Real Love

Intro

Last week as we passed the halfway point in the book of first John we were hit with a break in the book. In this second section the emphasis is heavily on love, and how we are to respond when we have encountered with the love of God. When you hear this passage is about God’s love its easy to think that means its going to be a nice feel good passage and I just get to hear about how much God loves me. And God does love you and that should make you feel good. But when we encounter a love as great as God has for us. The astonishing love that has been lavished upon us like we talked about last week. It demands a great response from us. Because once we have encountered a love that astonishing. It changes our perspective on what love truly is. It raises the bar in ways that should impact every single interaction. This morning as we get into this passages we are going to see just how high that bar has been raised. when we understand what real love is and what it requires of us.

1 John 3:11–15 NIV

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

John starts this section by continuing his train of thought from the section. That is the children of God are identifiable by what they do. In the same way the things I do are shaped by who my parents were. As children of God what we do is going to be shaped by our father.

John is pointing out that the quickest way that we are identifiable is by how we love or don’t love. Because the absence of love in the life of a child of God is inconsistent with the message of love that has been proclaimed to us. John is giving us some real concrete examples here of what it means to walk in the light.

Last week we saw where he showed us that walking in the light means that we live lives characterized by righteousness and not continual sin, now John is adding that God’s children walking in the light are also people who love one another habitually in everyday life.

To demonstrate this John gives an example from the Old Testament. The only one he uses in this whole book. In this example we are reminded of cain who killed his own brother. Why? because his brothers righteous actions exposed his sinful actions, and he became jealous.

The unrighteous will always hate the righteous. We as Christians got to stop being surprised by that. John tells us here don’t be surprised that the world hates you. in fact you should expect it and be happy about it because that means you are living in a way that your father is identifiable.

I hear all the time can you believe the world has gotten this bad. Can you believe they put that character on tv, can you believe they would take God out of this or that, can you believe that sin is celebrated and righteousness is hated. Yes I can believe it. hatred is the natural response of the world towards righteousness. John here is telling us so. Jesus told us so in John 15. We got to stop living surprised that the world is moving in the way it has moved since the garden of eden, and that is away from God. We got to stop acting surprised that sinners sin. They don’t understand what real love is because

1. Real Love is Righteous.

Cain could not understand why Abel was so dedicated with his sacrifice. He didn’t understand why God liked what Abel brought and hated what Cain brought. It was because Abel was righteous and Cain wasn’t. It wasn’t just that he did a righteous thing. Righteous is an inward quality that is lived out. God could see Able’s heart and saw the motive, and the motive was a righteous love. and he could see Cain’s heart and saw a wickedness that would be lived out when he killed his brother.

But John says you are not like that he says we have passed from death to life. the Greek word there for passed literally means to move from one place to another. We have moved from the spiritual sphere of death to the exact opposite region. We have moved into life. He says we know we have moved into life by the fact that we show love to our other believers.

1, 2, 3 John (1) Love in Action (3:11–18)

eternal life is not earned by loving the brothers. Rather, loving the brothers (e.g., the Christian family) is evidence that one has made the transition from death to life

If you are able to love your brothers and sisters in Christ it is yet another assurance that John offers of our salvation. but what kind of love are we talking about here? Does this mean we just go along with whatever other Christians are saying even if it contradicts the Bible because we want to show “love”? Absolutely not.

Remember why John wrote this book. People who had called themselves Christians were now attacking the church. They were showing hatred towards the body. And John is calling them out. John had a righteous anger towards these so called Christians, but he took that righteous anger that he had at the heretics, and instead of writing a letter to them calling them out. He expressed a righteous love towards the believers they were hurting. He wrote to the believers not to the ones that left.

He encouraged them, he warned them, he reassured them.

The world hates the righteous. The righteous should love the righteous. We show that love calling each other out when one of us steps out of the light. Thats the difference between righteous love and wordly love. Worldly love says just be yourself. Righteous love says come as yourself and be transformed into something you could never on your your own. Come dead and leave alive. Thats the invitation we are given.

1 John 3:16–18 NIV

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

The verb that we translate as we know, how we know what love is means a knowledge gained through diligent contemplation. it is an acquired understanding. and the perfect tense that it is in emphasizes a historical encounter with Jesus with ongoing results that effect one’s life.

Because we have encountered Jesus and gone from death to life as a result we now in our everyday lives understand what love really is.

You guys ever met someone in the past and your interaction with them informs your ongoing view of something. For me it was when I met Hendon Hooker…

After understanding how much bigger his hands are than mine. I understand how athletes are able to catch and throw in ways that I will never be able to.

