1 John 3:11-24

Intro

Tonight we’re dealing in dichotomies. And I know, dealing in dichotomies tends to oversimplify real life — and I hope to avoid that mistake tonight. Yet in this text, we are encountering matters of life and death defined by dichotomies.

First, a matter of two kinds of people. There is one kind of people who have been born of God, who love one another, and who abide in eternal life. The other kind of people have been born of Satan, hate one another, and abide in death.

These two kinds of people are headed to two very different destinations — one is full of eternal life, and one is full or murder and death.

In the midst of our strenuous and often complicated journey, we will find God to be our rest and assurance.

And this will form the outline for our sermon this evening:

There are only two kinds of people

There are only two destinations

Assurance can only be found in God’s love

There are only two kinds of people

There are those of God who love and live, and there are those of the evil one who hate and die.

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

John shows the ancient nature of this kind of command. It isn’t like this is some new thing. From the beginning, this is the command that we have received from God: to love one another. This is the kind of person that God created us to be, the kind of person that God calls us to be.

This is has been the same call to every person beginning with Adam, now to you, and to everyone inbetween. The call is clear: we should love one another. And yet we see that from the beginning, we have not done a very good job at being who God made us and called us to be.

Here John introduces us to the second kind of person:

1 John 3:12 “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.”

Though God has called us from the beginning to love one another, from the beginning there have been those who hate one another. Cain becomes the figurehead of this hateful kind of person, and we see in him the natural end of being a hateful person: murdering your brother.

In Cain, we also see an important detail about the relationship between these two kind of people: the hateful people hate the loving people; and look at the reason for this: it is because Cain’s deeds were evil and his brother Abel’s deeds were righteous.

This leads John to make a point of application to his original audience, and one that we would do well to hear also:

1 John 3:13 “Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.”

If you are a person who loves his brothers and sisters, John tells you to expect to draw the attention of those who are hateful.

1 John 3:14 “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”

Here John makes a fascinating observation, and he’s assuming that we already understand something about this whole dichotomy we’ve been talking about. His assumption is that we understand none of us are naturally the kind of person who loves one another. That is why he says “we know that we have passed out of death and into life,” because we all started as those who hate and die.

Ephesians 2:1–3 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

But John says here’s how we know that we have passed out of death and into life: because we love the brothers. John says that those who hate their brothers abide in death, and we all once lived in that. But those of us who have passed out of death and into life are marked by this one characteristic: we love the brothers.

John here is referring to the church. In this world that has been so tainted by sin, a world full of murderers, of hatred, of death — there has blossomed a people who are bursting with life and love for one another. This is the body of Jesus Christ, his bride, his church here on Earth.

Ephesians 2:4–5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—”

This is the first point we see: that from the beginning, there are only 2 kinds of people: those who love and live, and those who hate and die.

transition: what does love look like? What does hate look like? We can answer this question most clearly by seeing the end destination of each of them.

Life is a journey to one of two destinations

Jesus Reveals the Peak of Love

1 John 3:16 “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

Show his love

John says that in Jesus, we have come to behold such pure and perfect love that it has become our very definition of the concept. And what is in this definition? That “he laid down his life for us.” Let’s consider for a moment what this means, because it is perhaps deeper than you might expect at face value. When you read this, you might be thinking about how Jesus died for us — this is what it means that he “laid down his life” for us— but this is only a fraction of what John intends to communicate here.

What does it really mean that he “laid down his life for us”? Well laying down your life means a lot more than dying. In fact, it’s much harder than dying. Jesus began laying down his life long before he died.

He began laying down his life all the way at the beginning, when together with the Father and the Holy Spirit he determined to sacrifice himself to accomplish our redemption. Imagine the scope of this sacrifice for a moment — Jesus is the eternal Son of God. He has no beginning and no end; before anything was created, there he was in perfect fellowship with the Father and the Spirit. He was all-powerful and all-knowing. He lacked nothing. He had nothing to prove, no glory to gain that wasn’t already his. He didn’t need to create in order to be happy, God is sufficient in himself. But he did create, and he made people in his own image, even endowing them with a free will so that they could choose to follow him of their own volition. But his people abused that gift, using it rather to betray their awesome creator in an act of cosmic treason. And what did that eternal, all-poweful Son of God do? He made a promise to them, not to destroy them, but to save them from the sin that they just brought upon themselves and their entire race.

And so the almighty Son of God set aside his glory for a time. The King of creation willingly stepped off his rightful throne, and was conceived in the womb of a virgin. He would be born to that woman, though in an incredibly lowly state, being laid in a stall meant for animals. He became dependent upon his own creation that rebelled against him.

For the first time, he became hungry, and thirsty. He became tired and weak. He was susceptible to disease and famine. He was opened up to ridicule and shame, even from his own family at times.

He submitted himself to the law and became obedient — think of it, the master has become an obedient servant of the law!

He was hated, despised, lied about, cast out by his own people. The very people he humiliated himself to come and be with trumped up false charges against him so that they could have him murdered by the Roman government through an absolutely brutal execution in a public and humiliating fashion.

And why? Why all of this? Why the pain, the weakness, the humiliation, the obedience, the suffering, the death? It was because he loved his people so dearly, though there was nothing in them that warranted such love.

You see, this is what it means to lay down your life for someone. To set aside every right and privilege because you desire so deeply the good of the one whom you love. It isn’t merely dying for someone, but living for them too. This is what we have come to behold in our Savior Jesus Christ.

Show our responsibility to love like him

Do you see that this is the love that you are being called to live in for one another, church? Do you begin to see what it means that we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers? It doesn’t merely mean that we must be willing to die for one another, but that we would also be willing to live for one another, just as our Lord Jesus has done for us.

