Abide in what you heard in the beginning.

1 John 2:24 As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. What you heard from the beginning is important. The apostle John told his readers the key to abiding in the Son and the Father, namely, believing and keeping the foundational truth which they heard from the beginning in the forefront of their minds. What did they hear from the beginning? John told them in the first three verses of this letter. “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life — and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” If we want to have fellowship with the Father and the Son, the apostle said we must receive and hold fast to the truth that Jesus was a real person in the flesh, who entered into the history of mankind. He was, is, and always will be the eternal life of the one true God. If you have the Son, you have the Father. You have eternal life. If this truth abides in you, then you also abide in the Son and in the Father. The order is important to John. Why not say abide in the Father and in the Son? Because Jesus, the Son, is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). Jesus also said that if they kept His word, He and the Father would make their abode in them (John 14:23). The word which He gave them was to believe in Him as God and to love one another as He loved them (John 13:34; 14:1). I have summarized this truth into a call to live to love with Jesus. That is what Jesus commanded in the beginning. Because we believe He is God in the flesh and the only way to the Father, we obey Him, and make glorifying God by living to love with Jesus our purpose in life. The result is? You abide in the Son and in the Father. What a great encouragement these verses are to live to love with Jesus! It’s how we have fellowship with God on a minute by minute basis—abiding in what we heard from the beginning.