How We Know What Love Is Series

Throughout your body are millions of blood vessels - veins that carry blood to the heart, and arteries that carry blood from the heart. If you took all of them from an adult and laid them end-to-end, with capillaries it would be around 100,000 miles long - enough to circle the earth 4X.

Blood is moving through those vessels as long as your heart is pumping it. And you can even check to see if your heart is pumping by feeling one of those arteries. Go ahead. Feel your neck, just to the side of your voice box, or check your wrist, on the side near your thumb. You should feel a little pulsation as blood flows through. That’s called your pulse. It’s one of the fastest and most basic ways to check if someone is alive. If a person isn’t awake, you check for a pulse. No pulse, no heartbeat. No heartbeat, no life.

If you checked just now and couldn’t find a pulse, you might want to have that looked into!

From time to time, I’m asked questions about if someone is going to Heaven or not. In other words, is someone spiritually alive, or spiritually dead. You’re either one or the other. We were looking at that just last week in my Sunday School class. Jesus described it as “crossing over from death to life.” As you drive down the interstate into St. Louis, MO, you cross the state line. There’s a definite point, on the bridge where you cross over from one to the other over the Mississippi River. There is no in-between. You cross over from IL to MO. That’s true of someone being spiritually alive or spiritually dead, which, by the way, is the difference between eternity in Heaven with God or eternity in Hell separated from God. It’s one or the other. Period.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if there was a way to check that - a pulse where you could feel and say, “Yep, this one’s spiritually alive!” or, “Nope, this one isn’t!”

There is such a test, a spiritual pulse check. It’s in…

I 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.

Take a good look at this. It’s the way to know if someone is spiritually alive, or if he or she “abides in death”: Do you love the brothers? If you don’t, there’s no spiritual pulse. Just as surely as you can check your wrist and say, “Yep, it’s still beating!” you can apply one question today that indicates if you’re spiritually alive or spiritually dead. Do you love your brother in Jesus?

That’s where this 3:16 sermon takes us today - the verses surrounding 1 John 3:16. Remember, we’re going to be visiting some of the outstanding 3:16’s of the Bible - for the next 3 weeks, in fact. 1 John 3:16 is a wonderful counterpart to John 3:16.

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.

John really likes the subject of love. He uses the word “love” 33X in this short letter we call I John. And God really dwells on this command to love one another. In fact, those very words happen 15X in the NT, 6 of them here in I John (if you include 3:16). It’s almost like it’s really, really important!

1 John 3:11

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

If this was just some sound advice we could look at it differently. If this was just about a wise way to have a better life or to make a better world, we could put it in a category like that. But the Bible isn’t just a book of good advice about how to make life better. This book first is about God fixing our broken relationship with the Almighty Creator. So, when John talks about this command to love one another, he pulls no punches. This is a life or death issue.

1 John 3:11-13 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 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. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.

One side of this whole subject is hate.

“Don’t be surprised, brothers, if the world hates you.” Why would the world hate us? I thought we were likeable people. I kind of like us…especially me!

Jesus said it would be this way.