How to Love the Seen

Do you remember that movie You’ve Got Mail? Joe Fox , played by Tom Hanks and Kathleen Kelly, played by Meg Ryan, fall in love through back and forth emails. It’s actually not Joe and Kathleen who fall in love—it’s really Shopgirl and NY152, their online tags.

Unbeknownst to them they are actually business rivals. Joe is threatening to put her tiny little bookstore out of business. They hate each other face to face but have a budding romance in the unseen world of the internet.

Does Shopgirl love NY152? Does Kathleen love Joe?

Or to put that another way. If someone claims to be a believer in Jesus—to love God with all of their heart—but hates other believers (I love Jesus, I hate the church) is it legit?

John gives us an answer:

1 John 4:20–5:5 ESV

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Sermon Introduction:

John’s logic here seems to be that Shopgirl and NY152 only think they love one another. But it’s a mirage. They are letting their imaginations run wild in the unseen world. It’s always easier to love someone who doesn’t actually exist.

This is the plot of several movies, books, plays, television episodes. We understand that it’s easier to love someone “out there” than it is someone who is right in front of you. And as a side note, I think we might say this about hate too.

Things always get muddy and a bit more complex when we are face to face and living life together. It’s harder to love and it’s harder to hate. It’s one thing for me to say I love a honey badger and find them to be cute…you can always love honey badgers from a distance. It’s quite another to love one in person when it’s trying to rip your face off.

John’s logic seems to be something like this…you can’t say you love a honey badger if you’ve never actually met one…and you especially can’t say you love honey badgers if you meet one and there determine that you can’t stand it. You have to give up the mirage.

Shopgirl can’t say she loves NY152 when NY152 is revealed to be the Joe Fox that she cannot stand. If you can’t love the seen, you can’t rightly say to love the unseen. Or to drop the metaphor…if you do not love your brother who is seen, you cannot love God who is unseen.

Let’s think about this for just a moment though. In order for John’s argument to work, he has to be saying something rather astonishing about the nature of believers.

NY152 is Joe Fox. Cute honey badger in a picture is cute honey badger who rips off your face. God is the believer????

No. We know that’s not true. I mean if we were making a point about Christ then it’d be pretty easy. If you reject Christ, God made visible, then you cannot be said to really love God. But John, and more importantly the Holy Spirit, would not be pleased if we made an argument from this that believers are God..or even that we become gods.

But maybe we don’t throw this out and run away as fast as we can. John’s argument has to work. And in order for his argument to work there needs to be at least some correspondence between the believer and the God who created them. Otherwise he’d be saying something as silly as...

If you can’t love a honey badger you can’t love a butterfly. That doesn’t make any sense —the two aren’t even related. Of course I am free to hate that face-ripping honey badger and love the beautiful butterflies.

In order for John’s argument to work the believer has to represent God at least in some way. And as we search the Scriptures we see that all of humanity even represents God at least in some capacity…we are made in the image of God. We are vice-regents of God. We were created for rest, rule, and relationship. We are to work and keep the garden, to reflect the glory of God, and see that glory spread as we are fruitful and multiply.

This is why writers like CS Lewis have said things like this:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

But John is saying more than just other humans. He says “brother”. These are fellow believers. And here we see even more than shared humanity and being made in the image of God. Jesus said things like this:

John 14:20 ESV

In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

John 15:4 ESV

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

John 17:21–23 ESV

that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

In a very real sense, then, we might say that to hate another believer, to refuse to love another believer, is to refuse to love Christ. That is John’s point here. There is a consistency in this. I really like how Eugene Peterson says this in the Message:

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Chapter 4

The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.

What all of this means is that we can’t hide behind saying that we have an excuse to not love our brothers or sisters in Christ because they are quite the scoundrels and are rather difficult to love.

What happens at this point if we’re really honest with our own hearts and with what God’s Word is saying here, we get a little squirmy in our seats. We start wondering do I love the right way? Am I actually a believer…oh man, I need to make sure I’m loving the right way.

Which is not exactly what John is doing in this passage. To understand what he’s saying here we’re going to need to come at this thing from two angles.

There is a phrase that appears all over 1 John and it’s hear a few times… “born of God”, “born of him”, “children of God”, and then again “born of God”. We need to understand what is going on there if we will understand this passage.

Here is the best way that I know to illustrate this. The Scripture says that we need to be born again because in our first birth leads to only death. We are, as it says, dead in our sin. Lifeless.

Use my side-eyed gorilla.

Now let’s say for some reason we want side-eye gorilla to come alive. What will it take?

What would happen if I went about changing his circumstances? What if I propped him up with a pillow, put on some soothing music, gave him some Tylenol, and tried to take all of the stress out of his life. Will he have life?

What if we work really hard at improving his knowledge? If we read to him every night and maybe put some educational videos on the television, will he come alive?

What if we give him a pep talk and really try to work on his self-esteem? What if we reassure him consistently and sing happy songs to him? Will any of these help? You know that none of those superficial remedies will help.

