Love In Truth

Josh Elliott

John's Epistles • Sermon • Submitted 2 months ago • Presented 2 months ago

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Introduction

Illustration: Internet Slacktivism and negative reaction to “thoughts and prayers”

1 John 3:17–24 CSB

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? Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth. This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things. Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight. Now this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us. 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.

Sometimes when it comes to Christianity we know all the big picture things that God wants us to do and to be. He wants us to love Him and love one another. He wants us to be righteous. He wants us to be merciful. But if we leave it there, sometimes it can become easy to excuse ourselves from doing anything. We can say to ourselves that of course we love people, but never match that to any action. So the question becomes, how do we take the general overarching commands of Scripture and bring them down to ground level where we can apply them to the nitty gritty day to day of life as disciples of Jesus.

John is concerned with this possibility as well, warning his readers not just to love in word or speech, but in action and truth. And according to John this is the key to a number of things. Not only do we prove with our actions that we do in fact love those we claim to love, but we also reassure our hearts within us that we are the loving children of God that we’re supposed to be. We also by living lives of love in action obey God’s commands and He answers our prayers. So for that reason here are the three things we’re going to talk about based on this passage today:

Love in Action

Heart Reassurance

Power in Prayer

Love in Action

Illustration: We’ve probably all known someone who is like this, who says they love, but never shows it with their actions.

1 John 3:17–18 CSB

There are a lot of people in need out there. There are people without homes, without jobs, who worry every day about where their next meal will come from. There are people in war torn countries who don’t know where the next bomb will fall. There are hurting people all around us that never show just how broken they are inside. People who are lost and in need of a savior everywhere that we look. So we need to ask ourselves, have we ever seen someone who is need and withheld our compassion from them? Where do we need to do better to show love in action and in truth?

The last section ended by contrasting the results of hate and love. Hate results in murder, love in self sacrifice. John takes the extreme example of dying on behalf of someone else and brings it to a more day to day level. If we say we would die for someone, how can we then turn around and not give from our material things to help a brother in need?

John describes not helping a brother in need as shutting our heart against him. The picture this paints is of the natural God given instinct to give and to provide for someone we love coming from our hearts and the person who doesn’t love then forces their heart shut in order to resist that urge.

Remember these issues that John addresses as being signs for or against the health of your relationship with Jesus aren’t things that you do to lose your salvation or anything like that. They’re symptoms of a problem. In this verse in particular John asks the hypothetical question of how someone who has the God who is love (as John himself will describe him later) dwelling inside of him could ignore a person whom God loves and not help them with their practical need if they are able to.

James actually uses the example of wishing someone well without meeting their practical needs as an illustration of the uselessness of faith without works. James 2:14-17

James 2:14–17 CSB

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food 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? In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.

So what then should we do as disciples of Jesus in response to this challenge from John and James? Now one of the reasons you guys pay me is to do things like learn Greek so you don’t have to. The Greek language has multiple different verbs that you could translate as “see” or “look at.” In verse 17, when John talks about when “one of you sees a fellow believer in need,” the word for see is θεωρέω. Why does this matter? Because this word for seeing means to look at something closely. So this isn’t just a passing glance, this word means that you’ve taken a close look at this person and determined they are in need. So if we are to be loving in action and truth, than we need to look closely at our brothers and sisters, we need to truly know them so that we know when they are in need and can open our hearts to them and provide from our abundance according to our need.

Heart Reassurance

Illustration: Panic attacks, reassuring yourself

1 John 3:19–24 CSB

This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things. Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight. Now this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us. 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.

I’ve known a few people who seemed to live in perpetual doubt of their status with Jesus. They lived in fear that they might have done something wrong to lose their salvation, or that maybe they missed something and weren’t saved in the first place. You might think that believing in eternal security, which is the idea that once you are saved you can never lose your salvation, might make you immune to this worry but then there are those that wonder if the reason they struggle to do what’s right is because maybe they weren’t predestined to be saved in the first place. Here’s the reason that John is setting up all these tests of the genuineness of our claim to knowing God. It’s not so that we can judge each other’s salvation. It’s not so that we can leave feeling guilty or ashamed. It’s first to increase our certainty about who we are. We act loving to remind ourselves that we are the children of the God who is love. Secondly we use these tests to “persuade our hearts before him.” So if you are doubting your relationship with Jesus than go and do all the things that John says we are to do as believers and persuade your heart that you are in fact a child of God.

Remember the Biblical view of the heart. It is “desperately wicked” and unknowable (Jeremiah 17:9). Of course we believe that when we are saved God renews us and gives us a new heart, but we are still subject to the wickedness and sin of this world while we are here and our heart can still lead us astray. So then it is possible to have a genuine abiding relationship with Jesus but still have our hearts condemning us, telling us that we are fakers and frauds. This verse then is an extreme comfort to those of us who may at times struggle with these thoughts. “God is greater than our heart.” Hallalujah. He knows you are saved even if at times you don’t. He knows you are His child even when you don’t feel like it. Those are included on the list of things that God knows because God knows all things. He knows that He chose you and will conform you to the image of His son. What greater news is there than that?

In context this is a continued thought from the previous two verses. We DO have confidence in God, since we have persuaded our hearts and God is greater than our hearts. That’s the idea that John is trying to express.

So then you could just as easily say “since our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” We’ll see the truth of this view of the verse from what follows in verse 22, which we will talk about with the next point. John is claiming this confidence for himself and for his readers. They do have confidence in God built on the evidence of faith they have shown that he describes in this letter.

