The Outworking of Love

Now we know that believers ought not treat their brothers and sisters in Christ poorly. We also know that love is imperative to our faith. But what should this love look like? This is where John continues in the 16th verse of chapter 3.

 

What is the best example of love? Where do we find the perfect example of love? John's answer? In Christ - the One who was willing to lay down His life.

 

Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." This is recorded in John 15:13, and the word undoubtedly still echoed in John's mind.

 

The standard to which believers are called to love their brothers and sisters is a high one. It does not mean that to perfectly love them we must find a way to physically die for them. It means that we must find a way to die to our own selfish desires on their behalf. We must give of our money to the man without food, even though it will mean we cannot go out to eat this month. We must give of our time to the family without a strong roof, even though it will mean we use precious vacation days. We must give of our space to the mother and child without a home, even though it will mean losing the peace and quiet of our home.

 

In John's time, and a thousand times over in our time, this is a different sort of dying - a dying to self.

 

If you have the earthly means to help a brother or sister in need (you do), and you look away - pass the plate - walk on the other side of street, how is there any evidence of the love of God in you? If we claim to be imitators of Christ, yet do not imitate His most epic  action, on what basis can we claim to know Him?

 

If you tell your friends your brother is your identical twin, but when they see him, he stands a foot taller, has freckles, a different shaped nose, a stronger cheek, different colored eyes and different colored hair, are they going to believe you? Even you would have to take a step back and think, "Huh, maybe we aren't identical twins."

 

Most Christians do not have a problem talking about the needs of others. They don't even have a problem praying about them. "Lord, I pray that you would help the Smith family find a place to live. Lord, I pray you would bless the Johnson's with the funds to buy a car to replace the one they totaled. Father, please keep Johnny in the youth group and find him a mentor so he doesn't go back to his old ways."

 

Stop praying. The very fact that you are praying for them at all could quite possibly mean that the Lord has already provided the answer…in you.

 

Why can't the Smith family live with you until they find a place? Don't have room? How about converting that study to a bedroom?

 

Why can't you donate one of your cars to the Johnson family? Sure, it's convenient having two, but is it necessary? If you only have one car, what about a $100 check. No, it's not going to buy a car, but it's better than nothing. A $1,000 check would go even farther, but then again, you'd have to take that out our your emergency fund I suppose.

 

Johnny doesn't need a mentor. He needs you. No, you don't know everything, but you've been in the church for years. You can't explain the book of Revelation, but you can sure show him the law and grace of God, can't you?

 

I don't mean to be overly sarcastic or simplify this kind of love too much. It wouldn't be called laying down a life if it was easy. Letting someone live in your house is a sacrifice, so is giving money and possessions away. It's difficult. But that's the whole point, isn't it? We are imitating the One who did the difficult things. We are loving like only someone with God Himself inside of them could love.

 

This is how the world knows you are who you say you are. This is how you know you are who you say you are. 

The Imperative of Love

1 John 3:10-15 

PART ONE: THE SINNER 

Here, John simplifies things for us. While we've discussed some signs of true and false believers, John gives a broader and simple tell tale way of knowing who is which.  

1. Children of God will practice righteousness and will dwell harmoniously with other believers.  
2. Children of the devil will not practice righteousness and they will constantly find themselves bickering with the believers.  

Do you find yourself constantly bickering with others in your church congregation? Perhaps you do not have the love of God within you. Do you find yourself constantly diving into sin? Perhaps you have not been clothed with the righteousness of God.  

Do you find it odd that so many churches are dividing? Do you find it curious that quarterly meetings can be filled with so much heat? Is it not confusing that of all the places on earth where gossip occurs, the church body is among the most prominent?  

How do you explain this to an unbeliever? How do you convince them that Christians have tapped into something beautiful and wonderful and different from the rest of the world when we all look the same? 

Do you explain it away with, "Well, we're just sinners like everyone, saved by the grace of God,"? 

No.  

In Galatians 5:13, Paul says, "For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."  

The freedom Christ's sacrifice gives a believer is not to choose whether or not he will be nice to another believer today. Christ freed us from the chains of sin. Backbiting and gossip in the church is not a sign that the church is full of Christians who still sin. It is a sign of a pure lack of true believers.  

