True Christians Love Others

Introduction

A story from the Peanut’s cartoons - you know - with Snoopy and Charlie Brown:

It’s Christmas time and Lucy comes in where Charlie Brown is standing and says, "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown. `Tis the season of peace on earth and good will toward men. Therefore, I suggest we forget all our differences and love one another."

Charlie Brown, whose face lights up at this, says, "That’s wonderful, Lucy. I’m so glad you said that. But tell me, do we have to love each other only at this season of the year? Why can’t we love each other all year long?"

Lucy retorts, "What are you, a fanatic or something?"

Ladies and Gentlemen, my hope today is that you become a fanatic or something…

Welcome to all of you joining us both online and in person, we are so glad you are here. You are joining us as we have launched a new sermon series a few weeks back called True Christianity, Walking In The Light.

This series is based on the letter of 1st John and today we are going to tackle one of the big themes of the book. It’s a simple theme. The theme is loving others.

The Apostle John looks at love as THE identifying marker of Christians. Or, to put this another way…

True Christians Love Others

This simple idea is my main point for today. In fact, here’s what I believe. We all struggle with this. We all struggle with loving others, much less as the Bible tells us to do…loving them as much as we love ourselves.

All of us love ourselves. Some of us do a better job at it than others, but according to some psychologists we are living in the most self-consumed/narcissistic society in history.

Some of the possible reasons, according to Psychology Today:

Social media, while it connects us to others, may actually lead to greater self-centeredness as people strive to make their “presence” known. Much of social media is “all about me.” Overly doting “helicopter parents” may also be creating greater narcissism in children. Finally, society, with its emphasis on celebrity, appearance, and narcissistic role models and leaders, may be playing a part in the rise in self-centeredness.

In other words, we love ourselves a lot. And in truth, that means we have little desire or care to love others. But the Apostle John tells us, if we are truly Christians, if we are going to look like Jesus, it starts with us obeying this command, love one another.

But don’t take my word for it, let’s read together from 1 John 2:7-11 and I will let the Apostle John make his case. The words will be on the screen and notes will be in your app.

Main Text

1 John 2:7–8 ESV

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

1 John 2:9–11 ESV

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

These are the very words of God.

Before we dive in too deep, I want to take note of the very first word in this passage. John addresses this to Christians and he calls us beloved.

Now this is a description he uses for Christians over and over again in this letter. In fact, in the gospel of John he calls himself Jesus’ beloved disciple.

Now, not only does this mean that the Apostle John loves us, (He does and he wrote this letter because of an overflowing of love in his heart to the church and we are a recipient of that love today) ,but he also means for us to realize that God loves us.

I’m pointing this out because its the important foundation for everything that comes after it. We love because He (Jesus) first loved us. Our love is an overflow of the love that God gives us.

I believe that we cannot love, truly love others, without first recognizing the source of where all love comes from and that is God himself.

With that said, let’s look at what he says. He starts with this idea, that what he is writing to the church is…

A New, Old Commandment

1 John 2:7–8 “Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you…”

It would be easy for us to believe that John is growing senile or that he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He’s not.

He is essentially telling us about one commandment. It’s an old commandment, but it’s also new. It’s old because John says its from the beginning. Now some scholars think John is drawing us back to the Mosaic law, but I don’t think so. I think he is pointing us all the way back to Genesis.

I believe this because later in Chapter 3, John references Cain and says, we shouldn’t be like him, because he hated and murdered his brother.

Here John is saying we should do the opposite. As Christians we should love one another. This is a very old commandment from God. Cain would ask God after killing Abel… “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The implication to that question is, YES. Yes, we are our brother’s keeper. We should love our brothers and sisters and do good to them, not hate them.

That is why this is an old commandment. But it’s also a new commandment and I believe John says that because that’s how Jesus frames it.

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 this is a new commandment, but he is simply rephrasing and reiterating this old commandment.

Jesus ups the ante, the Mosaic law had told us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, but Jesus says to love one another as HE has loved us!

Earlier, when I said that we really love ourselves, you may have bristled at that. Perhaps you don’t love yourself. Perhaps you struggle with truly loving yourself and that is inhibiting your ability to love others well.

Jesus gives us the answer. We should love others (and truly love ourselves) as HE LOVE US. The standard for love is not ourself, but Him!

One of my favorite verses is John 15:9

John 15:9 ESV

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

This sets the standard. Jesus loves us in the same way the Father loves him and we are to love others with that same kind of love! This both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

It’s beautiful because we know how much The Father loves the Son and thus the Son loves us. It’s terrifying because we all know we fall short of loving others in that way. This means we have to live in a perpetual need of grace. Grace from God to help us love others well and grace for ourselves when we don’t live up to this standard.

Let’s push forward in the text. John says this new commandment is true in Him (meaning Jesus) and true in you (meaning us) and he gives us an interesting reason for this, he says…

The Darkness Is Passing Away

Now that is an interesting statement. What does this mean that the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining? How is the darkness passing away?

Well, let’s look at it first logically. If you bring a candle into a dark room, the darkness in that room retreats. If you bring a flashlight or a small lamp, the same happens. But if you bring a big enough light or enough lights into a room, the darkness evaporates or passes away.