The reward for placing faith in Jesus and loving each other is having God himself remaining in us. Here we have the picture of the current activity of the trinity. God sends His Son who then in turn sends the Spirit. It is the Spirit who is now living in us. Because this is the biblical picture I resist using the language of talking about “inviting Jesus into your heart.” In a way you might be able to theologically justify that statement, but the Bible prefers to describe the Son being at the right hand of God the Father and the Holy Spirit being the one who now resides in us.

There are lots of great arguments for the reality of the gospel, but the greatest apologetic for the gospel in our own lives is the Holy Spirit Himself. Our experience of God’s transformation in our lives might not work well to convince others of the truth of who Jesus is and the reliability of Scripture, but there’s no replacement for it in the life of the Christian, the disciple of Jesus. The way to know we remain in Christ is to know the Spirit which was given to us.

What then shall we do with this information? How should it change our Discipleship day to day? My heart for all who are believers in Christ is that we would live confident lives as followers who know that we are beloved and that we are doing our best to love others. We should long to see the church step out in faith from a solid foundation of trusting in God’s promises and not constantly questioning ourselves. If we feel like we’ve done wrong and our conscience is bothering us than we should repent and try again, knowing that God promised to forgive us. If we don’t really believe He has forgiven us than we aren’t acting out of a sense of shame but a lack of faith. Knowing that God is greater than our hearts and that He testifies to the reality that we are His children is all we need to stand firmly on what we believe and work boldly for the advancement of His kingdom.

Power in Prayer

Illustration: Electrical work scares me. I installed a plug for my in-law’s RV and it was probably the most nerve wracking handyman job I’ve done around the house. But electrical work is a lot like prayer.

1 John 3:21–22 CSB

Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight.

Now who doesn’t want answered prayers? There’s a lot of perks to being a disciple of Jesus, but this has to be one of the biggest that we can experience before we die. We are given access to God Himself and promises that He will answer us if we pray to Him. He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t even have to save us, but He could have left it at that. He could have said, “your sins are forgiven, see you in the next life” and that would already be way more than we deserve, but instead He also promises multiple times in Scripture to answer our prayers. Here are a few of those times:

Matthew 7:7 CSB

“Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

John 15:7 CSB

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you.

Mark 11:24 CSB

Therefore I tell you, everything you pray and ask for—believe that you have received it and it will be yours.

And that’s just three of them.

I am convinced that the modern Christian church has severely limited itself by downplaying promises like these in the New Testament. Multiple times Jesus Himself is recorded as saying basically the same thing that John is saying here. We can come confidently before God and therefore we will receive what we ask from Him. In this case no “unless” or “but” or “accept” is given. I question why my own instinct with these verses is to first go to all the exceptions and theologically talk myself into a place where I can reduce this command to “whatever we ask we might receive from him.”

That being said, John himself is giving a condition attached to this promise. We receive what we ask for because we keep His commands and please Him. Remember these are all a part of abiding in Christ. We don’t earn God’s favor, God is the one who does these righteous things in us if we abide in Him.

“Not as though our merits earned a hearing for our prayers, but when we are believers in Christ, all our works of faith being the fruit of HisSpirit in us, are “pleasing in God’s sight”; and our prayers being the voice of the same Spirit of God in us, naturally and necessarily are answered by Him.[1]” - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Other conditions given include in James when He cautions that they ask for things for the wrong reasons and therefore don’t receive them. Jesus makes their faith in God a condition for having their requests granted. There’s also a warning to husbands that if they mistreat their wives God won’t answer their prayers. 1 Peter 3:7

1 Peter 3:7 CSB

Husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker partner, showing them honor as coheirs of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

See? I think on the whole the Biblical view is to expect God to answer our prayers unless we have a specific reason that He should not answer. And at the end of the day if we don’t get the answer we were looking for trust that God knows better than we do and has something even better in mind for us.

So what does this change in our prayer lives as disciples? For one based also on the previous point we should pray boldly. We should pray as if we actually believe the promises that God makes in Scripture about ansering prayer. We should pray as if the God of the universe hears us and loves us because we are His children.

Matthew 7:7–11 CSB

“Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.

So we need then to ask, seek, and knock. Then if we are living lives of love we should have confidence that God will answer according to His perfect will. Not based on who we are, as though we have earned His favor, but based on the gracious promises that He makes in His word. These promises should inspire us to be constantly going to God in prayer, knowing that He is listening, that He cares, and that He will answer our prayers.

Conclusion

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve really enjoyed taking this time to go through John’s letters so far. While he does often talk about lofty concepts like love and truth and Jesus identity, today’s passage shows that his concern is not just with those theological concepts but also their practical impact on our day to day lives. So what has John taught us about our practical day to day lives today? He has taught us the importance of not just saying that we love each other, but showing it even with our material goods and other means. He’s taught us the value of our good works for reassuring us of who we are in God, and how we should have confidence in who we are and reassure our hearts if they try to convince us we aren’t who God says we are. And He has taught us about the promise God gives to answer our prayers if we love one another and put our faith in Jesus. Let’s reread the passage with these things in mind.

1 John 3:17–24 CSB

So then my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, what excuse do we have not to go and do what John has said in these verses. Let us seek out every opportunity to show love to one another, and step out boldly knowing not only that we truly are children of God, but that His power is available to us through prayer.