Things aren’t always what they first appear to be. During my first few years as the pastor of teaching here at LBF Church I got a phone call from a guy identifying himself as a Navy Chaplain. He told me that a guy recent discharge from the Navy’s child had died under tragic circumstances while he was at sea on an aircraft carrier. He told me that this guy and his wife were in Upland and that they didn’t have a home church, so could I please offer some pastoral support. I said that I’d be glad to, and I called the number the chaplain gave me. That led to a meeting with this guy and his wife, as they explained their terrible tragic circumstances, their need for a church home to support them, and for some cash to help with their immediate needs. I did something we never do here at the church and I have them cash...and no sooner was the check cashed and they disappeared.
I realized that I’d been part of an elaborate con, that the guy who called wasn’t a Navy Chaplain at all, that this family hadn’t lost their son, but that this was part of a scheme they did to get money from local churches.
Things aren’t always what they appear to be. In fact, this is also true in the spiritual journey of following Jesus Christ, that things aren’t always what they appear to be. The Christians John was writing do back in the first century were undergoing a terrible church split. The basis of the church split was over who Jesus was, and it seemed that every week they met there were fewer people, because more and more former church members were abandoning the church and the Christian life for unbiblical and false ideas about Jesus Christ and the spiritual journey. We’ve seen that in the spiritual journey things aren’t always what they appear to be as well. So far in 1 John we’ve seen the apostle John give his friends a few tests for the spiritual journey. The first test is belief in Jesus, and two weeks ago we talked about the need to develop doctrinal discernment about what any spiritual claim thinks about belief in Jesus Christ. We can understand the importance of this first test, to believe in Jesus Christ. After all, Christians believe that Jesus is God’s one and only Son, the one who came and lived the life we failed to live and who died the death we deserved to die in order to open up eternal life for us. Since Jesus Christ is central to God’s purposes in our generation, we can understand why believing in Jesus is so important. But the other big test John’s told us about is the test of our love for other followers of Jesus Christ.
Why does the Bible make such a big issue of Christians loving each other? Twenty-seven times the Bible commands Christians to love each other. Why couldn’t God just tell us to put up with each other, or to tolerate each other? Every church I know of, every pastor I talk to, struggles with this idea of Christians loving each other. It’s not that Christians don’t believe it, but it’s that it’s so difficult sometimes. Some churches simply give up on the idea because it seems too lofty, too unrealistic for modern people. Other churches pretend like they’re loving each other, but peel away the surface and you find the poison of bitterness and resentment, seeping out in gossip and slander.
Here at LBF Church we struggle with loving each other. We certainly don’t live up to the New Testament ideal of what it means. Why is loving each other such a significant part of the spiritual journey? What is it about the quality of our relationships with each other that causes God to say, "That’s important!"? What does our love for other Christians show about the reality our spiritual journey?
This morning it’s time to get real, time to set aside our excuses as to why we find it difficult to love each other and to take a hard look at why loving relationships are so high on God’s priority list. Now we’re not talking about this because of any specific problem, but simply because this is the next section in 1 John, but I know that we all need lots of help in this area. Today we’re going to see five reasons why loving other Christians is so vitally important to our spiritual journey of following Jesus Christ.
I. We Show Who We Really Are (4:7-8).
Now before we look at the text, let me give you the first reason: WHEN WE LOVE OTHER CHRISTIANS WE SHOW THAT WE ARE TRULY GOD’S CHILDREN. That’s what we find in vv. 7-8.
This is the fifth time in this little letter of 1 John that the apostle John has told us to love each other as Christians. Now this does not mean that Christians have no responsibility to love non-Christians. But it does mean that we start with where we are, with the person sitting next to us in church. Love begins with each other and then branches out to take the love of God into our world.
There’s a story told about the apostle John—I don’t know if it’s true or not because it’s not in the Bible--but the story goes that years after John wrote this letter he could no longer walk and no longer see. His followers would carry him around from church to church, and everywhere he went he just kept repeating, "Love one another" over and over again. Once someone lost his cool and asked John, "You’ve walked with Jesus face to face, you saw Jesus rise from the grave, and that’s all you can tell us?" John simply smiled and said, "Brothers...if you love one another that’s enough."
This was the creed John lived by, it was his mission statement in life to help Christians learn to love each other. John anchors our capacity to love each other in God’s love, that we’re called to love with the kind of love that comes from God. John uses the Greek word agape for love here, and before the Christians came around it was a very rare word in the Greek language that was hardly ever used.
John know that the other Greek words for love didn’t quite express the kind of love he was talking about.. He wasn’t talking about erotic love that wants to possess the object of its love, nor was he talking about family love that’s instinctive, nor was he talking about friendship love that’s based on common interests. No...John was talking about an entirely different kind of love. So he uses this word agape to describe the kind of love that comes from God, a God kind of love. Wherever you see God’s kind of love at work in human relationships you can be sure that God’s children are somewhere nearby.
