Tommy Mann

God is love. We know this concept and it warms our hearts. 1 John 4:8 famously says, "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." The sixteenth verse repeats this truth that God is love. We love this verse because it teaches us that the God of heaven loves imperfect people like us. This separates our God from other gods, like the god of Islam, who is impersonal. But what is sometimes lost in this verse is a deeper truth that points us to the Trinity.  If God is love, there must be someone for God to love. There has to be an object of His love; otherwise, how could God be love? He doesn't just love in the abstract, but existentially. God being love can't just be an idea; it must be put into practice. It stands to reason then, that if God is love, there is someone to love. I think we all would agree with that. Who does God love? Us! we shout with joy. But what about before there was an us? Who did God love before He made Adam? Or we could ask, Who ...

I can still remember my coach’s old mantra, “How you practice is how you’ll play.” If you goof off in practice, you will goof off in the game; but if you take practice seriously and treat it as if it is the game, then when the whistle blows you will do what has become second nature. How you practice is how you will play.   John would agree with my coach, but he was more concerned with how Christians practice in the game of life. In 1 John 3:7 the Apostle wrote, “Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.” Let no one deceive you. This is common sense stuff, so don’t listen to the false teachers that will tell you otherwise. You must practice righteousness if you want to be righteous. You must make a habit of doing the right thing, every time, even when no one is looking. Day in and day out we must do the right thing because Jesus is righteous, and we should be as well. What you practice is how you’ll live. In v.8 John c...

Falling in love with someone often feels out of our control, something that just happens to us. I’ll never forget the first time I met Alicia. It was like a scene from a Hallmark movie when she tripped over my foot and turned around to apologize. We hit it off right away as if we were struck by Cupid’s arrow.   Similarly, I’ll never forget the birth of our children, especially our firstborn. Reagan (who somehow turns 16 this week!) came via an emergency C-section, so we were in the OR when the nurses handed us this tiny baby that made us parents. I was instantly smitten with a kind of parental love I didn’t know before. Those things just happen to us. These were not choices we made. Loving my kids was not a wait and see thing where I chose to love them if they were well behaved or made good grades. It was almost out of my control.  When the New Testament speaks of Christians showing love, it uses that famous word  agape  that describes a choice we make to put the nee...

1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”     The blood of Jesus is that special ingredient that can make all the difference in our lives.   Without the blood, we are doomed to a joyless existence in life, and separation from the Father in the afterlife. With the blood, we are put on a path that leads to meaningful life now and eternal life with the Father.  John did not say it is religious effort, good deeds, trying hard, or behavior modification that cleanses us from sin. No, it is only because of the blood we can be made righteous.  I was walking in the darkness, but now I’m in the light;                                          ...

  1 John 1:9 contains one of the greatest promises in the Bible. The Apostle wrote, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is one of the verses I quote the most in the pulpit. But it is important we understand what this verse entails. First, John is writing to the church, not to unbelievers. The unsaved are not cleansed of their sin just by confession of sin. They must confess Jesus as Lord of their life. Whether Paul was telling the Philippian jailer he had to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31),” or telling the church in Rome that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13),” it is clear that there is no salvation apart from Jesus.  John is telling the church—who is already saved and had their sin-burden removed at their salvation—that our individual sins can be forgiven by confession.  And it is also important to understand what confession means. ...

Are we really supposed to believe that there is some evil spirit that goes around the world tempting people to sin? That might work in children’s church lessons, but are grownups still expected to believe in an actual devil?   Professor Jeffrey Burton Russell wrote extensively about the devil, including his book  The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity.  He posed the question, “What, really, is the Devil? This is comparable to the question: What, really, is art? Absolute answers to such questions are not attainable.” He went on to write, “evil has no ontological being and can therefore strictly speaking have no essence.”    Russell’s point is that the devil is a myth, simply “the personification of evil [1] .” Throughout time people have sought to explain the existence of evil in the world, and rather than blaming whatever god they worship, they assign blame to a malevolent devil.    But if we believe the Bible is God’s ...