The Test of Love | 1 John 2:7-11

Turn in your Bibles to 1 John 2:7

Have you ever been so angry at someone that you did or said something you shouldn’t?

When I was younger, I had some anger problems. I always felt the need to prove myself, so anytime anyone said something that hurt my pride, I got angry.

I remember this one time when I was younger my brother and I were playing this game with our neighbors where for some reason we were throwing shoes across a trampoline, and my brother threw a shoe and hit me in the face. I got mad and started yelling at him and my grandma came out to calm us down. As she was asking what happened, my brother said something that made me even more angry and finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I punched my brother in the face… Not my greatest moment.

Anger and hate has a way of blinding us so that we don’t think rationally. I know I shouldn’t hit my brother, but in that moment that was all I wanted to do and finally I let my anger cloud my judgment and I hit him. I wasn’t thinking straight in that moment.

I’m naturally an emotional person, so this topic hits home for me. Because this is something I’ve had to battle most of my life. So I’m excited to dive into this topic with y’all.

1 John 2:7–11 NLT

7 Dear friends, I am not writing a new commandment for you; rather it is an old one you have had from the very beginning. This old commandment—to love one another—is the same message you heard before. 8 Yet it is also new. Jesus lived the truth of this commandment, and you also are living it. For the darkness is disappearing, and the true light is already shining. 9 If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness. 10 Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness.

1. The commandment to love was from the beginning. (v. 7)

2. Jesus fulfilled the commandment to love. (v. 8a)

3. The Holy Spirit empowers us to love others (vv. 8b-11)

Application: Everything God has done was done out of love.