Love, Hate, and a Rat

I want to tell you a story today about the rat, the cat, and the missionary.

This is a true story, and I know it’s true, because it happened to me personally while I was living and serving in Haiti.

Now, the rats in Haiti are legendary. In fact, there is a Haitian proverb that goes like this: “Ou palé Kreyol tankou rat.” It means, “You speak Creole like a rat,” and the point is that rats are right at home in Haiti — so much at home that they might as well be born speaking Haitian Creole.

Rats creep me out. They disgust me. I hate them. And that’s pretty much how Haitians feel about them, too, but Haitians have lived in Haiti long enough that they aren’t surprised when they cross paths with a rat.

I, on the other hand, can count my in-the-wild encounters with rats on one hand, and I’d be happy to keep things that way.

So when I’d reached the halfway point of my six-month service in Haiti without having an in-the-flesh encounter with a rat, I considered it a blessing from God.

Now, my room in our ministry’s house was on the second floor, at one end of an open balcony that connected the restroom, my room, the other missionary’s room and our shared living room and kitchen.

Landon usually went to bed earlier than I did, as I would stay up doing schoolwork well into the night, with my lights on, my fan blowing and my bedroom door open to the balcony to make a cross-breeze in the stifling Caribbean heat.

We had a couple of kittens that had been weaned from their mother a couple of months earlier, and they liked to hang out with me, climbing onto my desk shelves to sleep while I worked.

So, one night, I was plugging along with my research for a paper on sanctification or some other deep theological topic, when a shadow of something moving out on the balcony caught my eye.

I looked over, and I saw a huge rat — no, this was NOT a mouse — standing in my doorway and glaring at me with dark, evil eyes.

Well, I did what anybody would have done: I screamed like a little girl, and I almost fell out of my chair. And then the rat did what any rat would have done: He turned tail and ran.

I cannot tell you what made me think to do this at the time, but in a flash, I had grabbed one of the cats from my desk, and I was in pursuit across the balcony and into the living room/kitchen area, to where I had seen the vile creature escape.

I ran inside, flicked the light switch, saw the rat in the corner of the living room, slammed the metal door shut and then — I’m not even exaggerating a little here — I threw the cat at the rat. It was time for this cat to start earning its keep, and I moved into the kitchen doorway to block the rat from escaping and to watch the battle take place in front of me.

What I learned that night is that a motivated rat is quicker than a surprised and confused cat and that the same motivated rat can fit through the one-inch space between the bottom of a metal door and the floor below it.

The rat escaped with his life. The cat had its first taste of mortal combat. And the missionary slept fitfully that night with his lights on, his door closed and two cats snuggled into his bed.

The next day, I considered my options, and I have to admit: One thing that crossed my mind was that we’d have to burn the house down to make sure the rat was gone.

Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and I realized that burning down the house would hurt us more than it would the rat.

But I was reminded of this incident as I was studying through today’s passage from the Book of 1 John, chapter 3.

In today’s passage, the Apostle John writes about love and hate as tests of the depth and quality of a believer’s fellowship with God. He presents Jesus to us as the perfect example of love, and he presents Cain to us as the perfect example of hatred.

And you will see as we come to that part of the passage just why it was that Cain’s example of hatred reminded me of that night in Haiti.

Go ahead and turn to 1 John 3:10.

You’ll recall that last week we started looking at the second cycle of the three tests of fellowship with God, as presented by John in his message to the churches in Asia Minor.

Do you recall the three tests? Righteousness, love, and belief.

Last week, as we took our second look at righteousness, we concluded that we give evidence of what we ARE by what we DO. What we DO gives evidence of the identity that we cherish.

As I said last week, every Christian has two spiritual fathers. Our first spiritual father is the devil, because each of us is born in sin. Each one of us has the stain of original sin and suffers from the problem of total depravity. We may not be just as bad as we could possibly be, but everything about us — at least insofar as we fail to walk in the Spirit — is tainted by sin.

This is the bad news we must understand before we can ever rejoice in the good news of the gospel.

Each of us was lost in sin — separated from fellowship with the God who created us to BE in fellowship with Him and unable to bridge the divide between ourselves and this perfectly holy and righteous God.