That is why circumstances, behavior modification, increasing knowledge, and growing in self-esteem will never cure your greatest problem. The only hope a dead man, the only hope a lifeless thing has, is if someone more powerful than death has the ability to raise him back to life. To breath life. Or to use a different phrase—to make them to be born again. To be born of God. That is your only hope.

When this happens it changes everything. Apart from this happening nothing will fundamentally change.

And so if we talk about loving one another, loving God, following his commandments, believing in Christ, persevering in our love for Christ, all the things that John has been saying throughout this letter…well, if you aren’t born again…not a single thing you do is going to make it happen.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control…not a single one of these are able to consistently define you and your character…no more than we could say that our side-eyed gorilla is truly able to love and have joy and peace and self-control.

Listen to what John is saying here. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. We might take this as “continues to believe” or we might point this to initial salvation. But this is something that flows out of being born of God.

John isn’t giving us a manual here about building something…he’s telling us how to troubleshoot something that is already built. He’s saying...”Oh, when you see believing that Jesus is the Christ...” well that’s a born of God thing.

He doesn’t mean there reciting facts. Being able to tell a story. Giving some mental assent to a thing. Passing a doctrine test. He’s saying that when someone is united to Christ, trusting in Jesus, relating to Jesus---what it means to believe Him to be the Messiah—the rescuer, the one in whom you place your hope and faith and trust and all of that…well, that’s something which God has brought about.

But that’s really a minor point, John is taking us to verse 2 here…everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. You’d expect that to be Jesus, but it’s not who John is meaning there. The one who is “born of him” is the one who “believes Jesus is the Christ”. John is just restating what he said in verses 20-21 of chapter 4.

Born again people love other born again people. That is John’s point. Well…how then do I know if I love the children of God.

John tells us in verse 2. “When we love God and obey his commandments”. What? You’re making me dizzy John. What he is doing is kind of like that ride at theme parks. I don’t remember what it’s called at SDC. Growing up we were closer to Six Flags and that ride was The Buccaneer at least for awhile.

It was a big pirate ship that went from one end to other…higher on this side, and then the momentum would swing you higher on the other side…that’s the kind of relationship they have. Swinging back and forth. And that is what John is doing here…how do I know if I love God, well you love other believers. Well how do I know if I love other believers…well, you love God.

It’s all connected. And so the way we love them is by exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit. We love God by obeying his commandments—one of them is to love one another. It’s to live out this life in a certain way. To be an apprentice of Jesus and love them like Christ would love them. That’s what it means...

And this is where we need to start to view this from another angle. Let me tell you about this guy about my age who was a pastor, wrote quite a few books, a couple best-sellers even. Had a huge impact on my generation. And he’s now an unbeliever.

One of the books he wrote was called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It was this manual for dating couples…well, actually not dating. It was now to be called courting. And there were rules, lots and lots of rules. It was to keep couples pure and to keep teens and young adults from breaking each others hearts.

It was to go back to the way the Bible talked about relationships. To be governed by the glory of God. There were all of these rules about what is the man’s role, the woman’s role, how is the father of the would-be bride involved. If you wanted a godly relationship then it needed to be done this way.

But it was quite a burden. Many relationships were kind of smothered because its hard to love someone when you’re always looking over your shoulder trying to figure out if you’re doing it exactly right. It was well-meaning but it sucked the life out of things. Josh, the author, would later admit this. He’d talk about all the harm it did.

But one thing he said when he talked about why he was no longer a believer really struck me. He said, “I just couldn’t untangle all the knots. Everything was tied together. And rather than trying to untie things, I just walked away from it all.”

I understand what he’s saying there. Let me try to connect this for you and what we see happening here in 1 John.

Let’s imagine for a second that you’re a newer believer in Jesus. And you come upon all of these passages that talk about “loving your fellow Christian” and you aren’t really sure exactly what that means. How do I do this? What does that look like? I want to obey God in this…so tell me what to do? And what do I do when it’s really hard to love someone—what do I do when this is a struggle and I’m sinned against, and I hurt, and I don’t want to love this person?

And a well-meaning believer, taking their own journey as the way that things work, gives you a list of things that have worked for them.

Well…you’re going to need to pray. You’re going to need to be immersed in Scripture. I also think this particular book that I’ve got here was really good. And you need to make sure that you come to church all the time, and we’ve even got a class for this particular thing, you’re going to need to go to that, I’ve also found that when I eat pickled pigs feet it gets me in a much better frame, and I’ve found that the Psalms are really good, oh and I really think it’d be a good idea to avoid watching old reruns of Matlock, and uhmmm you just really need to be around people all the time—how can you love them if you aren’t around them all the time...

What happens then is that this believer starts trying to learn to choke down both pickled pigs feet and the Psalms. There isn’t a differentiation. Some of these are fine disciplines. Many of them will help you grow as a believer. It’s a means by which we follow after Jesus. But they aren’t Jesus.

