Love, The Infallible Test Of Salvation Series

How do you explain the hatred and evilness in our society? How do you comprehend the hatred between the Jews and Palestinians? How can we support the evilness we see on the political scene? How we process the anarchy in our society? How do you explain Columbine? Families wounded by divorce? Friendships ended because of deception? Churches who continue to refuse reconciliation?

John reminds us of an ugly side of humanity. He connects the root of our problems to two brothers who met in a field. Suddenly one brother lifted an ax high above his head and, with one swift blow, caved in his brother’s skull and crimsoned the earth with his brother’s blood. From that meeting until now, we struggle with the embryonic tension between the two great poles of the human dilemma: to love or to hate.

John will remind us that there is always a powerful force of hate that tempts even Christians; he reminds us that the spirit of the antichrist is among us. Yes, inside the church. John will show us that hatred is a devilish thing. John, perhaps better than any other New Testament writer, was inspired to write from the perspective of God’s redeeming love. Yet, he also reminds us that there is a constant battle between love and hatred. We are challenged to ask: What is the origin of love and hate?

First, love and hate originate outside of humans. Love comes from God. Hate comes from the devil. Allow me to illustrate.

What possessed a mother in Texas to kill her 5 children? If parents in Africa kill a child who confesses to having AIDS, we call it barbaric murder. In America, we soften the reality of hatred born of the Devil by using psychological language. I understand that, because none of what to believe God created us for such evilness. He didn’t.

However, hatred creeps into our lives as secretly as we discover we are madly in love with the one to become our spouse. My wife and I, as childhood sweethearts, started our relationship with the assumption she was working as a matchmaker. Surprise, surprise. We started dating and I never went on a date with her friend. I have often said that I never asked her to marry me, from early it was a work in progress. Hatred works the same way. We rarely ever ask a person if we can hate them. It happens.

Cain was probably very unaware that when he hated he was under the control of another mind. Little did he know that someone was taking over his life. No sudden chill ran up and down his spine as the author of hatred was possessing him. Satan deceived him!

Remember when the Lord met with His disciples in the Upper Room....Judas was sitting at the table and Satan entered his heart. Remember the deception in the Church caused by Ananias and Sapphira? Peter would ask, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” Acts 5:3.

Scriptures holds before us a great revelation: It is possible for Christians to come under the grip of the Devil.

I. WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS IS A LITTLE MORE LOVE (:11-15)

The countercultural movement of the 60s was right in their major point: The world needs a little more love.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of

Their problem? They attempted to find love within themselves. Tragically, the failure to love was as characteristic of that era as any other. Precious lives were ruined by drugs and shallow sexual relationships.

When reading John, you discover he was not a confrontational preacher. You can only imagine the conflict of theology and wounded hearts that Gnosticism had caused. Yet, he doesn’t, like Paul, put it all on the table. It will help us to remember he is writing to a church that is in a battle zone. Many are leaving in protest, rejecting the Bible’s teaching about Jesus Christ. Harmful words and actions resulted from believers allowing the spirit of hate to enter their hearts–John equated it with the spirit of hatred that entered Cain.

Listen to how Timothy Peck describes the world in which we live.

We live in a world of hatred and violence, a world where relatives refuse to speak to each other for decades, a world where parents abuse their children, a world where children tote assault rifles. We live in a world of terrorism, where to make a statement people bomb the Ok City Federal building, we live in a world where people demonstrate what they believe by trampling on other people all the time. Don’t be surprised...this is life.

The church has a different goal–we are to model for the world the authentic way to love. The spiritual quest we must follow is that Jesus calls us to be different. We are called upon to do several things and to do them well.