Don't Be a Liar; Love with More than Love-Song Love

1 John 4:7-11, 19-21

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

19We love because he first loved us. 20Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. 

Don’t Be a Liar; Love with More than Love-Song Love

I have a music trivia question for you today: What do the Beatles and Taylor Swift have in common? They both have exactly 11 songs with the word “love” in its title. That’s a lot, right? Even for those songs that don’t have “Love” in the title, many more not only mention but also focus on the concept of love. Love is a very common subject for music.

11 songs with “Love” in its title. That’s a lot. But it doesn’t even hold a candle to the 20 times that that same word appears in the 8 verses we read in John’s fist letter earlier today. 20 times in 8 verses! John has a lot to say about love – what it is, what it looks like, what it does, where it comes from – how central and necessary it is for our faith and life as Christians.

Of course there’s a big difference between the kind of love that inspires love songs and the kind of love that we find in the Bible. Love songs are emotional. God’s love, though, is volitional, which means that it is a matter of choice. In love songs, love happens to you. In the Bible, you who and when and how much you love.

Love songs are ethereal and ephemeral, which means that the love they talk about is delicate and fragile and short-lived; the slightest change in the wind could scatter it to smithereens like dandelion seeds. God’s love, though, is indomitable and enduring – no outside force can corrupt or compromise or conquer it; it can and will survive anything.

Love songs are transactional and conditional. If your love isn’t returned, then either it turns into an unhealthy obsession or it dissolves into a memory. God’s love, though, is selfless and one-sided. He continues to love unlovable people even though/when his love goes unrequited.

My question for you is, do we love with love-song love, or do we love with God’s love?

I know a 3-year-old, who shall remain nameless, who, when he’s feeling upset with someone, will say, “I don’t love you.” In the case of this particular 3-year-old, I happen to know that his parents don’t play any Taylor Swift for him. So where does he get this highly emotional form of love from?

It’s born in him. It’s born in all of us. Selfishness is natural. Bitterness and resentment come to us as easily as breathing does. Maybe you’ve had conflict with people you love (or loved. Maybe it was something serious. Maybe it was something silly, like a well-intentioned but poorly-executed joke. Do you act like a 3-year-old and – if only internally – say something like, “I don’t love you anymore”?

If you do then this thing that had once been beautiful and precious is shattered and broken beyond repair – not only because of what that other person did, but because of how you reacted emotionally instead of selflessly and volitionally.

Sometimes we treat love like a Faberge Egg – a delicate, precious thing that is priceless in no small part due to its fragility. And there’s some truth to that. Words hurt. Actions scar. People sin against us and do serious damage not only to our relationship with them, but to our own psyche and the way that we think or feel about ourselves. A loving relationship is fragile and easily broken.

And when it is damaged, the temptation is to react with disbelief and anger and indignation. “We had a good thing going and you ruined it!” It’s so easy to let resentment spread like a cancer throughout our bodies - not only in our hearts but also in our minds and in our mouths, and our feet and our hands. It’s so tempting to seek retribution or give in to the Schadenfreude and shamefully rejoice in any and every bad thing that happens to them.

In other words, we hate them. We block them. We shut off communication with them. We close off our hearts to them. We smother whatever embers of love are left, and instead we breathe life into the bitterness that is waiting in the wings. We hold grudges. Maybe we even seek retribution; we speak ill of them; we poison other people’s perspectives of them.

When this emotional, ethereal, ephemeral version of love gets broken, it can get ugly and quickly.

But that’s never what love was meant to be.

Love is an Otterbox. Love is a fireproof safe. Love is one of those airbag vests that inflates when it senses a fall. But the thing inside the phone case, the fireproof safe – the thing the airbag is protecting – is not your fragile emotional state. It’s your conscious, deliberate goodwill toward that person.

Now, I get it. It’s hard to love other people. But have you ever put that shoe on the other foot? Have you stopped to think how hard it is for God to love you?

John points out a problem that was not unique to the Christians living 2,000 years ago. He says:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.[1]

Imagine how disingenuous that looks to God. It’s like carving, “I love you,” into the side of his car with your key. You might think you’re making this grand gesture of your love to the Lord, but you’re destroying something else that he loves. In the same way, if you say that you love God, but you express hatred – in attitude or action – toward your neighbour, you’re destroying something else that he loves, e.g. your neighbour’s well-being, the relationship he wants you to have with each other.

You can’t pretend that by coming to church on Sunday, it doesn’t matter what you do – or don’t do – on every other day of the week. You can’t pretend that because you’re working on your spiritual life, your earthly life doesn’t matter. It’s all one! Love reveals itself, not by what it says but by what it does. If your neighbour feels no warmth or light from you, then it’s a sign that something is dead somewhere inside of you.

If it’s hard to love other people when they hurt us, imagine how hard it is for God to love you.

But that’s exactly what God does. He loves you. He loved you first. He showed you what true love looks like by putting it into action. He sent his Son for you, to be a ransom for you.

