1 John 3:11-24—Love One Another Part 1
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: 1 John 3:11-24, Romans 12:9
N: Easter Info Card
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to Family Worship with the family of Eastern Hills. I’m pastor Bill Connors, and I’m really glad to be here this morning to gather with the church body in worship. If you’re a guest or visitor this morning, we’re so glad that you are here as well. We’d like to be able to thank you for your visit, so if you’re willing, would you please take a moment sometime during the service and fill our the visitor card that’s in the back of the pew in front of you?
If you’d rather fill out a communication card online, all you have to do is text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a link back to our digital card.
Whether you fill out the physical or online card this morning, I’d like the chance to meet you when service is over. Please just come down afterwards so that I can give you a gift to thank you for being here. If you filled out the physical card, I can get it from you then, or if you don’t have time to come meet me after service, you can drop it in the offering boxes by the doors.
Announcements
Announcements
AAEO ($12,220.79) Goal $17,000, taking through April.
Ordination Service for Aaron Ward, and commissioning for our three incoming deacons tonight at 5:30 pm
Easter Stuff
Good Friday Service 4/7 @ 12:15 pm, lunch afterwards with Student Ministry Mission Trip dessert auction
Egg Hunt Saturday 4/8 @ 9 am as Joe has already mentioned
Sunrise service out front 4/9 @ 7:45 am, breakfast following
Bible study for all at 9 am
Family Worship as usual at 10:30 am, no Kids Worship during that service though.
Opening
Opening
Our current series in 1 John is called “Letter of Life, Light & Love.” Last week, we looked at the first part of chapter 3, as John kind of started his transition to his focus on love, and much of the rest of the letter will have love as the main theme. This morning, we are looking at what I’m calling Part 1 of John’s message to “Love One Another.” Part 2 of that message will be on Easter morning, as we consider the last half of chapter 4. But for this today, we will be in the latter part of 1 John 3. Let’s stand as we are able in honor of God’s Word as we read our focal passage together:
11 For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another, 12 unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. 16 This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him—how does God’s love reside in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth. 19 This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight. 23 Now this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps his commands remains in him, and he in him. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us.
PRAYER (pray for Mississippi and the destruction, loss, and death from the tornadoes; Mission Valley Church in Los Lunas, Pastor William Snook)
How many of you have a uniform that you have to wear? Whether it’s for work, or a sports team, or a school, who here sometimes has to wear a uniform? Why do we wear uniforms? Uniforms are a means of identification with a group. If one of our members who is in law enforcement was to come in wearing his uniform, we would all assume that he is a police officer because he looks the part. When we play sports, the uniform helps us to know who is on our team and who our opponents are. The uniform is an identifying marker of the one wearing it.
When John wrote this epistle, part of what he was doing was encouraging the church because there were some who had separated from the rest of the fellowship. These people had started to deny the faith, no longer holding to the truth that Jesus is the Messiah or that a Messiah is even necessary. They had a wrong view of sin, and a wrong view of salvation. They were attempting to deceive the church. His argument was that if they could follow the false teaching and leave, then they never believed and were never truly a part of the church anyway. They hadn’t acted in love. They weren’t wearing the “uniform” that Christians are to wear: love for one another. John’s position is that this is a critical component of what a believer in Jesus Christ looks like:
1) Love for each other defines God’s children.
1) Love for each other defines God’s children.
Several times in this epistle, John draws the line that part of the “uniform” of the Christian faith is a sincere love for the brothers and sisters in the church. We’ve seen two such passages up to this point:
9 The one who says he is in the light but hates his brother or sister is in the darkness until now. 10 The one who loves his brother or sister remains in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But the one who hates his brother or sister is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and doesn’t know where he’s going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
10 This is how God’s children and the devil’s children become obvious. Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his brother or sister.
We looked at this last verse last week. In fact, it was John’s transition into this week’s passage:
11 For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another,
Those who are in Christ are to love one another. In fact, love for one another should be a defining characteristic of who we are as believers, something that is readily observable in the body of the church by those within and outside of her. John says that this is the message that we have heard “from the beginning,” meaning since the beginning of the Christian faith.
So this certainly isn’t a new message. Jesus told us to love one another:
17 “This is what I command you: Love one another.
Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica that it was evident that God was teaching them to love well, and so he didn’t need to instruct them further in it, but to do so more and more:
9 About brotherly love: You don’t need me to write you because you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. 10 In fact, you are doing this toward all the brothers and sisters in the entire region of Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more,
Peter told us that because love covers a multitude of sins, we are to maintain constant love for one another above all, meaning that showing our love for one another in the church is to be among our highest of priorities:
8 Above all, maintain constant love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins.
And Jesus in John 13 said that loving each other well is how people will know that we belong to Him and follow Him:
34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
See how love is the “uniform” that we should wear, church? Our love for one another is to be a practical display of our faith in Jesus. If we are in Christ, then we sit in this room as family, brothers and sisters in the kingdom of God, with God as our Father and Jesus as our spiritual Brother in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Look around the room for a second. Look at how big your family is… how many brothers and sisters you have! The question is: do we see each other this way?
John went on to paint a picture of what love doesn’t look like before he explained what love does look like. And his example was an interesting one: Cain. Continuing in verse 12:
12 unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
If you aren’t familiar with the story of Cain and Abel, let me summarize it quickly from Genesis 4. Cain and Abel were the first two sons of Adam and Eve, in that order. Cain grew up to be a farmer, Abel a rancher (to use modern terms). Each of them took from their particular produce and brought an offering to the Lord: Cain simply gave some of what he had harvested, and Abel gave some of the best of his flocks: the firstborn, including the very best parts of them. God approved of Abel’s offering and not Cain’s. So Cain was upset, and looked at his brother with hatred. God warned him that sin wanted to consume him, but Cain lured his brother out to the field and killed him because of his jealousy and envy.
Here, John says that Cain was “of the evil one,” again reflecting back on what he had said in verse 10: that the children of the devil are obvious. Why? Because Cain wore hatred like a uniform. God warned him against allowing his envy to fester, but he didn’t listen. Murdering his brother didn’t just result from his jealousy: it put his heart on full display. His actions flowed out of who he was following.
Donald Burdick wrote:
“Godlessness is disturbed by the condemning presence of righteousness in its midst, and it would remove the cause of its discomfort if it could…Hatred is the desire to get rid of someone, whether or not one has the nerve or the occasion to perform the act.”
—Donald Burdick, The Letters of John the Apostle
And John here warns the church in verse 13 that we shouldn’t be shocked when the world hates us, because hatred and revulsion are the natural responses of the world to the light of righteousness. This is because the world—the corrupt system that stands in opposition to the things of God— has the same “father” as Cain: the devil. So, as we saw last week, the world is going to hate us, and revile us, and resist and reject us and the message of God’s love in Christ that we carry.
For John, the one who lives in hatred of his brother or sister in the faith is likely not in the faith at all. In fact, John compares hatred to murder, just as Jesus did:
21 “You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. 22 But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Whoever insults his brother or sister, will be subject to the court. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire.
But we see in verse 14 that the evidence of our having passed from death to life is found at least in part in how we love one another: the fact that we honestly wear the “uniform” of the redeemed as a way of life.
So back to the question: Do we actually want to show love to the other people in this room, to the other Christians in Albuquerque, or to the other believers that we meet in the world? This is what we are called to do as evidence of our faith. This is why we pray for our sister churches in the Central Baptist Association every week, because we want them to be effective and successful in what God has called us to collectively. This is why we support church plants and missionaries locally, nationally, and internationally. This is why it’s a terrible thing to see ourselves as being in competition with any other believing Christian church: because we are family. If they do well, we all do well, because the Kingdom expands.
If you are harboring anger or bitterness against a brother or sister in this room, or if you are holding on to resentment against another believer, this passage tells us that we should be exceedingly wary of those feelings, because they might give evidence that we don’t actually believe what we claim to believe. Hatred has no place in the body of Christ. If our lives are characterized by hatred instead of love, we should be very concerned and get on our faces before the Lord to have our sin exposed and corrected.
We are called to love one another as Christ has loved us, because Jesus defines love.
2) Jesus defines love.
2) Jesus defines love.
So what does this Christian “love” look like? What does it actually do? Well, in this we can see a great connection between John 3:16 and 1 John 3:16. In John 3:16, we see a demonstration of God’s love: that He gave is one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
And in 1 John 3:16, we have that love explained: we know what love is because of what Jesus did.
16 This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
While, yes, the Father gave the Son, the Son (Jesus) willingly laid down His life for us all. It’s not only that He received the punishment that we all deserve. It’s that He volunteered for it. The Gospel isn’t good news just because someone died for someone else. The Gospel is good news because the One who owed nothing paid everything for those who owed it, but couldn’t pay anything. Jesus died willingly in our place, so that we could be saved and made right with God again through faith in Him.
