Untitled Sermon (39)

Our text this morning is both incredibly simply and horribly difficult. D.A. Carson, speaking of a similar passage from John 13, said this:

The new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into practice: Love one another.

As we read through this remember what John is doing. He’s not giving us a test like, hey if you miss this question you’d better go work on it. Here is what you are lacking, now go fix it.

No, it isn’t that kind of test. It’s meant to be encouraging for believers. Of course, it serves another purpose in that it’s kind of a pass/fail. Maybe the Spirit would bring conviction to some of those in their midst who were professing believers but realizing…oh, wait, I don’t think this heart change has actually taken place.

I say that to say as we read this text and as you listen to it…think about trajectory. Think about whether or not this decisive heart change has happened…

1 John 3:10–18 ESV

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. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 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. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 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? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

The text itself, as I said earlier, is really quite simple. But it’s application is a little bit more difficult. So, here is what I want to do this morning. We’re going to look at what the text means…then we are going to talk about why it’s a pretty difficult passage…then we’re going to tie it back to Jesus.

First, what is this text saying to us. John’s point is pretty simple. And it goes back to Jesus in John 13. When he told the disciples, John 13:34-35

John 13:34–35 ESV

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus says that, and John says that, because of the work that the Spirit does in the life of believers. That heart change means you go from not really loving believers to now loving believers. But what does that look like?

John begins with a negative example. Cain and Abel. It’s a story from Genesis 4. The first siblings…one murders the other. The word used there for “murdered” is a violent word…it would probably be better translated as “slaughter”.

He violently killed his little brother? Why? The most generic answer is because he was expressing who he belonged to. He was showing in his life that he was not a child of God but was a child of the devil.

Another answer that John gives us is “because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous”.

What happened in that story in Genesis 4....Cain was a tiller of the ground and Abel was a keeper of flocks. One was a farmer. One was a shepherd.

Cain brought an offering of the Lord of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought an offering to God the first of his flock. God smiled upon Abel’s offering but disregarded Cain’s offering. Cain was furious. He was mad at God and jealous of the favor that God gave to Abel.

God asked, Cain, “Why are you angry”? Telling him that sin is crouching at his door and that he had better repent now or it will overtake him. Envy and slander and all sorts of things were bubbling up in his heart. Cain did not listen and he killed his brother Abel. We learn from Hebrews that the difference between Abel’s sacrifice and that of Cain is that Abel offered his in faith and Cain did not.

But I want to take you to the core of the issue. What this passage is telling us is not a pretty picture. To put it bluntly, in our natural state we are all murderers. We are God-haters and people-haters.

That seems harsh. Hate? Murder? But that’s why John can say what he does “we know that we’ve passed from death to life...” Because our bent towards people has fundamentally changed. An when I say other people, in this text, he especially means other followers of Jesus.

Verse 14 is a pretty strong statement. If you do not love, then you do not abide. You do not have that new nature. It means you are in the line of Cain. The same jealous, hate-fueled, and murderous heart which Cain had.

Verse 15 “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer...” Now the way the language is here would lead us to believe that this is an ongoing attitude. It’s a disposition of the heart. It’s your character.

We are naturally self-centered. And apart from grace we are quite like Cain. That’s why there is hate for followers of Jesus…oh, you think you’re better than me. Oh, you’re somehow accepted? That isn’t fair. What about me?

And there is this murderous intention in our hearts. We want to knock down others to prop ourselves up. John first gives this negative example—this is where humanity is at until our heart is changed.

Then John gives us a positive example.

Do you want to know what love is? Look at Jesus. Do you want to know what example we are to follow in our love? Look at Jesus. Completely innocent, being beaten, mocked, whipped, spit on, despised, hated, and ultimately crucified. What did Jesus say, “Father, forgive them they know not what they do”.

Not only was Jesus despised and crucified innocently, but his death had a purpose. He did it for a reason. Jesus could have easily called down legions of angels. Do you really think that nails could hold God onto a piece of wood? Do you really think that any number of men could control the One that breathed life into them? Do you really think Jesus could not have avoided the Cross if He wanted? Jesus was not a martyr in the same way Christians might be.

