Let Go of It
Walking in Truth and Love • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I realized last night that I’ve reached my limit.
Annette left on Monday to go and spend time with her family in California and Nevada, so today marks a week that she’s been gone. Apparently that’s my limit.
She makes me a better person. She makes me a better MAN. My days are brighter and more meaningful when she’s around. She helps keep the darkness at bay.
I’m glad she got to go and see her family, but I’ll be gladder when I see her walk down the passageway in the arrivals terminal at the Norfolk airport tomorrow night.
We don’t do a lot of separate vacations, but whenever we do, I’m always reminded of how much I need her, how much I love her, and how much I don’t want to let her go the next time.
I cherish her, so I want to hold onto her as tightly as I can.
And I think that’s a sign of a healthy marriage — at least I hope it is. What we hold onto shows what we value, what we cherish. And it’s completely appropriate that I would value and cherish this wonderful woman whom God brought into my life.
But we need to be CAREFUL about what we hold onto PRECISELY because it shows what we value and what we cherish.
Today, as we continue our series, Walking in Truth and Love, we’re going to see the Apostle John talking about holding on and about letting go.
We’re going to see that, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he calls us, as followers of Jesus, to be ready and willing to let go of some things, because we cherish the example set for us by Jesus, and we value our fellowship with God in Him.
We’re going to be looking at three verses this week — 16 through 18 of chapter 3. As you turn there, let me remind you that John began this chapter, which includes some of his most well-known statements about love, by warning us NOT to love the things of this world.
In the course of giving us a sort of recipe for living in fellowship with God, he said we should live like children of God, rather than children of the devil.
We should live as subjects of the righteous King, rather than subjects of the ruler of this world.
And he said we make our allegiance known by the things we do. We demonstrate we are children of God by practicing righteousness and by loving one another.
But when we sin — or when we fail to love one another — we demonstrate that we don’t value our status as children of God more than we value the things of this world.
For followers of Jesus, love should be the defining element of our character. Love should be the foundation of how we live as people who await the return of our King, who loved us so much that He gave His life for us.
But even in the first-century cultural context in which he wrote, John understood that it wasn’t enough to simply say that we should love one another.
“Love” is simply too broad a word. It can mean almost anything, depending on who’s talking about it.
So, in the passage we studied last week, he talked about what love is NOT. And in today’s verses, he talks about what love IS and how it ACTS.
Let’s read these verses together, and then we’ll spend some time digging in to see John’s point.
16 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
17 But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
18 Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
Now, considering that last week’s passage dealt with hatred and murder, it’s interesting to see John pivot here and talk about love and martyrdom. There, he said, “Don’t love like Cain loved.” Here, he says, “Love like Jesus loves.”
Cain had a family affection for his brother. But when God accepted Abel’s sacrifice in faith and rejected Cain’s faithLESS sacrifice, it was revealed that Cain loved his own unrighteousness more than he loved his brother.
But Jesus, the Righteous One, showed us what true self-giving love looks like. He took upon Himself OUR unrighteousness at the cross, suffering the punishment that we all deserve for our sins so that we who turn to Him in faith can be saved.
He laid down His life for us so that we who were dead in our trespasses could become alive in Him.
And if Jesus did this for us, John says in verse 16, then we should be willing to do that for one another.
Now, the tense of the Greek verb in the second part of that verse suggests an action that is continuing, one that will be repeated over and over.
But we can’t give our physical lives more than once, right? So what John is suggesting here must be something else.
The word translated as “lives” here is the one from which we get our word “psyche.” It refers to the seat of all our feelings, desires, affections, and aversions.
And so, the idea that John has in mind is that if Jesus taught us what real love looks like by giving His very life for us, WE should be willing to set aside our feelings, desires, affections and aversions for the sake of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
One commentator put it this way: “It is easy to ‘lay down one’s life’: martyrdom is heroic and exhilarating; the difficulty lies in doing the little things, facing day by day the petty sacrifices and self-denials which no one notices and no one applauds.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 1 Jn 3:16, quoting Smith.]
This setting aside of our own desires — this self-denying love — is such a common theme in the Apostles’ letters that we have to recognize how unusual this kind of love is among humans.
We’re not raised this way. We’re not naturally inclined to this kind of love. This isn’t what the world teaches us about love.
The world encourages us to love one another to the extent that such love doesn’t infringe on our own desires and affections.
