Love Like Jesus (1 John 3:11-18)
Love Like Jesus
Introduction
In my late teens and early twenties, the church seemed rather religious and unnecessary to me. I didn’t really like church people. I thought they were mostly out of touch, stale, and snooty. I thought “Take the church, just give me Jesus”. But what that ultimately meant was that I showed up when I wanted to. I was never a member who came to serve, but a consumer who came to get. I belonged and served as long as the church served me how I saw best.
But in my early twenties, I was either born again or had a revival moment in my faith, so that my relationship with the church was one of the many things transformed. Not only did sin become less tolerable and enticing, God’s church became precious to me. I couldn’t help but want to be around Christians, even if they were not the people I would typically spend time with. I wanted to join a church. I wanted to be known and know others because these were the people that belonged to my Savior. The people Christ died for! They bore the name of Christ and were united to him! How could I not want to be a part of their growth and flourishing? This new love is what set my life on the trajectory that it is on, and I love what I get to do!
How do you feel about the church? Do you struggle to feel this way about this church or even certain people in our community? Do you love the church?
Context: Two Evidences of True Children
This question this letter of John brings to us today is actually a matter of salvation. If you remember, last week we finished in verse 10:
”By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”
As we’ve been teaching each week, one of John’s main goals for this letter is to provide assurance to the true church and also warn those who may not truly belong to him. So today John wants to give us more evidence that we are God’s children.
John doesn’t stop with whether you walk in righteousness. He gives a second but equally as important piece of evidence of true children of God, namely love for your brother.
This is the main point today: True children of God love the family of God like Jesus.
Now, I admit, that most of my life I would not have answered someone who asked me how to identify a Christian by talking about their love for God’s family. In fact, I’ve been shocked studying this book at how front and center it is in John’s mind. He’s not only going to mention this here, but over and over again in this letter.
This has not been on my radar like it should, which is why it’s good that we choose to preach through books of the Bible, so that we don’t miss this stuff!
I think we can forget that God’s commands are not just about what we don’t do but also about what we ought to do. We follow Jesus not just because of what he didn’t do, but because of what he did. Sin is both commission - doing what you shouldn’t do, and also omission - not doing what you should do.
We often forget about sins of omission.
This idea of loving your brother goes after just that. Christian, loving your brother is just as important to your faith as killing your sin.
If that’s true, we need to know who our brother is and what that love looks like.
A Foundational Gospel Truth
Look with me at verse 11:
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
John calls for love for “the brothers” but here he broadens our aim to “one another”. Who is that? While John clearly affirms a love for all humanity, he has in mind here fellow Christians, the church, the family of God. While it’s not super clear to me why John only uses “brothers” above, this description “one another” helps us see that he has in mind the entire family. Similar to how John calls all Christians “children”, we know that “brothers” encompasses our sisters as well.
So, John starts by simply reminding them how fundamental loving one another is to the faith. The Gospel they heard at first included this society transforming attitude of love towards others. An attitude that actively does unto others as we would want done to us. An attitude that forgives offenders and blesses our enemies. In other words, this is part of the Gospel through and through.
Actions Flow From Identity
Now, John is going to give two examples, a negative example that Christians should not follow, and a positive and inverse example of love that we should follow.
First the negative in verse 12:
12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.
In Genesis 4, Cain tragically murders his brother Abel. Why did he kill him? “Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.”
We get this incredible insight here into the motive of Cain’s murder. He was jealous. His sin began in his heart and expanded into tragic action as he gave into it. That’s how all sin happens. In fact, it’s how all righteous acts happen as well. His hatred and jealousy led him to murder. A Christian’s love for another leads to acts of service.
John teaches this right here in verse 12 when he says definitively that Cain “was of the evil one”. How did he know that? His actions put on display who he belonged to. They proved that he wasn’t a child of God, but of the evil one.
***John wants us to understand that love and hate are not just fluffy ideas. No, these things come from deep within a person, from the heart. Love and hate are profoundly deep expressions of a human soul!
Our actions flow from who we are. John is showing us that children of the devil cannot love, but children of God cannot help but love.
Listen, our actions always flow from our identity.
This is why John says in verse 13:
13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.
Why shouldn’t we be surprised? Well, we don’t expect apple trees to produce grapes. People of the world, likewise, cannot produce love for God’s family because of their heart condition. The church can’t make sense to them. The Bible only feels like a book of rules and its God, a kill joy. Anyone who’s lives and breaths the Gospel, therefore, is not someone to love but a threat to their worldview, to their joy, to their freedom. Even if they are not hostile, they dismiss the church as irrelevant, they pigeon-hole, and are cynical.
