"Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us."
Commentary
Abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ is done by keeping His Commandments, both as an individual believer as well as a collective body of believers, I.e., a church, or congregation, or assembly of believers etc. Thus, when an individual believer or collective body of believers decides to not hold up the Lord Jesus Christ’s Commandments (which do not contravene nor annul any of God’s Old Testament commandments which reveal and declare the righteous and moral Character of God, and thus we as people who are all created in His own Image are to likewise reflect and live by), then that individual believer, or body of believers, ceases to abide in Christ, even though they may still call themselves Christians or followers of the Lord Jesus Christ in reality they no longer are, because they have ceased keeping His commandments which He has given us all to preserve and to uphold us all in the face of humanities sinful and demonically prompted inclinations to reject and rebel against God and His Word and Will for us all. And so, this is the battlefield both on a personal and collective level. For make no mistakes about it, when the Word of God says, that Sodom and Gomorrah are set forth as an example for all those who would afterward live ungodly lives, its warning us all not to follow this world’s moral depravity to our own eternal destruction (see Mark 9:42-48; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Gal. 5:19-23; 2 Peter 2:4-22; 3:10-13; Jude 3-25; Rev. 21:6-8; 22:14-15; also see Rom. 1:18-32; Lev. chapters 18, 20).
Having then covered how we
abide in Christ the next part of the Apostle Johns exhortation tells us how the
Lord Jesus Christ abides in us, and that is by His Spirit whom He has given us
all who believe in Him. In reality then the first part is not possible without
the second, for we cannot abide In Christ unless He first abides in us, which
happens the moment anyone believes in Him, then He will come and dwell in them,
just as dwells in us, just as He has Promised us (Rev. 3:20). Therefore those who
have been born again by God’s Spirit through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
will always keep Christ’s Commandments, because we cannot deny Him who abides
in us, while those who are not born again will always default or fall back to
the world and its morals and values, to lessor and greater degrees.
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