The world has made love something that’s completely emotional in nature, and if we don’t feel that emotion about someone else, then it’s fine not to love them.
But the love that John writes about here, the CHOOSING agape love modeled for us by Jesus — this love seeks the best for others, whether we feel any positive emotion about them or not, whether they DESERVE our positive feelings for them or not, whether they RETURN that love or not.
Cain had loved his brother, Abel, in the worldly way. There was an emotional attachment by virtue of the fact that they were brothers.
But when that emotional attachment was jeopardized by the shame Cain felt over his rejected sacrifice, and when the emotion of love came up against the emotion of jealousy, then it became clear that real love wasn’t the foundation of their relationship.
So, John says don’t love the way that Cain loved. Rather, love the way that Jesus loves.
Jesus loves the people who don’t deserve His love. By the way, that’s YOU and ME. He CHOOSES to love us when we’re unlovable. He CHOOSES to love us, even when we don’t love Him back.
His love isn’t rooted in emotions that might change from one moment to the next. Instead, His love is rooted in the unchanging nature of God.
And that should be an encouragement to us, because we’d all be in big trouble if the love of God, the love of Jesus, were subject either to their emotions or to OUR worthiness.
Jesus didn’t stop loving the moneychangers when, in His godly anger, He flipped over their tables in the temple. In fact, He died for them, no less than He died for each one of us.
Jesus didn’t stop loving Peter when He saw Peter deny Him for the third time on the night before He was crucified. In fact, He died for Peter, no less than He died for each one of us.
When you sin — and remember, John has already said that if you say you don’t sin, then you’re a liar — when you sin, Jesus doesn’t stop loving you.
As Paul put it, NOTHING can separate followers of Jesus from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Not even our sins.
If you have put your faith in Jesus, then God chose you from the foundation of the world to be the object of this special love of His. Nothing can break that relationship, though your sin CAN and DOES injure the fellowship.
So, John says that because we who follow Jesus cherish what He did on our behalf and in our place at the cross, we should follow His example in loving one another with a self-sacrificing, self-denying love.
That probably won’t mean that you have to give your physical life for a fellow believer.
More likely, it will mean that you have to continually and repeatedly give up your own rights, go against your own feelings, set aside your own desires and affections, and even swallow your own aversions to love someone who’s just as unlovable as you are.
To love someone who, in their own particular way, is just as unworthy of love as you are.
After all, isn’t that how Jesus loves us?
Look, I don’t know. Maybe some of you here today feel like you deserve for Jesus to love you. After all, you’re basically a good person, right? You’ve got a good heart, right?
But that’s not what the Bible says about you. What the Bible says is that your heart is deceitful above all things, that it’s desperately wicked.
What the Bible says is that all who have not turned to Jesus in faith are enemies of God. Every one of us either IS a rebel against the Kingdom of God or we WERE rebels before we were saved by grace through faith in Jesus.
I don’t know anyone here intimately. I don’t know your hearts. But there’s one person here I DO know intimately. There’s one heart here I’m very much familiar with.
And when I look at that person — when I take stock of his heart — what I realize is that there’s nothing in me that would ever make me deserving of the love of God or the love of Jesus.
God’s love for me — the love Jesus has for me that held Him to the cross — is ENTIRELY a function of His grace.
And if I cherish the grace that was lavished upon me at the cross, then I demonstrate the change it has made in me by loving not as Cain loved, but as Jesus loves.
And so, having established what real love should LOOK like among brothers and sisters in Christ, John now pivots to describe what that love should ACT like.
If God’s love abides in us — if we love God — then that love will manifest itself in loving others. Indeed, loving others is the most obvious way we demonstrate that we love God.
Anybody can say they love God. Anybody can set aside an hour or two to go to church on Sundays. Anybody can listen to Christian radio stations or repost Christian memes on Facebook.
Anybody can do all those Christian-y things that people do to show the world they’re Christians. Those things are easy. At least, they’re easy compared to forgiving and loving people who’ve hurt us.
They’re easy, compared to setting aside our own feelings, desires, affections, and aversions for the sake of people who might never do the same thing for us. They’re easy, compared to continually laying down our lives for one another.
But the fact is that it’s also easy for us to SAY we love one another as followers of Jesus. What makes the difference — what reveals our true hearts — is how we ACT.
That’s the point John makes in verse 18. Notice how he sets two different ideas in opposition to one another.