The greek word here means that it ceases to exist. John says that is happening, 2000 years ago. How much more is this a reality today? John wasn’t the only one to think this. Pauls puts it this way…

Romans 13:12 ESV

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

So Paul believed the same as John. But why is this happening? Because the True Light is already shining. He is most certainly talking about Jesus. At the beginning of his gospel, talking about Jesus, he says this…

John 1:9 ESV

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

Now, I don’t believe John is only thinking about Jesus, but a concept here. If Jesus is the True Light and we have Jesus living in us, that means wherever we go, Jesus is shining his light into the darkness through us.

Obviously the more Christians there are in the world then, means this light is growing brighter and brighter and the darkness is indeed retreating and will cease to exist one day.

On top of that, John is also echoing what Paul said to the Romans. Darkness exists in our hearts alongside of the light and we should actively be casting off any works associated with darkness and embracing the light.

He puts it this way in verse 9. 1 John 2:9 “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.” And then again in verse 11. 1 John 2:11 “…whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

That means…

Walking In Darkness Is Walking In Hate

This is the simple explanation John is going with, that when we hate our brothers or sisters, we are walking in darkness. We still have darkness in our hearts and we need to expel that darkness from us.

Hate is such a strong word, but sometimes we like to soften it and pretend it isn’t that big of a deal. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount equivocates murder and hate. If you hate someone in your heart, that’s equal to murdering them when it comes to how God looks at our sin.

John will put it this way later in this letter…

1 John 4:20 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.

In other words, you can’t love God while hating someone else. These two things do not coexist in the same heart. If you hate someone today, you do not love God. It’s that simple. You need to repent. Stop hating that person and start doing loving acts towards them.

Why do we fight against this truth? Why do we think we can live a lie like this? It’s simple

Darkness Blinds Us

John finishes verse 11 by telling us that darkness blinds us. Now, you would initially think that light blinds us. If you’ve ever looked into a very bright light, you know that it can be blinding.

But that’s not what John is talking about here. He says its actually the darkness that blinds us. By this he means, we cannot see when we are in the dark. It’s blinding in the fact that we have no vision.

I like the way Matthew Henry puts this…

Spiritual darkness is spiritual bondage.

Matthew Henry

When we are walking in hate. When we are walking in any of the deeds of darkness, we become blinded. We think we are doing well, but this is a lie. We think we can separate our life into categories.

For instance, God I go to church, I pray, I read my bible, but I just can’t forgive my mom or my dad or my neighbor or whomever, because you know how they hurt me! We justify our unforgiveness, our bitterness, our hate and we think we are offsetting that by reading our bibles.

Listen, there is no scale at the gates of heaven. There is no scale when it comes to our relationship with God. We are either walking in love and in his grace or we are harboring hate and resentment.

If you think you can do both, you are blinded.

This brings me to my main point and where we will end…

True Christians Love One Another

I think verse 10 is the key verse to understanding this passage. 1 John 2:10 “Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.”

Abiding in the light is what we want. I’ve spoken about this before, but that word Abide in the greek is full of meaning. It means to make your home, to actually build a house in the light. Live in it. Make that your pad.

True Christians will live in the light, they will make it there home. They will shun hate and live lives of love toward others. Now this can be extremely difficult in a society that is incredibly individualistic.

We may not hate our brothers, but we are apathetic towards them. We may not outright hate our neighbors, we just don’t know them. We may not hate our co-workers, we just secretly loathe them behind their back.

Love though, requires action. It’s not a stagnant idea, it’s a powerful force propelled by action. Or to quote the famous 90s theologians, DC Talk, Luv is a verb.

Love requires us to to do something. We can’t just simply say we love others, we have to have actions that back that up. In fact, that’s the message of the cross.

God didn’t simply say that he loved the world, but he took action. He sent forth his son, who died on a cross for our sins. His actions proved his speech.

Jesus shows us what true love looks like. It looks like one person laying down his or her life for another. Love is surrendering my wants, will and desires for that of another person. This is best seen in a godly marriage, but it’s also seen in deep friendships and it should most certainly be seen in the church.

Conclusion

Today I want to challenge you to live in the light. True Christians Love Others. Live a life of love. This requires at least two things.

You need to take inventory of your life. Is there someone that you hate? Are you harboring unforgiveness or bitterness in your heart towards someone? Who has hurt you? Who has wounded you? Was it a parent? Was it a friend? Was it your spouse? Who has caused you tremendous pain? That’s where you will typically find things like hate and bitterness.

You need to lay that hate and anger down. The altar will be open. Feel free to come and pray. If you don’t feeling like coming forward, grab someone around you and ask them to pray with you. We are the body of Christ.

2. Leave evidence. If you are truly a Christian today, your actions should match that of your savior. Maybe you’ve heard this before, but if you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence left behind to convict you? First time I heard that it stung. Your life as a Christian should be leaving lots of evidence of that fact behind. That’s really the heart behind this series in 1 John. True Christianity is not just a secret club that meets on Sundays. True Christianity is walked out in your daily life. It means you look different and live differently than your neighbors. It means you love people that others would hate. It means you forgive when people hurt you.

If you are feeling like, no there’s not enough evidence to convict me. I’m going to ask you to pray to God and ask him to send his holy spirit to fill you and empower you to do all that he has asked. If you want to pray with someone about that, please feel free to come up front and pray with me.

Let’s sing.