{"id":656,"date":"2022-06-13T19:16:43","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T19:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/?p=656"},"modified":"2022-06-13T19:16:43","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T19:16:43","slug":"dec-24-the-son-of-god-appeared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/dec-24-the-son-of-god-appeared\/","title":{"rendered":"Dec. 24 &#8211; The Son of God Appeared"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-adtags-visited=\"true\"><em>Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the\u00a0one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as\u00a0He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the\u00a0devil; for the devil has sinned fom the beginning.\u00a0The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy\u00a0the works of the devil.\u00a0<\/em>\u20141 John 3:7\u20138<\/p>\n<p data-adtags-visited=\"true\">\nWhen verse 8 says, \u201cThe Son of God appeared for this\u00a0purpose, to destroy the works of the devil,\u201d what are the\u00a0\u201cworks of the devil\u201d that he has in mind? The answer is\u00a0clear from the context.\u00a0First, verse 5 is a clear parallel: \u201cYou know that He\u00a0appeared in order to take away sins.\u201d The phrase \u201che\u00a0appeared to\u2026\u201d occurs in verse 5 and verse 8. So probably\u00a0the \u201cworks of the devil\u201d that Jesus came to destroy are\u00a0sins. The first part of verse 8 makes this virtually certain:\u00a0\u201cThe one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has\u00a0sinned from the beginning.\u201d\u00a0The issue in this context is sinning, not sickness or broken cars or messed up schedules. Jesus came into the world\u00a0to help us stop sinning.\u00a0Let me put it alongside the truth of 1 John 2:1: \u201cMy little\u00a0children, I am writing these things to you so that you may\u00a0not sin.\u201d In other words, I am promoting the purpose of\u00a0Christmas (3:8), the purpose of the incarnation. Then he\u00a0adds (2:2), \u201cAnd if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with\u00a0the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He Himself is\u00a0the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also\u00a0for those of the whole world.\u201dBut now look what this means: It means that Jesus\u00a0appeared in the world for two reasons. He came that we\u00a0might not go on sinning; and he came to die so that there\u00a0would be a propitiation\u2014a substitutionary sacrifice that\u00a0takes away the wrath of God\u2014for our sins, if we do sin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the\u00a0one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as\u00a0He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the\u00a0devil; for the devil has sinned fom the beginning.\u00a0The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy\u00a0the works of the devil.\u00a0\u20141 John 3:7\u20138 When verse 8 says, \u201cThe Son [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}