Badges identify people. There’s the policeman’s badge (make a paper star). Every service company has its’ employees wear a badge (plastic cover with name inside). Boy Scouts and Awana children have badges telling you about their achievements (Awana shirt or sash).
Christians have badges too. There’s the fish or dove symbol on the back of the car. Maybe it is a church bumper sticker. Some Christian’s wear a cross necklace. What does the Bible teach as the most prominent badge of a Christian? It is love.
A man asked Jesus what the most important commandment in the Bible was. Without hesitating, Jesus answered it is to love God and to love people. All the commandments in the Bible point to either a love relationship with God or people. You know the first part of the Ten Commandments deal with loving God and the second half deal with loving people. This is a problem.
What are you good at doing? Are you good at building or fixing things? Maybe you have an artistic gift. When you draw a horse, it doesn’t look like a camel. I’ve known a few people who are good at making money. I had a friend who bought a used ski boat at the start of the summer, played with it all summer, and sold it at the end of the summer and made money! I didn’t even know that was possible.
I can tell you what we’re not good at doing. We’re not good at loving God and loving people. All our life we’ve practiced being selfish. Most of life is observed from the perspective of how this is going to affect me. It comes natural to us. We don’t have to work at it. We don’t need lessons to be taught to be selfish. We’re naturals when it comes to being the center of our universe. Then we become a Christian. We learn that Jesus wants us to be good at what we are terrible at doing: loving God and loving people.
The reason why our churches struggle in forgiving one another, agreeing with one another, and encouraging one another is we are not good at loving one another. Tertulian was a Christian apologist that lived from 160-230 A.D. He quotes the pagans as saying of Christians, “Behold, how they love one another.” People had never seen a love that didn’t discriminate between men and women, rich and poor, free and slave, or Jew and Gentile. One of the most powerful witnesses for Christ was the community of believers that loved one another with a selfless love.
When the great Methodist missionary and evangelist E. Stanley Jones met with Mahatma Gandhi in India, he asked Gandhi why he seemed to respect Jesus’ teachings but rejected becoming His follower. Gandhi responded, “Oh, I don’t reject Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are unlike Christ. If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today?” Gandhi tried to enter a church in South Africa when he was a young man and interested in Christ. They barred him from entering.
One of the core values of Northeast is community. You will see it framed on the walls. We define community as imperfect people sharing life together. Sharing life together means we have responsibilities for how we treat each other. Those responsibilities are found in the “one another” passages in the New Testament. I’d like to look at a few of those. One of the responsibilities that we have is to love one another. Love should be a Christian’s single most defining attribute.
First, Jesus commands us to love one another.
I. JESUS COMMANDS US TO LOVE (JOHN 13:34-35)
(34) “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. (35) By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
The scene is the upper room as Jesus and the disciples share the Last Supper. Jesus has washed the disciple’s feet. Judas has gone to do his dastardly deed of betraying the Son of God. Jesus has told the disciples He will soon depart, and they can’t go with Him. This means His departure will be the crucifixion. He begins to lay out what He expects of them while He is away. Peter interrupts Jesus and asks where He is going. This prompts Jesus to give an extended explanation about his departure of going to heaven and preparing a place for them. He will return for them. In the meantime, the followers of Jesus are to love one another.
Why did Jesus call this a new command? We know that Leviticus 19:18 says, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” By the time Jesus said this to His disciples, He had already cited love for God and love for people as the two greatest commandments (Matthew 22:34-40). In the Sermon on the Mount, He taught us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). So what was “new” about this command to love in John 13?
The “newness” of this command is seen in the standard of this love: “Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.” How did Jesus love them? He’d just humbly served them by washing their feet. After this, He goes to the cross to die for their sins. Love means to humbly serve.
There’s a great deal of mystery behind the death of Jesus on the cross and how His death purchased the salvation of sinners. The brightest minds have pondered and debated how this is possible, but no one doubts Jesus’ love for us. There is only one explanation for why Jesus would make this sacrifice. He loves you.
His love stands in stark contrast to our love. Our love is often self-serving. We fail to love people because we fear rejection or hurt. Our love is calculating. What will I benefit if I fake love? However, His love is shown to be a choice. He didn’t have to care for us.
A little boy wanted to buy a puppy with a broken leg at the pet store. The owner said, “Son, you don’t want that puppy. Its leg will never be any good. The dog is worthless. I’m going to have him put down tomorrow.” The pet store owner tried to interest the boy in another puppy but the little fellow insisted on the crippled puppy.
“Son,” said the man, “the dog will never be any good.” The little boy raised his pant leg and showed a brace and said, “Sir, you don’t know what love can do.”
The standard of this love is Christ’s love for sinners. The witness of this love is to reflect the true God to this world. Christians are to love the world and seek to reconcile it to God. But they are to love each other more, not love the world less, but to love each other more. We are the children of God and we are to reveal the love the Father and the Son have for one another.
