1 John 3:16-24
“We Know Love By This”
By: Rev. Kenneth Emerson Sauer
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
Humankind has made so many attempts to define love.
Volumes upon volumes of books have been written about it.
Over the centuries romantic love has been the theme of the larger part of all music written and sung.
How many classic plays, novels and movies have, in some way, been based on the theme of love; yet, if we were to ask ten people to define love, we’d be likely to get ten different definitions.
But in our Epistle Lesson for this morning, John gives us the briefest and the best definition of love.
We could not know love apart from God.
God is love.
And if we do not know love; God’s kind of love…
…then we don’t know love at all.
All other affections, no matter what we call them, fall short and incomplete if they are not based on the Love of God.
The Greeks had three words for love.
One “Phileo”, specifically refers to the love between two friends.
It’s where the name “Philadelphia” comes from…
…which means “City of brotherly love”.
Another, “Eros”, refers to romantic love.
It’s from this word that we get “Erotic.”
But then there is “Agape.”
This is a totally self-sacrificing kind of love; asking nothing in return.
It is a love that spends itself completely and unwaveringly on its object. This is the kind of love John is writing about.
We can only know love if we understand that Jesus laid down His life for us.
The eternal Creator of all; the giver of life Himself; the only One who didn’t need to lay down His life at all…laid down His life for us!
The One from whom no one could take life; Who was in absolute control over death and the grave, deliberately laid down His life in payment for our sins…
…so that through Him we might have life.
Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”…
…and then He laid down His life for those who were hostile to Him…so that we might become His friends!
The redeeming truth is this: The character of the love that brings people into life has been once and for all definitely revealed in Jesus Christ.
Before Christ people had known love such as Jacob’s, David’s and Jonathan’s, and the prophets…
…but until Jesus Christ laid down His life for us the fullness of love was not complete!
Do we understand that Jesus’ love is absolute?
Let’s face it, the modern mind seems to comprehend the love of money, chocolate or Freud better than the love of Christ!
The love of Christ is absolute because it is indistinguishably ‘one’ with the
eternal love of God.
This is Reality!
The fundamental quality of absolute love is self-denial…
…to the point of death for others.
Jesus denied Himself…
…but not for a principle or a cause…
…Jesus denied Himself for us!
The pagan in John’s world could live in heroic self-denial—
…the athlete…
…the orator…
…the warrior.
And likewise, in our day, the scientist…
…the artist…
…the soldier…
…can be capable of great self-denial.
But mere self-denial is not love.
Only when a person surrenders something that has value for his or her own life in order to better the life of another does he or she love.
Jesus’ love is marked by action…
…He laid down His life…
…it’s not defined in terms of reason or emotion.
Emotion is the most unreliable part of our personalities, and if we only love when we feel like it or when we are loved…
…then our love will be irregular and incomplete.
Love is an unwavering attitude toward things regardless of the way we feel.
Jesus’ love is universally understandable.
It speaks to people of every nation, class, and race; and we are called to have faith in the ability and capacity for people to respond to it.
A common sin in the church is the assumption that sacrificial love, for example, has a reality for a foreign missionary that it cannot have for the ordinary churchgoer…
…or that to lay down one’s life has a meaning for some spiritual hero that it doesn’t have for you or me.
But this is completely untrue!
Every Christian’s life is to be an ‘imitation of Christ.’
And only by living in the kind of love that Christ has can we know…
…from the inside…
…the new life that Jesus brings.
We must, at all times, be willing and ready to deny ourselves!
We must be ready…at all times…
…to witness to the good news of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ…
…to make decisions about our lifestyles…
Do we really need that brand new t-v set…when in buying it…we will be unable to fulfill our obligations to give a tenth of our income to the church?
Are we willing to make time to show up for a church work-day…when selfishly…we’d rather take a nap or go to the beach?
Are we ready to make it priority number one to come to worship God each and every Sunday…no matter whether we have a soccer game…
…a golf buddy who wants to tee-off…
…or a slight headache?
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives” for one another.
Certainly we have all heard profoundly moving and dramatic instances where lives have been given for others.
Perhaps we have wondered if we could be as courageous should the opportunity come our way.
But the opportunities do come—daily, though usually in ways that are so subtle that we often overlook them.
Faithfulness means that God is at the center of our lives…
…and when God is at the center of our lives…
…God loves through us.
Sometimes my life is like the car I see from time to time.
On its dirty, dusty hood someone has written with a finger, “Wash me!”
Many things drift into the center of my life, and they are mostly about me: my needs, my pride, my fear of getting involved, my certainty that I know how to meet the needs of others.
But faithful living means laying down our arrogance and our hesitations…
…and returning to God, the Center.
Then, and only then, being attentive to God and to others, we can love “in truth and action.”
In Romans 8:16, Paul writes: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.”
And the Apostle John agrees with Paul that we can know with certainty that we belong to God.
“Those who obey his commands live in him and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”
At times we feel overcome by the greatness of God: but actually God’s greatness comforts and steadies us.
The important thing in Christianity, it has been said, is not the theological belief that God is great…
…but the personal experience that God knows us.
“Those who obey his commands live in him…”
This commandment once and for all permanently connects Christianity and morality, theology and ethics, faith and works.
To believe and love is the commandment.
Believing and loving is written into the constitution of the universe and of human life…
…and whether or not we believe and love determines our destiny.
Jesus Himself has set before us fateful questions…and we are pressed to make a decision.
He requires us to decide between God and money, love and selfishness, the truth or the lie, humility or self-righteousness, faith or unbelief, an eternal or an earthly life.
We are called to decide whether we will be on God’s side and eternity’s side or on the side of the world, time and the devil.
But the source of our confidence before God is not based on ourselves…
…it is based on God’s Holy Spirit living in us…
… “We know…by the Spirit he gave us.”
John Wesley wrote: “It is hard to find human words to explain ‘the depth of God.’ Indeed, there are no earthly languages that will adequately express what the children of God experience.
Perhaps one might say that the testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God—that Jesus Christ loves me and gave himself for me, that all my sins are blotted out, and that even I have been reconciled to God.”
In chapter 5 of our Epistle for this morning John writes: “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
The Holy Spirit witnesses to our spirits that “God loved us, sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins,” and “freed us from our sins by his blood.”
Only then, after God works in us, do “we love God because he first loved us” and for His sake we also “love our brothers and sisters.”
We cannot help being conscious of the work of God’s Spirit within us…
…because God’s Spirit within us changes our priorities…
…our entire perspective on life begins to change…
…we begin to get a taste of the fruit of the Holy Spirit which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
And the longer we “keep in step” with the Holy Spirit living inside us…the more natural it becomes for us to love.
“This is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins…We love because he first loved us.”
Our puny minds…at least my puny mind cannot fathom the depths of God’s love.
We can only fall on our knees and worship Him, praise Him, adore Him, for His most excellent gift.
And what does God ask in return?
Well, nothing pertaining to our salvation.
It is done.
But John is right, when he says that even our shallow understanding of the love of God, demonstrated on Calvary’s cross, should inspire us to give of ourselves completely to the world around us…so that by the grace of God…others might be saved!!!
Jesus said, “By this people will know you are my disciples; that you love one another.”
Do we want to give something back to Him for His great love for us?
He made it simple…
…love one another.
Let us Pray: Almighty God, with every good reason we can say, thank You for Your incredible gift of love! Thanks be to God, for You allow us to say, “I know the One in whom I have put my trust.” You have sent the Spirit of Your Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba! Father!’ Even now, the Holy Spirit “bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God.”
May our lips declare Your praise, and our lives as well. May all our thoughts, words, and deeds become a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to You, O God, through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.
