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My wife and I have moved countries three times. I don’t recommend it.Each international move comes with a degree of culture shock, and a time when you have to decide if and how you are going to assimilate to the cultural norms and expectations of your new surroundings. The best advice I ever received from someone who was a few years ahead of us on the journey was: “Do your best to live like a local and to love a place as if it is going to be your home for a long time.”
In other words, be a local, live like a resident. Don’t treat your home like a vacation rental and don’t engage with your environment like you don’t love it.
It really does change your posture. I came to realize that once I saw the place I found myself in as a home to stay in rather than a place I was just visiting, it created a sense of familiarity, responsibility, and passion for the people and place I didn’t have before. We now care about college football and have a favorite BBQ spot. We are living here as if we live here.
Friends, this is not altogether unlike what the Apostle John so badly wants to encourage us toward in his letters:
“And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.” (1 John 2:28)
Abide is a familiar phrase in John’s vocabulary. He uses it throughout his letters, and it’s a central theme in his Gospel about Jesus’ life. It is also one of those words Christians say a lot, assuming its meaning and intent, but we don’t often take the time to explain or remember what it actually means.
In its simplest form, to abide means to take up residence in—to make your home in. John calls God’s people to make their home in Christ. To live in such a way that you are most at home in Jesus and His ways.
Throughout John’s letters, this idea of making your home within Christ is almost always tied to walking in His ways (1 John 2:6) and doing the will of God (1 John 2:17). In John 15, John links abiding directly to keeping Jesus’ commandments (John 15:10). So, there is a very real sense in which abiding means obeying. You can’t abide in Christ if you don’t follow His instructions, and you won’t follow His instructions if you don’t know Him well.
This is not a call to follow rules to get by. This is about making your entire life about believing in and worshiping Jesus Christ. Abiding isn't just visiting; it's making a permanent home. Many of us seem content to live more like Christian tourists than like permanent residents in Christ’s kingdom. We know facts about Jesus, but we don’t really know Him. We believe His teachings, but we don’t feel obligated to obey them. John doesn’t want us to live that way, and he offers a compelling reason why.
In his letter, John ties his urging to abide to Jesus’ second coming. Abide in Him. Why? Because Jesus is coming back. We abide in Christ in anticipation of when, at Christ’s return, God makes His dwelling place with us.
But why does that matter? Once He returns, won’t everything be OK? The question John wants us to consider is: how will I feel on that day? John wants us to have full confidence and no shame when Jesus returns. And not surprisingly, abiding makes a huge difference in whether or not we’ll feel that way.
When you abide somewhere, you develop an intimate knowing—a deep relationship and familiarity. Abiding in Christ produces the same result. When you have spent your entire life devoted to following Jesus, when you have been saturated by His Word and your daily living has been shaped by Scripture, when you dedicate your time and resources to steward in accordance with God’s will, you have abided.
And when you have abided in this way, Jesus’ return is a reality you will long for and anticipate. It won’t feel like a stranger coming to a distant people He’s never heard from or hasn’t talked to in a while. His coming won’t cause confusion or uncertainty in us because we’re not sure whether He’ll remember us. His return won’t bring fear or shame because we’re worried He might realize we’ve snuck our way into the family of God and don’t really belong here.
No, we will be confident, and we will not shrink back in shame when He returns, because we know our Savior. Instead of a stranger returning, it will be someone we’ve been talking to for hours upon hours, someone we’ve been modeling our entire lives after, someone we’ve been pursuing with our whole lives, someone we love dearly and have been longing to be near to. When He comes back, it will be the greatest reunion. It won’t feel like a stranger or an old friend we haven’t seen in a while because of our own neglect or ignorance. It will be our Savior and Friend coming back to take us home, where we will get to abide in Him, in fullness, forever.
John wants us to be ready for the fullness of that day. I want to be ready.
So, how do we prepare for His coming? It’s not just a matter of gaining enough knowledge about the end times or understanding the signs for His second coming. It’s by abiding in Him.
This is why the regular practice of holy habits matters. We know Him by communing with Him in prayer, and study, and worship, and fasting, and all of the rest. This is why obedience and repentance when we fail to obey are important practices of an abiding life. We come to know His power and mercy when we come to Him as we really are and submit ourselves to Him as He really is, all in the midst of our everyday successes and failures.
Jesus is coming back no matter what. I want to stand before Him one day and not feel the urge to “shrink from him in shame.” Like John, I long for that day to be when you and I will stand in awestruck confidence, because we know our King—we have lived our lives in the reality of who He is, and so we feel no shame at His rule and reign because it is what we have already lived under for the longest time.
Oh Lord, come quickly. And teach us what it means to abide while we wait!
Want to dive deeper into the sermon series? Check out our sermon series guide on The Letters of John, or watch the most recent sermon from The Letters of John sermon series.