Because he have met Jesus who laid his life down for us. We can never look at love the same way again. John here is calling us up to Jesus’ standard of love. A “I’ll pray for you” type of love is not enough between believers because.

2. Real Love is Generous.

Someone’s life is their most precious possession. The fact that Jesus was willing to generously lay his life down for us is the greatest possible expression of love. John plainly says because Jesus was willing to lay his life down for others we should be willing to do the same. He immediately goes to the extreme example. He turns it up to 1000 right away. He says you should love each other. and your like yeah thats nice that makes sense. and then he goes that means you should be ready to die for each other.

That escalated quickly. But a call to follow is a call to imitate and the one we have been called to imitate generously gave his life for us.

John doesn’t just give us the extreme example however. He knows that not many will be required to follow through with that willingness to give up their life for another. but the opportunity to help a needy brother or sister is constant. The challenge for John’s hearers as well as us today is to apply our real Christians love generously to our everyday context.

This is the hard part because its easier to say I would lay my life down for you guys, knowing that likely will never happen. Than it is to help someone who is in need. knowing that same person will need help next week. It is far easier for us to be enthusiastic about helping the general everyone than it is for us to love individual men, and individual women, if we aren’t careful loving everybody in general may become an excuse for loving nobody in particular. The pity we are called to have for people is an acknolegement of their situation with a desire to help that leads to action.

We got to love not by word of mouth but with real deeds. A real love that cares enough to look at other specific peoples specific situations and respond with generous action. That is evidence that you have recieved the most generous love of all if you in turn show some of that generous love to others.

1 John 3:19–24 NIV

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

In these verses John talks about how we can have confidence before God. This is different than the confidence that he said we can have last chapter. That was talking about we can have confidence when Jesus comes back. This time he’s talking about the confidence that God’s children can have going to God in prayer. We see that even when our own hearts condemn us and say you, God wouldn’t want to talk to you. Not after what you did. We get to see here God being stronger than our own hearts.

My heart that I know will lead me away from God, and whats good for me God is stronger. His love screams louder than the call of our heart.

3. Real Love Endures.

Real love, God’s love endures despite our feelings. We are able to go into his presence knowing that we can take our hearts into his presences as corrupt as they are and be confident that He is greater. His love endures, and he is able to overwhelm our hearts with his lavishing, righteous, generous, enduring love. Because he is greater than our hearts. We are able to control our hearts, keep his commands, and please Him. Not because of how able we are, but because of the one who is able to do more than we could ever ask or imagine.

So he wants us to come into his presence with confidence because he is our father who’s faithful love endures forever.

We are able to do this because of what it says in verse 23 we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ. To believe in the name of Jesus Christ means to trust in all that He is. “Jesus” is the Greek form of 

Joshua meaning “The Lord is salvation,” emphasizing His role as our Savior. “Christ” is the Greek translation of Messiah,

 declaring Him as the long-awaited, anointed King. His name isn’t just a title—it reveals His nature as fully God, fully human, and the One who came to rescue and reign. Placing our faith in His name means embracing Him as Savior, Lord, and the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Real love is Righteous, Real love is Generous, Real love Endures.

Like how Jesus the righteous lamb of God, Generously gave his life to restore our relationship with God that will endure forever.

Real love is Jesus. We know that real love can even exists because of Jesus, We got to see what real love looks like because of Jesus, We get to experience real love because of Jesus, We have the ability to show each other real love because we know Jesus.

Conclusion

If you are hear today and you have never experienced real love. In your life you experienced what you thought was real love but it let you down, maybe your heart drew you to love some thing or someone that you shouldn’t have and your own heart led you to heart beak. I want to invite you this morning to come meet the person who is real love embodied. Jesus loves you with a righteous, generous, enduring love. come put your faith in him to be able experience it fully.

If you are hear today and you have experienced that that love. My question to you is are you showing others the righteous, generous enduring love that you’ve been given? The love you have been given is too great to do nothing with. If you do nothing with it you either don’t understand it or don’t really have it.

My challenge for you this week is to go from here and find 3 different situations to show someone real love. Find a way to love righteously. Call out a brother or sister in a loving way.

Find a way to love generously. Give of yourself to a brother or sister who actually needs it not just someone you like.

and love someone enduringly this week. If someone offends you don’t be surprised. the world hates righteousness. resist the urge to fight back and instead pray for that person.

Let this be a lifestyle for us who have given a righteous, generous, enduring love to imitate that love by imitating our savior.