A Compelling Love

Introduction

Love. Countless songs have been written about it. Books are filled with it, and television and moves make billions off of it. Our world and culture seems to be consumed by the concept of love. You yourself are very familiar with love. In fact, you love everyday. If you are married you love your spouse. If you have children you love them. You love your friends. In the words of Pablo Picasso, “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.”

However, this morning the concept of love that we are to address is our love for one another. That is, not only your love for the one sitting next to you but also the one sitting across the room from you, and even your love for complete strangers.

I can’t think of a more appropriate message today. It is of no surprise to you that hatred exists even among the membership of Christ’s church. There is no person immune to the disease of hate, and no person safe from it artillery. Yet, as we will see this morning, God has a desire for his church to be made up of people who love one another. This isn’t just for the benefit for the church but is essential to accomplish the mission of God to reach every person and people group with the gospel.

Will you join me this morning in praying for God to prepare our hearts for what he would have us receive this morning?

Corporate Love

There are many things that people look for when they consider a church. Activities for the family, good music (depending on your preference), a preacher who can communicate well with engaging sermons, a up to date facility. The list could go on and on. While all of these are not bad in an of themselves, they do not make a church a church.

When reading out text this morning and all the subsequent texts that you will read in this series, one thing you must keep in mind is the audience. John was most concerned with their obedience to God and their knowledge of who Jesus is. In other words, the person and work of Jesus is not only something we believe as Christians but is also something that truly transforms every part of our lives. By this I mean, the faith that we proclaim with our lips will be made evident in the sermon we preach with our lives.

In the church specifically, the world comes to know the genuineness of our faith by our love for one another. Notice, I did not say our love MAKES our faith genuine, but genuine faith will be partnered with love. We see this throughout the New Testament . Paul, writing to the Galatians says,

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”

He says to the church in Corinth,

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. “

What Paul is saying is that you can keep all the rules, appear to be the number one follower of Christ but if you lack love you lack all that matters. You have missed the mark.

So, what we first find in our passage is a love for the bothers. I think the use of the plural is intentional for John. Certainly a love for individuals is important, but if this church is to be a lost reaching church, then a community overcome with love for one another is what it will take. In fact, a loveless church cannot obey the commands of scripture toward the church.

Rom 12:10 “Love one another with brotherly affection”

Rom 12:13 “Contribute to the needs of that saints and seek to show hospitality.”

We cannot “seek to do good to one another” as 1 Thess 5:15 says.

We cannot “confess our sins to one another” as James 5:16 says.

We cannot obey Gal 5:13 that tell us through our love for one another we should serve one another.

Neglecting fellowship is often because our own time and interests are more valuable than other people’s needs. Therefore we don’t “count others more important than ourselves.” Phil 2:3

We cannot bear one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2 )

Pray for one another as (Jam 5:16 ) says.

If you are familiar with the narrative of the bible you will find that this was God’s plan for His called people from the beginning. Not only that, but love for each other is directly connected to out love for God. Remember what Jesus said when he was asked what the greatest commandment was? He said,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

and then he said,

“And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself”

That word “like” comes from the greek word homoios which means “resembling” or “the same as”. In other words, our love for one another is not mere sentimentalism. It is evidence that we have experienced the love of God in such a way that we replicate it to those around us.

In John 13 Jesus tells his disciples, “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.”

This is how this community will know that church 220 are children of God. It will not be because you come to this building every Sunday. It will not be because of the amount of bible verses that you have memorized. I will not be because of a bumper sticker on your car, or a tshirt that you wear. It will not be because of a facebook post. The world will know that this is a community of Jesus people because you love one another.

This is why John says in verse 16 that Christians know love. It is because “He laid down his life for us.” If you have been rescued by Christ, you know love. Likewise, if you do not love like this John questions if God’s love abides in you. To put it more bluntly, if you do not have love are you really saved?

Therefore, this community of believers in Lakeview is called out by God to be known for their love for each other. Every church in every city has a unique identity but every church in every city should be cohesive in how the love one another.

Concise Love

I think love is easiest when done in community. You have support and accountability. Not to mention there are other people helping share the load. This is why small groups are so helpful to the over all health of the church. If done correctly, there is not one person doing all the work.