Similarly, in Romans 6, Paul condemns those who claim the grace of God, yet live in sin. In verses 1-4, he says, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." 

Simply put, someone who has actually been "saved" will no longer act like him who has not  been saved. There are no exceptions. God has made it clear how we ought to act, and how we ought to love. He has also made it exceptionally clear that the Spirit within us is more powerful than any temptation we will face (1 Cor. 10:13).  

No matter how juicy the potential gossip, the Spirit within us is capable of closing our mouths. No matter how much we disagree with the date of the church car wash, the Spirit within us can give us the spirit of love toward the individual who dared suggest a new date. Absolutely no temptation is too strong. Therefore, to give in to any temptation is to blatantly ignore the Spirit.  

This bickering, gossiping believer is a modern-age Cain. Now, Cain killed his brother, and maybe fake believers aren't killing their brothers. But let's look at the root cause of why Cain killed Abel.  

3:11-2: "For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother's righteous." 

What do sons of Cain have in common? They bicker and gossip and backbite out of a need to be better than someone else. It's pride, Satan's greatest tool. Listen to the words of Matthew Henry. 

"Sin, indulged, knows no bound. He (Cain) was vexed with the superiority of Abel's service, and envied him the favour and acceptance he had with God. And for these he martyred his brother. Ill-will will teach us to hate and revenge what we should admire and imitate." 

How many  church divisions have their roots in pride - in individuals fuming over things and people they should be admiring? We leave because the pastor insists on preaching something that tugs at our pride the wrong way. 

Don't get me wrong, there will be things in every single church service you attend that irk you slightly - or at least someone in that church. Anytime a group of people meet, there will be disagreements, controversy, various opinions and temptation for discord. This is normal. God made us unique. What is not normal, at least not to the believer, is when, in our pride, we believe that our unique opinion is superior to all others.  

This is no small sin. Because sin has taken its first hold of our foot, like a cord wrapped around our ankle. All we need do is take one or two more steps in that direction. We need only let this pride fester. We need only tell one or two people in the church  body how frustrated we are with so and so. We need only lie in bed thinking of what we would say to that individual if we didn't have such a godly filter.  

That is how Satan will trip you up, and the entire church body, if they are not careful, will not be far behind.  

PART TWO: THE BELIEVER 

John now switches gears, speaking to the believer. He tells the follower of Christ that the kind of hatred he's just spoken of should not surprise them. Hate toward believers not only spreads throughout the earth, but it infiltrates the church body.  

"Do not marvel," John says.  

The very fact that such hatred toward us exists gives us something to measure our faith by. We know we have passed from spiritual death to life, because we are not bound by hatred and pride. This is not an area where the believer should struggle. It is the linchpin of the evidence of our spiritual transformation. The imperative of love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ is that without it we have no assurance of salvation. But with it, we can view the hatred toward us much as Noah would have viewed the rainbow - as a promise.  

We ought to love fellow believers. We ought to refrain from gossip, choosing instead to encourage (Ephesians 4:29), not because it is our duty, but because it is our nature.  

It is not that we love them because they are the kind of person we naturally love. As stated earlier, the church body is full of unique people of various backgrounds, viewpoints and beliefs. But we are all under the love of God.  

Matthew Henry said, "(Love) is a mark of our transition into a stage of life. We may know it by the evidences of our faith in Christ, of which this love to our brethren is one. It includes a peculiar love to the Christian society. They are not so much loved for their own sakes as for the sake of God and Christ, who have loved them. This is the issue of faith in Christ, of our passage from death to life. The hatred of our brethren is a sign of our deadly state." 

Do you find yourself bent to hate before love? Examine this passage and pray that God would reveal the true state of your heart. 

We are not Dirty Dishes

I've never been a huge fan of doing the dishes. I think I was scarred as a child, particularly because of my brother Jonathan. When we were both in elementary school, it was our job to do the dishes together after every single meal. Or maybe it was once a day - or once a week. It felt like every day anyway.

 

Jonathan, being the nice brother he was, would always ask me if I preferred to "wash, or to do EVERYTHING ELSE." "Everything else" consisted of rinsing, drying and washing the counters and table.

Naturally, I stated that I would prefer to wash. How courteous of him to offer me the choice.

