According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): The love we have for one another is to be expressed, not only in word, but in deed. We'll explain that next on *According to the Scriptures*.

Guest (Male): You don't have to look far in today's world to find examples of hatred, but the Christian is to stand out by their love. Today on *According to the Scriptures*, we'll be encouraged in that direction as we consider the ultimate example of love. Of course, that is Jesus. We're knee-deep in our study of 1 John. Pastor Damian Kyle opens chapter 3. Let's see now how to love like Jesus.

Damian Kyle: This morning we continue our series in 1 John, a series entitled "Authentic Fellowship with God." In this particular part of John's epistle, he instructs us that an authentic relationship with God will not only always be marked by obedience to his commandments, and he has stated that repeatedly throughout the entire letter, but he goes on here to speak about the fact that it will be equally marked by a love for our brethren, that is, for our fellow Christians.

In my mind, this particular section, as we saw last week in verses 10 through 15 and then this week verses 16 through 24, it's kind of like God the Father, Abba Father, Daddy, he takes us and calls the whole family around the dining room table for a family meeting as the members of the household of faith. This family meeting, as he calls it, he lets us know really in no uncertain terms, he lays down the law about how he wants things within his family and that we are to love one another.

I think that anybody that's ever raised any children knows that's something that if you have more than one, that that's something that is repeatedly being done in a family life, that children are exhorted to love one another, and Jesus the Lord does that here. We need to love one another as his children, and then he tells us why it has to be so. Last week in the first part of this passage, instructing us that we should love one another, the very words of John here in the passage in verses 10 through 15, we pick up the second section of it, part two of the subject in verses 16 through 24.

But here it's good to recap a little bit in terms of what we've been through already and then head into what we're learning right here so we don't forget the entire scope of this subject of love. Last week we learned first of all that along with the practice of righteousness, a love for the brethren differentiates a child of God from a child of the devil. It reveals our moral parentage. Then second, that to love the brethren is a command of God, and it's not to be dismissed or to be ignored any more than we would ignore or dismiss any other command of God.

Then third, the Apostle John presented the Old Testament personage of Cain as an example of someone who ought to have loved his brother and didn't, and the great trouble that can enter into a person's life out of a failure to obey this command of God. Then fourth, John instructed us that we're not to marvel if the world hates us because it's the same old story. It's as old as Cain and Abel, and the righteous are always persecuted by the unrighteous for simply knowing God and loving him and obeying his commandments.

Fifth, we saw that our love for our fellow Christians is evidence that we've truly been born again by the Holy Spirit. Then sixth, John equated hating a brother with murder. So now let's huddle up around that dining room table and see what the Lord continues to speak to us in this regard. In verse 16, next he tells us as Christians, John does, he reminds us that Jesus is our example regarding the love that we're to have for one another. He is the example of this.

John doesn't stop there. What specific example does John point us to in terms of the expression of Jesus's love? He laid down his life for us. You think about the love of God and the love of Jesus for us, and your mind can just go in all kinds of different directions because it's so multifaceted. He expresses it in so many ways within our lives. So John here sets our focus firmly upon Calvary, Jesus's death upon the cross, and upon the sacrificial nature of his love for us as the example that we are to follow.

Now, as an expression and demonstration of this, that Jesus loves this family that we are a part of and this household of faith, John reminds us that he loved it sacrificially. Now, verse 16 isn't half of a verse. It's a whole verse. It's not just one sentence; it's made up of two sentences in which John tells us that in the light of the greatness of the sacrifice that Jesus made for each of us personally as Christians, and then to stop and think about all of the immeasurable blessings that have come into our lives by virtue of that sacrifice, that as a result of his sacrificial love, we're to love this same family, whatever the sacrifice is required of us in order to do that.

Then he informs us that that is to be even to the point of death. Now, it's an interesting thing to realize about this second half of verse 16 is that John isn't kidding when he writes this. You're looking for an LOL after that second sentence, but there isn't one. He's not kidding around. He's not saying something for effect. It's not hyperbole. He's not overstating the fact. This is what the Holy Spirit says about the love that we're to have for one another.

Now in this regard, we need to notice three key words that the Holy Spirit uses in this verse. First is the word "know." He says, "By this we know love." And the word for "know" is our old friend *ginosko* in the Greek, and it refers to a knowledge that comes by experience. So as Christians, this love Jesus demonstrated at Calvary isn't merely something that we know about or we learn about by virtue of study or by virtue of reading or some kind of an intellectual investigation purely, but this love is something that we know by experience.

The love of Christ for the body of Christ and for you and me isn't something theoretical; it's concrete. It's historical. It's something that was demonstrated in a profound way 2,000 years ago in human history. And it is our daily portion. We live, we move, we have our being in it. What would we do without the confidence of God's love within our lives, the continual expression of his love, the pouring of that love into our lives, not only in words but also in what he does for us?

So we enjoy this love that Christ has for us. We're going to enjoy it for eternity. So Jesus's death upon the cross isn't simply human history. It has become a part of our history. What he did on the cross 2,000 years ago because of our faith in him, that has now become a part of our history, and it will be a part of our history forever and ever. The second word that's important to notice here is John's use of the word "ought." He says, "We also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

"Ought" means more than that we should do so. Sometimes we say, "Well, that's something that we ought to do." And when we use the word "ought," it has the idea of, "Well, you can do it or you don't really need to do it." You ought to, but it's not the end of the world if you don't. And so that's how we use it so often, but here in terms of the word that John uses, it literally means that we owe, that we owe a debt.

So we have a moral obligation in the light of how richly we have become recipients of Jesus's love, not only 2,000 years ago in that act upon in his death, burial, and resurrection, but in his daily outpouring of love within our lives, to then love our brethren, however great the sacrifice might be. So that love of God for us is never to hit a dam within our lives where we become a reservoir of it, but it is to channel out of our lives then and flow then into the lives of the rest of the family.

Now notice third, John's use of the word "also." In other words, we are not to love our brethren in isolation where God just comes and says, "Love your brothers. Love the brethren." He doesn't say it in isolation. So we're not to love our brethren in isolation without any kind of connection to anything else. We're to do it because of what Jesus did for us first at Calvary. We're to do it in response, not to the worthiness of any Christian for our love or any brother or sister in the body of Christ, but in response to Jesus and to Calvary. That provides us with an inexhaustible cause for response.

John does something very wise here, of course, in that he helps us to keep our sacrifices in regard to loving our brethren in their proper perspective. He gives us a needed context in terms of any love that is we show to another Christian or that we are required to show to another Christian. Because I can take even the smallest and the pettiest of sacrifices on my part in this regard and blow them up so much in my mind as to consider them to be massive, that I've made a huge sacrifice in doing this tiny little thing for somebody else in the body of Christ as an expression of my life. Sacrifice is not well defined in our flesh and not in our mind so often.

So John says to us in essence, "Okay, take the sacrifice you are making to love the brethren and put it up against Calvary, the very Son of God covered with wounds, covered with his own blood from those wounds, covered with the spit of sinful man, covered with the blasphemies that were being heaped upon him in that environment, to say nothing of bearing the sins of the whole world at that moment, including our own, and now let us have a conversation about what you know about sacrificial love."

The point being that no sacrifice we will ever make in order to love the brethren, to love this family called the body of Christ, the household of faith, will ever approach Jesus's sacrifice for us. When it does become sacrificial in our lives and when it does become even significantly sacrificial in our lives, it'll never be more sacrificial than the sacrifice Jesus made for us. The point being that I simply cannot be like Jesus, I can't even remotely be like him without this love for his family.

So now we see why in verse 10 John takes the commandment to love and he puts it on a par with obedience to God's commands and he puts both of them seamlessly together because both of them are equally serious. Jesus taught us in John 15, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." Certainly true of Jesus, and we receive that into our heart in our relationship with him in understanding that was his love for us.

But he doesn't leave it there in John chapter 13. He said to us as his disciples, "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another." My very carnal, very selfish Adam nature would have been fine if the Apostle John had stopped with the first sentence there in verse 16 and not have gone on to the second sentence.

The reason that my flesh would have been delighted if he had only done the one sentence is because my flesh wants a Christianity in which Jesus does all of the loving, he does all of the giving, he does all of the sacrificing and all of the dying. But John doesn't stop there because that's not what Christianity is, where Jesus is the only one that experiences those things. We as the body of Christ will do so as well. A Christianity in which Jesus does all of the dying, all of the sacrificing, all of the loving is not an authentic Christianity.

But our flesh, our old Adam nature, is so unwilling to endure any sacrifice at all in order to continue to love one another. We realize that this love is not in us naturally. It has to come from the Lord. So as we saw last week where we look and say in just a transparency before God, our own hearts before him, and to say, "Lord, the love that I have for your people, for this family, for the body of Christ, doesn't even remotely approach what John is calling me to here. And in fact, if it were known to anyone else but you, I would be ashamed of how small my love is."

Whatever we would say to him about ourselves and say, "Lord, would you please impart that love into my life? I need you to do whatever is required in my life so that this becomes a reality of my Christian life as well." And he will absolutely be faithful in doing that. Now then second here as we look at it this morning in verses 17 and 18, John then instructs us that our love for one another is to be expressed not only in word, but also in deed and specifically that this love should be expressed materially. It should extend to our material possessions.

And here, though this truth has a broader application, the two great commandments in the Bible are to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength, and love our neighbor as ourself. Here John is narrowing things down to the family dynamic, our relationship with one another as Christians, and so we'll make that our focus as well. The Apostle John wrote something similar to this in Galatians chapter 6, verse 10. He said, "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith."

And that's an important distinction too because those who are not Christians oftentimes, maybe not as much in the United States, but when you look at the body of Christ worldwide, to be identified as a Christian immediately cuts you off from all kinds of resources that are available from the government or from other institutions that are available to all of the other citizens within that country or within that society. And so because Christians often don't have access to the same material resources than non-Christians in this world, because as John wrote in verse 13, the hatred of the world toward Christians, this can leave Christians absolutely destitute of any kind of help unless that help comes from fellow Christians.

So there's that necessity that we would look out for one another. Now any love in life, and certainly God's love, *agape* love, cannot truly exist in our lives without then expressing itself, not only verbally but expressing itself physically, expressing itself materially, without expressing itself toward the object of our love in deed. And what good is love to us if it goes unexpressed in deed? I mean, it goes so far but falls way short.

So we like people that love us to express their love for us in words, but deeper still, we like it when those words are then backed up by deeds. That reveals that this isn't just words that somebody is speaking. And so when words of love are then expressed with a hug, or expressed with a held hand, or when words of love are then expressed with flowers, or words of love are then expressed with time spent together, or words of love are then expressed by committing to marriage, we think about what an anemic thing our love would be if its expression was limited solely to words as opposed to being expressed by both our words and by the actions of our lives.

Well, the same thing is true, John tells us, in the family of God. The expression of our love is not to be limited to words, but it is also to express itself materially toward one another. Jesus expressed his love toward the disciples repeatedly verbally over and over again, but he also demonstrated that love over and over again with corresponding actions. And so to love as Jesus loved, and indeed to love as Jesus loves each of us in our relationship with him as a member of this family, it then will be to express our love in more than words.

And so in given the choice, would we prefer to be loved in words only, would we prefer that somebody only loves us in words devoid of actions, or to be loved with actions devoid of words? Well, we would prefer both. Absolutely prefer both, but forced to choose, I think most of us would say, well, actions speak louder than words, and it does.

Guest (Male): We've been talking about the love we're to have for each other here today on *According to the Scriptures*, a love that is expressed in both word and through our actions. If you're interested in a CD copy of today's message or the *Authentic Fellowship with God* series, give us a call: 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

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You can email us at atts@ccmodesto.com. Include your prayer requests as well. That's atts@ccmodesto.com. *According to the Scriptures* with Damian Kyle is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto. We'll catch you back here next time when we'll get back to our series, *Authentic Fellowship with God*.