But God sent His unique and eternal Son, Jesus Christ, to live a sinless life on earth as a man and to give Himself as a sacrifice so that those who believe in Him could have eternal life.

Scripture says that we who place our faith in Christ Jesus as our only means of reconciliation with God have died to sin, so the devil is no longer our spiritual father.

When you place your faith in Jesus, God gives you the Holy Spirit as a downpayment on His promise of eternal life with Him and with the Son as part of God’s family.

When you come to a saving knowledge of Jesus, God adopts you into His family as a son or a daughter. He becomes your new spiritual father.

And so, as we saw last week, we who have been adopted as sons and daughters of God are now called to live in such a way that we reflect His characteristics — His righteousness and His love.

Look at verse 10.

1 John 3:10 NASB95

By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

Now, this verse serves as a sort of hinge between last week’s passage about righteousness as a test of the quality of a believer’s fellowship with God and this week’s passage about love as another such test.

If the God who loved us so much that He came in the person of His only begotten Son to die for our sins has adopted you as His son or daughter, then you should be righteous, the way He is righteous. You should model His characteristics. You should love the way He loves — sacrificially.

And John reminds us again that this is not a new message. Look at verse 11.

1 John 3:11–12 NASB95

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.

Loving one another is absolutely basic to living for Christ. And Paul wants us to be sure we understand the implications of that, so he reminds us of the story of Cain, who killed his brother, Abel, after God rejected Cain’s sacrifice but accepted Abel’s.

Note here that Cain isn’t described as being “of the evil one” BECAUSE he killed Abel. Instead, John tells us Cain killed Abel BECAUSE he was of the evil one. He killed Abel because his spiritual father was the devil. His actions demonstrated the character of his spiritual father, just as Abel’s actions demonstrated the character of God, his spiritual father.

And why did Cain kill Abel? What was at the heart of his hatred for his brother? Jealousy and pride.

Pride can tempt us to “dislike those who are more righteous than we are because they make us feel guilty by comparison.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 1 Jn 3:12.]

Cain realized that his brother was more righteous before God than he was, and he became jealous of Abel because of it. Whereas before he had probably only been indifferent to Abel, now the seeds of hatred within him sprouted and grew into the foul fruit of hatred.

And that’s what John reminds us in the next verse that we might face as followers of Jesus. Look at verse 13.

1 John 3:13 NASB95

Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.

“Christians are to the world what Abel was to Cain, so we should not be surprised if the world hates us.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 1 Jn 3:13.]

The lost world might simply be indifferent to you now, but when it feels convicted by your righteousness — when it feels threatened by your relationship with Christ — you should not be surprised that it will rise up against you in hatred.

Now, having given the negative example of Cain, John once again sets out to encourage his Christian readers. Look at verse 14.

1 John 3:14–15 NASB95

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.

Do you see the test of fellowship there? We know that we have passed from death into life by our love for one another.

And when we choose not to love one another, then we choose to abide in death — we choose to turn from fellowship with God, our new spiritual father, and to renew fellowship with the devil, our old spiritual father.

We choose to identify ourselves with death, rather than identifying ourselves with eternal life. Christians who choose not to love one another reveal that eternal life is not the controlling factor in their lives.

One commentator has said that when Cain killed his brother, he also killed himself. The idea there is that life in fellowship with God IS love. And so, by murdering his brother, Cain chose spiritual death for himself.

Just like burning down that house in Haiti would have hurt me more than it would have hurt the rat, Cain’s actions brought physical death to his brother, but they brought spiritual death to himself.

Failing to love your brothers and sisters in Christ might seem a matter of simple indifference to you, but the damage done to you and your fellowship with God in Christ is much greater than the damage done to those you choose not to love sacrificially.

“One cannot experience the life given by God in salvation if at the same time one is not loving one’s brothers and sisters in the Lord; this does not speak of one’s position in Christ.” [Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999), 1712.]

Our position in Christ should cause us to want to love as He loved — sacrificially. Look at verse 16.

1 John 3:16–17 NASB95

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?

Cain hated his righteous brother, and so he killed him. But Jesus loved the unrighteous people of the world, and so He gave His own life for us.

Hatred and murder take life. Love GIVES life.

