Living In Love
Living In Truth: A Study of 1 John • Sermon • Submitted
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· 10 viewsWe are children of God and are called to live accordingly. In order to do so, we must see ourselves as God sees us. We are His heirs in the Kingdom. Our commission is to love God and to love one another, but not as the world loves. We are to love as Jesus loved, by giving up our lives for one another.
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Intro:
Intro:
If you have missed the last few weeks or are visiting today, we are in the middle of a short study on 1 John.
So far we have covered the first two chapters and this week we will go through chapter three.
Our goal in this study is to learn from these messages that John sends to one of his churches about what it means to Live in The Truth.
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.
There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
And you know the way to where I am going.”
“No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”
Jesus is the truth and to live in Him means that we know Him, by experience, as we allow Him to direct our lives.
John uses imagery that we see in other places in the bible of Jesus being light and love.
What we see John repeating over and over in this short book is that we, as the church are to live as Jesus did.
Not in our own power, but through the power of the Spirit that Jesus sent that now lives in us as believers.
Because the Spirit lives in us, we are the embodiment of Jesus until His return.
Being a tangible representation of Jesus is a huge responsibility and blessing.
Today we are going to dig into this idea and my hope is that we will see that we are to completely rely on the H.S. for our righteousness and any hope of doing anything of value and worth.
Jesus has given us a new identity as children of God.
Jesus has given us a new identity as children of God.
We are going to consider four ideas that are found in this chapter and make some applications for our lives and the life of our church.
John is going to discuss our identity as children of God.
The distinct differences between children of God and the world.
Our love for one another should follow the example of Christ.
Our responses to the Holy Spirit reveals the nature of our relationship with God.
Let’s pray together again this morning before we dig in.
Ask God to open our hearts to receive His word and direction.
Give us eyes to see him and the desire to pursue Him.
1 John 3:1-
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.
Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him. Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is.
Jesus has given us a new identity as children of God.
Jesus has given us a new identity as children of God.
When we adopted our children out of fostercare, (I didn’t know this was a thing until it happened, I’m sure I was told, but missed it) they were given new birth certificates that showed Bethany and I as their parents.
It reads as if we are their biological parents.
It looks just like the ones we have for our bio kids.
There is no trace or record on those documents that they ever had a different identity.
The same is true of you and me when we become the children of God through faith in Jesus.
When we hear the gospel, have our hearts are drawn by the father, decide that we need him, repent, and ask him to be our Lord, an incredible thing happens.
We are, by faith in Jesus, adopted into God’s family, and that becomes our identity.
We are no longer slaves to sin nor are we that person that we used to be.
We are new creatures.
We have been born again.
We need to understand this reality because it informs us of who we are.
Both John’s argument and our understanding of who we are in Christ rely on this truth.
Remember that there were men in that church that were trying to convince everyone that Jesus was not the son of God.
John is teaching the church that what the deceivers are saying about Jesus not being the messiah is not true.
Because of our belief in Jesus, he calls us his own and has made us heirs of the kingdom of heaven.
As heirs, we are inheriting the Kingdom of God.
John says in this passage that
We don’t know what that will look like in its final form, but we do know that we are living in the kingdom now and should be living like it.
Our priorities should be Kingdom focused priorities.
It would be good for you to begin considering this idea if you haven’t begun already.
This will be a major focus for us for quite a while.
As we will see as we walk through this passage today, we cannot be members of the Kingdom of God and have other things as a priority in our lives.
We know this, but how to live life and what we make important is a big deal.
Conversation with Jon about how he has spent the time that he was given with his children.
He is now looking back and realizes that he had his priorities in the wrong place and has missed out on too much of his kids lives.
I don’t want any of us to look back on our lives and wish that we had spent our time differently.
As important as this idea is I want our motivation to come from the right place.
We shouldn't be motivated by fear.
If we are walking with God daily and doing the things that He is telling us to do, we will be more than satisfied with our lives.
Is there anything that God has told you to do that is scary?
How can our life group help you in moving forward?
Yesterday afternoon I was at my office preparing for today.
Steve came through and said hello as he usually does on Saturdays.
His dad hasn’t been doing well for the past week or so and I’ve been checking on him.
I went to his office and asked how his dad was doing today.
