SACRIFICIAL LOVE (3:10-24)

As we’ve previously seen, John has three tests of the genuineness of anyone’s claim to know God and be in fellowship with Him.  Do they believe Jesus Christ is the light of the world, the Son of God come in the flesh?  Are they disciples - do they keep His commandments?  And do they manifest the love of God?  Using the Graeco-Roman rhetorical method of repeating and amplifying his themes, he comes back to these three themes time and time again.

It is as if he is taking us up a spiral staircase, with three different views around it: one theme is about the Person of Christ, a second theme is about obedient discipleship and practicing righteousness, and the third is about love. As we continue up the staircase, we see each view repeatedly, but from a higher viewpoint: we see further. The revelation goes deeper. His aim is that from the top of the tower, we will be in that joyful fellowship with the Father and the Son, which he spoke of as his aim for his readers.

This section (1 Jn 3:10-23) is John’s second tranche of teaching about love.  In the first (1 Jn 2:8-11), he had described love as the natural result of obeying Christ’s commands, linking it to Jesus’s command at the last supper, to ‘love one another as I have loved you’.  He had emphasised that it wasn’t something new, but of the essence of the gospel from the beginning.  It was a hallmark of the new birth.

He will develop this theme even more in his third tranche (1 Jn 4:7-21) where he sets our Christian agape in the context of God’s loving plan of salvation, giving His only-begotten Son to enable us to dwell in intimate, unhindered, loving fellowship with Him.

OUR SPIRITUAL GENES WILL SHOW IN HUMBLE LOVE

‘Now we are children of God; and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him’ (1 Jn 3:2).  John continues his theme about the seed of God within us.  Though the world doesn’t recognise us yet, our spiritual genes do manifest themselves even in this life.  Holiness - practical discipleship out of loyalty to the Lord - is one such way.  The purpose of Christ’s coming was to destroy the devil’s lawlessness which he implanted into us at the Fall.

But holiness without love, is nothing.  Simon the Pharisee was no doubt holy, and yet he omitted the usual courtesies of a foot-bath, a kiss of welcome & some perfumed hair-oil.  Whereas the local prostitute, whose sins were many, was forgiven everything because she loved much: she washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, worshipped them with a kiss, and lavished her best perfume on them (Lk 7:47).

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor 13:1-3).

Though John will go on to challenge the hypocrisy of verbal empathy without practical action, we must never forget that love starts from our spirit but manifests in our soul - our feelings, thoughts and choices - as well as our practical deeds.  Christ rebuked the church in Ephesus because though they had guarded the faith and excelled in practical service, they had lost their first love.

Love is the greatest of the Christian virtues, because unlike faith and hope it will continue throughout eternity (1 Cor 13:8).  It is the first fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22) and the practical evidence of faith (Gal 5:6).  It has been poured out by the Spirit, into every born-again heart (Rom 5:5).  It is the fulfilment of the New Covenant promise that God would write His laws - to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbour as ourselves - on our heart.  It is the love of God, flowing from Him through us out to others, but also engendering adoration and love back to Him - just as a powerful magnet will magnetise a nearby piece of iron such that it snaps together with the magnet.

This message, that we should love one another, is not some new Gnostic ‘insight’.  It is what they heard from the beginning (1 Jn 2:7-8), along with the message that God is light (1 Jn 1:5).  The whole gospel can be expressed in two phrases: ‘God is light’ and ‘God is love’.  Loving your neighbour as yourself was Moses’s summary of his law.  “Love one another as I have loved you” went a huge step further: and like all Christ’s commands, carried with it the New Covenant promise of the power to do so.

CAIN, THE ARCHETYPAL SON OF SATAN

Cain was the first human being ever born, the first child of Adam and Eve.  And yet the corruption of the Fall was already full-blown in him.  He was a son of Satan by nature; and Satan ‘was a murderer from the beginning’ (Jn 8:44).

Cain offered God a sacrifice of things he had grown, perhaps because he knew his deeds were evil and thought he could atone for them in this way.  He had been wilfully disobedient (Jude 11).  His younger brother Abel, who was a shepherd, brought the fatty portion of his firstborn lamb.  Since till then man had never killed any animals, we must assume that God had specifically told him to do so and that he had acted in obedience.  We know that his offering required faith (Heb 11:4), and that was what made it better than Cain’s.  His offering was righteous and was honoured by God: we don’t know how, perhaps by heavenly fire? Whatever, Cain was furious; and despite being warned that he was in grave danger of being eaten alive by sin, he let his anger seethe until one day he lured his brother into the fields and slaughtered him (Gen 4).

Given a God-opportunity to confess his sin, instead of doing so he arrogantly replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  He completely repudiated any responsibility to love and care for his brother.  But Abel’s blood was crying out from the soil where it had soaked in, crying for justice without grace (Heb 12:24).  The land Cain had tilled was cursed, and his relationship with his parents and with God was destroyed.  Initially he was condemned to live as a fugitive in fear of his own life, but God graciously protected him from revenge.