There were two problems with this. The first, was that I was a very imaginative boy. So, washing the dishes took forever. I would place the soap bubbles on my face and pretend I was an old bearded man. I would fill a cookie sheet with water, trying to balance it between that skinny part that separates the wash and rinse sinks (I once did that for 45 minutes.). My kryptonite was strainers. I would fill them with water, lift them high above the sink, and bask in the glory of the waterfall - over and over and over again.

Thus, by the time I had actually placed two dishes in the rinse sink, Jonathan had long ago finished "everything else." Therein lay the second problem. Jonathan knew I was an imaginative procrastinator. Sure, he would pop in every once in a while to rinse a few dishes, but mostly he was Scott free.

 

This is just like the two different ways of approaching sin. And nearly all of us approach it like I approached dishes - slowly, distracted, wanting to finish - but having too much fun to actually deal with the problem at hand. Oh, sure, we plan on washing it - eventually, but only after a little more fun. But before we realize it, we've been playing with a single dish for an hour. We've been flirting with a single sin for a decade.  

 

In 1 John 3, the apostle John begins to draw a line, which many Christians would rather prefer to pretend did not exist. We are, after all, so fond of the feel-good gospel, the one that tells us that Jesus loves us just the way we are.

 

Max Lucado once said, God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you there."

 

Now, some aren't too fond of Max Lucado, some stating that he is too liberal. Others have stated that this phrase diminishes God's love, saying that this somehow claims that God's love is conditional on us improving ourselves.

 

The apostle John could not make this point more clear. True believers will be transformed into the image of God. They will conquer sin. They will not be chained by addiction. The Holy Spirit within a believer will not allow them to remain the way they were. It will not allow them to be chained by their old self. It will not allow them to be indifferent to the Word of God. It will not allow them to dwell in continual sin. A man or woman who claims to be a believer, but is involved in these things, is either a liar, or incredibly confused and terribly lost.

 

 

1 John 3:4-9 says the following: "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God."

 

Let's take this one verse at a time.

 

"Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness."

 

This verse is paramount in understanding sin. John is writing to believers, and to believers only. To the unregenerate, blind, sin-plagued individual…sin is oxygen. He or she is born into sin, and it is a part of them. They are under the curse of Adam. They sin because they don't know another way. The unregenerate aren't all murderers, of course. Some of them are quite lovely, but they are still under Satan's authority.

 

The believer is completely different. His or her eyes have been opened. They have been filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. They are no longer bound by the chains of temptation. Therefore, the sin of a believer is much different from the sin of an unbeliever.

 

Bible Commentator Matthew Henry said it much better than I can when he wrote, "The unregenerate person is morally unable for what is religiously good. The regenerate person is happily disabled to sin."

 

While the unbeliever holds a sin nature, the believer has the righteous nature of God in him or her. Sin goes against the nature. It's as unnatural as a right-handed pitcher throwing with his left hand. The believer cannot sin without consciously choosing to do so. The man who does not know Jesus, sins because he is unable to do otherwise. The man or woman who knows Jesus sins, despite Jesus. They stand in rebellion and declare that they will walk in darkness despite the work of the cross.

 

That is what John means when he says that sin is lawlessness. Warren Wiersbe points out in his commentary on 1 John, that John is not referring here to individual sins, but to sin as a whole. "Sins are the fruit," said Wiersbe "but sin is the root."

 

That is why, while a believer may commit a sin, he or she will not and cannot be plagued by continual sin. Sin is rebellion. This is why the level of sin does not matter. You may think the homosexual man lives in rebellion, because he is listening to his body's desires, despite what he knows to be true. But what about your and my small sins? What about intentionally going ten miles over the speed limit? Romans 13:1-2 says, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." Is not then speeding an act of defiance? Doing something you want to because you don't agree with the rule. How is this any different from homosexuality, theft or murder? The earthly consequences may vary tremendously, but the core of the issue is defiance, and that is what marks an unbeliever. Defiance of God has no place in a follower of the Way- in the believer.

 

1 John 3:5-6 says, "And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him."

 

John says (paraphrased), "You know this, already. Jesus came to take away your sin. He lives inside you, and He has no sin in him. Therefore, there should be no sin in you. If there is, obviously you aren't acquainted with Him."