His response was, “He died last night.”
Just very flatly said it.
Now, at first, I was taken aback by his response.
But, I know Steve well and I knew Mr. Ayres well too.
Mr. Ayres was a man that loved God and loved people.
Tell the story about him giving me permission to help someone when the time came.
He was an incredible man.
You know, I never once asked him if he was a believer.
There was no need.
It was obvious by the way he treated people and the gospel just oozed out of him as he ran his business.
I’ve been around a lot of businessmen in my life and this is not the norm.
This leads us to our second point for today.
There is a significant and noticeable difference between the children of God and the children of the world.
There is a significant and noticeable difference between the children of God and the children of the world.
Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God. So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God.
John is clarifying the line in the sand that these men were trying to blur.
As we discussed two weeks ago, those that were causing the disruption in the church were calling their actions righteous.
Whether they believed it or were falsely claiming it to support their cause, John is saying that it is easy to tell what is truth and what is not.
Last week we talked about the fact that because the Holy Spirit lives in us, we have the ability to discern the truth about people’s actions.
If someone is putting on a front to appear to be something they are not, it becomes apparent to us.
John is not making a case that we need to try and be something we aren’t.
This has been the primary way in which most of us taught that we must proceed.
John is, in fact, making the case that if we are children of God, we will, because of who we are in Christ, be righteous as Christ is righteous.
He is, in fact, making the case that if we are children of God, we will, because of who we are in Christ, be righteous as Christ is righteous.
It is God in us that makes us righteous and gives us a desire for righteousness.
Therefore, if we are made in Christ's image, made righteous by our relationship with Him, and have a greater desire for Him than for what the world offers, we will not be like the world.
John is telling the church that there is such a vast difference between Godliness and worldliness that it is blatantly obvious which is which.
If someone is trying to deceive you, it is a clear indication that they do not know God.
As he has already covered, if we are children of God, we cannot keep on sinning.
Because of our identity and the Holy Spirit, we can see who is a believer and who is not.
If we understand the power that we have been given to distinguish between the two we do not need to live in fear of someone trying to undo all that God has done.
We will be able to see it for what it is and respond accordingly.
We will be able to see it for what it is and respond accordingly.
John is writing this to them as encouragement.
It would be very easy to imagine after having to deal with these men that they would constantly wonder who else was in their midst that was trying to lead people astray.
John helps them to see that there is no need to fear that and to trust God.
This will free them up to be able to focus on what is important.
Loving God and loving one another.
We should love one another exactly as Jesus loves us.
We should love one another exactly as Jesus loves us.
We should love one another exactly as Jesus loves us.
We should love one another exactly as Jesus loves us.
This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.
If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.
We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.
Loving people is not always easy.
Some, particularly those that are like-minded, are easy to love.
However, we should not be surprised when we are hated or disliked for being God’s and living in His righteousness.
When we are obeying God, experiencing His joy, and seeing fruit in our lives it can cause those that are doing those things to resent us.
When that happens, all we can do is ask God to handle it and do what He tells to do.
You may not have experienced that before, but as you grow in your relationship with God, you will.
This is a hard thing to go through, but we need to respond in love.
Loving one another is not a new concept for us, but John explains this concept in a very clear way.
So that we can more fully understand what he means by loving as Jesus did I want to focus in on a keyword in particular in this section.
I want to key in on one word in particular in this section.
This is not a new command, in fact, we talk about it a lot, but there is a word in verse 16 that really spells out for us what this means.
That may be
I think that when we hear this phrase, “love one another”, we agree that we are called to do that and have good intentions of following through.
However, I think that sometimes our good intentions or even an incomplete idea of what it means to love can get the best of us.
What we may mean is, we will love one another, as it’s convenient or comfortable.
I don’t mean for that to sound as harsh as it does and we would never say it that way out loud, but isn’t that often our sentiment?
I know it is because I’ve heard it from myself and from others.
From myself and from others.
Not in those words, but our actions speak too.
When we consistently put our own desires ahead of our friends, loved ones, and community that is what we are saying.
We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.
When reading this verse, I ask myself, “what does this look like for me?”
As your Pastor, I ask myself, “what does this look like for the church?”
The word I’m looking at is life.
