It isn’t going to church, it may not even be your baptismal certificate, so what are the evidences I am a Christian?
John has already written that God is within us if we love other believers.
Love comes from God: so loving one another shows you have been born of and know God, v7.
God is love: so if you do not love then you do not know God, v8.
Since God so loved us: we ought also to love one another, v11.
No one has seen God: but if we love one another God lives in us, v12.
So the love factor is clear. It is a strong indicator that you are a Christian if you love fellow believers.
Then John writes this:
“This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.” (1 John 4 v 13-15)
So John goes further and he writes of the kind of the love found within us. Love that is found:-
- In the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
- In the witness of the Bible which we hold as truth which reveals the historical Jesus Christ as the Saviour from sin.
- In our confession that Jesus is the Son of God.
That is the assurance we all need that God is here in my life and I am living in Him.
Missions Paul 