He went on to have children and found the first city, perhaps to ensure his own security.  But four generations later, his great-great-grandson Lamech also killed a man, repeating the tragedy.  Nevertheless Lamech’s offspring saw the start of civilisation, diversifying into sheep-herding, music-making and metal-working.  In that sense, Cain (who had murdered the first ‘shepherd of the sheep’), was the father of ‘the world’.  And he is the archetype of all persecutors down through the ages.

John draws the obvious conclusion: don’t be surprised if the world hates you, just as Cain hated Abel or the High Priest hated Jesus.  The origin of this tragedy lies in one sense in Cain’s wickedness and refusal to heed God’s warning.  But in another sense, it’s a story of religious jealousy: envying the grace of God in one’s brother’s life.  And in that sense it was very apposite to events in the life of the local churches.  Men like Diotrephes (3 Jn 9) were jealous of the grace of God in John’s life, and were seeking to cut others off from it and build their own empire.

It is also very relevant to our present-day church.  Hating and denigrating each other over secondary doctrinal issues, intellectual and spiritual pride that destroys brotherhood in Christ, is murder!  If we experience such issues amongst Christians, what wonder is it if the world hates us?!

LOVE AS GROUNDS FOR ASSURANCE & DISCERNMENT

If you've ever lived as an expat in a foreign country, you'll know how expats look out for each other to help cope with discrimination and xenophobia. We are expats in the world, with special responsibility to encourage, strengthen and pray for each other - especially when being persecuted.

It should be no surprise when the world hates us.  Jesus told us that the world would hate us just as it did Him (Jn 15:18,19; 16:1ff).  John’s readers faced intense persecution from Domitian, but “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my mistake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you" (Mt 5:11, 12).  Reproach for the name of Christ is to be welcomed (1 Pet 4:12-17).

In such circumstances, where mere association with other Christians was taken as proof of disloyalty to the Emperor, the presence within them of a hunger for fellowship and a compassion for those suffering persecution, was proof that they had been ‘beamed up’ from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light.  They could know for a fact (oidamen) that they had passed from death to life.  It was the life of Christ within them that had ‘shed the love of God abroad in their hearts’, and which was overflowing in love for each other (Rom 5:5-11).  Their delight in having fellowship together showed they were precious to the Lord (Mal 3:16,17).

Just as irrational anger and hatred tell us that someone's reaction is being driven by the Devil, finding that we can forgive the unforgiveable tells us that we have passed from death to life. When Corrie Ten Boom forgave and shook hands with a German guard from the concentration camp where her sister had died, she was overwhelmed by grace. Realising that we are growing in grace - becoming slower to anger, less irritable and bad-tempered, forgiving more easily and swiftly, repaying blessing for cursing - becomes a ground of assurance for us. We are being changed into His likeness!

Any unforgiveness in our hearts blocks our fellowship with the Father and His Son. The Spirit of grace is grieved when our anger turns into mental vendetta. That’s why Jesus tells us we should always check our hearts before praying, if we want to be heard (Mk 11:25,26).

Some of the secessionists had left without rancour. Of them, John says that those who do not love the brethren ‘abide in death’ - they never had eternal life.  But others left with anger; and John says they’re like Cain, murderers at heart.  (In the circumstances this might well have been literally true, if they had betrayed the true believers to the Roman authorities).  The believers could know for a fact that such folk did not have eternal life.  All their claims of superior fellowship with God were completely false!

But a question arises: how do we know that our love is genuine Christian agape love (the word John uses throughout) and not just philadelphia, the much commoner word used in Greek for tender affection?

CHRIST - THE EXEMPLAR OF AGAPE LOVE

Christ loved us to the furthest extent that human love can reach. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends'. And yet His love went even further, in that 'while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us'. He even washed Judas's feet, and shielded him from the others' wrath.

Having loved His disciples despite their worldliness, He loved them 'to the uttermost' (Jn 13:1).  Christ demonstrated to us the epitome of 'perfect agape': love which stoops to conquer. His perfect love, loves us into perfection. His humble desire to wash our feet, loves us into the humility of continuous confession, continuous acceptance of His grace. His perfect love washes away our pride, and commands us to serve one another, to wash each others' feet.

By this we know agape love.  Where John has previously used oidamen (we know for a fact) now he uses ginosko (we perceive, KJV).  And he uses the perfect tense. So perhaps we could read it as ‘we have come to experience the reality of’ agape.  When I first met Jesus, the experience of being fully known and yet loved, was quite overwhelming.  May that reality never be displaced by dry intellectual knowledge of the facts of the crucifixion.  To know ourselves forgiven much, is to love much.  Continual confession keeps the awareness of our need for grace fresh.