However, there is also a danger there for some, because for some it is easy to fade away into the background. As long as you are present and appear engaged then all is well. It is like doing a group assignment in school. Show up to the meetings, give some input and look the part. Before you know it you have a A+. This is not a healthy way to live in community in the church. Why? Because while we are to have corporate love, we are also all to love individually and do individual acts of love.

“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.” 1 John 3:17

Notice that John has moved away from using the plural to the singular. He is becoming more concise with how we are to love. This verse is not saying that you find one person to love, but that you are aware of the needs of those around you and use your God-given resources to meet those needs. This means we need to do at least three things, maybe more.

be willing for our lives to be interrupted. Jesus gave us a wonderful example of this when he was on his way to heal Jarius’s daughter in Luke 8. I will not recount the story but on the way to heal Jarius’s daughter Jesus was touched by a desperate woman in need of healing. He wasn’t there to heal her, he was passing through. However, he welcomed the interruption in order to heal her. How welcoming are you to interruptions in your schedule?

Be aware of those around you who are in need. In John 5 Jesus comes to Jerusalem and makes his way over to the pool of Bethesda where people with crippling sickness would lay to ask for money. What I always find incredible is that is says that Jesus “saw” the man lying there and “knew” he had been there a long time. Not only was Jesus aware of this man, he understood the greatness of his need. Jesus could have kept going but instead he stopped and asked this man “do you want to be healed?”

3. Be prepared to meet the need. You can welcome the interruption, and be aware of the one in need but you also have to be prepared to actually meet the need. I don’t mean that you have the have all the ingredients to meet the need. What I mean is that your heart needs to be prepared to meet the need. I think it is very possible that we often are interrupted by people in need, and see the need, but fail to meet the need because or hearts are indifferent to those in need. This is why John says in verse 18,

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

In other words, talk is cheap. But more so, if we expect for others to believe us when we say that Christ loves them we better be prepared to love them as we say Christ loves them.

Commanded love

In some way it seems that John assumed that this love is a basic Christian trait. He begins our text by sayin, “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning.” In other words, you already know this but I am going to remind you. What is find interesting is that he calls this the “message” that they have heard from the beginning. Elsewhere in scripture this same word is used, many times, to refer to the gospel of Christ. This is the message that Christ has given to you, he loved you until the end and likewise you are to love one another.

John illustrate this for us by contrasting the two brothers Cain and Able. What is interesting most about the account of Cain and Able is the simliarities that they shared. They were brothers, so they were a part of the same family. They both showed up to worship God. Both brought sacrifices to God. However, Cains sacrifice apparently didn’t meet the specifications of an acceptable sacrifices. Therefore, God took Able’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s.

That is nearly a sermon in itself. It is not enough to belong to the church i attendance (same family), or show up every week (participate in worship. It didn’t matter that Cain was Adam’s son, or that he showed up to worship. What mattered was if he was offering God an acceptable sacrifice. God cares about or obedience.

Keep in mind, it wasn’t that Cain merely disliked his brother. It was a battle for the moral high ground. It was a was for prominence. Cain considered himself to be more valuable that his brother. It is possible that when they were young, their parents told them of their life in the Garden of Eden and how God removed them due to their disobedience. It is clear that Cain and Able understood that there is a proper way to approach God in worship. Yet, Cain decided he would offer God a lousy sacrifice that didn’t cost much.

God rejected Cain’s offering. It wasn’t a matter of favoritism but of right and wrong. However, Cain’s anger grew against God and spilled over onto his brother as he killed him.

This same battle rages in all of us. To follow our own will or the will of God. In the words of John Stott, “Hatred is still the worlds currency.”

Likewise, we are met with a decision. To follow the will of God for our lives or to follow our own selfish ambitions. For, that is really why Cain killed able. He thought more highly of himself than he did his brother. His love for self overshadowed his love for Able. In the same way, the hatred in our hearts are entirely due to our own selfishness.

We really need to understand 1 John 3:6. It not that we know what love is because Jesus loved us. It also knowing who we were before we were saved and how Jesus loved us.

