The Imperative of Love
1 John 4:7 – 5:5
The Letters of John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Max A Forsythe
Introduction: One of my Christian
friends once asked me why I thought the practice and understanding of the faith
once given to the saints was at such low ebb in our time. I have to be careful
with a loaded question like that. I do try very hard in the public sector to be
as respectful as possible of the various faithful and unfaithful denominations
of the Christian Church. However, that
charity is not always returned, and those of us who are reformed in thought
find few clergy friends outside the usual suspects, so to speak. In several places within the Presbytery – we
have found true friends only here and there and it certainly helps our
scattered pastors to find like minded gentlemen: other pastors with whom one
does not have to weigh every comment before saying anything at all!
In the secular area as well, it is difficult to
find close friends who become soul mates – people with whom you can truly relax
and be yourself. Over the twenty-five
years I spent in public service, there were only a handful of other teachers
and staff with whom I had this close relationship. Students were another matter, each year – I
could connect with five to ten, simply because there were so many more of them
around. Just a few years ago, one young
lady told me that I was the first adult outside of her church who she felt
comfortable talking with – since we shared the same world view.
Of course, it is not just enough to let these
relationships happen, we need to be outgoing and always seeking those with whom
we can share the closest secret of our lives – our relationship with God in
Christ. In the Gospel of Luke 6: 32, Jesus charges us: “If you love those who love you, what benefit is
that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to
you, what benefit is that to you? For
even sinners do the same.”
I used to teach a three week course on the meaning
of the word “love”. In that course, I
would go through the several models of understanding that essential word. There were the philosophical, biological,
psychological, literary and Christian understandings. The psychological model goes a long way to
explain where we are as a culture in our day.
In fact – the scripture verse just cited from Luke demonstrates the all
too common focus on self-esteem that leads one to only love those who love
you! Self-centeredness is in and it is
part of the natural common condition of all mankind. The premise and promise of the Christian
model is to get people to look outside of themselves and just as our God has
done toward us, we too must learn to love the unlovely! That is an increasing hard sell in our
contemporary culture.
Development: For years I had to
endure the ongoing torture of teaching English language and literature as a
foreign tongue to today’s amoral generation. The essential problem in doing that
was to patiently demonstrate for more than six months that words have meaning. Then going on to declare that meaning imposes
an obligation to understand and finally there is an imperative to practice that
meaning in one’s life! I was very
pleased on a final exam one
May to notice that two of my regular critics noted: that after all of the
arguments - rantings and ravings they had regularly heaped out all year long: the most important thing they had learned in one
year of my "English as a foreign language" class, was the fact that
words had meaning and meaning had
implications! Thank you Lord for blessing those students with that bit
of hard won wisdom and for such unlikely candidates!
Some of you chuckled quietly last week when I
observed that some of our own grades on the three test questions in our series
on 1 John may be below "C" level and perhaps even a dismal D-. Yes,
very, many Christians can articulate the correct answers and habits required in
the social, moral and doctrinal questions raised by the Apostle John. However, how well prepared are each of you to
include the three contexts in a wholesome lifestyle pleasing to God? Yes, as I
joked last week, it is good to get a D- in salvation. You can get home to heaven with just such a grade
card! But how pleased will your Father in heaven be with such a minimal grade?
The issue before us today in these verses is the relationship between the three
test questions. And what you should be concerned with is how to excel at demonstrating
these characteristics in your lifestyle.
John R.W. Stott, the commentator whose outline I am
following, divides our text into three parts. Briefly, verses
Okay, let's wade into the first division of our
text in verses
The second occurrence is in verse eleven where it
is shown as a duty. "We also ought to love one another". Now
that word "ought"
is an unpopular word in our day. The critics once panned a popular book entitled
The Way Things Ought to Be as archaic conservativism! Now, I am willing to
guess that the author of that book is basing his premise on the charitable agape
type of love which Western Civilization used to encourage. And doing what one ought to do is a mark of
being civilized! It is a lesson that the western culture is fast forgetting. One
young lady once asked me what it meant to be civilized. I looked at her and suggested that not
burning her neck on motorcycle exhaust pipes might be a step in that direction!
The next day she wore a turtle neck and I complimented her on appearing to be
civilized! Yes, we all know what we
ought to do. Just doing it is another
thing!