John needed a positive example for love and he could have given many examples of love. He could have given the example of a mother and her baby, a father and his son, a husband and his wife, etc.

It’s Mother’s Day and we can see that with good mom’s that’s what this looks like. They lay down their life for their kiddos. They provide for them, care for them, nurture them.

I’m grateful that my wife models this. I’m thankful that my own mother was like this for me. You know that when the rubber meets the road—mom will do what it takes to provide care. I’m grateful to have that.

But moms aren’t perfect. No mom is. But Jesus is. And so John chooses the best example he can. John 15 Jesus said, “greater love…that one lay down his life for his friends.” And he did.

Notice also that John says at the beginning of verse 16, “we know”. Christian, you know what love is. If you did not, then you would not be a Christian. You know the love of Jesus Christ. You know that, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf”. The innocent Jesus took our sin upon Him. I want you to really catch how innocent and pure Jesus Christ was, and is. He knew no sin. He never struggled with lust, he never was unloving, he never woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and he never put anything before God. All 10 Commandments he kept wholeheartedly. He was completely innocent and pleasing before God.

But something happened at the cross. In order to provide for us…in order to love us...He became our sin. Charles Spurgeon says it well,

One day, in my wanderings, I heard a cry, a groan; metought 'twas not a cry such as came from mortal lip, it had in it such unutterable depths of wondrous woe. I turned aside, expecting to see some great sight; and it was indeed a great sight that I saw. Lo, there, upon a tree, all bleeding, hung a man. I marked the misery that made his flesh all quiver on his bones; I beheld the dark clouds come rolling down from heaven, like the chariots of misery; I saw them clothe his brow with blackness; I saw even in the thick darkness, for mine eyes were opened, and I perceived that his heart was as full of the gloom and horror of grief as the sky was full of blackness. Then I seemed to look into his soul, and I saw there torrents of unutterable anguish,—wells of torment of such an awful character that mortal lip dare not sip, lest it should be burned with scalding heat. I said, "Who is this mighty sufferer? Why doth he suffer thus? Hath he been the greatest of all sinners, the basest of all blasphemers?" But a voice came forth from the excellent glory, and it said, "This is my beloved Son; but he took the sinner's sin upon himself, and he must bear its penalty." O God! I thought, I never saw sin till that hour, when I saw it tear Christ's glories from his head,—when it seemed for a moment even to withdraw the lovingkindness of God from him,—when I saw him covered with his own blood, and plunged into the uttermost depths of oceans of grief. Then I said, "Now shall I know what thou art, O sin, as never before I knew it!" Though those other sights might teach me something of the dire character of evil, yet never, till I saw the Saviour on the tree, did I understand how base a traitor man's guilt was to man's God.

This is love.

John, then makes an application point from this. We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If you see brothers in need and do nothing—that’s a callous heart. We can’t love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

Mark Dever said it well:

We demonstrate to the world that we have been changed, not primarily because we memorize Bible verses, pray before meals, tithe a portion of our income, and listen to Christian radio stations, but because we increasingly show a willingness to put up with, to forgive, and even to love a bunch of fellow sinners.

Dever goes on to say, “If you goal is to love all Christians, let me suggest working toward it by first committing to a concrete group of real Christian with all their foibles and follies.”

That is what John says. Christians love other Christians in the way that Jesus loved us. Or John 13:34-35

John 13:34–35 ESV

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

But this is where it gets tough to really apply…we can get the concept…

It’s hard because love is so often broken.

· Individuals in the United States are 18% more likely than those in the United Kingdom to have had their hearts broken. Americans are also more prone to experiencing heartbreak. People on the other side of the Atlantic had two heartbreaks on average, compared to five in the United States.

· Binghamton University and University College London researchers asked 5,705 people from 96 countries to rank the emotional and physical anguish of a breakup on a scale of one to ten (unbearable). In terms of emotional distress, women scored 6.84 on a scale of 1–10, while men scored 6.58. While women are more emotionally and physically affected by breakups than men, women tend to recover more quickly and emerge emotionally stronger. Men, on the other hand, never really recover from their traumas; they merely go on.

