The Love for Loving Others: 1 John 3:11-18

Our text today will come from 1 John 3:11-18.

1 John 3:11–18 “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who 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. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 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? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” PRAYER

Andrew Murray once made this statement in regards to love for Christians: “And let us consider one another. He that enters into the Holiest enters into the home of eternal love; the air he breathes there is love; the highest blessing he can receive there is a heart in which the love of God is shed abroad in power by the Holy Ghost, and which is on the path to be made perfect in love. That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God—remember this, Faith and hope shall pass away but love abideth ever. The chief of these is love.”

The meaning of love has been seriously diluted and eroded today. Practically everyone claims to love God. Everyone who claims to be Christian also claims to love God and his neighbor. But true love is much deeper than emotion, infatuation, or a carnal love that indulges the flesh. The main point of today’s sermon courtesy of the Apostle John tells us what true love is and how it differs from hate, showing us the origin (The Command), nature (The Contrast), and practical consequences of both (The Standard).

1. The Command to Love

1 John 3:11 “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another;”

“from the beginning”

In explaining the meaning of love, John says the commandment to love is hardly new news to his listeners. You have had the message of the ‘royal law’ (James 2:8) from the beginning, he says. In 1 John 2:7, we examined how John reminded believers that they had ‘heard from the beginning’ the old commandment which had now taken on new meaning. The same thing applies here. John is referring to the words of Jesus,

John 13:34–35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

“we should love one another”

It is striking that Jesus commands us to love, since most people do not think of love as a response to a command. We think about love being an instinctive or emotional response or an inclination, but Jesus elevates love by linking it with the command to love God and one’s neighbor. Love is not an option for the Christian; love is not to be held hostage by our changing emotions. Love is an attitude that we cultivate and a pattern of behaviour that we embrace.

Jesus and the New Testament writers presented love as an essential mark of a saving relationship with God. Love gave strength and credibility to the New Testament witness. When the disciples went into the world, speaking of Christ and living for him, people looked at them and said, ‘Behold how they love one another!’ That kind of love the world could not ignore; it gave weight to their words. Tertullian, the early church father, said that love made Christianity triumph over persecution in the ancient world. Love is still one of the church’s most powerful evangelistic weapons today.

Even so, John presents loving one another as the evidence of true faith in Christ, not as an argument for it. Jesus and the other apostles, such as James, Peter, and Paul, handled it the same way. When Jesus and the apostles explained how Christians should behave in the world, they did not begin with arguments. Of course, they did teach us how to live. Scripture is filled with counsel and direction on Christian living, ethics, and morality. But that is not where the apostles began.

John follows the typical apostolic approach. He does not first come with a command, saying, ‘You have to be good children; you must love one another and live in harmony with one another. If you fail to do that, you will not be effective.’ Rather, John, Jesus, and the apostles handled the command to love in the context of describing believers who already love one another because they are Christians.

In applying this text to our lives we must be believers first, then live out that belief in an ever increasing measure of love.

2. The Contrast of Love

John now goes on to illustrate how to love by contrasting love and hate in verses 12-15. In that framework, he tells us four things:

(1) what a Christian is not and (2) what a Christian is; (3) what a Christian does and (4) what a Christian does not do.

What a Christian is not. John says in verses 12 and 13: “not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.”

John is saying that if a Christian is no longer a man of this world, he will not act like Cain, who personified this world and hated his brother Abel. Cain is the exemplar of the non-believer, for he was of the wicked one, his works were evil, he abode in death, and he hated his brother. John is drawing a parallel between Cain and the world, and Abel and the Christian.

You remember the story (Gen. 4:1-8). Abel came to God with his offering. He brought a lamb to God, and God was pleased with the sacrifice. Cain brought the fruit of the field to God as an offering. God was not pleased with that offering. When Cain found that Abel’s offering was accepted, his hatred and resentment so increased against his brother that he murdered him. That has been the relationship of the world to the living church ever since. As Jesus said, ‘Do not marvel if the world hates you; it has hated me before it hated you. That is the reason why it hates you.’ Cain hated Abel because he hated the light that shone through Abel’s life.

Likewise by way of application, the world hates Christians because it hates the light and the deeds of light.