“In the cross of Christ we catch, focussed in one vivid moment, the eternal quality of creative life” (R.E.O.White).  The event is just the momentary illumination of the eternal truth, that God is love, and that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for you and for me.  The incredible generosity of the love of God is continuous.  “Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!”

If we are to be like Him in this world, sacrificially generous love should be present in our lives as it was in Christ’s life.  We should be laying down our lives for our brethren.

PRACTICING AGAPE GENEROSITY CAN BE A STRUGGLE

These verses (1 Jn 3:17-22) have long been seen as extremely difficult.  They could perhaps be read as indicating that we can buy right standing with God, through our giving: the Jewish doctrine of alms-giving.  But the context makes their meaning clear, if we recognise that they are referring to a condition of the heart, not the conscience (as some paraphrases have it).

Bringing us down to earth with a bump, John gives a very specific, personal example.  If we have the material ‘means of life’ ourselves, and we see our brother in need but don’t try to help in practical ways, how can we claim that the agape which is characteristic of God, and which was supremely manifest at the cross, dwells in us?

“If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled’, but do not give them the things that are needed for the body, what does it profit?.. Faith without works is dead.” (Jas 2:15-17)

Such love in word but not deed, is not genuine agape.  And yet how often do we casually say, “I’ll be praying for you”, without thinking whether we can help practically?

We may well be asking, like the scribe did, “But who is my neighbour?”  To which Jesus’s response was the parable of the good Samaritan.  Seeing the need, and having the means, makes us neighbours no matter how great the cultural divide.

John may have been thinking of what Moses taught: "if anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land of the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards them. Rather, be open-handed and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbour this wicked thought: "The seventh year, the year for cancelling debts, is year", so that you do not show ill will towards the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin.”

Agape love, and a calculating meanness of spirit, cannot co-exist.  So far, so good.  But how are we to see verses 19-24?  Are they a digression about assurance in prayer, or are they an integral part of the flow of John’s thought?

SACRIFICIAL CHARITY’S EFFECT ON OUR PRAYER LIFE (vs 19-24)

This is one of the more difficult passages in scripture as far as translation goes, and paraphrases vary significantly.

At first sight it seems to be about how to reassure ourselves if our faith is being called into question by others, or our own conscience is uneasy:

• We are practicing sacrificial love

• God knows our hearts better than we do

• Our prayers are being answered

• We are keeping His commandments, especially in believing in Jesus

Our conscience is one aspect of our spirit. Like a compass, it will automatically align with God’s Spirit, and point us in the right direction. When we choose to go off piste, we struggle to shut down its persistent alarm bells. Of course on many occasions doubts come from ‘the Accuser of the brethren’, Satan. If we don’t hold on to the truth of Christ’s atoning death for us, he can bring us to despair and even to the brink of suicide.

Dealing with doubt must be done in His Presence. David prays, ‘Search me O God, try my heart; see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting’ (Ps 139). Paul says that he holds others’ judgement of him lightly, and doesn’t even rely on his own conscience (1 Co 4:3,4), knowing that only the Lord judges perfectly. Peter, having learnt that his cocky boasts of loyalty were hollow, ultimately appeals to Jesus’s knowledge of his heart: ‘Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You!’

When we know that we have sinned, if we confess and repent we can rely on our great High Priest and Advocate in heaven. Jesus Himself will appeal to the Father as our propitiation. But while we hide our sin, pretending it doesn’t matter or denying it, ‘our bones burn within us’ and our health suffers (Ps 39).

BUT this reading of the passage has various problems:

- It ignores the fact that it's clearly linked to its context: ‘By this we know'

- Nowhere else is the word ‘heart’ translated as ‘conscience’

- The Greek for ‘assure’, really means ‘persuade’: it’s not about easing our conscience

There is another way of interpreting the passage, which I think makes more sense. John has previously talked about ‘shutting up our hearts’ against someone needy. And Moses spoke about seeing a fellow-Israelite needing help, but not wanting to lend him anything because the Year of Jubilee (when all debts are cancelled) was just around the corner (Deut 15:7-11). He called this 'hardening your heart' and 'shutting your hand', and warns that it is sin. Our hearts should not be grieved by giving, because God will bless every aspect of our lives in return: ‘pressed down, heaped up, and running over’.

When seen in this context, an alternative paraphrase might be ...
“When we experience situations like this, we know experientially that Christ’s truth has entered our heart, and will be able to persuade our hearts to be generous by His standards. For though our natural meanness of heart would condemn us, God’s character is far more gracious, and He knows exactly why that person is needy.
 If our stingy-ness has been changed by God’s generosity, we pray with confidence in God’s willingness to give us whatever we ask. Because we live in line with His character, what we do delights Him. He loves to see us putting our belief in Christ into practice, by loving one anther.
 This keeping His commands, or walking by His Spirit, is the essence of what indwelling means: you are in living union with Him, and He with you. We know the reality of this, every time we experience the Spirit prompting us from within.”

In other words, Spirit-led generosity is a form of fellowship with the Father and the Son!