The Mark of the Christian
Introduction: Someone has likened the First Epistle of John to a spiral staircase in that the Apostle keeps returning to the same three topics—love, obedience, and truth—only each time he picks up one of those themes he takes it to a higher level. In our last message the moral test of the believer’s faith (are we obedient?) was predominant, but it ended with a transition to the social test in verse 10: “Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” From that point to the end of the chapter, we are confronted for the second time with the social test (do we love one another?). Only this time John speaks much more forcefully and practically, leaving no escape from the fact that love is the sine qua non of the believer’s life; that is a Latin term which means simply that it is the thing without which there is no life.
Rarely does one find such a clear introduction of a Biblical author’s theme as we find in the first verse of today’s text: “This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.” That theme is developed carefully, beginning with the fact that …
Love is the original commandment of God. (11-13)
Love is not a theme thought up by the Apostle ; it is not even a new concept introduced by Jesus Christ, though He certainly lived it and demonstrated it to an extent no one ever had before. Rather love as a commandment from God for His children goes all the way back to the beginning. In fact, we can go back to the very first family of human beings to find an illustration of what happens when people refuse God’s commandment to love one another.
Cain violated that commandment. Verse 12: “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.” All of us are somewhat familiar with the story of Cain and Abel. They were brothers who brought sacrifices to God. Cain was not an atheist; he was a worshiper. But he was not a true worshiper, for John says he belonged to the evil one. There are many who worship today and some even bring costly sacrifices, but that is not proof that they belong to God. Cain’s sacrifice was refused while Abel’s was accepted, and there are two possible reasons. One is that Cain did not bring the kind of sacrifice he had been instructed to bring; the other is that he did not bring it with the right attitude. I’m inclined to think that the latter is more to the point. Abel brought his in faith, according to Heb. 11:4. Cain’s motivation was different, perhaps pride.
At any rate, Cain slew his brother (he cut his throat or butchered him, according to the original language). Was it because his brother was a great sinner and deserved to be slain? On the contrary, it was because his brother was righteous and his own deeds were evil. In other words, the ultimate act of murder grew out of a more basic heart attitude, an attitude of jealousy and hatred. The connection between hatred and murder will become important in a few verses.
Our text then goes on to indicate that Cain was not the only one who violated God’s commandment to love.
The world violates that commandment all the time. Verse 13: “Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.” Cain is the prototype of this world. It is therefore only to be expected that the spiritual progeny of Cain would continue to hate and persecute the spiritual progeny of Abel. Jesus said as much in John 15, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” Just as Abel’s righteousness revealed Cain’s sin, so Christ shows up the world’s true nature. When the world comes face to face with reality and truth, it can make only one of two decisions: repent or destroy the one who is exposing it. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if the world hates us. In fact, we might go so far as to conclude that if the world finds nothing to hate in us, it is more likely than not that the world sees little of God’s work in our lives.
Now having affirmed that love is the original commandment of God and having shown extreme negative examples of what results when hatred and murder are practiced instead of love, the Apostle now turns to the fact that …
Love is the proof of spiritual life. (14,15)
Or, to put it another way,
Love is a necessary (though insufficient) condition for salvation. Verse 14: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.” Passing from death to life is simply a poetic way to describe personal salvation. We are all stillborn spiritually speaking. But when a person places his faith in Jesus Christ he is born again from above and inherits eternal life. How do we know whether that supernatural rebirth has happened to us? How can we be sure? After all, true believers don’t glow in the dark, not literally at least. They don’t have a distinct blood type. They don’t all speak with a holy voice. How can we know? Some would say, that’s easy, just check the church rolls and see who has been baptized or confirmed. Others would say the key is to give them a doctrinal exam. One of the ways we frequently use to determine who is and who isn’t is to listen to testimonies; if we hear the right jargon, we conclude the person is saved.
But the principal criterion offered in the Book is this: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.” And my study of logic tells me that the obverse of that is true as well. “We know that we have not passed from death to life if we do not love our brothers.”