John uses an interesting word here. It’s only used twice in the entire Bible and the other time was just a few verses earlier. It’s a strange word, but it shares the same root as the word God uses for mercy.

You know what mercy is, don’t you? Mercy is what I would cry in desperation when my brother was beating the living snot out of me for being a living snot to him. Mercy is what the police officer gives you when he doesn’t write you a speeding ticket even though he caught you going 15km/hr over the speed limit. Mercy is not giving someone the punishment that they deserve for their behaviour.

And do you know how God accomplished that mercy for the first several millennia of the world? Substitutionary sacrifice. A lamb or a bull or a dove would symbolically take your place and symbolically suffer the punishment for your sins by paying for them with its life. It would be sacrificed, i.e. killed, offered on the altar to appease God’s justice. But those sacrifices were just symbols, band-aids, temporary stop-gap measures.

Jesus, on the other hand, was the real deal. There was nothing symbolic about his sacrifice. He was your substitute. He took your place on the cross and suffered the penalty for your sin, so that you would be cleansed of it.

That’s the love of God for you. That’s what real love looks like. It’s not emotional, ethereal or ephemeral. It’s volitional, indomitable and enduring. It was a conscious decision. It couldn’t be swayed or compromised or conquered by adversity, anger or apathy. It was strong enough to survive our sin and endure into eternity. It’s a love that is self-sacrificing, i.e. that is willing to suffer inconvenience and even pain to bring benefit and blessing to you.

This love wasn’t easy. It wasn’t cheap. It cost God a great deal, but he was willing to give it because that’s what love is and does.

And that’s why John starts this section the way he does:

Dear friends [re: Beloved], let us love one another, for love comes from God.[2]

Love for one another is not a demand God makes of you to earn his love for you. Love is the condition you live in. Beloved is your status in his eyes. Love gives you confidence for life in heaven and purpose for life on earth – because God loves you, love one another.

It’s hard, but it’s simple at the same time. And, in many cases, it’s something you’re doing already. It’s something I’ve seen in that unnamed 3-year-old. If godly love is the willingness to inconvenience yourself to bring benefit to someone else, then love among Christians is a child sharing his snack or his toys even though it means that he won’t be able to enjoy them himself.

Love among Christians is not only staying in a marriage that has long since progressed past its honeymoon period, but being committed to be kind and compassionate and caring to the person who has the closest access to your heart (and sometimes hurts you more than anyone else could).

Love among Christians is giving up your holidays or a job opportunity or the years you meant to spend in restful retirement so that you can take care of your aging parents or assist in raising your children’s children.

Love among Christians is cheerfully spending your hard-earned income on school and sports and social activities for your spouse or children (without complaining about what it’s cost you – the rounds of golf you don’t get to play, the hobbies you put on hold, etc…)

You ask John, Paul, Ringo and George – you ask Taylor – what love is, and they’ll tell you one thing. God will tell you another. He’ll point you to his Son as proof of how selfless, volitional, indomitable and enduring true love really is. God didn’t just tell us that he is love. He showed his love by what he did for us. And he calls you to do the same. If you love him – because you love him who loved you first – love one another. Amen.

[1] 1 John 4:20

[2] 1 John 4:7

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God Is Greater than Your Heart

1 John 3:18-24

18Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

19This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24The one who keeps God’s commands lives 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.

God Is Greater than Your Heart

Have you noticed how much blue and orange you see around town these days? Flags on cars. Jerseys on babies in grocery stories. I see some in here today. And I’m not going to fault you for it. Cheer for your team. But I do have a confession to make: I always dread wearing my Oilers gear for fear that someone is going to ask me a question about it.

“Did you see the game last night?” No. I didn’t.

“What do you think about the year Draisaitl has had?” I couldn’t even tell you his first name. Is it Neon?

And then you get the inevitable look: “You’re not really a true fan, are you? You’re one of those bandwagon fans. If you were a real fan, you would have been wearing that jersey when we were 5-12, not just now that they’re in the playoffs.”

Now, I’m not here to tell you how to be a hockey fan or what true fandom looks like. I bring this up because it’s easy to ask similar questions about our Christian faith and life. Are you just wearing Jesus’ jersey or are you a real fan? If you consider yourself a fan of his – a follower, disciple even – what have you done to prove it?

The Apostle John has a suggestion:

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.[1]

In fact, what prompted this suggestion was a question he posed immediately before it:

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?[2]

That’s a penetrating question, isn’t it? What do you typically think makes a person a Christian? They go to church. They read their Bible. They say their prayers. Maybe you do all 3, which, to be fair, is no small thing. Did you know that a study was done in 2021 that showed that only 23% of Canadians attended any kind of group religious activity – Christian or not, something like what we’re doing right now – at least monthly.[3] So, even if you only come to church once a month, you’re already more Christian than 77% of our country! Kudos to you. Golf claps and slaps on the back all around.

But John’s not buying it. Even for those who go to church every week, who read their Bible and pray every day – even for the top 23% - John would say that’s not enough. You’re not a “real Christian” unless you love with actions and in truth. And that’s a harder thought to think.