Consider what this commandment requires of you. How much are you supposed to love your brothers and sisters in the church? Just on Sundays and Wednesdays? With just 10% of your money? At an arms length? Is it enough to do the right things, but not have the right heart or intentions?

No — but we in the church are called to love one another with everything we are and everything we have, not only in deed but also in truth. We can’t be content to pretend to show love just one or two days a week. We can’t just write a check each week and act like we’ve paid our dues. We can’t be content to simply spectate from the sidelines. We can’t say the right words and harbor wicked thoughts. Rather, we must open up our hearts, our homes, our wallets, and everything that we have in the name of loving one another in Christ. This is how Jesus has loved us, and this is how he has called us to love one another.

Well, we’ve just run headfirst into a brick wall here haven’t we?

Selfish living reveals the rock bottom of hate

1 John 3:15 “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

1 John 3:17–18 “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.”

John just did something that we shouldn’t ignore. If we were to picture love as a mountain to be scaled, he just brought us to the peak in his consideration of Jesus laying down his life. This is love in its ultimate and pure form. This is the aim of love, the call to each of us.

But then, in verse 17 and 18, he brings us all the way back down to base camp. He begins talking not about laying down your life for your brothers, but just making sure their physical needs are met. John asks, if someone has everything they need to make ends meet and then some, and they see their brother going without and refuses to help, how can that be called love? To give out of your abundance to somebody who has so little, this is just the beginning of love. And to fail to do that, what does this begin to say about you? John asks, how can we say that God’s love abides in this person?

This brings a deeper understanding to the words of Jesus in Luke 9:23–24

“And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Do you see? To save your life, or to live for your own benefit, will cause you to fall further down the pit of hate, where only death waits for you. To save your life will cause you to lose it.

Conversely, to lose your life for the love of others will cause you to climb further up the mountain of love, finding true life.

To bring it back to the beginning, what kind of person does that say you are?

Now if you’re like me, this is the part where things start to get uncomfortable as you consider your own life. For although you may be able to think of examples where you have truly loved your brothers and sisters truly, I am sure that you can also think of many examples when hatred has come out of you. And for all of these examples, I am sure there are so many more that are ambiguous — actions and feelings mingled with love and hate at the same time.

Brothers and sisters I ask you, which one of us lives up to God’s standard? Who here can honestly claim to have laid down their life day in and day out? Who has ascended tho this mountaintop of love and lays down their life so purely?

Who can look at this passage and not feel some level of conviction?

John anticipates this, and it leads us to our last point:

Rest is only found in God’s love

Our salvation rests in God’s hands, not our own

1 John 3:19–21 “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;”

Now let’s be careful to follow what John is saying here. John acknowledges that each of us will find condemnation in our own hearts at times — this is because of what John said at the beginning of his letter,

1 John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

But when our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. And I don’t know about you, but it isn’t immediately obvious that this should be comforting to us. If my own heart condemns me, and God knows even more than I know, wouldn’t that just mean that my condemnation increases? That depends entirely on God, and here we recall another verse from the beginning of this letter

1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

You see, our standing before God is not determined by our own personal perfection in the realm of love. This is because the God that we serve, while being perfectly just, is also deeply merciful.

So the question concerning our assurance then becomes not if we have reached the peak of love, but whether we are climbing that mountain in the first place. We see that it is possible to be transferred out of death and into life without yet being perfected.

And this should not come as a surprise to us. We know that we are transferred out of death and into life through faith in the Son of God — it is his love that has accomplished this transformation in us and is not dependent upon anything in us. In theological terms, we call this transfer from death to life our justification, and this is done by the grace of God through faith in his Son Jesus.

But when we are justified, we are not immediately made perfectly holy in our conduct. This begins the process that we call in theology our sanctification, which is an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of all those who have been justified by faith.

But sanctification doesn’t happen overnight. This is a process that bears resemblance to a trajectory. So when we are justified we begin to love our brothers and sisters, and over the course of time we would expect to see that love grow as we approach the peak that was displayed by Christ laying down his life for us.

Augustine, a 5th century church father, comments on this passage in this way:

Because love is not perfected in all, and because man ought not to despair in whom love in not perfect, if that is born in you which may be perfected in you, then it must be nourished, and must be brought up unto perfection… This, being thus begun, if you will nourish with the word of God and hope of the life to come, you will come at last unto perfection, that you will be ready to lay down your life for your brothers.

If you seek assurance of your destination, don’t ask if love is perfect in you, but ask if it has been born in you. And if it has been born in you, then nourish that love and seek its growth. And I believe we should take Augustine’s advice, nourishing this fledgling love in us through the word of God and hoping in the life to come.

This is the same line of thought that John continues with, showing that faith and love produce the best rest in us.

Faith and love produce the best rest

1 John 3:23–24 “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”

If you desire to advance in this journey as one who has been born of God, loves his brothers and sisters, and has eternal life abiding in him, heed these words.

Believe in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ, and love one another.

If you’re near the beginning of your journey, you may have to start small. If you have an abundance of money, of time, of expertise, then seek to give of that abundance to somebody who doesn’t have so much.

Begin to study the faith more seriously. Find someone who is more mature than you, who is further along this mountain of love than you are, and seek to learn from them.

just like a sapling, never stop nourishing this growth of love within you. Seek the grace of God in this, and he will certainly answer.

And finally, brothers,

Philippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

FCF: When sin entered the world, it caused us to become hateful people, and hateful people will never dwell with God

CFC: When Christ entered the world, he loved us perfectly and overcame sin and hate. He causes all his people to do the same.

Call: Follow Christ’s example in the transformative power that he provides us: Love your brothers and sisters.