The third example here demonstrates John's
hypothesis in verse twelve. There's a word that you can just barely remember
from school? "Hypothesis” in Webster's
definition means “the formulation of a natural
principle based on inference from observed data”. So what principle does John describe here?
"If we love one another, God lives in us and his love are
made complete in us." What if we
don't love one another? What is the terrible implication of that
suggestion? It is quite simply this: if
we can’t love those whom we can see, then we don't love God our Father in
heaven. The obverse side of that coin is
this: if we love the Father, we must
also love each other to prove God's presence in our lives!
So now we come to the second division in our text for
today (verses thirteen to twenty-one. The synthesis of the social and doctrinal
issue in our daily living! As you look over those words, the doctrine there is carefully
declared. John makes two points in this section. Verses thirteen to sixteen
declare that we have the gift of the Holy Spirit. God Himself has come into our
hearts. And by His presence, we are able to declare the correct doctrine that Jesus
is the Son of God. So, even if we are
struggling to love one another, we should take encouragement that God is in us
and we are in Him.
So, there is hope, and if you have ever struggled to
love another fellow Christian, that is the Spirit of God contending with your
own spirit. Oh, you mean a lot of that heartache that I have experienced over
the years can be profitable? Yes, “no pain, no gain”
as the popular proverb goes. Only, here it is spiritual aches and growing pains
preparing us for heaven.
Verses seventeen to twenty-one encourage us by
showing us that “in
this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the
Day of Judgment." I sincerely hope that all of you have at
least a "D-” in salvation. And if you realize that in the context of the
questions we have been studying then any leftover worldly fear of dying has
been forever put away! Are any of you
afraid to die? If you are, then you need to perfect your understanding of God's
love for yourself.
You see, left to your own some, you would not love
God. Very many in the world remain
self-centered and humanistic because God has not come into their hearts. How
can we tell if we are too worldly still? Look carefully at the ending of this
section. "Who do you love?" the world would ask. A much more
important question is "Who loves you?" Can you demonstrate the presence of God's
love in your life?
Finally we come to the third section in our text for
today. In the first five verses of chapter five, John summarizes what he has
been about. Like an old joke I heard about a fundamentalist preacher who when asked about his preaching style answered: First I tells
them what I'm going to tell them. Second I go ahead and tell them clearly. And
Third I close by telling them what I told them! This has been my habit
in public school for seventeen years. Whenever we began a new instructional
unit, I would hand out a list of seven goals.
Then we went through multiple pages of lecture notes outlining the
content for those seven goals. Finally,
the students received a seven section test over those very same goals. In that last step, I hoped that my students
could tell me what I told them. John too
uses this method in this letter.
John begins the heart of his letter by telling us the
three questions he is going to ask in chapter two. Then in chapter three he goes
into the moral and doctrinal area. In
chapter four he covers doctrinal and social questions. Finally in this first
part of chapter five he brings the three together again. What he is at great
pains to show is the essential unity of his threefold thesis? The moral, social and doctrinal aspects of
the Christian faith are inseparable. And
how are we to pull this sanctified lifestyle together? How are we to demonstrate faith, obedience
and love?
Conclusion:
Well, we can all pretty much agree that we ought to
love God. We also ought to love His Son: Jesus Christ. What about God's other
children? Huh, you say, what other children? Why you and you and you and all of
those who publicly claim to be born again! You see, just like Jesus who was a
natural Son of God, we have all been adopted into the Holy family.
Now, how do we show that we love each other? Look
at verse two. We show our love of God by
obeying His commands. John promises us that His command to love one another is
not burdensome. And further, if, as we grow in grace and sanctification, we
better demonstrate the love of God in our lives we will see more and more
victory as our God given faith overcomes the world in us and around us.
Finally, John closes this section with the
observation of who is an overcomer! Recently, I had occasion to look over a tax
guide who helps auditors and accountants to determine who is an employee and
who is a contractor. There are twenty
IRS questions on the subject, and if any one of them is answered in the
affirmative, then the person in question is an employee. The text before us it not so time consuming
and complex: just look at verse five for
the answer to who belongs to Christ: "He who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."
May you all learn to affirm that grace in your heart, with your mouth and in
your lives as well? Amen.
Resources Used: Barnes, Peter. Welwyn Commentary
Series: Knowing Where We Stand.
Stott, John. Tyndale New
Testament Commentaries: Epistles of John.
Good News Publishers. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.
Copyright (C) 2002 Christ Covenant REFORMED (Presbyterian
Church in
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