Easter doesn't have the lull that Christmas leaves many of us.
Acts 4 Easter life has worship life look like public life-new Eden in the midst-live like you have forever to live-My guess is that Luke is already looking to the past as a golden age.
I John 1 light, life, darkness sin and walking the talk are all mixed together in the first chapter.
Just like the gospel of John the physical and spiritual are bound together, even if at different levels. So this is a direct assault against some socially acceptable rhetorical ploys of our time. You don't have to go to church and be christian-Ok but that doesn't mean that one may consistently avoid church and claim the name either. Christians are hypocritical-Ok-so what i else is new, but here it makes it plain that doctrine and a way of life are conjoined twins, if you will. I am so tired of the division we have permitted between head and heart when it comes to religion. Jesus did not save one element of life alone. Jesus saves us entirely, body and soul and mind together so that we can follow the great commandment of loving god and neighbor.
1 John's Black- importance of genuine fellowship (koinonia) "with us" and "with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (...Easter is God's refusal to leave the world in the lurch, . West WP-at stake is whether our actions testify to the truths we confess, whether our lives line up with our beliefs. In the view of 1 John, the truth is something we think or believe and it is something we do. And the "doing" includes confession of sin. It opens our lives up to the "cleansing" of our actions, to new ways of being and doing.The bottom line for 1 John is embodiment and incarnation. How do we know we walk in the light? The evidence is in our embodied relationships, that is, in our fellowship with and our love for one another (cf. 3:18). If we are doing the truth, then the community becomes a kind of incarnational evidence. If we sin, that, too, is manifested in community. What happens in the body matters, whether in the koinonia-body or in individual bodies (1:7). What happens in how we think through the faith matters. Yes, what happens in the heart matters, but it is not the test. That Is especially true when people have the gall to speak of worship as what it does for them emotionally but not asking if the worship is proper toward God.
John 20,-Pres. outlook-John has a focus on Thomas because he is the prime demonstration for the basic mistake in the gospel: a relentless focus on the physical alone without making a spiritual step. Notice the sensory emphasis see, touch. Jesus gives him what he desires, but please notice that it is when they are all together that his eyes see and his eyes are opened. We're all hovering between Easter and ordinary life, having glimpsed resurrection but still wondering if it is too good to be true. We're all waffling between forgiveness and resentment, confession and covering up our sin, sharing and hoarding. But living, breathing, took-on-our-sin, defeated-death, Jesus walks into all of those in between spaces, even when we padlocked the door. Easter life starts with forgiveness according to John. Forgiveness gives new life to relationships that have died or are on the brink. It is the first gift of new life Jesus brings to his disciples. After all, most of them had fled and all were in self-imposed house arrest. His act forgave them as it led them into Easter life themselves.
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