Now don’t come to a silly conclusion here that I’m saying that prayer and Bible reading and fellowship and stuff aren’t necessary or part of living out the Christian life. They are. But what I’m attempting to say is that what gets lost in all of this is “you must be born again.”

Listen, do you need to teach a newborn to eat? I mean you might need to teach them that eating paint chips isn’t a good idea…but that instinct is there, right.

You don’t have a class called “breathing 101”. You don’t need to teach them to grasp things. Nobody teaches a kid to cry…they come out doing that. Reflexes, Sensing, rooting, and even swimming These are all reflexes that a newborn doesn’t need to be taught.

Did you know that those who are born of God have the same type of reflexes? If you are born of God you have similar reflexes. It’s why you saw the early church do what they did in Acts. They gathered together, they read the Scriptures, they devoted to prayer, they gave, they shared the gospel, they did all of these things almost instinctively.

And so when John says something like “keep his commandments” there is a Spirit impulse within us that knows exactly what that means. If you’ve been born of God you know what that means…you might not be able to explain it, it might be muddy at times, there might be some things that look like a carnival mirror at times, but at its core you know what it means.

The problem though is that we don’t like this freedom. It scares us. And maybe rightly so. Babies have certain reflexes but sometimes those aren’t trained…that grabbing impulse will happen if it’s a rattle or if its a hot iron. They’ll chew on a piece of glass just as easy as a bottle.

These instincts need to be trained. But what happens is that so much within the church and what we call discipleship, etc. is geared towards thinking that we CREATE disciples. Like that we MAKE Christians. And so then it gets all confusing...

Our person who was asking about love starts to struggle with eating those brussell sprouts, still wants to watch Matlock on occasion, battles praying in the prescribed method, can’t seem at these early stages to grasp Psalms but is really attracted to the Proverbs, has a weekly battle with getting out of bed on Sunday mornings, and wrestles with distraction in prayer.

And the whole Christian life becomes this big massive burden. It starts to become about performance. And at some point when she’d been trying to give up Matlock for all of these years, someone else says, “you know I don’t think it’s true that Christians can’t watch Matlock” and suddenly she’s thrown for a loop. And some of these other things start to crumble away or she discovers that this Christian who told her all of those important disciplines hasn’t really been in a small group for 15 years, and suddenly she starts to think “is any of this true”.

All of this could be helped if we’d just drink in what is being said here in 1 John. “And his commandments aren’t burdensome”.

Drink that in for a second. What if John is telling us the truth?

And you’re sitting there saying…man, it sure feels like a burden. I feel so weighted down by trying to please God. I feel this big massive expectation and weight and like I’m just suffocating under it all. How can you say this John?

How can you say, John, when there are like 613 commandments in the Old Testament?

And New Testament guy comes in and says well we can really drop those down to two of them—Love God and love your neighbor! Awesome…you ever try doing that? That’s a lifetime, man. And it can feel like a burden...

Not a burden...

But why is God’s Word ever a burden. I can think of two reasons. One, it’s a burden if I really want to do the other thing. If my heart wants to agree with the way the world defines love—then it’s going to be a burden for me to love according to the Scriptures.

If I want to be angry and vengeful, Jesus’ call to turn the other cheek is going to burdensome. If I’m filled with lust and envy and I want to consume and control another person, God’s call to love them as I’d love myself will be a burden. God’s command is a burden if I agree with the world.

But it’s also a burden even if I agree with it, but I think that I have to accomplish it with my own strength. But John tells us here, “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world...”

Now you hear that and think it means the unbelieving world out there, those trying to persecute us, take away our Christian rights, etc. But that isn’t what John means. When he says “overcome the world” he’s talking about all of that junk swirling around in our hearts. The stuff that keeps me from loving you and you loving me.

What John is saying is that when we are born of God, it changes us from the inside out. We now want to follow God’s command. We want to love as God calls us to love. And it also give us the strength and power to actually grow in obedience. We truly do overcome the world…and some day we will finally and fully overcome the world through Christ.

Corrie Ten Boom worked against the Nazis in World War Two hiding Jews in her home. When she was caught, she was sent to a concentration camp where she was stripped of her dignity, saw her father and her sister (Betsie) die, and suffered more at the hands of other people than we could possibly imagine.

“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.’ He said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

I’m not going to close this sermon by giving you something to do…trust the instincts. And if you’re thinking, man I don’t even know if I’m a believer. I need to be born again…How does that happen? Well, it’s a mystery upon mysteries…as Jesus says it’s like the wind that blows wherever it wishes. You can’t really make yourself born again...

But here is what I do know. The Bible calls us to call upon the name of the Lord. To cry out, “God have mercy on me a sinner.” And we know that when this happens he responds…and we know that this is the kind of thing that happens when one is being born again. If that is what the Spirit is doing trust Him. Repentance. Asking forgiveness. Reconciliation. Do what the Spirit is calling you to do.