Who can you not stand? If you had a vote, you’d vote them off the island. Let that represent the church. Is it OSU fans? Maybe it’s Democrats or liberals or MAGA hat wearing Trump supporters. Is it welfare queens milking the system by being baby factories? A very godly man in my college church spoke about his great struggle with hating homosexuals and pedophiles. Maybe it is people of another religion or race. Some people can’t stand others that come from another country or a different part of this country. Are you beginning to see the immensity of God’s love? God loves who we love, and He loves who we can’t stand.
God loves people no matter who they slept with last night—spouse or one-night stand, heterosexual or homosexual. He loves people no matter what they sniffed up their nose or shot up their arm. He loves the one’s who smell nice and the one who stinks up the room. I don’t love like that. You don’t love like that. Jesus commands us to love like that: love with His kind of love. Love even the one you can’t stand. You’re thinking of someone, aren’t you?
Jesus commands us to love. His love is to be our single most defining attribute.
Secondly, actions demonstrate love.
II. ACTIONS DEMONSTRATE LOVE (1 JOHN 3:10-12, 16-18)
(10) This is how God’s children and the devil’s children become obvious. Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his brother or sister.
(11) For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another, (12) unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.
(16) This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. (17) If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him — how does God’s love reside in him? (18) Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
John describes Christians as people who love one another (v. 10). The nature of brotherly love is illustrated negatively by Cain who killed his brother and positively by Christ who laid down His life for us (v. 11-12). I’d much rather you hate me than murder me, but John is pointing out that all murder begins with hatred. Instead, follow Jesus’ example of going beyond your feelings to costly sharing one’s possessions with the needy (v. 16-17). Actions demonstrate love (v. 18).
John appeals to us to love one another. He uses these contrasts to explain the nature of Christian love. True love is an action verb. The example of murder seems to be over the top. Maybe John is pointing out how damaging hateful words and actions can be and that hatred is a powerful statement regarding to whom one belongs.
Then it seems as if he goes the other direction of using an extreme illustration of Jesus dying on the cross for sinners. It is rare that a Christian would be asked to give up his life for another, but that spirit is to be seen in everyday experiences of sacrifice in our personal possessions to help a fellow believer in need. John’s expression is graphic. Someone in need is in front of us, but we slam the door that keeps our compassion and our “goods” on our side and the brother in need on the other side. Whether one is a murderer or withholds help in the face of need, how can God’s love reside in him? Love requires action.
You’re 22-years old. The alarm clock rings and you either roll out of bed to head to classes at the university or you’re off to work. Your biggest decision to make that morning is whether you have time to get a coffee at Starbucks or finding a parking space near your classes. For 22-year old Katie Davis, there’s no alarm clock. Instead, she wakes up to several pairs of little hands on her face and several pairs of feet bouncing on the bed. Her biggest decision will be how to care for 14 children in Uganda—her daughters whom she’s adopted.
When Katie graduated from high school in Brentwood, TN, she was class president and homecoming queen. Not unlike her friends, she had big dreams. The difference was that she didn’t want to go to the university but to Uganda. At 16 she began persuading others to let her go to Uganda the year after high school before going to college. She didn’t get lots of support at first, but God changed minds and hearts.
She traveled 7,000 miles to work in an orphanage teaching kindergarten children. The children don’t know much English, but love knows no language. Life’s not easy. Mixed in with slumber parties and dinner made out of eggs and popcorn, she battles rats, bats, and encounters with the lawless.
While walking children home after school, she notices the many children begging and idle. There are few public schools and none near her area. Private schools are not a possibility for these kids. That’s when she has the idea of establishing a non-profit and asking her church to sponsor 40 kids. Despite not knowing how to set up a non-profit, 150 kids receive school scholarships and two hot meals per day!
In the meantime, things are changing for Katie. She shares love with children daily, feeding them beans and rice, giving them showers, removing jiggers from their feet, and picking lice from their hair, taking them to the hospital for medicine, and teaching them about Jesus. Then one day, tragedy strikes three young girls in her circle of students. Their parents are dead, and they were living in a hut by themselves. The eldest caring for the other two. One of the hut walls collapses on the oldest child. At the hospital, Katie hears the doctors and police discussing not treating the girl because she has neither a guardian nor money to pay. Katie intercedes. Before the day is done, custody papers for all three girls are in her hands. (Remember: this is Uganda. Things like adoption and guardianship are far different than in the U.S.). She has gone from being Auntie Katie to Mommy.
This is from her blog in August 2009:
“All my life, I had everything this world says is important. In high school I was class president, homecoming queen, top of my class. I dated cute boys and drove a cute car. I had supportive parents who so desired my success that they would pay for me to go to college anywhere my heart desired. BUT, I loved Jesus. Jesus says to Nicodemus that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, one must be born again. Check. Jesus says to another guy that in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven one must sell everything they have and give it to the poor and then COME, follow Him. Oh…I realized that I had loved and admired and worshipped Jesus without doing what He did. So I quit my life. Originally, it was to be temporary, just a year before I went back to normal Brentwood life and college. It wasn’t possible. I had seen what life was about, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know. So I quit my life again, but for good this time. I quit college; I quit my cute designer clothes and my little yellow convertible. I quit my boyfriend. I no longer have everything that the world says is important. BUT, I have everything I know is important. I have never been happier, and I have never been closer to the Lover of my Soul and my Savior. Jesus wrecked my life, shattered it to put it back together more beautifully. I am in LOVE with Him. Period.
