“A Call to Love First” from Pastor Jake Heskett

More Messages from Pastor Jake Heskett

From Series: "1 John: Love God. Love Neighbor"

1 John is a five chapter master piece. John Wesley believed that 1 John contained the purest, most distilled version of the gospel in the entire Bible - “We love because God loved us first.” For Wesley, this changed everything. He read from, preached, and quoted 1 John more than any other book of the Bible by far. While we are accustomed to reading 1 John as a letter, it lacks all the typical marks of an ancient letter and reads more like a sermon - cyclical and meditative - and asserting important key themes. God is light. God is love. God is life. When we know who God is, we know who we are. Fred Craddock says it this way: “1 John isn’t the beginning of Christian doctrine - it is the fruit. 1 John assumes you have met Jesus. Now it wants to know: what difference is that making in your neighborhood?”