Fellowship Means Living Love Series

John had seen love first-hand. He watched Christ die for our sin of his own volition. Christ chose to love us enough to die for us. That is some great love indeed. We can know how we are to love by looking at the actions of Christ. Christ gave every bit of His being even to the point of death because He loves us. Wow! We have an awesome example; one very difficult to imitate and very different from the world. Christ’s love was one that sacrificed for others. The world’s love is selfish and only looks out for itself. What example does the world have? Hue Hefner? Saddam Hussein? Someone might say Mahatma Gandhi which is much better than the others. Gandhi was just a passivist and not necessarily someone who truly knew how to love. Christianity is different and so we must be different starting with our example. We must follow our different example by loving sacrificially.

A Better Way to Love – 16b-18

Loving sacrificially stands as the one virtue of Christendom. Christ set a pretty hefty example to follow. The world’s love is very selfish and yet His was unconditional and unselfish. His example sets the stage for the rest of verse 16 through 18. “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” John tells the people that they must also live like Christ by loving sacrificially. Verse 17 gets a little interesting. Verse 16 refers to the death of Christ and then verse 17 actually says “If anyone has the life of the world, they should help those in need.” The life of the world is wrapped up in possessions, money, and greed. If anyone has the stuff of the world, give it to help others out. If they didn’t give that stuff up, what kind of Christians were they? Christ gave his own life and they should give up their worldly things. Verse 18 is the key, the center, the very essence of how these men and women should be. “Do not just talk love, but live love.” John tells them that through Christ’s example they should understand that they must live love. Anyone can talk about love, forgiveness, and sympathy but only those dedicated to Christ can consistently live it out daily. Talk is easy but walk is much harder.

“In The Christian Leader, Don Ratzlaff retells a story Vernon Grounds came across in Ernest Gordon’s Miracle on the River Kwai. The Scottish soldiers, forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad, had degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. "A shovel was missing. The officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot . . . It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first check point. "The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others! . . . The incident had a profound effect. . . The men began to treat each other like brothers. "When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: ’No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness.’"”