What did Jesus give up?
If we look at how this word is used in the rest of the bible, we see three things that it refers too.
1. Our inner part that thinks, wills, feels, and desires. - it is commonly translated “with all your heart”, in other words, with complete devotion, energy, and sincerity.
2. It can express the idea of the whole person and is used in conjunction with other words that describe the total human personality or giving all of who you are.
3. It may refer to physical life in general.
If we look at this passage with these ideas in mind, what we see is that Jesus didn’t give up part of who he was to love others.
He gave every part of himself so that we might know God.
John is telling us that we know real love because Jesus loved us by giving all of Himself.
So, as a result of knowing Jesus, as discussed in the last point, it is in our new nature to love our brothers and sisters in Christ just like Jesus does.
Not to love them as the world loves them.
The world “loves” when it is beneficial, easy, our facebook-able.
The world gives up when things get hard or inconvenient.
We are to take Jesus’ lead and love others with everything that is within us.
Jesus didn’t hold anything back. He devoted his life to loving others. We see it in every interaction, every conversation, and even when he went to be alone to pray, it was for our benefit for Him to do so.
Do you see how high the bar has been set?
Do you realize how unattainable it is for us to do this in our own power?
But we don’t have an option.
Remember the two commandments? Love God and Love one another.
The good news is that God is the one that is going to do all the work to get us to that point.
But only if we let Him.
Last week when I talked about the level of love that I feel for all of you, this is the foundation of that love.
It isn’t me choosing to love you, it is Christ in me.
I gave myself to Him to do with as He sees fit and what He has given me His heart for people.
I haven’t always felt this strongly.
Without a doubt I’ve loved you, but not like I do now.
Guess what, He chooses the same thing for you too.
I am not alone or special in this.
John is showing us that this happens with every believer.
When we talk about BLESSing and committing to community, this is the foundation that those things are built upon.
It is a foundation of love that comes from the Father.
If we aren’t “feeling” those desires to live for one another at this level, it’ okay.
As you continue to grow in your relationship with God, this area will grow with it by default.
The fact that we are aware of our need for improvement is the work of the Holy Spirit and we need to ask Him to make the changes in our hearts to make us more like Himself.
This is how a relationship with God works.
It is not a one and done.
It is a process that never ends until we die.
Our daily devotion to set our eyes on Jesus
Our response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit confirms the true nature of our relationship with God.
Our response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit confirms the true nature of our relationship with God.
Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God. Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.
Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence. And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him.
And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us. Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us.
This cannot just be a thing we talk about.
We cannot say that we love people with our mouths and live for ourselves.
If we do, we are living a lie.
If we truly love God and love one another, we will show it by our actions and our words.
The relationships we have and how we handle them will be proof to one another and the world that we are children of God.
This is a life long process of going deeper in our understanding of who God is.
It is a lifetime of pursuing God, asking Him to reveal Himself and His ways, and walking in obedience.
In living life this way, we are made one with Christ.
Our desires have been transformed into His desires.
In verses 21 and 22, John says that we no longer need to live feeling guilty.
We need to recognize the identity he has given us and allow Him to work in us.
As we do this, we can ask for anything and we will receive it.
That’s a bold statement that John makes, but it is true.
If we are abiding, the things that we want are the same exact things God wants and of course, He will do in and for you, what He wants to do as well.
John’s purpose in writing all of this is to show the church that if they need proof that Jesus is God’s son they need to look no further than at one another.
The way in which believers live and love one another is all the proof that anyone needs that Jesus is the Messiah and that His Spirit lives in us.
As we have said so many times before, this is God’s master plan for making Himself known to the world.
For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.
So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ.
That’s why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me.
col 1:27-
To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
He has chosen to reveal Himself through His people and this is how it happens.
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He has chosen to reveal Himself through His people and this is how it happens.
He has chosen to reveal Himself through His people and this is how it happens.
He is revealed as a God of love by His people loving one another as only He can.
It will be hard and we should expect it to be, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, we will be successful.
I want to end today where we began in John chapter 14.
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?
Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me.
Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe because of the work you have seen me do.
“I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.
You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father.
Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!
John 14:
We have seen the Father, we know Him, we believe that Jesus is the son, and in His power, we can fulfill the commission he has given us.