1 John 2:2-6, 9-11, 15-17 records, “I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But
if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When He served as a sacrifice for our sins, He solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s. Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep His commandments. If someone claims, “I know Him well!” but doesn’t keep His commandments, he’s obviously a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the one who keeps God’s word is the person in whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived. Anyone who claims to live in God’s light and hates a brother or sister is still in the dark. It’s the person who loves brother and sister who dwells in God’s light and doesn’t block the light from others. But whoever hates is still in the dark, stumbles around in the dark, doesn’t know which end is up, blinded by the darkness. Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.” MSG
Summing up these verses as a Christian definition: obey Jesus by living like Jesus who displayed God’s love by loving people and not the world. Simple not easy. Our constant wanting is hard, whether it is wanting pleasure, power, or possessions. People are hard, they irritate and aggravate us. Obedience is hard, dying to self, making others more important than myself, serving constantly, giving generously, forgiving unconditionally, overwhelming!
None of these things are to be done in the flesh but by His Spirit. None of our failures to do these things keep us from heaven for Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross paid for all our failures. Yet, as He rose from the dead, so too His resurrection life and power is to be alive in us working through us to win people to Himself by us. This is the pressure to live like Jesus.
Not pressure to get into heaven but pressure to reveal that heaven has gotten into us. O how far we must go to truly live as a Christian. We are a Christian because of the Christ Who died for our sins and appropriated to us His life and righteousness. We are justified before the Father to be glorified with the Son at His appearing or our departure. It is the sanctification process, our cooperation with the Holy Spirit here on earth before men, that is struggling to reveal the hand of God upon us, in us, accomplishing His will through us.
When that occurs, that is when we reveal we are truly a Christian.