However, I have noted for you an important point, namely that while this is a necessary condition for salvation, it is not a sufficient condition. In other words, if you show me a person who loves his fellowman, it is not necessarily the case that you are showing me a believer. Let me use an illustration. I might say that clean air is a necessary condition for human life to prosper on this planet, and most everyone would agree. But clean air is not sufficient for life to prosper. You could put someone in a room and give him all the clean air he could handle, but if you don’t also provide food and water and an appropriate temperature, that person will die. By the same token, simply demonstrating love is not sufficient proof that one is a Christian. Even today’s text indicates in verse 23 that one must also believe in the name of the Son. But one thing you can be sure of: if there is no love, there is no life.
Now the second point John makes in establishing that love is the proof of spiritual life is that …
Hatred is incompatible with eternal life. Verse 15 goes on, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” John is using a syllogism of sorts here. The two premises are: One who hates his brother is a murderer, and a murderer does not have eternal life abiding in him. The obvious, though unexpressed conclusion, then, is that by the same token one who hates his brother does not have eternal life abiding in him.
The notion that hatred is really murder goes back to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus argued with the traditional understanding of the fifth commandment: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.” The reason why the hater is equated with the murderer is that when we hate we are in effect wishing that other person dead.
The last part of verse 15, however, is much more difficult, and I confess I don’t know exactly what to do with it. I find it hard to accept at face value that no murderer is saved since it seems David was a child of God both before and after he committed murder. Furthermore, Jesus prayed on the cross for his own murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Some commentators have tried to avoid the problem by emphasizing the word “abiding” in the original, which the NIV leaves out entirely, “No murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” In other words, one cannot be saved while exercising a heart of hatred or murder, but a former murderer could be saved.
But perhaps more help can be gained if we remind ourselves that throughout chapter 3 John is concerned with the habits of life that a believer develops. Occasional incidents of anger do not nullify the principle. If anything, they prove it, because a believer who has hate in his heart is an absolutely miserable person. His feelings make clear to him that something is wrong. At the very least it seems to me John is saying that a heart of hatred is inconsistent and incompatible with a claim of eternal life. If that is true, I think it is appropriate that we stop here for a moment. Is there someone you literally hate? You have no use for that person and would feel no sense of loss, perhaps even a sense of satisfaction, if they were to die?
Let me narrow the question a bit: is there someone in the body of Christ about whom you feel that way? I recently heard a professing Christian say regarding Jim Bakker, “I’m glad he got 45 years; it’s too bad they didn’t string him up.” Is that any attitude for us to have toward another person, much less one who claims to be a believer? Now don’t misunderstand me; I believe Jim Bakker deserves to be rebuked and even disciplined, but not hated.
Let’s narrow it even further: is there someone in this church toward whom you feel hatred? Several times recently I have had conversations with individuals who have told me that there were other people in this family who wouldn’t speak to them. They felt rejected and in at least one case felt as though they had to step out of a particular ministry because of the attitude of some other Christian. Now I don’t know if such attitudes qualify biblically as hatred, but it sure looks like it! This text is saying that such an attitude, if not impossible for a Christian, is certainly at least completely out of place for a Christian. Friends, these things ought not so to be.
I rather suspect there are some individuals listening to me this very moment who have some important spiritual business to conduct with God on this matter and then with their fellow-believers. If you don’t, you’re going to find that hatred is a vicious circle. The longer you live with it the harder it is to get over it. It will affect your family, your work, your relationship with God and all your other relationships.
The first fact we noted today is that love is the original commandment of God, and second, that love is the proof of spiritual life. Now third, …
Love is the example of Christ lived out in our lives.
The example of Christ defines love. Verse 16: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” One can give all kinds of elaborate and profound definitions of love. I Corinthians 13 does a marvelous job defining love in 12 or 14 different ways. But the bottom line is self-sacrifice. If you want to see love in action, look at Jesus who gave His life for His enemies. Just as to take a person’s life is the greatest sin we can commit against him, so to give one’s own life on another’s behalf is the greatest possible expression of love. But Jesus’ example is not given just to be admired; it is to be imitated.