· Adolescents have a lot of romantic connections, and because of their short duration, they have a lot of breakups. A study of Canadian teenagers aged 15 to 18 indicated that 23% had suffered a breakup in the previous six months. Breakups are thought to be the leading cause of suicide among teenagers.

· According to one study, 40% of people experienced clinical depression after a romantic relationship ended, with another 12% reporting moderate-to-severe depression.

Love can hurt. Love can leave scars. That’s why something like Mother’s Day can even be hard. It’s the same thing that is happening here. If you had a good mom (I did, I do), then you aren’t going to bristle at Mother’s Day.

But it can be really tough if your relationship with your mom isn’t great. Or if you wanted to be a mom but God hasn’t given you that blessing yet. Or your mom has passed away. Whatever the case…Mother’s Day causes you to kind of…ick up a little. That same thing, I think can happen when we talk about love…and even love with other Christians. We get burned. And there is no hurt like church hurt.

In 2018, Spencer Chamberlain, the lead singer of Christian metal band Underoath shocked fans when he said, “If I was still a Christian, I’d probably be dead.”[1]Chamberlain admitted that he had left the faith. What was his reason? This was part of it:

My drug problem was very public and all of the Christian community hated me. I was struggling and all I was getting was hate, like, all I'm having is people tell me how [awful] I am all the time. That's not love, that's not comfortable. The most alone and isolated I've ever been in my life is when I considered myself a Christian, personally. Because I had real issues going on in my life and no one could talk to me about it. There was no help. There was nothing. It was just hide it, don't talk about it because if you do you're not Christian and the band can't go on anymore and that's such an unrealistic thing. Life happens, people deal with stuff differently.[2]

There are many stories just like this one. A misattributed Gandhi quote sums it for many: "I like your Christ, but not your Christianity. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."[3]

What do we do with this perception? Or is it reality? Jesus after being betrayed by Judas, Jesus told his disciples that the new commandment he was giving them—the foundation of this new community of faith—was that they love one another just as Jesus had loved them.

If you have feeling similar to Spencer Chamberlain—or others—and you’re disappointed and discouraged that Christians seem to be nothing like Christ, maybe it’s encouraging to know that Jesus likely isn’t too pleased with it either. If this is the foundation of the new community—what conclusions do we make if we’re neglecting this in our Christian walk.

I’ve seen this statement pop up here and there, and it’s often in response to someone like Spencer walking away from the faith because of how Christians act toward one another—or even towards him.

“If being hurt by church causes you to lose faith in God, then your faith was in people not in God.”

I understand much of the sentiment behind this quote. It’s saying some helpful things. Though everyone abandons the faith it doesn’t make the truth less true. The hypocrisy of Christians doesn’t negate the reality of Christ. We want our faith (and all the other graces of the Spirit) to be grounded in the objective reality of Christ. We must be ultimately tethered to Christ and not to others. So, I give all those points a thumbs up but I still think this statement is missing something about the reality of New Testament Christianity.

This pithy quote, I believe, is missing the fact that our greatest apologetic is other Christians. Or as Francis Schaeffer said,

…after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gave is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians. (The Mark of the True Christian, 29)

Schaeffer makes his point by showing the difference between Jesus’ points in John 13 and John 17. In John 13 Jesus tells his disciples that they’ll give evidence that they truly are followers of Jesus by loving one another. But in John 17 Jesus is tying the veracity of His own claims to our ability to actually love one another.

So when church folk do hurt you and it rocks your faith—it doesn’t de facto mean that your faith was in people instead of God. John 17 helps us to see that a rattled faith in God is an expected byproduct of Christians not modeling Christ.

Yes, there are people who are needlessly offended. Yes, sometimes “Christians are hypocrites” is just a smokescreen to keep from having to actually wrestle with the claims of Christ. But on occasion the disunity among professing followers of Jesus actually will rattle the faith of others. And that’s not because they are weak—it’s because our love for others was weak and we weren’t accurately imaging Christ. And such a thing ought to give us pause to consider how our interaction might actually harm the faith of others.

That’s why that statement doesn’t really sit well with me. It minimizes the interconnectedness of believers and it mutes our final apologetic.