How can we say that we have fellowship with the God who IS love if we fail to love those in need, if we fail to give them LIFE by giving to them the things they need to HAVE life? Love bears fruit. If what we ARE is people of love, then it will be revealed by what we DO.

Look at verse 18.

1 John 3:18 NASB95

Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

“To love in word is to feel love and speak loving words but stop short of doing anything. To love in tongue is to profess what one does not have at all. The opposite of loving ‘in word’ is to love in deed and the opposite of loving ‘in tongue’ is to love in truth. [We are to] love from the heart and with actions.” [Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999), 1712.]

Now, once again, John seeks to encourage us, because he understood that the human conscience can be unforgiving.

Maybe I should have dropped some money in that guy’s bucket when he was begging on the sidewalk the other day. Shouldn’t I have stepped up and paid for that young mother’s groceries when she came up short at the grocery store?

If we are people who are characterized by love, we can sometimes find ourselves standing in self-condemnation for such missed opportunities. But God knows our hearts better than we do. Look at verse 19.

1 John 3:19–20 NASB95

We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

No matter how generous we are, there will always be needs that we do not meet, needs that we cannot meet.

“We can overcome feelings of false guilt by remembering that God knows our real motives. He does not judge on the basis of appearance as we often judge ourselves.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 1 Jn 3:19.]

When we come before God, whether before His throne in heaven or before His throne in prayer, He will judge our hearts, and (verse 21):

1 John 3:21–22 NASB95

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

If you are a believer who is abiding in Christ — if you are a believer who is abiding in eternal life by loving your brother and your sister in Christ and keeping His commandments — then you can come before God in prayer with confidence.

Now, there’s nothing magical about prayer. God’s not going to give you a pony just because you asked for it. He’s not going to give you a nice beach house just because you asked for it.

What John is saying here is that if you are abiding in Christ, then your heart will be turned toward His heart. You will cherish the things that He cherishes. The things you want will be aligned with the things that He wants.

But this alignment will only happen to the extent that you abide in Christ. And as you walk in fellowship with Him, you will find yourself wanting the things that He wants.

You will find yourself praying for more opportunities to show His love to your brothers and sisters in Christ and to the lost world. You will find yourself praying for the opportunity to share the gospel with a lost friend or family member. You will find yourself praying for the ability to give more of your time, talents and treasure to the work of the church.

And if you are walking in fellowship with Christ, God’s answer to those prayers will be, “YES!”

Whatever we ask, we will receive if we have kept His commandments. But what are the commandments?

Look at verse 23.

1 John 3:23–24 NASB95

This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

And so, John brings us back to righteousness and belief as tests of the quality of a believer’s fellowship with God.

Right belief in Jesus is sufficient for you to receive eternal life. But loving one another is necessary for you to experience the fullness of eternal life within your mortal lifespan.

If you keep both commandments, John says here, you will abide in Christ — you will have a deep, quality fellowship with Him through the Holy Spirit, who was given to you in the moment of your salvation.

We are saved by grace alone. That is the basis of our salvation. We are saved through faith alone. That is the medium of our salvation. The proof of our salvation is obedience. And obedience is believing that Jesus Christ is who He said He is and has done what He said He would do and loving one another as He loved us — sacrificially.

If you have done the first — if you have believed rightly — then God dwells within you through the Holy Spirit.

But what John is saying through this passage is that we should want more. We should want God to abide in us — to make Himself at home within us.

Our love for one another should be such that the God who IS love feels right at home within us. Our love for one another should be a life-giving love that sacrifices the things of self for the benefit of others, just as our Savior sacrificed Himself for us all.

Let us love one another not with words that stop short of doing anything and certainly not in tongue, professing something that really is not true.

Let us, instead, love one another in deed, doing the things that prove the words we say, and in truth, loving one another genuinely because doing so is the true proof that we are people who are following the one who called Himself “the way the truth and the life.”

Let us be people who can boldly go before God and ask for more people to love. Let us be people who can confidently go before God and ask for more opportunities to show the love of Christ.

This is what true, deep, genuine, quality fellowship with Christ looks like. I want that for myself. And I want it for you. But is it really what you want?

This kind of fellowship requires that kind of love. And that kind of love requires sacrifice. Are you ready to love that way?