The example of Christ is to be imitated. Verse 16 goes on, “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” The fact is that very few of us will probably be called upon to give our lives for our fellow-believers, but it was not an uncommon thing in the early church. Frequent were those times when Christians were threatened with death if they refused to testify against a fellow-Christian. To the Apostle John martyrdom was a far more acceptable fate than unfaithfulness and lack of love. But while we may not be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice, each of us is called upon to exercise self-sacrifice for our brothers. Verse 17 shows how.
The example of Christ is to be applied very practically. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” What this verse adds to the discussion is that a person need not even hate his brother to be guilty of sin. All he has to do is to ignore him, or be indifferent toward his needs. Did you notice the transition from plural (brothers) to singular (brother) between verses 16 and 17? The Apostle knows that it is easier to be enthusiastic about Humanity with a capital “H” than it is to love individual men and women. Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular.
All of us know, of course, that we live in a world where the needs are unlimited and our resources are limited. Is John saying that so long as there is one human being more needy than we are, we are obligated to give to that person? Please keep in mind what this verse actually says. First, the need must be seen. I would interpret that to mean more than a passing glance or a vague awareness. I think he is speaking of needs that God specifically brings across our path, needs that stare us in the face.
It is not our failure to feed the famine-ridden peoples of Sudan that will bring judgment upon us (though I certainly am not opposed to doing something to help), but rather our failure to have pity and to reach out to one in our midst who is needy or one whose predicament is drawn to our attention. You may argue, “But here in West County there is no hunger problem.” That’s probably true, but there are people in our church who don’t know where their next rent check is coming from, and there are many more to whom World Impact, one of our mission organizations, ministers on a regular basis. Secondly, one must have resources to help. It’s the one who has this world’s goods but holds tightly to them and refuses to share except with his family and his closest friends who is here condemned.
We cannot leave this topic without commenting on the summary in verse 18: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” Protestations of love are not enough. Actions speak louder than words. Love is neither sentiment nor talk; in fact, it is not even prayer-talk; it is action. This was brought home to me in a stark way through Gary Jost’s brief but serious illness. Three weeks ago tomorrow I spoke to Gary on the phone and told him I loved him. I meant it. But that night one of our elders left home at midnight and drove seven hours to Fort Wayne to spend three days caring for Gary and staying up with him through the night. It cost me nothing except a phone call to say, “I love you.” It cost a lot to drive there and show him love.
Also please don’t overlook the fact that love must be with actions and in truth, according to verse 18. This is important in view of the fact that we have an enormous capacity to use the word “love” for actions that are self-motivated or even lustful. Take, for example, a young couple convinced they are in love, who begin to live together or maybe just sleep together. Well, that may on the surface qualify as “love in action,” but there is no way it can qualify as “love in truth,” for it violates God’s clear commandment. The truly loving thing for them to do is to respect one another’s personhood and to wait until such time as they are irrevocably committed to one another.
Now I could focus exclusively this morning on our obligation to love and could emphasize our frequent failure to do it, but I want to encourage you as well. I thought I would read a couple of letters I have received just in the past few weeks that indicate how this church has shown love. (Note: I failed to attach these letters to this sermon).
When I read letters like that, I want to say with the Apostle Paul in 2 Thes. 1:3: “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.”
Finally, this morning, let’s notice that …
Love is the answer to doubt. (18-24)
You will remember that we said at the very beginning of our study of I John that perhaps its most dominant theme is Christian assurance. Again and again the Apostle comes back to the basic human need of assurance and confidence before God. Here in verses 18ff he indicates that however firmly grounded a Christian may be, his heart may sometimes need reassurance. “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us.”
