Thessalonian Faith

An Invitation to Fellowship with God (1 John 1:1-4)

(62-02a)

Study Guide

First John could be considered God’s TRIP MAP 1 for your growth to spiritual maturity. The five chapters neatly present five phases of growth in fellowship with God:

  1. Join in Fellowship with God
  2. Abide in Fellowship with God
  3. Love in Fellowship with God
  4. Live in Fellowship with God
  5. Thrive in Fellowship with God

Each chapter offers practical insights to help you understand and respond to God’s will for you as His child in fellowship with Him.

Fellowship is sharing a common life and a common purpose.
It is “doing life together”2

Lesson Outline.

Join in Fellowship with God (1 John 1)

  • Invitation to Fellowship with God (1 John 1:1-4)
    • Focus of fellowship – Jesus (1 John 1:1-2)
    • Invitation to Join in Fellowship (1 John 1:3-4)

Read the Passage

Read verses 1-4 of the first chapter of 1 John several times from one or more of the following key translations. This, with the outline above, will help you see the boundaries, content, and flow of the study passage.

  1. Your own Bible
  2. Berean Standard Bible (BSB with audio and transcript)
  3. New Living Translation (NLT)

Who is the person being described in verses 1 & 2?
What do these verses tell you about this person?

Study the Passage

Use the following suggested resources to answer the three key questions of Bible study:

  1. What does the passage say? (God’s eternal word)
  2. What did the passage mean to the people of its day? (to them then)
  3. What is the message for people today? (for us now)

Suggested resources:

If you have any questions not answered by the above resources:

  1. Go to https://www.gotquestions.org/
  2. Type the Bible reference or your question in the search box at the top of the web page.
  3. Click on any of the related questions listed and explore the results.

Has this passage changed your understanding of fellowship?
How?

Memory Verse

1 John 1:3 (NLT)
“We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard
so that you may have fellowship with us.
And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”

Footnotes:

* Use the right and left arrows to move between verses.

  1. TRIP: Transformational, Relational, Intentional, Personal
    MAP: Ministry Action Plan ↩︎
  2. Colin S. Smith, Unlocking the Bible Story (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 2002) ↩︎