Know this, Christian, all of us were there. All of us were born by nature with a desire to be god. We were born bucking against anyone or anything that disapproved of our ideas and actions. God convicts, people warned, but we could not come to the light because we loved the darkness.
But by God’s mercy, that was not the end of the story. It doesn’t have to be the end of the story for anyone! That’s why Jesus came! Look at verse 14:
14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Friends, God offers life to the dead. Eternal life!
Family, we were all at one time dead men walking. Dead people don’t just get out of graves. But the resurrected Christ can make a dead man get out of his grave and that’s exactly what he did when he called each one of us by the Gospel. When we heard Jesus call us and we put our faith in him, we were born again, and in that moment we passed from death to life! That’s what God wants for us.
And John says, if you want to know if that happened to you, notice how you interact with God’s people. Do you love them?
Notice what your heart is doing when you get around other Christians. Is it jealous, indifferent, or does it move towards other brothers and sisters in Christ with deep affection?
Don’t let yourself off the hook too quickly here. John wants you to test your heart. Verse 15 provocatively brings to mind what Jesus famously said in his sermon on the mount, that if you simply hate someone you are liable to the same judgment as a murderer (Mt 5:22).
You may not have murdered anyone, but if your heart despises a brother or sister, you are just as good as a murderer in God’s sight because deep down you would prefer that person dead rather than alive.
Do you see why this matters so much?
Remember, sin tainted not just our relationship with God, but also with humanity. Jesus came to recreate what sin destroyed. God wants to restore both our relationship with him and others. So our heart towards others, especially the family of God, is evidence that we are either still dead in our sin, or have passed from death to life.
Again, our actions flow from our identity.
Before we move on, it’s important to mention that I believe non-Christians can love others truly because of common grace. But they cannot love God’s family the way John has in mind. Why? Because they do not love the Father. They do not love the King. They belong to an opposing kingdom so how could they.
The world cannot love the church like John has in mind because the heart has not been transformed to love their king.
So, we’ve seen the negative example – Cain’s hatred for his brother.
Now, lets look at verse 16 for John’s positive example of love. It doesn’t get better than this.
Love Like Jesus Loved Us
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
If you want to know what love is, look no further than Jesus who descended from heaven, lived among us, and died in our place.
When we were dead in our sin, hating God and hating others, there was one who stirred by love, willingly went to the gallows in our place. He took the noose off our neck and put in on himself for our sake.
The world wants to define love for you. But don’t let anyone sell you a cheap idea of love that is noncommittal. No, true love is one of commitment unto death.
There is no better example than in what God has done for us in Christ. We cannot truly know what love is apart from this story.
In fact, any good love story that Hollywood produces, the best hero stories, are stories of sacrificial love like Christ. Right?
And John says, you too, must love like this. When I tell you that love for Christians is a mark of a child of God, I’m talking about love that is intensely sacrificial, the kind of love that makes the receiver and anyone watching scratch their heads and say, “why would they do such a thing?” “For me? For them?”
And why? Why should we do that? Why is that the mark of a child of God? Because someone who has been loved by God has had God’s loved poured into them so abundantly that it cannot help but spill out lavishly on others! If you know the love of God for you, you can’t hold back!
Get this: this is what strips us of any ability to boast today about how well we love others.
No, we know that if we get anything right, it’s because our God first loved us and caused us to pass from death to life.
This is why any of us can love.
Friends, if you want to change, if you want to be a person who loves like this, the first step is simple: believe that Jesus has dumped more love and grace on your life than you will be able to fathom for eternity. Welcome Jesus to change your heart, to set you free, and give you new desires that align with his, even to give you his love for others.
So, we know we are children of God if we love one another, not perfectly, but in increasingly like Jesus has loved us.
Now, look at verse 17. John is going to get practical with what Christ-like love looks like.
Love Always Does
17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Did you see that phrase “God’s love abiding in him”?
We’ll see later in this book that at the core or heart of God is love. 4:8 says “God is love”. The one who is love could not help but move when he saw us in our helpless state.
In the same way, Christian, when God’s love abides in you, your heart should be moved when you see a brother or sister in need. Your heart should be stirred towards’ others just as God’s was towards us.