So Jesus defined love this way:
12 “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
In the cross, Jesus showed us what love really is. If you want to see love, look to the cross! If you want to show love, look to the cross! If you want to know love, look to the cross! If you want to live a life of love, look to the cross! (Paraphrased from Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in 1, 2, 3 John)
So loving might mean dying. This is a hard truth to swallow. But how many missionaries have we heard of who laid down their lives for the sake of the Gospel, to tell people around the world about what God has done for them in Christ? The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering is named after a missionary who did this. However, it is doubtful that physically dying is the way that most of us are going to be called to demonstrate the kind of love that Jesus defines.
In a way, especially in our culture today, physically dying might be the easier path. Because John then goes on in verse 17 to tell us what laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters actually looks like in a practical sense:
17 If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him—how does God’s love reside in him?
Living a daily life of dying to ourselves is what we are called to do in Christ. John here echoes James chapter 2:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.
Have 1 John 3:17 put back up.
One thing that we need to keep in mind here is that John is being perhaps a little bit more expansive than James, even though they’re making the same point. The meaning of “the world’s goods” in John is “the daily needs of earthly life.” And the phrase here for “withholds compassion” is literally “shuts and locks the door of their guts,” showing that their heart is closed before the question even gets to their hands.
So the way that we need to demonstrate love might be something physical and tangible, like food or clothes or shelter. But it also might be something intangible, like concern, or a conversation, or time, or a hug.
Can you see why this is more difficult, in a way? It’s very difficult to lay down your rights to yourself and your stuff. It’s hard to set aside what we want in order to serve someone else. We struggle to deny ourselves to bless someone else. We have a hard time being humble enough to decide that our fellow believers are more important than we are.
If you see your brother wrestling with sin, and you’d rather sit back and judge them with pride than to pray for them, or better yet, to come alongside them to help them, you’re in sin yourself. If you demand that others in the church serve you first before you’re willing to serve them, or if you have no interest in serving others at all, you should have a deep concern for the state of your heart. That’s an indicator that the door to your guts is shut and locked.
The church doesn’t exist for you. It exists for Jesus, and you get the blessing of being a part of it, but on both sides of the coin: we’re called to serve one another, which means that sometimes you’ll be served in love, and sometimes you’ll love others by serving them.
Paul instructed us to intentionally work for the good of all, but especially for our fellow believers:
10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.
If we’re only in the church to be served, as if this were some service industry or club, then it’s possible that we aren’t truly in the church at all, even if we say all the right things. This is where John goes in verse 18, which is the real kicker here.
18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
Our display of love isn’t just in what we say (word or speech). It’s in what we do (action), but even deeper than that. It’s in why we do it. That’s why John said that we are to “love…in truth.” In Daniel Akin’s commentary on this passage, he writes the following:
“Words can be empty and actions can be hypocritical. You may choose to do nothing, though your words promise much. On the other hand, you may do something for someone, but your motives are impure and your intentions evil. We call this manipulation. God cares about both our motives and our actions. He wants us to love and care for others just like we have been loved and cared for by Jesus.”
—Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in 1, 2, 3 John
I’ll just let Paul expand on this to close this point, because he does so in Romans 12 so well: READ THIS SLOWLY
9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good. 10 Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another. 11 Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer. 13 Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud; instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation.
Take some time to think through these things this week. Do we love the way Jesus calls us to love? If so, that is a blessing, because when we love well, when we “wear the uniform” of the Christian well, then it provides us with confidence:
3) Love provides confidence to us.
3) Love provides confidence to us.
Just like much of what John has written in this letter has been for evaluation of the evidence of our lives, so this command to love one another is. The “uniform” of Christian love isn’t something that we wear in order to BE saved, but it is something that we have on because we ARE saved. It’s also not something that can be faked before God. I mean, I could not simply put on a Cubs uniform and suddenly have a $14M contract like Dansby Swanson. If I were to put on a Cubs uniform, it would be either as a costume or a disguise. Doing so wouldn’t give me the confidence to go play shortstop for a professional ball club. But when he puts on the uniform, it means something, because he can really play baseball.
Likewise, when we actually love the way we are called to in Christ, it provides us confidence in two ways: confidence of our salvation, and confidence in our prayers.
A) Confidence of our salvation.
A) Confidence of our salvation.
Our emotions are interesting things. We trust them nearly completely, but the reality is that because of the brokenness of humanity through the Fall, even our emotions are flawed. So we might (even during this message) have our hearts doubt that we are saved, or even declare to us that we couldn’t possibly be saved at all.
19 This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things.
Your heart will lie to you, because it is broken just like the rest of you, according to Jeremiah 17:9. Our emotions are not a valid test on their own to tell us the truth about our salvation.
