“Love” is a word that is thrown around more than a football at the Super Bowl. Everyone talks about love. I love this. I love that. I love your hair. I love that shirt. I love this team or that team. I love summer. I love Christmas. “I love you. You love me. We’re a happy family.” Love, love, love. Two characters on a TV show mumble something about loving each other as they slide between the sheets. We say we love our favorite sports team, then we wind up questioning the legitimacy of the coach’s birth when he makes a bad decision. We hear pop singers sing about love. Love is everywhere.
As a culture, we talk an awful lot about love. We love lots of things, from pizza to Budweiser, from warm spring days to our friends new hair do, from a car to that new girl in English class. We have come to confuse love with infatuation and lust. The main difference is that infatuation and lust are selfish in motive. When we are dealing with those ideas, we are looking out for our own selfish interests. We only “love” the object of our affection so long as it pleases us. We seek our own pleasure over the interests of someone else.
Our culture is constantly engaged in this. It goes beyond physical motives. We sometimes think that if we can get this person as a friend they will do something for us. Maybe the person is influential or skilled in an area where we need help.
The measure of how much we love someone is only as true as our actions that back up our words. A parent, who constantly tells a child they are loved, but yet persists in neglecting the child, doesn’t really love that child. On the other hand a husband and wife that have been married for years may not always verbalize their love for each, but yet you can tell that they love each other because of their actions toward each other. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t express our love for others verbally, but it cannot become a substitute for the real thing.
Love is only love insofar as we have the actions to back up our words.
Turn with me to 1 John chapter 3.
Read 1 John 3:18-24.
We are confronted with four truths here: True love is more than hot air, God knows our motives, God rewards those who are obedient, and the Holy Spirit proves we are God’s children.
True Love is More than Hot Air
It is helpful at this point to remember that John was dealing with a group of people who believed that the body and spirit were disconnected. They thought they were okay because they said that they were Christian, but their actions didn’t back up their words. This is why John says, in verse 18, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
John is saying that love is more than hot air. We could drag out a number of cliches at this point. We could say, “Put your money where your mouth is.” Or, we could say, “Talk is cheap, it’s time for action.” Or, we could say, “Actions speak louder than words.” All of these apply to this situation. Cliches aren’t enough.
James 2:15 and 16 says, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?”
It does no good if we say to someone in need, “Go in peace. May the Lord bless you.” I would even say that it is not enough to pray for the situation, if there is something that we can do to remedy the situation.
In the parable of the sheep and goats, Jesus condemned those who did nothing to help the situation. Our love must be made known through our actions. It doesn’t matter what we say. If we can make the situation better, we must do so. That is the meaning of loving in deed or actions.
John also says that our love must be in truth. Our actions must be motivated by Christian love. Our love must be true in our actions. It’s not enough to do something out of compulsion or peer pressure.
If we do something because we feel guilty about the situation, it means that it is not a matter of love. Back in the 1980s there were all of these celebrity causes. There was Farm Aid, Live Aid, Comic Relief, We Are The World, Hands Across America and other things. I am not convinced that all of these events were motivated by genuine love. They really did very little to ease the suffering of anyone. Mainly it was an opportunity for various actors, rock stars, comedians and other high profile people to say, “Hey, we’re trying to do something.” Perhaps the motivation was guilt release for excess wealth. Perhaps it was so they could put a positive spin on their images. Genuine love and concern, no doubt, motivated some.
God knows our motives.
This brings us to the fact that God knows our motives. God knows if we are truly motivated by love or some other selfish reason. He also knows if we are incapable of doing anything. Sometimes we are in a position were it is not possible for us to help in a situation because of some legitimate reason. I don’t believe that the biblical command to help the poor means that we are expected to starve our own family. It does mean that we may have to give up a luxury to help the poor.
John is speaking here to those who may have been feeling guilty because they thought they were not doing all they could. This has to be taken in the context of verse 16 of chapter 3, which says, “By this we know love, that he [meaning Jesus] laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” One could take this to the extreme by saying we are required literally to die for others. That is not what that verse means. There may be a point where would be necessary. What it means is that our self-interest is laid down for the interest of someone else. We must be willing to sacrifice all for others.
John is saying that God knows if that is our true intention. God knows if we would lay down self-interest for someone else’s benefit.
If we are doing what we can, and if our motives are pure, we have no reason to condemn ourselves. Sometimes the devil will come up and tap us on the shoulder and say, “Hey buddy, you aren’t doing enough. God isn’t pleased with what you are doing.” He tries to throw guilt on us that is not necessary.
At the same time, we must be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, because it is possible that we are not doing all we can. If our heart doesn’t condemn us we don’t have to fear.