To love in word is the opposite of loving in deed. If I love someone in word only, it means that maybe I have some positive feeling about them and even say kind and loving things to and about them. But I stop short of doing anything for them that might constitute a sacrifice for me.
To love with tongue is the opposite of loving in truth. So, what it means to love in tongue is to claim that I love someone when I really don’t love them at all.
What John is saying here is that, when it comes to Christian love, actions speak far more loudly than words. What you say means little if it’s not backed up by what you DO.
And so, in verse 17, John gives a practical example of what Christian love DOES.
Look at that introductory clause, “Whoever has the world’s goods.”
There’s an interesting play on words taking place between verses 16 and 17. In verse 16, the word that’s translated as “to lay down” means “to give something up.” And that’s probably not surprising to you. That’s the way we naturally read that phrase. Jesus laid down His life. He gave up His life for us.
But in verse 17, the word that’s translated as “has” actually means “to hold.”
Do you see the contrast between these two verses?
In verse 16, John’s saying we should give up our lives — our perceived right to our feelings, desires, affections and aversions — for the benefit of one another.
And in verse 17, he talks about someone who holds onto the world’s goods — the Greek word here is bios, and it can mean either physical life itself or the resources we need to sustain life.
And what he says is that whoever holds onto the things that guarantee our comfort, ignoring the needs of a brother, demonstrates that the love of God isn’t abiding in Him. That he’s not in fellowship with God in Christ.
It’s interesting to me that God said essentially the same thing to the people of Israel, way back in the Book of Deuteronomy.
Look at Deut 15:7:
7 “If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother;
Notice that God refers to “brothers” here. He wasn’t necessarily speaking of blood brothers, but rather ethnic brothers, people whose kinship came through their shared heritage and nationality.
People who were related as having been among God’s chosen people, Israel. People who were preparing, at this time in Israel’s history, to go into the Promised Land.
The significance of all that is that gracious and generous love toward one another should characterize those who were only a nation because God had made them one.
Gracious and generous love toward one another should characterize those who would soon have a land — a kingdom, if you will — because God was GIVING it to them.
The parallel with what John says in verse 17 should be obvious.
We who’ve followed Jesus in faith have been forgiven our sins and adopted into God’s family as sons and daughters ONLY because of God’s gracious and generous choosing love for us.
And we have become citizens of His Kingdom ONLY because He brought us into it. We would have no rights as citizens of His Kingdom except that HE made us citizens by His grace and mercy.
And just as the people of Israel were called to reflect God’s gracious and generous love in dealing with one another, so we, as followers of Jesus, are called to do the same for one another.
Now, understand that this isn’t a test of faith. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone.
You CAN be saved without ever demonstrating the kind of selfless, self-giving, self-denying love that John talks about in this passage.
As I said earlier, the amount of space dedicated in the Apostles’ letters to teaching about this kind of love reminds us that loving in this way isn’t natural for us. And it probably suggests that, even in the early church, this kind of love was unusual, if not rare.
So, you can be saved without loving one another the way Jesus loves us. But this was the new commandment that He gave us: “Love one another, even as I have loved you.”
And so, if you’re living your Christian life WITHOUT this kind of love, then you’re living in disobedience to Christ.
And if you’re living in disobedience to Jesus, then you’re living in sin, no matter how good you might be otherwise. You’re walking in darkness, instead of the Light.
And if you’re walking in darkness, you’re missing the abundant life that Jesus said He came to give us. You’re missing the fellowship with God in Christ that you can have RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW.
And THAT’S the thing we who have placed our faith in Jesus should be holding onto. THAT’S the thing we should cherish and value above all else.
One day, we’ll all see that everything else — the world’s goods — our own feelings, desires, affections and aversions — all of it pales in comparison to truly knowing the God of all creation. All of it pales in comparison to the fact that He wants to have fellowship with us.
And one of the keys to that fellowship — one of the ingredients of the recipe for fellowship with God — is loving one another, even as Jesus loves us, in deed and in truth.
That’s what real love is. That’s what real love DOES. But you can be sure that this kind of love will require you to let go of something.
What will that be for you? Will it be your attitude of unforgiveness? Will it be your right to be respected? Will it be your expectation that you’ll be treated well by those whom you treat well? Will it be your comfortable life? Will it be whatever worldly identity it is that makes it impossible for others to see your identity in Christ?
Whatever it is that’s keeping you from loving others, even as Jesus loves us, you need to let go of it right now. And prepare to be amazed at the abundance of life in true fellowship with God.