How well do you understand God the Father and the God Family?

In 1 John 2:1, John begins, “My little children.” When you understand this book, you know this is God the Father speaking! John is trying to get all of God’s people to understand their Father!

John’s goal was to bring all of God’s people into the bosom of the Father. He, like Jesus Christ, was declaring the Father. His focus was on the message, not Christ the messenger. John had a deep understanding of God’s Family and the Father who is the Head of that Family.

The gospel is the good news about the coming Kingdom, or Family, of God. This is the message that Satan is trying to blur and destroy. Just look at the attack on family today!

We are little children! We know nothing apart from God. What is it worth for God to call us “My little children”? God is a Father to all those called today. We must respond by acting like God’s little children. That is the whole message of this book. Those who have known God but are now rebelling must get back to understanding and obeying the Father.

John later referred to these same people not as “my little children” but as “little children” (see verses 12, 18). Perhaps they were no longer acting like God’s children; they were rebelling and getting away from God. These are times of grave danger, which is why John refers to the last hour in this chapter. He is using this affectionate term, “little children,” yet at the same time he is calling them liars! John is trying to get God’s Family to see how they are loved and how they are rebelling! They are wandering off, not looking to their Father.

Satan is always trying to blot out and destroy the Father. If you lose the Father, you lose the Family, the gospel—everything!

How can you make a physical family strong? Only by structuring it the way God designed it, with a father at the head. If the father does his job and the mother fulfills her godly role, that family will be happy and stable. When ministers leave the pcg, in most cases they simply were not the head of their physical families as they should have been. They lost sight of God the Father. Upside-down families will not work! Family will only work if the father leads. The world does not like this message because it has too many weak and upside-down families today.

In verse 13, John talks to those who “have known the Father.” They no longer know Him! What have you lost if you have known the Father? These people are losing their eternal lives! Verse 14 discusses people who have God’s truth abiding in them and “have overcome [conquered] the wicked one.” There are many Laodiceans who have God’s truth to some degree but are no longer conquering the devil!

A battle is raging between God’s people and the devil—and we have to conquer! If you know God, you will conquer. If you don’t know God, you will be conquered. Families will fall apart. Problems will fester between people. John is talking about human relations in the Church!

If we keep God’s law of love, we will solve those problems.

Realize, God must give us His love, or we won’t have it. We can’t just talk about love and think somehow we will have it. God must give it, and He will only do so if we are obedient to Him.

How often John kept driving home the law of love. The world is passing away forever. Don’t become tempted by the evil world in this last hour (verses 17-18).

For more, read my free booklet The Last Hour.