We can’t expect God to bless us if we aren’t obeying him.
The commands of the Bible are clear. We are to obey God. It’s not an issue of being saved by what we do. It is a matter of God’s love being so evident in our lives that we can’t help but obey him.
We have seen that the demonstration of God’s love in our life is shown in our true love for others. We cannot claim to love God if we do not love others. Later in this letter we read, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
How can we expect God to bless us if we are in open rebellion against his will? We cannot expect God to answer our prayers or bless us if we have hard feeling against someone else.
Several years ago during an evangelistic campaign, an evangelist preached on the Christian home. After the service, a man went to the evangelist and told him about his wayward son for whom he had been praying for several years. The evangelist asked the man if there was any conflict between him and anyone else. The man indicated that there was a problem with a certain individual. The evangelist told him to go and make it right. The man resolved the problem with the other person, and the son was saved before the end of the campaign.
We cannot possibly expect God to bless our lives while we are not following his will. This is not only true on an individual level. It has consequences on the group level.
One thing that we have done in recent times is divorcing the individual from the body. We take the Bible and make it apply only to the individual. There are parts of the Bible that specifically address areas of individual concern, but much of the Bible applies to the group life of the Church.
John states in verses 21 and 22, “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”
Some translations of the Bible incorrectly translate it, “If our hearts [plural] do not condemn us.” This is wrong. It is singular. It is referring to the heart of the Church Body. We collectively have a heart.
I once heard someone say, “We are saved corporately, as well as individually.” At first I didn’t agree with that, but now I see that is true. We are accountable to the Lord as individuals as well as a Church. We must individually follow the commandments of God. We must as a group follow the commandments of God.
How can we expect God to bless us as a group if we are not following his will for us? His will is that we follow his commandments and do what pleases him.
The question arises, “What are the commandments of God?” It is really one command that has two aspects. Verse 23 says, “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” When I read this, I think of the Great Commandment, given in Matthew 22:37-40, “You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
How do we show love as a group? We show love by our faithfulness out of a heart of love. We show love by being faithful with such things as our time and money. We don’t come to church out of duty or social obligation. It’s not a habit or ritual Those would be wrong motives. It’s not drudgery that we come to church. It’s not out of mere obligation or duty that we give our tithes and offerings. Those things should flow from a heart of love.
As a group our actions demonstrate our true love for God. It is through the Church we can maximize our resources to bring the gospel to people. Our demonstration of love in the group sense is how much we are able to bridge the gap between the unchurched and the Church.
The Spirit shows if Christ is in us.
All this raises the question, “How do we know that we are following God’s will?” Verse 24 provides the answer, “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”
The proof that Christ is in us and us in him is that he gives us the Spirit. I believe that we know whether or not we are following the will of God. If we are honest with ourselves, we know if we truly have the Holy Spirit.
John offers us the true test of whether or not we are abiding in Christ and he in us. It is simply keeping his commands.
Again we look at verse 23, “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us.”
It is not enough to just believe in Jesus. It is not enough to love others. They are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have a coin with out heads and tails. You can’t abide in Christ with out believing in who he is. When John says that we are to “believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ” is more than to believe that his name is Jesus. There are all kinds of people that believe there was a man named Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God. John is saying that we must believe in who he is. We must believe that he is the Son of God. We must believe he is the Son of God. We must believe that he came to save us. We must believe the claims that he made. C. S. Lewis, the great 20th century Christian thinker said that when we look at the claims of Jesus, we must either believe that he is the Son of God or we must believe that he was a lunatic.
The other side of the coin is our love for others. We can sit around all day talking about how much we love Jesus, but we have to put our words into action. We have to demonstrate our love for him. We have to support his ministry to reach the lost.
John says that when we do these, believe in who he is and love others, he abides in us and we in him. The Holy Spirit gives witness to this.
Call to Action
The old song goes, “Love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. This I tell you brother, you can’t have one without the other.” I say to you today that we can’t abide in Christ nor he in us without believing in him and loving others. This is a Cross-style life.
One who claims to believe in Christ and doesn’t show love is not really in Christ. Likewise, there are tons of people who love others, and would do anything to help people, that don’t believe in Jesus. They are not abiding in Christ either.
You can’t have one without the other. Do you truly believe that Jesus is who he says he is? Do you believe he is the Son of God who came to offer salvation?
On the other side of the coin, do you love others? Jesus has commanded us to love others. Do you demonstrate your love for Christ by loving others?
I have worked in “Christian” environments and secular environments. It troubles me greatly that some people who don’t care two bits about Jesus show more love and concern for others than some so-called Christians.
God calls us to do both. We are to claim Christ. We are to demonstrate that our claim is real.
Is it real for you, today?
