John’s Loom
July 24, 2024
After reading the apostle John’s first letter this morning (that is, listening to it on an audio app — https://live.bible.is/bible), I saw something that I hadn’t pictured before.
John is quite poetic in a way. He repeats certain concepts in slightly different ways as a weaver creates a comforter on a loom with different colored threads. Over and over again, the shuttle is thrown back and forth creating a beautiful tapestry in the cloth representing the Gospel of Jesus.
The vertical threads held tightly by the loom is God’s love. The shuttle passing through those threads is the love Believers have for one another. The finished product is a combination of God’s love, Believers’ responding love for God, and the communal love the family of God has for each other.
The finished product is indeed a Comforter just as the Spirit of God wraps Himself around Believers to keep them warm in this cold, cold world.
There is a lot more to the warp and the woof threads of John’s tapestry lesson, but here’s a general outline of his letter:
@ https://overviewbible.com/1-john
Quick outline of 1 John
“Disclaimer: this may be the toughest book of the Bible to outline. With all John’s reasons to write, scholars have a hard time forming an outline from John’s letter. But the central focus of First John seems to be distinguishing the false teachers from children of God, so here’s my take:
- The children of God keep His commands (1 Jn 1–3)
- The Spirit of God affirms Jesus’ first coming (1 Jn 4:1–6)
- The children of God love one another (1 Jn 4:7–21)
- Things the child of God can know (1 Jn 5)”
One of the deeper colored threads woven into the letter are the warnings against false teachers and self titled “prophets.”
A bright thread is one of hope, knowing that history is coming to an end with Jesus coming again — but this time to finish the tapestry re[resenting God, Jesus, and the Bible.
Another dark thread that everyone should consider, is the one foundational setup of the loom, the warp and woof of it all, I will put as a question: Are you a twice born Believer? Jesus said, “You must be born again.” I cannot emphasize this concept enough.
You have to start at the beginning which is the first step both John the Baptist and Jesus preached, that is, “Repent.” Repent means turning away from our own concepts and actions and turning to God’s.
Here’s an essential read putting the idea of being born again in context:
“There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again,a you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.b 6Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” — John 3:1–8, New Living Translation.
As an aside, I would point out that it is true that there are many mysteries in the Bible. Yet, like any well-written detective novels, there are factual events which are all resolved in the book’s denouement, unraveling the mystery.
Likewise, John’s tapestry has the promise of Jesus’ return, which is the unraveling of the this particular mystery (Again, let me emphasize that John is writing to born again believer.):
“Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.” — 1 John 3:2, ibid.