Does my love for other believers and the way I interact with them proclaim that Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Son of God who actively transforms hearts? Or does my interaction give lip service to those claims whilst clearly evidencing a heart still grabbing for another kingdom?

Think of it this way. Your unity with other believers is a means that God uses to keep me in the faith. The way you interact with others is something that God uses to strengthen and enliven my belief that the Spirit of God really does change hearts. Or your interactions and your disunity calls into question whether or not God is powerful enough to bring the unity he said that he would. And your disunity leaves a little pebble in my shoe forcing me to wonder whether or not this whole thing is just a sham.

Don’t read me wrong. My faith is grounded in the objective reality of a resurrected Christ. You can’t ultimately cause me or anyone else to lose my faith. In fact, I’m firmly convinced of the living Christ. Because I know Him. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a few pebbles in my shoe that I wish weren’t there. And in John 17 Jesus calls us to care about the pebbles we are putting in the shoe of others. As well as the active way our unity can shine a massive spotlight on Jesus.

So, this passage is difficult because “they’ll know we are Christians by our love” and I hope online for like 15 minutes and I see Christians just bashing one another…so much hate…I don’t see the sacrifice. And so what do I conclude. Nobody is really a believer?

I don’t know…that’s tough. Where do I go with that? Where do I go with my own heart when I have trouble loving others who are professing Christ. Can I just cop out and say—well they aren’t really Christians, I don’t have to love them quite like what it’s saying here.

Well, that sounds like a great “out”. But Jesus told us to love our enemies…and so if I’m not doing that what does it mean. We cannot escape this call to love.

And if our heart is not bent toward love, I think John would have us to say, “you sure you’ve had that heart change?”

But I really think that’s where we also find some hope. I struggle with love. I struggle with a lack of love. Or being broken and calloused and wish I could open up this part of my heart again…but I’m struggling and wrestling. If Christ hadn’t been doing work…if he hasn’t done that work…there would be no struggle there.

When we find ourselves in that place where maybe the Spirit is bringing conviction—oh, man, I don’t love like I ought. What do we do? We go to Jesus. Change my heart, O God, give me baby skin on my heart. Don’t make me a fool—where my love isn’t wise—but help me to love others deeply from the heart. Give me a heart of a servant. Give me a heart of sacrifice. Help me to love others. Continue this heart change, God.

But, I think we’re also to have some measure of celebration here. I do love like I didn’t love before. My love is less selfish. I am able to love enemies. I am able to do hard things and love an abuser by telling them the truth. I am able to lay down my life for others.

And that’s only because of the work of Jesus in my life. Apart from that I’d have the same bitter and murderous heart that I once had. I didn’t have the guts of Cain, but I had the same seething anger. And Jesus heals that.

Where are you at?

I want to close by going back to John 13. Judas is there…Jesus is talking about betrayal. And Judas’ heart has already intended to betray him. He’s settled in this. But Jesus has one final…do I say final…act of love.

They are eating the Last Supper and Jesus gives this morsel of bread to Judas. That word that’s used there is for a tiny piece of bread…but it’s a special piece.

But when the host would dip his piece of bread into the dish, and then give the sop to someone, that was very, very significant. The host or master of the house would give the sop to the person to whom he wanted to show his greatest love and esteem.

He did that by dipping into the common dish and then placing the sop in the person’s mouth. In doing that, he would show to all those present, and to the person receiving the sop, the love and honor he had for him.

This is love. Jesus is once again inviting Judas into love. To take all his disappointment, all his questions, all his hurts, all of the ways he thought Jesus isn’t matching up to who He should be....all of that…and lay them at the feet of love.

And how did Judas respond? He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t love. He chose to walk away from love.

This final act of love is both received and then rejected. “Judas accepted the bread, but he did not change his decision to betray Jesus. It shows how deliberately Judas became a traitor (Luke 6:16) and treacherous.” Leslie Newbigin says it rather eloquently:

And that final act of love becomes, with a terrible immediacy, the decisive movement of judgment. At this moment we are witnessing the climax of that action of sifting, of separation, of judgment which has been the central theme in John’s account of the public ministry of Jesus … (3:16–19). So the final gesture of affection precipitates the final surrender of Judas to the power of darkness. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has neither understood it nor mastered it.