What a Christian is. John tells us in verse 14 what a true Christian is: ‘We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.’ A true Christian has passed from death into life. (Speaking of assurance: ‘We know’). The chief characteristic of this world is that it rests in the lap of the wicked one. It is under the dominion of Satan as the god of this world. As a result of sin, this world in which we are born and live is a realm of spiritual darkness and death. We have been shaped in iniquity and born in sin. Because of that we are part of the realm of death.

Adam and Eve were give a clear alternative in the Garden of Eden. God commanded them not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He warned them: Genesis 2:17 “for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and took fruit from the tree. As a consequence, sin entered into the world, and death by sin. So, as Paul says, death is cast upon all men for ‘all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23).

In Ephesians 2:1 Paul said, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,” To be dead in sin means to be dead to God’s realm. It means to be dead to the true knowledge of God, dead to living fellowship with God. A Christian is someone who has come to realize the true nature of sin. He recognizes that he is caught up in the midst of a spiritual conflict and that by nature he is under the dominion of sin and Satan. He recognizes the desperate plight of his position. Furthermore, he sees that only God in Christ can deliver him from that plight. He sees the truth of the gospel in Jesus Christ and comes to a personal, experiential knowledge of God.

A Christian is born again. He has become alive to God in Christ. He is a child of God and is in living fellowship with God, having become part of the family of God. He has been translated out of this worldly kingdom of death and brought into the family of God’s Son. He once lived in darkness and death, but now he lives in light and life eternal. He has eternal life abiding in him.

In applying this verse, my prayer is that you have passed from death into life. For either you’re alive in Christ or you’re still dead in your sins, for no one can be part of both worlds.

What a Christian does. John focuses here on the critical issue of Christians loving one another. ‘We love the brethren.’ If a Christian has been made a partaker of the life of God and has been brought into the family of God, then he should have an intimate, loving relationship with every other member of that family. Every other believer has become his brother or sister in Christ. If a person has become a new creation in Christ, if the love of God dwells in his heart by the Spirit, and if he has come to love God as his Father through the Father’s own love, then he will love his brothers and sisters in Christ with the love that the Holy Spirit has given to him.

Notice that John is not saying, ‘If you want to be good Christians you better start loving one another. You must try harder and put more effort into loving one another.’ Rather, he says that love for one another is the inevitable outcome of having passed from death into life and of having God’s eternal life within us. The mindset of all true Christians is to love God and their brothers and sisters in the family of God.

What a Christian does not do. Notice how he uses the negative aspect of the former teaching to reinforce what John has just said. A Christian does not hate his brother. Hating someone, according to the New Testament, is the impulse of murder—the wish or desire to destroy, to wound, to hurt. Furthermore, the person who fails to love his brother is still in the realm of death (v. 14c). As John says, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (v. 15). The man who does not love his brother and sister in Christ still lives and moves in the realm of death; his failure to love shows that the life of God does not abide in his soul.

In applying the text: Do we love our brothers and sisters in Christ? Or do we harbour resentment, bitterness, envy, and jealousy against someone who professes to be a Christian? We need to face that kind of question now, before it is asked of us on Judgement Day, for love will be the standard which judges us on that final day. Many people will come to Christ on Judgement Day, professing to have served him. Saying ‘Lord, have we not done many miracles in Your name?’ Christ will respond, ‘I never knew you.’ You were baptized, you participated in the Lord’s Supper, and you did many things for the church, but you never knew what it meant to be born again and to partake of this new nature which compelled you to love God and one another.’

3. The Standard of Love

If you ask people what it means to love, you will get many answers. Most explanations will be shallow because relationships in our world have become shallow. John tells us the standard of love is to practice love in verses 16-18: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 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? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”

John says two things here. First, he says that love is selfless, self-sacrificial, and enduring. We know what true love is because Jesus displayed it in laying down his life for us. Jesus is the great example of what it means to love one another before God. He laid aside his comforts, turned his back on his privileges, endured the cross, and bore the judgement of a holy God for the sins of a lost and guilty people. Even as nails were driven into his body, Jesus refused to stop loving those who were torturing him. He appealed to God, saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34). If you want to know what love is, says John, let me take you to the cross; there you will see love in all its brilliance and glory. 1 John 4:10 “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

No one anywhere has ever loved the way God did at the cross. No one can stop the outpouring of God’s love.