If God is love, and his love drove him to the cross for us, how can we say we love while closing our heart towards others who are needy, whether for physical goods, or forgiveness, or relationship?
John wants us to see that true love always does. Love goes to work like Jesus’s love went to work for us.
Verse 18 gives us contrasting pictures: those who “love” in word or talk, and those who truly love in deed and in truth.
Again, true love does. It works.
Church, do you claim to love others, but just make excuses about why you can’t serve them?
Turn in your Bibles quickly to Isaiah 58. This is what Isaiah preached against in Isaiah 58, in response to Israel’s confusion about why they didn’t feel God’s favor.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a person to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a reed,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the Lord?
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
While Israel fasted and prayed, doing all the right religious practices, they neglected “their own flesh”, that is their brothers, who were hungry and homeless, naked and oppressed.
I’m sure there were a thousand good excuses these had as to why they couldn’t fulfill these commands, one of them being “sorry God, I’m fasting to get more of you”... But the Lord rebuked them. He challenged his people to love not just with words or to worship with religious acts. What moved God’s heart was when his people loved their brothers in deed and in truth.
Do Love Like Jesus?
So I ask you today church, does this kind of love for God’s family define you? Does sacrificial working love like Christ define our church culture? Would others say that of us?
We have just three core values. One is “Love His Family”. We have this value because it is central to the faith. So how are we doing?
As one of your pastors, I can say with great joy and gratitude that you are killing it! I feel like I can say with Paul out of 1 Thessalonians 4:9 “Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
I’m consistently blown away by your acts of love for my family and for one another. From the meals you make for the sick or new parents, to the generous giving to the unemployed. From the thoughtful calls and messages, to the time spent in prayer for one another. I see you pouring yourself out for one another until it hurts. You guys show up and serve in crazy ways.
Even Christians beyond APC. I’ve seen you pour out your love towards Lebanon. And Lebanon, you have shown great love for us. I’m so encouraged.
If you are here this morning and part of this, I want to say to you today: I know that you have passed from death to life because of your love for the family. I know that you are a child of God because of your love for God’s family! Be assured of your salvation! Praise God!
And with Paul, I just want to urge you, “brothers and sisters, to do so more and more.” In this little family and beyond this family, let’s keep seeking first the kingdom together in the ways we love and serve Jesus’s bride.
But what if that’s not true of you today?
What if you feel hatred towards another person or indifference towards the church? The solution today is not to look inward and try to fix yourself, but to put your faith in Jesus who can transform you by his Spirit into a loving person like he is. If you’re not yet a Christian, it all starts there. Good actions flow out from your changed identity.
And if you are a Christian and still struggling, you need a greater revelation of God’s incredible love for you. When you were his enemy, he came running after you. He took your punishment so that you could have eternal life! That’s the Gospel we need every day church. Belief in the Gospel will produce that same love for others. So if you want reconciled relationships, if you want to love more, go and be with the Father and let him pour out a greater measure of his love into you.
Church, we want to be part of God’s promised Kingdom growth don’t we? Well, you need to know that the only way is to love in radical ways. We will never plant churches that plant churches that transform our city unless we love like Jesus.
Jesus said that the world will look in and know that we belong to Jesus by our love!
So today:
If you are prone to run away from needs. Run towards someone this week.
If you are prone to bitterness and unforgiveness. Go offer forgiveness in the same measure you have received it.
If you are slow to open your heart towards the needy, go find someone to lavishly give to for their good.
If you are slow to open your heart to others, go seek someone out, learn about them, and find creative ways to sacrificially serve that person like Jesus served you.
I challenge you, every time you gather, to look for a way to serve the family. Show up prayerfully, seeking God’s Spirit for power to serve with your encouragement or exhortation or with your hand.
Start with your DNA and MC and then to the broader church family.
We are welcoming new members this morning. Seek them out. Get to know them and serve them.
At our potluck after service, sit with someone you don’t know.
When meal trains pop up and you hear of sensitive needs, create space for them.
Set aside 2% of your tithe each month to support the needs of the family, etc.
And pray for one another.
Church, let us love one another like Jesus. And as you do, be confident that you are a child of God!
Corporate Prayer Time
1 John 3:16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
Praise him/Thank him for this incredible display of love.
Ask him for help to love the family like we have been loved.
Jesus said in John 13:35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Pray that the kingdom would advance as it looks in on our church and the global church’s love for one another.
Benediction:
1 John 4:11-12
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.