This doesn’t mean that the way people become God’s children is by loving each other, but it does mean that when people who are God’s children through faith in Jesus Christ we will show that reality by loving each other. We become children of God through our faith in Jesus Christ, but once that happens we show our relationship with God the father by our love. You might think of the quality of our relationships with each other as how we show our family likeness to God the father. Just like the little boy who sees the image of his father in the mirror, so Christians reflect the image of their heavenly Father by their love for each other. When we don’t make this a priority, when we choose to engage in resentment and bitterness instead of forgiveness and compassion with each other we obscure our family resemblance to our Father. When we fail to love each other, people are surprised when they find out we’re Christians, because they never saw the family resemblance.
This is the first reason why God sees the quality of our relationships with each other as so important, because we show that we are truly God’s children by loving each other.
II. Love Accomplishing Its Purpose (4:9-12).
Now let me give you the second reason: WHEN WE LOVE OTHER CHRISTIANS WE SHOW THAT GOD’S LOVE HAS ACCOMPLISHED ITS PURPOSE IN OUR LIVES.
Our natural question is this: "How do we know God really loves us?" John answers that by looking at God the Father’s decision to send his son into the world. In a way, John thinks of Christmas, of the incarnation of God in human flesh, when Godhood and manhood became one (as we sang about this morning). That word "showed" in v. 9 means to take something that you can’t see and to make it visible (Louw and Nida, Greek English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 24.19). God took his unseen love and made it visible when he sent his one and only Son into the world so we could enter into this spiritual journey of living our lives for Jesus Christ as his followers. This lead’s John to a definition of love in v. 10.
Now lots of people have tried to define what love is. "Love is a many splendored thing," whatever that means. Others have suggested that love is a rose, fragrant and beautiful, but thorny and painful. Or, "love means never having to say you’re sorry." Whitney Houston sings her anthem, that "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." But John will have nothing to do with abstract definitions or pie-in-the-sky sentimentality. Instead he simply points to the cross, that we learn what love is like, not by starting with our human experiences of love and working up from there, but by simply turning our attention to the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death to pay for the sins of the whole world and to open up to every man, woman, and child the possibility of a living relationship with God is what love really looks like.
This leads John to once again prod us to loving each other, that the cross ought to empower us to love one another. Then, in v. 12, John says that God’s love is made complete in us when we love each other. That word "made complete" means "to be completely successful in accomplishing a goal" (Louw and Nida 68.31). In other words, God’s love accomplishes the purpose for which it was given when it empowers us to love each other.
Now think about that for a minute with me. This means God’s love is not primarily given to make us feel good, it’s not just given to heal our hurts, to forgive our sins, or to set is free from our guilt and shame. The purpose God’s love is given for us to do all that so that we might in turn be able to love others with the same kind of love. If God’s love is the arrow, the bull’s-eye aimed at is you and I loving each other. If God’s love doesn’t hit that bull’s-eye, then even if we feel better, even if our hurts are healed, God’s love hasn’t yet accomplished its purpose in our lives. When you and I love each other, we can be sure that God’s arrow has hit the bulls-eye in our lives.
III. A Witness To Our World (4:13-15).
Now let me give you the third reason God sees this as so vitally important: WHEN WE LOVE OTHER CHRISTIANS WE SHOW THAT JESUS CHRIST IS TRULY OUR WORLD’S HOPE.
At first John seems to be drifting from the subject here, because now he’s sharing his conviction that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. We tend to divorce our efforts at sharing that reality with our world from our relationships with each other. But God won’t let us do that, because God knows that we can claim that Jesus is the world’s Savior all we want, but if our lives are no different than our world, our testimony falls on deaf ears. This is why Jesus Christ told his followers, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this [by what? By this love for each other!] all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35).
Jesus himself tied our effectiveness as his representatives to a lost and irreligious world to the quality of our relationships with each other. I’m amazed at the number of unchurched people I talk to who gave up on the Christian faith because of the inability of Jesus Christ’s followers to get along. Many of the more notorious opponents of the Christian faith throughout the years were exposed to Christians earlier in their lives who couldn’t get along, and that tainted their view of the Christian message. Do we really believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world? Or is he only our savior, someone to be hidden and kept to ourselves. If we really believe this is true, it should not only impact our heart for irreligious and unchurched people in our community, but it should also impact our relationships with each other. I’d much rather be wronged by another Christian and simply forgive and be done with it that issue’s going to get in the way of an unchurched person listening to my claim that Jesus is their only hope. After all...which is more important: Being right or effectively reaching irreligious people with the good news of Jesus Christ?
If you’re here today as a seeker--someone who’s not yet committed to Jesus Christ--and if you see us failing to love each other, would you tell us, would you share with us how it undermines our credibility to share the love of God with you? When we love each other we show that Jesus Christ is truly our world’s only hope.
IV. Free From Fear (4:16-18).
Now let me give you the fourth reason: WHEN WE LOVE OTHER CHRISTIANS WE SHOW THAT WE ARE NO LONGER MOTIVATED BY FEAR.
