1 John: Knowing You Are Alive
1 John
29 September 2025
Hopeful Confidence in Life
1 John 5:13-21
by Joel Sim
In the concluding passage of this letter, the apostle John draws everything together under one great theme: confidence. He desires that we live with confidence before God in this uncertain world. This confidence is grounded in what we know, particularly the fact that God saved us through Jesus Christ, hears us through prayer, and keeps us through the prayers of the church and His sovereign might. Our today is in the hands of Jesus, but so is our tomorrow, and He will bring us safely into eternity. This is why we can live with confidence and hope in this life.
21 September 2025
The Assurance of God
1 John 5:1-12
by Paul Lee
John has shown that God’s children are known by love and obedience. Now, he assures believers that their faith in Jesus is grounded in God Himself. The Father gives us victory over the world through faith (1 John 5:1–5). The Spirit testifies to the truth of who Jesus is (1 John 5:6–10). The Son gives us eternal life (1 John 5:11–12). Our confidence rests not in ourselves, but in the testimony and work of the triune God: Father, Spirit and Son.
14 September 2025
Why We Love One Another
1 John 4:7-21
by Tan Huai Tze
Loving one another is a mark of being a true follower of Jesus. But this kind of love is only made possible for the follower of Christ because God is love in His very nature, God has loved by giving His Son as a sacrifice for sin, and God continues to love by living in us, and is accomplishing the goal of His love for us. Indeed, we love because He has first loved us.
7 September 2025
Test the Spirits
1 John 4:1-6
by Tan Huai Tze
The gift of the Holy Spirit is so precious that it will be counterfeited. Because of that, John wants us to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1) to see if they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. John shows that those who have the Holy Spirit will believe in Jesus, stake their lives on Him and stay in the church that He is building.
31 August 2025
An Abiding Assurance
1 John 3:19-24
by Aaron Akins
This passage shows us that even as genuine believers, assurance that we are truly children of God is something we need to fight for. However, the foundation of that assurance is not what we do, but what Christ has done. We receive this by faith, and the result is a life lived in faith, obedience and love.
24 August 2025
Loving with the Love of Christ
1 John 3:11-18
by Joel Sim
The apostle John focuses on the social test in these verses, i.e., whether one has love for a fellow believer. Love for one another is not a duty of burden, but a gift of assurance that we truly know God. Since we have been brought from death to life, we are no longer called to treat one another, as if we're still living in the darkness. Rather, we love one another by God's grace and in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who laid down His life for us as a demonstration of the love that we are called to.
17 August 2025
Children of God
1 John 2:28-3:10
by Tan Huai Tze
In this passage, we discover who the true children of God are, what they will be, and how they live now. In His love, God makes us His children through Christ. And when we see Christ when He comes again, we will be like Him. And so today, in light of that hope, we live lives joyfully dependent and lovingly obedient to God, expressed in our practical actions.
10 August 2025
Many Antichrists Have Come
1 John 2:18-27
by Tan Huai Tze
In his love for his readers, John issues a stern warning about the danger of the antichrists. They are those who leave the fellowship of the church, and who deny that Jesus is sent by God, and is indeed the Son of God. They are deceptive. In order to resist them, we need to let God’s truth abide in us, and we need to continue to abide in God. And what will move us to do so is to know that Christ is better than anything antichrists can falsely offer.
3 August 2025
The Love of the Father
1 John 2:12-17
by Tan Huai Tze
John shows how someone “does the will of God” and “abides forever”. This involves knowing how the Father has loved us, and loving Him in return. And we love Him by turning our hearts away from things that are not from Him and that will pass away.
27 July 2025
Knowing We Have Come To Know Him
1 John 2:1-11
by Joseph Tern
In a world of spiritual confusion, the apostle John assures his readers that they can truly know God. It is made possible through the atoning work of Christ, who is our Advocate before our Father. As we grow in obedience, love for fellow believers, and Christlikeness, we see the evidence of God's work in us, giving us confidence that we do know Him.
20 July 2025
Walking in the Light
1 John 1:5-10
by Joel Sim
As believers, we know that we have communion with the triune God through the reality of walking in the light. It begins with knowing God as holy, which helps us to grasp why we need the Gospel in the first place. In light of this, we are called to fellowship with one another as the fruit of our fellowship with God, as well as to live with humble integrity through the confession of our sins. This is made possible through faith in Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world (John 8:12).
13 July 2025
That Our Joy May Be Complete
1 John 1:1–4
by Tan Huai Tze
John writes to assure believers that their faith is real—not just for certainty’s sake, but so their joy may be complete (1 John 1:4). He calls them to trust the reliable witness, receive the eternal Word, and enter the genuine welcome of God’s people and of the Triune God Himself.