The Grands Letter

Dear Grands,

1 John 2:3-6, “And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.

4 The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;

5 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:

6 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

What is salvation? How do we know whether we have been saved? To John, and to the whole of Scripture, it is simple: you keep His commandments. The commandments to which the apostle refers are the directives of Jesus Himself. In his Gospel, John quotes Jesus as saying, “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (Jn. 15:14). In other words, we know we have been saved –born again—when we’ve abandoned our thinking and way of life and committed ourselves to His way of Life.

I remember asking a person if he were a Christian. He said, “Yes,” to which I responded, when were you saved?” He replied, “I always have been.” Rest assurred: no one has always been saved or always been a Christian. Were that true, Jesus then died needlessly. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they rejected God’s way for their lives. Their sons, Cain and Abel, were born in sin, making it necessary that the LORD Himself provide a way of forgiveness for their sin. Jesus was His Father’s sacrifice for all mankind.

When He died on the Cross, He opened the door of opportunity for all mankind to be forgiven and cleansed from sin.

Did you read this week that Lady Gaga called herself a “Christian”? And in the same breath, she denounced the Christianity of Vice President Pence and his wife, Karen. Jesus taught that we are to love one another. Knowing Jesus as our Savior and LORD means we have changed our thinking and our way of life. Whatever we were previously, we have renounced. We have believed upon Him and adopted His way of thinking and of living.

As someone once said, “It’s not how loud you shout or how high you jump; it’s how you run when you hit the ground.”

His love is perfected in us when we keep His Word. We want to live so close to Him that people will even come to mistaking us for Him. When we live in His Word, we abide in Him; and when we abide in Him, we begin to look like Him. We then “walk in the same manner as He walked.”

When I was a child, my Dad wrote a poem in which he expressed how much he wanted me to be like him. My Dad was a quiet and godly man with a very dry sense of humor. I would have done well to have lived like him. The humor is about all I got. But in the same way my Heavenly Father wants me to be like Him. He wants you to be like Him, too! Are you? If you are like Him, you probably don’t think you are; if you’re not like Him, you probably need to read this letter again.

We love you and pray for you. May we all come to look more like Him in our lives!

Nana & Dado III

(Rose Marie & Gene)

Gene L. Jeffries, Th.D.

Springdale, Arkansas 72764

United States of America

“We never know that God is all we need

until He becomes all that we have.”