True love seeks what is best for the other person, which is, ultimately, eternal life. The Lord Jesus forfeited his own life so that unlovable sinners could have eternal life. He deliberately chose to love them. He wanted the best for those who were obnoxious to him.

In Christ, God loved his people with abounding love. He loves lavishly, giving them everything he had. When God gave his only Son, his bosom Friend from all eternity, he gave the best that he had for the worst he could find—depraved sinners who were his enemies by nature. In loving the unlovable, God subjected his Son to the worst imaginable sufferings. God held nothing in reserve, for he spared not his own Son.

True love is God’s love modeled in Christ. God is the ultimate source of all love. To love truly is to love as God loves. John 13:34 Jesus said “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

What does such love mean in our relationship with others? John says true love means that we are willing to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ, just as Christ laid down his life for us. Ephesians 5:25 Paul said “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,” Jesus Christ and his sacrificial love is the standard for family love and for love in a Christian congregation. Selfless, sacrificial service for the good of others is to be the defining feature and the model for all of our relationships.

That kind of love is so important because the devil is unceasing in his attempts to kill love in our lives. Usually he does it slowly. We are hurt by someone in the church, and we begin withdrawing from them. Over a period of time, we gather resentments to justify our isolation. We erect barricades around ourselves to keep others out. We become insensitive to other people and their needs.

If love is dying in your heart, go to the cross of Jesus Christ. Pray that drops of his love would rain upon your heart. Only at the cross will we experience the love that God longs to see in the lives of his people. At Calvary, we see sinless love personified in God’s Servant laying down his life to bring the blessings of God to the people of God.

Second, John teaches us that Christian love is evident in caring for one another: 1 John 3:17-18 “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? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” True love is not what the false teachers do, John says. They speak eloquent words but fail to care for others by sharing resources with them. If you have material possessions and fail to have pity on your brother who is in need, how can the love of God be in you? Pity means doing more than saying, ‘I will pray for you.’ James 2:26 says “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” Showing pity to the needy means sharing our money, our goods, our precious time, our friendship, and ourselves with that person in need.

There is a remarkable description in Matthew 9 of a time when our Saviour was in need. Jesus has been off on an intensive evangelistic tour. He had been walking for days over the hot Judean countryside. He was weary and in need of a break. While resting with his disciples, a great crowd appeared out of nowhere. Jesus’ disciples wanted to shoo the people away, but Matthew says Jesus looked at the needy people and was ‘moved with compassion on them, as sheep having no shepherd.’ He put aside his own weariness and ministered to the people in their need.

When we are in church and are receiving a blessing, it is easy to tell ourselves that we love everyone. If is far more difficult to put that love into practice, especially when it means making personal sacrifices for other believers. We must remember what John says, 1 John 3:18 “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” That is the evidence that the love of God is in us.

In applying this truth: Love within the family of God must be rekindled. To find our way back to such love, we must go back to where love was gloriously displayed in all its magnificence. We must go back to the cross, where the Prince of Glory died. There our cold hearts will be humbled and our hardened hearts ploughed up. There love will once more be revived within us. We will only love one another when we realize how greatly we have been loved. That is why John says, 1 John 4:11 “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

We love one another because God is love. If we claim to be part of His family, then something of that likeness will be manifested in our lives. I’ll close by giving two practical implications of such sacrificial love which include:

Belief without a loving heart is the faith of devils. James 2:19 “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.” Simply believing in God is not enough. The devils believe in God, too but they lack a loving heart. Let us not think that because our doctrine is right, we are genuine Christians. We can have right doctrine and wrong hearts. In such a case, even our ‘orthodoxy’ is spurious. John is clear: whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

We love God because he first loved us. God does not ask us to manufacture love; rather, he tells us that we will only love as we should when we know how we have been loved from all eternity by a triune God. When the wonder of the love that gave up heaven’s glory for rebellious, hell-deserving sinners breaks into your heart and mind, then true love for God and for his people will grow in you. Ultimately, the cross is the answer to everything. When we come back to the cross of Christ, we realize how much God has loved us. We find love at the cross which we then extend to others. PRAYER and INVITATION