You can read her amazing story in her book, Kisses from Katie. Obviously, few are called to this kind of extraordinary, sacrificial love. However, we are all called to love. Katie puts it this way:
Every circumstance is an opportunity for God’s work to be displayed. How will you change your world today? Love. Not just in Africa, but wherever you are. Love. Love the way God loved you. Look to Jesus; watch His life. “Now, go and do likewise.”
Jesus commands us to love. His love is to be our single most defining attribute. Actions demonstrate our love. For us to love like Christ, God must enable our love.
III. GOD ENABLES OUR LOVE (1 JOHN 4:7-12, 19)
(7) Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. (8) The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (9) God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. (10) Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (11) Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. (12) No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.
(19) We love because he first loved us.
We’ve already admitted it is hard to love some people. But now we must admit something about ourselves: it is beyond our power to love like Jesus. We simply don’t have the supply of patience, humility, compassion, or unselfishness that we need to love well.
According to v. 7, the good news is that this love comes from God. John is not saying anyone who loves is a child of God. That is to take this verse out of its context. Elsewhere in this letter, John stressed the necessity to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only Savior of mankind. Thomas Jefferson was a great believer in the value of Christianity, but he didn’t believe in the resurrected Christ. There are legitimate concerns that he was a Christian. John is saying it is an equal concern to question a person’s Christianity if they do not love.
John tells us in v. 8 that you can’t come into a real relationship with a loving God without being transformed into a loving person. How do we know that God is loving? This is the only explanation for the Father sending the Son for our salvation (v. 9). In this, we see the nature of love. Love is self-sacrificing and done for the benefit of others (v. 10).
You’d expect John to say next that we have experienced such amazing love from God that we love God back. What John says is that we have experienced such amazing love from God that we feel obligation to love others (v. 11).
Before John goes on to complete his thought that if we fulfill this command, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us; John says no one sees God. It seems out of place. When a person loves his fellow Christian in a very practical way, he experiences the love of God in his heart and he knows the presence of God with him. You hear that in Katie Davis’s testimony. To really know the invisible God, it is indispensable to love people right in front of you (v. 12).
In v. 19, John reminds us that the more we are aware of how much God loves us, the more we in turn become people of love.
In 1964, Eric Berne released the book The Games People Play. It was a huge bestseller, staying on the N.Y. Times bestseller list for 100 weeks. The book has sold 5 million copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Berne attempted to explain the different ways we manipulate people to meet our need. Maybe we pout like a child or shout like a parent to get our way. The other option is to be an adult that seeks to look at the situation reasonably and respond maturely.
What John pictures is a person so aware and full of the love of God that doesn’t feel the need to manipulate another person to get their need met. Have you ever had someone give to you with strings attached? That gets old and probably leads to reverse manipulation. Then there are others who are willing to give without thought of anything in return. They simply love you.
CONCLUSION
In my family, the men shook hands to express affection. We don’t hug. That was for your mother or wife or daughters. The manly thing was to shake hands. In 1995, Northeast called a young man to be our youth minister, Matthew Hofeld. Matthew doesn’t shake hands. He hugs. I’d never been around a “man hugger.” It was weird, strange, and uncomfortable. Matthew served at Northeast five years. In time, I got to feeling a little more comfortable with the man-hug. He was called to away to another ministry in 2000. I settled back into my comfortable handshake.
Then about 14-years ago God brought a true, blue, God-fearing, tough as nails Marine to Northeast. He, too, is a “man hugger.” Here we go again. His love for his pastor wasn’t sufficiently conveyed in a handshake. So, every time Bob Gleason and I meet, we greet one another with a hug. He’s Italian, and I thank God he doesn’t do the cheek kissing thing.
I noticed something after being around these two men. I can hug a guy. Being able to hug a guy produced something else in me. I got to where I could say to another man, “I love you.” Trust me, this is a sign of the power of God. Ladies, men never tell one another they love each other. There are grown men in this room who can’t remember when if ever another man told him that he loved them. Think about that.
The brotherly love these two men have shown me has been of enormous blessing to me in expressing my love. Every time I took Jim Warren home after the 8:15 service, after I got him situated in his home, I told him I loved him. Jim, a 90-year-old WWII veteran, got to where he said it back to me. I had the freedom to say that to Scotty Morris too. However, the greatest blessing is I now hug my father and tell him that I love him. You know what? This old oilfield worker says it back to me. Only the love of God could make two Sasnett men express their love this way.
I’d be pleased with the outcome of this sermon if it would persuade you to find a way to express your love to those around you. I think you’d be surprised to know how many men have trouble saying this to their wives and daughters and sons. Let’s start there. Don’t give up if at first there is not much of a response. It could be shock you’re seeing. Then we can graduate to telling church members we love them. This might lead to a revival of loving one another at Northeast. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if some day they say of NEBC, “Behold, how they love one another.”
Jesus commands us to love. Actions demonstrate this love. God will enable us to love like this. Love should be a Christian’s single most defining attribute. Let’s wear that badge proudly.