John says that something that will allow us to have confidence that we belong to the truth, and that will correct our condemning heart in the process, is that we have loved our brothers and sisters well, not just in word or speech, but in action and truth. This is because when we love well, it’s evidence of the work of the Spirit in our lives.
Not only that, but when we do fail to love well, and we feel that sting of conscience and pang of guilt from our hearts, we can be encouraged that if we didn’t belong to Christ, we likely wouldn’t care. In those times we can trust that God is at work to keep us from “closing the door” of our hearts by His grace. So we can humbly come to God for correction, reassurance, and hope, like David did in Psalm 139:23:
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns.
Paul said that he just trusted the Lord to judge him instead of letting others or even his own heart, because he knows that it’s only God who will judge him correctly:
3 It is of little importance to me that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I don’t even judge myself. 4 For I am not conscious of anything against myself, but I am not justified by this. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 So don’t judge anything prematurely, before the Lord comes, who will both bring to light what is hidden in darkness and reveal the intentions of the hearts. And then praise will come to each one from God.
Again, it’s not that our performance of works in the life of the church body saves us. It’s that if we love well, we can have confidence that we actually are saved, even when we fail and our hearts tell us that we couldn’t possibly belong to Jesus. We can look back on the love that God has manifested in our lives, trust God’s judgment and not our own, and say, “God, I don’t know myself or why I do some of the things I do, but I commit myself to you in trust and faith.”
And flowing out of that confidence in our salvation is confidence in our prayers:
B) Confidence in our prayers.
B) Confidence in our prayers.
Finally, the confidence that we have because of our bearing the fruit of loving each other in the body of Christ well overflows into confidence in our prayer life as well:
21 Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight.
John will say more about this is chapter 5, but this verse in chapter 3 gives it context:
14 This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.
If we have confidence in our relationship with God through how He has worked in our hearts as evidenced by our keeping of His commands and doing what pleases Him, then we can also have confidence that when we pray, we are seeking His will, and thus will receive what we ask for. We can pray boldly, asking for God-sized things with confidence that He hears us, and that those things that are in accordance with His divine will will be granted to us, because what we want more than anything is His glory.
Closing
Closing
But what is the command of God that we keep? John tells us in the last two verses of the chapter, which will serve as our closing consideration this morning:
23 Now this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps his commands remains in him, and he in him. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us.
The command of God, the first thing, is that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the fullest expression of love. And our fullest expression of love is to believe in Him, surrendering our lives to His Lordship. Daniel Akin explained believing in this way:
“To believe in the name of Jesus Christ is to place one’s faith, one’s trust, in him and all that he is—the Divine Son, the incarnate Deity, the sinless Human, the Messianic Savior, and all other facets of his unique nature and personhood. Belief is acceptance of the entirety of him.”
—Daniel Akin; 1, 2, 3 John, New American Commentary
Jesus lived a sinless life so that we could be saved, and He died to pay the price for our sins. He then defeated death so that those who believe in Him and thus belong to Him will live forever with Him as well. And He said that He is coming back to set the world right, and to receive those who belong to Him into glory. Surrender to Jesus. Believe in Him. Turn away from your sins and trying to do things your own way, and trust Him.
Then you’ll be able to live out the command to love one another. This is how we know that we abide (or remain) in Him, and that He abides in us: that our lives are characterized by loving Jesus and loving one another. And to those who belong to Him, He gives His Holy Spirit as a down payment or guarantee of the inheritance that we have in Him.
14 The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory.
The abiding of His Spirit is the most telling evidence that we belong to Jesus:
9 You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.
When we abide in Christ, and He abides in us, we live out our faith by loving our brothers and sisters… we wear the “uniform” of the faithful, and people will be able to see that we belong to Him for His glory.
Do you belong to Jesus? Have you believed in the name of Jesus Christ? Do you have the Holy Spirit living within you? If so, then praise God and love your fellow believers well. If this is something you’ve been struggling with, and your heart is condemning you, then repent. Turn to God and ask for forgiveness.
If you’ve never trusted in Christ to save you, believe in Him this morning, surrendering your life to Him in faith, turning away from your right to yourself and your sins. And please come and tell us if you are believing in the name of Jesus Christ today. I’ll be down here, along with Trevor, Rich, and Noreen. If you’re online, send me an email.
Joining the church (if you’ve had a conversation with me, and you’re ready, come during the invitation).
Prayer needs
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (Jer 18)
No Pastor’s Study tonight for Ordination
Prayer Meeting 5:45 Wednesday
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
22 Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth, so that you show sincere brotherly love for each other, from a pure heart love one another constantly, 23 because you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like a flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this word is the gospel that was proclaimed to you.
Go and love well.