Do any of you have extra clothes in your closet? What about food in your pantry or so much food in your fridge that you can’t eat it all before it goes bad and you have to throw it away? How many of you have more than one vehicle at home and can afford to have at least some gas in each? Then you’re doing better than a solid portion of our society. Then you have material possessions, as John would say, but do you see your brother or sister in need?

We sit on the doorstep of a metropolis of over a million people, many of whom are worse off than we are. I can’t tell you how many phone calls I get every month asking for gas cards or food hampers. We have members in our own congregation who are victims of tragedy and are in tangible need of worldly, material assistance. John wants you to take a good hard look at yourself and consider whether you’re the kind of Christian who just wears the jersey or whether you’re the kind of Christian who walks the walk of faith.

Is there more that you could do with what you have? Could you be more shrewd with your resources to make them stretch further and help more?

Or think about it this way. Why are there so many unwanted children in this world who float through foster care – or worse, never live to see it? Why are there so many teenagers so lacking for a sense of belonging within or from their family and friends that they resort to radical shifts in identity or biology? Why are there people so lonely or made to feel so useless that they feel their best course of action is to seek medical assistance in dying?

Could it be that the love of Christians runs cold? That we are better at talking the talk than walking the walk? Is the problem that you are content to wear the jersey, but not put in the time or effort on a daily basis?

I don’t know about you, but when I read John’s words here, my heart is shot through with a whole quiver of arrows. When I take a good, hard, honest look at myself, my heart condemns me. For a lack of love. For insincere love begrudgingly given. For willfully turning a blind eye and hiding behind excuses.

John doesn’t make it easy to be a Christian, does he?

But then he does, actually.

John is so right to call us out on our hypocrisy and insincerity. He nails us to the wall with our sin and leaves us feeling about this big. But then he reaches down and picks us up with the only thing that matters:

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: if our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.[4]

The way to know that we belong to the truth – the way to know that we have a real place in God’s family – is not to look at our resumes, not to stack up good days, not to fall back on our good deeds. The way to know that we belong to the truth – the way to set our hearts at rest in God’s presence – is to look away from ourselves and to the God who is greater than our hearts and knows everything.

He knows your sin, even better than you do. But he knows something else, too. He knows himself and his heart which is infinitely greater than yours.

We miss it a bit in our English translation but the very next word in John’s letter is one of the most special in all of Scripture: Ἀγαπητοί. Literally, it means “beloved,” or, “loved ones.” But its use in the Bible makes it even stronger than that. Ἀγαπη is this one-sided, unconditional love for someone else. Ἀγαπη is the kind of love that doesn’t wait for someone to be loveable before making the choice – the conscious, willful decision – to love them anyway. Ἀγαπη is the love that is best put on display in the cross of Jesus.

Here's a bit of a paradox – you have to love sincerely to be a “real” Christian, but it’s not your sincere love that makes you a Christian. Christ does. In love, Jesus named you his sister or his brother. In love, Jesus left heaven behind and claimed human flesh and blood to be your Saviour. Jesus’ love for you extended beyond words and speech. It wasn’t just lip service when he said he cares for you or promised to save you. He did something about it. He took action and showed true compassion.

He met people in their need, and he fed them, or he healed them, or he spoke to their troubled hearts words of consolation and peace. But above all, he died for them. He died for you. He looked at you with such love and compassion in his heart that he wasn’t content to wait for you to be worthy of him, as if you ever could. He took action and showed the sincerity and intensity of his love for you by dying for you to take all your sin away. He sacrificed his life on a cross to forgive all your sin. He rose from the grave to free you from guilt and shame.

That’s what real love looks like. We’ll never live up to it, but we don’t have to. Jesus did. And his life and his love are what God remembers even when we forget. His death and his resurrection are what God sees even when our hearts look with shame at the sins we commit. God remembers his Son. He answers the accusations of our hearts with the accomplished salvation that Jesus won for us on the cross.

And then he reminds us that we do belong to the truth, whether we deserve to or not. He reminds us that he lives in us by his Spirit who works in our hearts every time that we hear his word. And by that same Spirit, he even empowers us to do what John encourages us to do here: to love with actions and in truth.

Your record is not perfect. No one’s is. But you do love with actions and in truth. I’ve seen it. It’s not the reason for you to set your heart at rest before God, but it is cause for rejoicing because it is evidence that God is at work in you. Even if you don’t always remember, God does.

It’s like what Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 25. To the people that Jesus calls righteous – to the Christians who do more than just wear his jersey – Jesus says,

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?”

The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”[5]

God is greater than your heart. He knows your sin. He knows your Saviour. He even knows the deeds of love you do in the Spirit without knowing it yourself. When your heart condemns you, look to him, believe in the name of his Son Jesus, and love one another. Amen.

[1] 1 John 3:18

[2] 1 John 3:17

[3] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2021079-eng.htm

[4] 1 John 3:19,20

[5] Matthew 25:34ff

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