1 John 3:11-24 [NLTse]
11 This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. 13 So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.
14 If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. 15 Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.
16 We know what real love is because Jesus gave up His life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?
18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. 19 Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God. 20 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and He knows everything.
21 Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence. 22 And we will receive from Him whatever we ask because we obey Him and do the things that please Him.
23 And this is His commandment: We must believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. 24 Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with Him, and He with them. And we know He lives in us because the Spirit He gave us lives in us.
When asked which was the greatest commandment of all the Lord Jesus answered, “To love God; to love Him with all our hearts and minds; to love Him using everything we have; and, to love Him using all of our influence and talents and time.” But Jesus went on also saying, “And there’s another commandment that’s just as great as loving God: Loving those around you; in all the same ways you love yourself, to love those around you.” And the Son of God underlined what He’d said, saying, “Everything that God has had to say can be summarized to ‘love God’ and ‘love those around you like you love yourself’.”
“What is love?” has been the most searched phrase on Google, according to the company. Our society has answered that question in a variety of ways. Some say that love is “a powerful neurological condition like hunger or thirst, only more permanent.” That love can be viewed as “a survival tool – a mechanism we have evolved to promote long-term relationships, mutual defense, parental support of children, and to promote feelings of safety and security.”
Some say that love depends on where you are in relation to it. “Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air – you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming, a physical pain.”
Another definition is that love is “perfect, amazing, beautiful, just plain awesome, the tears on your pillow, the outbursts of laughter in the middle of class, friendship set on fire, like a war between your head and your heart, both your enemy and your best friend, what keeps you going back to her [or him], pain and happiness at the same time…” Or, “love is like when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day”.
God tells us that love is “patient and kind. That love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. That love does not demand its own way. That love is not irritable, and that love keeps no record of being wronged. Love does not rejoice about injustice, no, love rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up; love never loses faith; love is always hopeful, and love endures through every circumstance.”
Does any of that get you thinking about your “love” relationships? Is your “love” like that?
James Baldwin said that “love is battle; love is war”. And there is surely a battle going on in our culture and our world over love.
Our culture calls a child whose parents never got married a “love child”, and speaks of sexual activity of almost any kind as “making love”, even though God tells men and women to get married before they start being sexual. People say, “I love chocolate.” People say, “I love God” even while they are doing what God has told them not to do; even though Jesus has said that if we truly love Him then we will do what He’s said.
Yes, there’s a big difference between what our culture considers love and what God considers love. And God’s Word, the Bible, says that “God is love.”
Let’s go back to 1 Corinthians 13, the Bible’s “love” chapter. Love is
- “patient and kind”
- “not jealous or boastful or proud or rude”
- “does not demand its own way”
- “is not irritable”
- “keeps no record of being wronged”
- “does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out”
- “never gives up”
- “never loses faith”
- “is always hopeful” and,
- “endures through every circumstance”.
How does your love for your husband, how does your love for your wife, stand up to that? Much nicer to have “love” just be some warm-fuzzy feeling or some ache or desire, isn’t it? How does your love for your kids or your parents measure up? Nicer just to be able to say, “I love you” and mean something vague and well-meaning, isn’t it? How about your love for God?
Are you patient and kind towards God? Are you jealous or boastful or proud or rude towards God or around God? Do you demand your own way with God? Are you irritable with Him? Do you remember all the times you feel God’s treated you badly or wrong? Have you given up on God? Have you lost faith in God? Do you love God?
In our reading this morning from 1 John 3, the apostle John is writing about love. He compares a love-relationship with Cain and Abel, and that we shouldn’t be surprised how badly non-Christians can sometimes treat us just because we are Christians, because unbelievers see us doing right things while they are doing wicked things, and it makes them jealous and angry and feel judged. And they take that out on us.
All the more reason to love each other, John says. And if you hate a fellow-Christian, he writes, then you’re just acting like an unbeliever, like Cain.
Giving up our lives is what love is all about, the Holy Spirit says through John. Jesus showed His love for us by giving up His life for us, and we show our love for Him and for one another by giving up our lives.
Because God Himself is love it is impossible to truly love another person without God’s help. When we are truly loving others we are showing that God’s Own nature is within us. That’s why we are called “children of God” because only God is love, and so to truly love one must have God’s Spirit within them: The Holy Spirit Who fills our hearts with God’s love.
As a pastor I am very familiar with the height and breadth and depth of God’s love. Many people will give me a hug or send me a card, saying, “I love you, Pastor.” I know they are wanting me to say, “And I love you!” I do that now, but I didn’t used to. Because I know all that love is! I know all that love means! And I know how short I fall. And I don’t want to say hollow words.
But the Lord’s taught me that while I can’t love anyone – that is, truly love anyone – that by Christ in me I can. It is God’s first loving us that moves us to truly love. It is God’s nature growing in us as we trust and obey Holy Spirit more within us that moves us to true love. It is God’s work upon us through the loving teaching, the loving fellowship, and the loving discipline of His church – God’s loving family – that moves us to truly love. Yes, we have to give all we have and are to love God and those around us God’s way, but as we do it is our trusting in that power that raised Jesus from the dead that will grant all of our efforts and work to transform our minds and hearts.
And John tells us that the greatest effort and the greatest work we are called to do is to give up our lives. We are all much more focused on the ways we want others to love us and give up their lives for us! But God doesn’t call us to make sure others are loving us or to make sure that others are giving up their lives for us. No. He calls us to love Him and those around us, and to give up our lives for Him and for them. Giving up our lives so that we might take up God’s life! Laying down our plans and dreams so that we might pursue God’s plans and dreams.
Oswald Chambers said, “We have no right to judge where we should be put or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim [must be] to pour out a wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work.
And whatever those works might be day by day – big and little works, big and little sacrifices, faithfully doing the seemingly world-changing and faithfully doing the seemingly inconsequential – all the things that trusting Him leads us to do – whatever attitudes, words, and actions that believing in Jesus Christ and giving up our lives might lead us to, when we do them, it is Him doing them in us, and it is called love.
Let’s pray for God to help us be like Him, and to fill us with His Spirit, so that we might truly love…
O Father: You tell us in Your Word that You have loved us from the very beginning of the universe, of the world… That the perfect love You have for Yourself Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has multiplied and overflowed, and so You created us – Your covenant-people, Your beloved, Your church – to be the focus of Your love. But we did not love You in return. No, we loved ourselves. And so our love grew twisted, and our ideas about love grew twisted…
But in Jesus, Father, You have shown us what real love looks like again! Forgive us our sinfulness. Restore us to fellowship with You and each other, and teach us about love and how to love. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit and grant us greater and greater surrender to You in us. We love You, Father, and want to truly love You more. We love each other, Father, and we want to truly love each other more.
Lord: You have made Yourself like us. Make us like You. In Jesus’ name…