More Than Naughty or Nice

By Dean Collins

“Oh, you better watch out…”

I won’t repeat the lines that by now are running through your head because I am sure you have already heard that Santa Claus is coming to town more times than you wanted to hear!

I suppose that at some point every child who isn’t quite sure if Santa is real or not pauses and considers whether they have been naughty or nice in the last 12 months. After all, according to the song, Santa knows pretty much everything. And I imagine that hundreds of parents have both reluctantly and desperately quoted lines from this song to try and curb the ever-growing restlessness in their child as Christmas nears.

The truth is that all of us have had some naughty and nice moments in the last 12 months. We may not be all that concerned about what Santa thinks of those incidents where we allowed our anger, our selfishness, or our seeking of revenge to get the best of us. But some may wonder what God thinks of those moments. The apostle John has good news. We can know we are in the truth and have the reassurance that our heart is properly aligned with our Father in heaven.

John tells us in 1 John 3 that God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. What is central to our relationship with God also unlocks the pathway to effective prayer. Here is what John teaches us:

“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”

We don’t need to live in fear of whether God is watching us with a desire to catch us in a mistake and withhold his love and his blessings.

The epistle of 1 John is short and filled with assurance concerning our relationship with God. In fact, in verse 13 of the last chapter of this letter to believers, John says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” We don’t have to keep a daily checklist concerning whether we have been naughty or nice. According to John and many other passages in the New Testament, what is needed is our daily confession that Jesus was born of God and is our Savior. And we demonstrate our confession by how we follow the example of Jesus and love each other.

As we approach the celebration of the birth of Jesus during this advent season, we are thankful that through Christ we are no longer trying to be acceptable to God by keeping hundreds of rules. Through Christ, we can know we are the children of God because we obey his commandments, which all boil down to how we love each other and those around us.

Father, thank you for the gift of Jesus. Thank you that we don’t have to live in fear about whether we have done everything perfectly. Our confession is that Jesus was born of God, died for our sins, and lives again by the power of the resurrection. And today we will affirm our confession through our love for each other. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Your Time with God’s Word
1 John 3:19-24, 5:1-7, 9-13 ESV

Photo by Unsplash
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