We have all sinned against him. We have all shown that we didn’t love him. We have forsaken his ways and followed our own. And as a result an eternal gap has been created between us and God. As Ephesians 2 states we were by nature “children of wrath.” This means that God’s wrath against sin, a part from Christ, is directed toward us.

Let’s read the good news from Ephesians 2

“ And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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— 3 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—”

Did you see that? Christ died for sinful undeserving people. We didn’t deserve his love. There was nothing in you nor I that deserved his love. He choose to give up his life for ours. He chose the cross. He who knew nothing of sin became sin and died a death of a sinner, so that sinners could have life.

Jesus is not Cain. Cain decided that his brother was not worth love. He considered his life more valuable. He refused to humble himself to serve. Yet, Christ emptied himself (phil) and became a servant of those who wronged him. On the cross, when he could have called an army of angels to save him, he prayed for those who were murdering him.

Here is where the rubber really meets the road. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

We ‘ought to. It doesn’t say that it is suggested that we do this, or that it would be a good idea. To love like Christ loves is a command for all believers.

Look at verse 14, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”

This verse does not make love a requirement for eternal life but a product of eternal life. We will be known for our love for one another and our faith will be made evident when we show this type of love.

Confident love

This is a lot to take in. Love isn’t as simple as we probably thought it was. In truth, love is not as natural as we might think. In our flesh, we don’t want to love. In our flesh, we want what is best for us not what is best for others. Tina Turner once asked, “what’s love got to do with it?” Well, everything, and all of this can be a bit intimidating, especially for those of us that struggle to love. You may have just realized that you don’t love like you should. Instead of you being discouraged and leaving here this morning hopeless, I want to offer you hope found in the person of Christ.

“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”

As I mentioned love is not easy or natural. We are quick to think about how a certain action will affect us. Sometimes we have the “what’s in it for me” mentality. You may be aware of this right now.

But, what John is teaching us is that God is greater than our hearts that condemn us and tells us that we will never be able to obey. We will always be the hateful and selfish people that we are. If that is you this morning, I want to encourage you that God is greater than your heart. When your heart has feelings of hatred God will overcome that hatred. When you are overcome by selfishness, God will over come that.

We can also be confeident that when we pray to God we receive what we ask.

“and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”

Notice how that is worded, “Because we keep his commandments.” This is not saying that you can pray for a million dollars and God will give it to you. What it is saying is that if you are concerned with his commandments he will give you a supernatural ability, aided by the Holy Spirit, to obey him.

This is why John tells us in verses 24 that, “whoever keeps his commandments abides in God.” Our requests from God are due to our communion with him. As we abide in him we desire to be more like him.

What is truly comforting is that John tells us that God knows everything. When our hearts condemns us, he overcomes our hearts BECAUSE he knows everything. David Lewis Allen said this in his commentary on this book...

“Because God knows everything about us, God is sometimes more merciful with us than we are with ourselves. Since God is greater than our accusing conscience in the sense that he has greater knowledge of it than we do, we can be confident he understands our weaknesses and loves us in spite of them.”

I am sure of it that all believing Christians desire to love. I’m certain that the Holy Spirit convicts our hearts of our failure to love. Yet, we fall short. We miss the mark. I know I do this often. I fail to love my church, my family, my friends, and even complete strangers. Yet, God is the true judge who judges rightly. Not on my works but the works of Christ in me. Not on my performance but on the finished work of his obedient son Jesus.

Therefore, since God knows everything we can have confidence that we can come to him with our unloving hearts, of which he is well acquainted with, and he will produce in us a heart that reflects himself.

conclusion

I think it is important to consider that as Jesus sat with his disciples to have his last meal with them, and to teach them their last lesson he said, “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.”

From this we see to things.

Jesus desires all people to know we belong to him.

We show the we belong to Jesus by our love for one another.

Church 220, it is my sincere prayer for you that you be a people who loves one another and that all the world comes to know Christ by seeing how well you love. As we enter into a time of prayer and reflection, consider your own heart and ask God to give you his. The world doesn’t have to travel far to find hate. May it have to travel less to find love.

Let’s pray.