 

Think of it this way, if you went to see the best comedian on earth, and you were trying to convince me of that you had been there. You don't have to tell me about the comedian. You don't have to tell me any of the jokes. I should be able to see your red cheeks. You should have a contagious smile that you couldn't get rid of if you wanted to. You should randomly chuckle every so often as you remember another punchline. A believer should be marked by his or her righteous life. You shouldn't have to convince people that despite your addiction, you've been saved by a righteous God who literally came to take away that sin. No wonder people are confused.

 

The next two verses say, "Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning."

 

Why does John find it necessary to warn believers about this deception? It is because the devil used this trick on Even in the Garden of Eden, and he uses it to this day.

 

"One little bite won't kill you," Satan says. "One little peak won't kill your marriage. One small lie can't make you a liar. God is love, isn't He? Why would your love for your same-sex partner bother a God of love? Making fun of celebrities on social media is just fun and games, not slander. Come on, relax, God's about love -not rules - remember? He will love you no matter what you do. So, go ahead, ask Him into your heart. I don't mind. Go to church even. I have plenty of pastors right where I want them. Start a Bible study, picket abortion clinics, vote republican, homeschool your children and tweet all about God's love. I'm on board. Just don't change. Give every dollar you make to charity, just don't give God yourself. Don't strive to be perfect as He is perfect. Call yourself a Christian. Lead other people to the Christian faith that lets you both be a Christian and keep your addictions. Go ahead. I shall delight in every soul you save, for they shall all be saved for me."

 

Jesus said in Matthew 5:48, "You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."

 

Did this mean, "do your best, and remember, nobody is actually perfect?" Absolutely not. It meant be perfect. Now, in this context, Jesus is talking about perfection in the way we love people. But He doesn't demand perfection in one area and not another. Provers 3:6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." You cannot be trusting in the Lord with all your heart and maintain addiction. If the Lord is directing you, He will not lead you into an immoral relationship. God is perfect. Therefore to abide in Him fully gives you the potential to mirror His perfection, and therefore, He demands it.

 

Think of it, in your very self, if you are a true follower of Christ, lies the Spirit of God Himself. This isn't some small thing. God dwells in you. His power dwells in you. His peace, hope, love and perfection dwell in you. So, listen to Him. He will not lead you down a dead end. He will lead you in the perfect way.

 

Actions have consequences. If I have never consumed caffeine, and I suddenly drink four Red Bulls, will there not be a noticeable difference in me? If I have been blind my entire life, but a groundbreaking new surgery allows me to see, will I choose to close my eyes when I cross the street?

 

Of course not. A man indwelled by a Holy God will have no desire to remain the way he was. She will have no desire to remain in sin. And should she be tempted, the Spirit will be so much stronger. Now, should she ignore that Spirit and sin, her conscious will plague her until she repents. If her conscious does not plague her or if she continues in this sin, she ought not have any assurance that she is destined for eternal bliss.

 

Hell is filled with "Christians." Only those who have been made alive by God through the work of Jesus Christ and the moving of the Holy Spirit will walk the streets of gold. And those who have truly been made alive will walk righteously on this earth prior to eternity.

 

This is where my title comes in about the dirty dishes. Most followers of Jesus Christ, Catholic and Protestant alike, deal with their sin like I dealt with the dishes. Not just slowly, but repetitively. Once  I finally finished the dishes, it would not be long before I found myself right back there, dishes piled high, and hours of procrastination at hand.

 

In the same way, once we finally deal with our sin, we find ourselves back dealing with it again. The never-ending chore of washing away our sins. Some do it at confessionals, some at alter calls and others in the quiet of their homes. It's all the same, really. We're all dealing with our own sin over and over, grateful that God is willing to forgive us.

 

The problem is that this goes against the entire reason Jesus came to earth.

 

Jesus did not come to give us the ability to ask forgiveness for our sins every time we slipped up. He didn't hand us a bottle of soap and say, "Now you can clean these dishes every time they get dirty."

 

Jesus did not come so we could more effectively wash the dishes. He came so we wouldn't ever have to do the dishes again. He came to make us forever clean.

 

For a child of God to sin indicates that he does not understand or appreciate what Jesus did for him on the cross.