Our typical approach to doubt, as we noted several weeks ago, is to take people back to the Bible and show them what God says. John would do more. He would have us examine our lives. He claims there is a legitimate experiential basis for assurance of salvation. If you find your heart condemning you, go back to the Book, but also look back at the evidence of genuine love in your life. The self-sacrifice you have practiced is evidence that the Holy Spirit indwells you and is doing His work. I conclude from this that …
A life of love results in assurance of salvation. By the same token a life of hatred is inevitably a life filled with doubt concerning God’s love and God’s goodness. Look at the last part of verse 20: “For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” That can be interpreted in either a terrifying way or a reassuring way, and I happen to think the latter is intended. John is painting a picture of a spiritual drama in which there are three participants. It is a kind of trial, with our heart as the accuser, ourselves as the defendant, and God as the judge. Our conscience is by no means infallible; its condemnation may often be unjust. We can, therefore, appeal from our conscience to God who is greater and more knowledgeable. Indeed, He knows all things, including our secret motives and deepest resolves, and, it is implied, will be more merciful towards us than our own heart. His omniscience should relieve, not terrify us, if we know we have practiced sincere love for our brothers.
A life of love also results in answered prayer. Verse 21: “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” The one who practices love for his brothers finds peace for his condemning heart, and when the conscience is clear prayers are answered. Of course, there are other conditions for answered prayer offered in the Bible, such as asking according to His will, asking in faith, coming to God with a forgiving spirit, and praying in Christ’s name.
But the key point I think we need to learn here is that some unanswered prayer may be traced directly to hatred or a lack of love in our lives. This is so crucial that I would say this: if you have been struggling with some area of your life and God has not responded to your petitions about that area, you should examine your heart and ask, “Is there a fellow-believer whom I hate or whose need I have ignored?” Perhaps when that matter is taken care of God will answer your prayer.
A life of love results in Christ being “at home” in the believer’s heart. Verse 24: “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.” The commands we must obey are spelled out in the previous verse: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another. The verb “to believe” is in a tense which speaks of once-for-all action. The verb “to love one another” is a present tense indicating continual action. That is the constant picture we get in the Scriptures. One believes or places his trust in Jesus at a particular time, but then the living out of that faith is a day-by-day experience.
Note, too, that the Christian life depends upon both right belief and right conduct. There is no such thing as Christian theology without a Christian ethic, nor is there any such thing as a Christian ethic without a Christian theology.
If obedience to these two commands is evidenced in our lives, there will be no question about the mutual abiding relationship between the believer, His Lord, and the Holy Spirit. Doubts will disappear and confidence will take their place as the second and third persons of the Trinity find themselves at home in our lives.
Conclusion: I believe it was Charlie Brown who said, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.” The Apostle John won’t accept that; in fact, he argues that even our claim to love people is empty if we aren’t willing to sacrifice ourselves, our possessions, our time, and our energy for them. C. S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters, a fictional account of the correspondence between a senior demon named Screwtape and his junior demon protege named Wormwood. Screwtape is coaching his apprentice with practical advice in how to undermine the faith of a new Christian. Listen to his insight:
“It remains to consider how we can retrieve this disaster (namely the conversion of a certain person). The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilizing the seeds which the enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition, but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will
be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”[i]
We each have a choice today. We can go on talking about love or we can act. Jesus acted and that’s why we have the choice.
Some of us feel much more secure with doctrinal criteria: does the person believe in the deity of Christ, the Virgin birth, the authority of Scripture, the Trinity, the Second Coming, etc.? And there certainly are doctrinal criteria for salvation—we have already been confronted with the doctrinal test in chapter 2, where we learned that the one who denies that Jesus is the God-man is not only not a Christian but is actually an anti-Christ. But the problem with doctrinal criteria is that there’s no observable way to distinguish between merely intellectual beliefs and personalized beliefs. Many affirm the truths of Christianity, but those truths seem to make absolutely no difference in the way they live.
We can, however, with a much higher level of accuracy, discern whether a person loves his brother, and Scripture says that love is a necessary condition for salvation. If you don’t love your brother (or sister), you are not a believer.
DATE: November 12, 1989
Tags:
Love
Doubt
Assurance
[i] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast.