Series: On Being A Christian
#3: Love Is In The Air Part 1
We are talking about a stool—a 3-legged stool. The stool is the gospel of Christ and Christian experience. The legs are the 3 essentials of Christianity. The Apostle John is answering the question: what does it mean to be a Christian. When you get right down to brass tacks, what does a Christian look like?
In his first letter John focuses on answering this question with the 3 essentials of what it means to be a Christian. These essentials are obedience, love and belief. Last week we discovered that John begins this definition with the leg of obedience and our willingness to do God’s will and to live the way our God designed us to live. If there is neither desire nor intent to do what God says, then end of discussion. We pack it in and all go home and not waste our time.
If we are the result of some cosmic big bang, then life is futile, without purpose, and it all ends at the grave. But if God created our world, us included and created it on purpose, and if Genesis is true then God desires an intimate and personal relationship with each of us. That is why John is so emphatic about what it means to obey God’s commandments. He is explicit in saying, “If you say you have fellowship with God and you are not doing what he says, then you are a liar.” John is pulling no punches as we are discovering.
In this letter John on 2 occasions discusses the legs of obedience and belief, but on 3 occasions he discusses the leg of love. While John does not explain why he emphasizes love 3 times, we can surmise that it is because love is at the heart of the Trinity and of everything that God is. Every time we walk into our sanctuary we are reminded that “God is Love” if you look up at the marble plaque hanging above the door. In his gospel John writes (13:34-35) that the mark of true Christian discipleship is love for one another and Paul in Galatians (5:14) says that the whole law of God is summed up in one word: love.
In this letter John transitions his discussion on obedience to that of love in 1 John 2:5-6, “Whoever keeps his word truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in him. He who says he abides in him ought, himself, also to walk just as he walked.” The love of God is expressed in obedience. So again this is not some cold-hearted, legalistic, duty-bound obedience nor is it some warm, fuzzy, tingly kind of love. To love God is to obey and to obey God is to obey out of love. And our loving people is directly related to our loving God.
In our two Scripture readings we are going to look at 2 aspects of this essential of love: 1. the statement by John that love is both old and new and 2. the statement that we love because God loved us.
God’s love is both old and new. One of the key Hebrew words that appear in the Old Testament is the word hesed. There is no equivalent word in the English language. In fact this word is not found in any of the other Semitic languages of the Middle East and is unique only to Hebrew. Yet it occurs some 250 times in the Old Testament. The King James Bible translates this word as mercy, but hesed carries the idea of passionate, devoted loyalty of a superior to an inferior, especially when it is undeserved. This word describes the character of God. The Hebrews are saying that this God is unlike any other god for they are not his slaves to do his bidding at every whim but a God who has committed Himself to them in covenant and when they break that covenant and deserve God’s destruction this God continues to be kind, loving and full of mercy. All the other gods are looking for what they can get from their worshippers. This God is looking for what He can give to His followers, and He continues to pour out love, compassion, concern and guidance.
In the Old Testament, hesed is not something you feel rather it is something you do. Why did God enter this covenant agreement with the Hebrews and with us? So that they and we could become like Him and share His character so that we could do hesed to others because God has done hesed to us. So that is why John writes that this love of God is not new but from “the beginning.” God has always desired to do hesed with us but it involves far more than mercy. Sometimes hesed is translated as grace but it is far more than grace. Sometimes the word used is kindness but hesed is far more than kindness. Sometimes we see steadfast love used but hesed is far more that steadfast love. In fact all of these and more is what hesed is and how God loves each of us. And because God has loved us we are to love one another. This is not a new commandment but an old one.
And yet it is a new commandment as John writes. Three times John describes that Jesus laid down His life for us (3:16, 4:10,14). John is saying that he had seen hesed in action in Jesus and that on one particular day he stood on a hilltop outside the city walls of Jerusalem and saw God give us His hesed, love in the flesh on the cross. In the Old Testament hesed was a teaching, a concept about the character of God. It was an idea. But in Jesus hesed took on human flesh and blood and showed a passionate, loyal, dying love. God’s hesed, an old law that was only an idea but now a new commandment that could be seen, touched, heard, and felt--an unfailing love of a superior for an inferior. That is God’s love. That is God’s hesed.
So John can say that God is love (4:8). Note that John does not say God thinks love, or feels love or does love, but that He is love, and that love is a self-denying, self-giving love. If we are to be like God and take on God’s character, we too are to do hesed, to love one another. By it’s very nature love must be given away, or it ceases to be love. Like manna love hoarded will be love rotted. Love given away will be love renewed and replenished.
Other religions have systems of ethics, codes of conduct, ritualistic rites and core doctrines but no other religion suggests that at the very heart of the universe is a self-denying, self-giving love that is manifested in God’s children. That is why Jesus could say in John 13:34-35, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples.” By what? By our doctrine? Doctrine is very important, but no. By our ethics? Ethics are at the heart of Christianity, but no. By our moral standards? Moral absolutes spring from a transcendent Creator God, but no. Rather, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This is the 2nd aspect of love that John speaks to in this first letter. God loves us because He is love. We love because He first loved us, or because God loves us we are then able to love others. John gets pretty blunt and straightforward in this letter, as he pulls no punches. And John says that if in fact we do not love others then we do not know God. Again, change your behavior or change your name.
Look at 1 John 2:11, “ He who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” 1 John 3:15, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” John then uses the example of Cain. How quickly after sin entered human experience did the worse kind of sin happen by a brother against a brother no less--from the hesed, the self-giving, self-denying love of God in the Garden of Eden to the self-pride and self-indulgent and self-serving ego of sinful nature of man. Self took center stage and now other people are no longer sisters and brothers but are competitors and rivals, the enemy who threaten to take your money, your land, your wife, your job. The great Cleveland Indian baseball pitcher Satchel Paige summed it up best when he said, “Don’t look back; somebody might be gaining on you.” Sin has made us enemies of one another, no longer hesed but self. It’s all about me and mine.
Cain who wanted to do something good for God offered a sacrifice that wasn’t pleasing to God. The younger Abel on the other hand did offer a pleasing sacrifice to God. Cain whose idea it was in the first place, instead of learning from his mistake and doing it right the next time, got angry and murdered his brother. We Christians don’t do it that way much anymore, but we haven’t changed much since the days of Cain and Abel. We murder differently. We murder people in a more sophisticated manner by our gossip and rumors, by our half-truths and slander, by our twisted understanding of what it means to be spiritual, by our innuendos and backbiting and even backstabbing. No hesed in Cain, and often no hesed in us.
Why do you and I need God’s hesed, God’s self-denying, self-giving love? Because the alternative is being shut in the cell of our self and there is no worse dungeon. It is God’s love that frees us to love Him and to love one another with a self-denying, self-giving love that is no longer a concept but can be seen in those who claim the name of Jesus.