Once again John calls us back to God’s love as our basis for loving each other; once again he reminds us that love has accomplished its purpose in our lives when we break through our bitterness and resentment to truly love each other. But we also find that when God’s love has truly had its way in our lives that we’re set free from the fear of punishment. It would be tempting for John to say, "Love each other guys, or God’s gonna get you." Many people approach this issue that way, threatening people with God’s judgment if they don’t love each other, trying to motivate people by fear into loving each other. But fear can’t change our lives, fear can’t enable us to break through our bitterness and anger, fear can’t produce forgiveness and compassion in our hearts.
So instead of threatening us with God’s judgment, John tells us that when we encounter God’s love we’re set free from our fear of punishment because we know the punishment for sin was settled once and for all on the cross. Instead of fear we can have confidence--boldness and assurance--that when we stand before God we’ll be secure in our relationship with God.You see, fear is often what holds us back from loving each other. We fear people of another race, so we stereotype them instead of love them. We fear that homeless person on the street, so we look the other way rather than taking the risk to talk to him and listen to his story. But God’s perfect love will drive out all traces of fear, so we’re motivated by love to love.
Maybe you remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words that new laws can’t force a white man to love him, but it can prevent a white man from lynching him. That’s because laws can’t transform a human heart; they can’t turn a hater into a lover. Laws are good--God ordained them according to the Bible--but the best laws can do is prevent us from acting out our hatred, they can’t change us into loving people. Only the good news of Jesus Christ can do that. When we’re able to love each other we show that we’re no longer motivated by fear in our relationship with God. We demonstrate the fact that our future with God is secure through the cross, we’re not trying to obey laws to earn brownie points with God and somehow merit God’s acceptance.
Christians still bound by fear will find it impossible to truly love each other. Have you found freedom from fear in God’s love for you? If so, it will transform your relationships with others into loving relationships.
V. Touched By God’s Love (4:19-21).
Now let me give you the final reason loving relationships tops God’s priority list: WHEN WE LOVE OTHER CHRISTIANS WE SHOW THAT WE HAVE TRULY BEEN TOUCHED BY GOD’S LOVE.
Our capacity to love at all is directly tied to the fact that a loving God has first loved us. Because of this incredible reality, our love for each other isn’t something we can brag about or call attention to ourselves with. Any success we have in this thing called agape love is simply an example of the love of God flowing through us. John gives us some sobering words when it tells us that any claim to love God that’s accompanied by hatred toward another Christian rings as a hollow and false claim.
This is the verse that helped one of our pastors realize that he wasn’t really a Christian several years ago, even though he went to church, was raised in a religious home, and even served in ministry. When this pastor read this, he knew that he hated his brother--in his case his identical twin brother--and he knew that he hadn’t truly encountered the love of God. So up at Forest Home Conference Center on New Year’s Eve, as a counselor with Youth For Christ, he surrendered his life to Christ...and guess what? He was suddenly able to start loving his brother.
It’s inconceivable that we could truly love God--a person we’ve never actually seen with our eyes--when we demonstrate hatred or indifference toward God’s other children. In fact, one of the primary ways we love God is by loving his children...especially the unlovable ones who irritate us.
Do you remember the story of Midas? In Greek mythology Midas was the guy who turned everything to gold that he touched...it made it really hard to eat lunch or kiss his girlfriend. We say people have the Midas Touch when everything they touch seems successful. Well God has a kind of Midas touch too, but it’s not a touch that turns things to gold. It’s a touch that turns people into lovers, it’s a touch that transforms our attitudes and motives into loving ones. When the love of God touches us, it transforms us into people who can love the unlovable.
If we could have our way, the spiritual journey would be to believe in Jesus Christ and to tolerate each other. But the top of God’s priority list is to trust our lives to Jesus Christ and then to love other followers of Jesus Christ, even the ones who irritate us, the ones who wrong us, the ones who make us mad. We’ve seen five reasons why this is so vitally important to God: The quality of our relationships with other Christians shows who we are as God’s children, it shows that God’s love has accomplished its purpose in our lives, it shows that Jesus is our world’s hope, it shows that we’re free from fear, and it shows that we’ve truly been touched by God’s love.Sometimes I’m asked what the business of the church is. Is the church’s business to get bigger or to build bigger buildings? Is it to have as many programs as possible or to make sure we meet all our bills? Is the business of the church to make people religious? The way we’ve answered that question is in our purpose statement: It’s on the back of your bulletin every week.
Our business is reaching unchurched people of the Inland Valley and beyond and helping them grow into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ who wholeheartedly love God and others. When you walk through our doors ever week there’s a saying above the doors the worship center: Helping people love God and others. In other words, doing what John is talking about here strikes at the heart of what we exist for, to reach irreligious people in our community and beyond with the message of Jesus Christ and to introduce them to a God of love who can transform them into people who love each other.
This last week I was thinking about this priority of love and I saw an incredible example of it on Dateline NBC of all places. It seems that two members of the same church participated in a 40 day prayer and fasting time to seek God’s will for their lives. One of the woman badly needed a kidney transplant, and at the end of the 40 day time of prayer and fasting, the other woman felt strongly that God was leading her to donate her kidney to this other woman. People couldn’t understand why, after all they weren’t family, they weren’t even friends before that, one was white the other was black. Her response was simply, "She has a need and God has given me the ability to meet that need…that’s what loving each other is all about."
