12

Love: The Church’s Circulatory System

LOVE IS THE circulatory system of the church. If the arteries of love get clogged, the church is in danger of spiritual cardiac arrest. One key evidence of spiritual maturity in our lives is the depth of our love for one another. John returns to this theme of Christian love for a second time. Interestingly, when it comes to love, John speaks of four different levels of relationships in which we can choose to live: murder (vv. 11, 12), hatred (vv. 13–15), indifference (vv. 16, 17), and Christian love in action (v. 18).¹ John develops each of these in order. He reminds us of what Christians have “heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” This is illustrated by Cain’s murder of Abel as an example of the difference between righteousness and evil. John then tells us we should not be surprised when the world hates us rather than loves us. Love for other believers evidences the fact that Christians have passed out of spiritual death into spiritual life. Hatred is a form of murder, according to John, and by his logic, no murderer has eternal life dwelling in him. On the other hand, mature love is willing to die for those loved, as Jesus did for us. Since we ought to be willing to die for fellow believers, how much more incongruous is it for Christians to be indifferent to the needs of others by refusing to sacrifice to provide them with what they need from their own storehouse. Finally John draws it all to a close by telling us we are not to love in word only, for such is not love at all. Rather, we must love in genuine action. Loving one another for John is both a duty and a test. It is a duty in that we are commanded as Christians to practice love. It is a test in that our practice of love for others demonstrates the reality of our Christian faith.

 

Love and Hate Are Mutually Exclusive in the Christian Life (vv. 11–15)

Verse 11 introduces a paragraph providing the grounds for John’s concluding statement in verse 10. In the previous paragraph John reminds us of who we are: “children of God.” Children of God are to behave like children of God. It is not enough to believe rightly. We must behave rightly. Being precedes doing, but all Christian doing must be based on being, that is, on who we are in Christ. Our practice proclaims who and what we are. “Message” is another word for the gospel, which includes the specific command to love. This message is one that John’s readers have heard “from the beginning,” meaning from the first time they heard the gospel.² John gives an illustrative example of the brothers Cain and Abel in verse 12 that is related to verse 11 as positive to negative. Hatred is the opposite of love. Cain’s underlying attitude of jealousy and hatred for his brother led to his murder of Abel. This account is related in Genesis 4:1–16.³

Several important points need to be noted about the situation of Cain and Abel. Both were brothers with the same parents. Both brought sacrifices to God. Both sought to worship God. The problem was that Cain’s sacrifice was apparently contrary to God’s specified rules for the kind of sacrifice he should have brought. When Cain saw that God accepted his brother’s sacrifice but rejected his own, he became angry. Cain demonstrated his spiritual and ethical relationship to Satan when he acted as he did. John had referred to “the devil” in verse 8, and now he refers to him as “the evil one,” which connects Cain’s evil heart and deed with its ultimate source, Satan. Cain’s spiritual father, if you will, was Satan. Cain murdered Abel because “his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” John uses a word for “murder” in the Greek New Testament that means “to butcher or slaughter.” Rendered literally, it would be translated “to cut the throat.” Abel died a violent death at the hands of his own brother. This illustrates the fact that it is often the nature of the wicked to hate the righteous.

John answers three questions about Cain in these verses. First, where did Cain come from? Answer: “the evil one.” What did Cain do? Answer: he “murdered his brother.” Third, why did Cain do it? Answer: “his own deeds were evil.” Cain failed the test of love for his brother.

John draws a conclusion in verse 13: “Stop being surprised⁴ that the world (people like Cain) hates you.” The world hates Christians for the same reason Cain hated Abel. Abel’s righteousness was the fruit of his obedience to the Lord, and all this revealed Cain’s disobedience and unrighteousness for what it was in reality. The present tense verb “hates” in verse 13 indicates a state of hostility. Few men are as qualified as Martin Niemoller to speak about the world’s hatred of Christians:

The fellowship of Jesus has no promise that it will ever be in the majority; we must indeed guard against thinking that there can ever be any kind of human security or assurance against the world’s hatred. All parleys, all truces, all peace treaties are unreal, for the world must hate the Christian fellowship; and because of the fellowship, so long as it is a Christian fellowship, cannot hate, it must suffer at the hands of the world. . . . The motto of the community of Jesus is: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.” It is indeed a conquered world which seeks to terrify us; it is indeed a condemned and dying hatred which attacks us.⁵

Note the shift from “children” to “brothers” in verse 14 since John is dealing with the topic of brotherly love and Cain and Abel were brothers. John says we have come to know through experience that we have permanently passed from spiritual death to spiritual life (v. 14). The experience he refers to is our love for fellow believers. John views life and death as opposite spiritual domains that we more commonly refer to as “saved” and “unsaved.” To “pass” from death to life is to experience the permanent change from a state of lostness to a state of being saved. Spiritually dead, though respectable; dead, though honored of men; dead, though positioned in places of political power. Spiritually dead, though educated and cultured; dead, though decent and satisfied with an outward form of godliness; dead, because of rejecting God’s Son as Savior.⁶ Nothing is more striking than the contrasts used in the Bible to illustrate the complete change the gospel brings. The difference between the saved and the unsaved is variously depicted as that between people who are lost and found, blind and seeing, bound and free, sick and whole, in darkness and enlightened. But probably the starkest and startling contrast of all is “out of death into life.” We know that we are saved because we habitually practice love for our fellow believers. Whoever does not love continues to remain in a state of being unsaved, according to John. The now famous line from the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit is, “Hell is other people.” Each character needs the other even when each hates the other.⁷ Those who don’t love abide in death, John says. They have the smell of the grave about them.

The apostle talked of death. We try not to mention the word, but here our sophistication stops. For death is the leveler. We know infinitely more about the human body and the human mind than the apostle John; but we die just as he did. We talk of our plans to fertilize the earth and colonize the moon, but we die just like our ancestors. We are the generation “come of age” who are reckoned to take charge of events, to decide our future, and to need no God; yet we are as vulnerable as the most superstitious savage. A stray germ, a gangster’s knife, a drunken driver—and the most brilliant modern mind is as dead as the caveman. All we have done is to prolong life expectation by a few decades. The punctuation mark remains. Full stop.⁸

We might ask the question, how is it that one who hates his brother is a murderer? Jesus answers the question in Matthew 5:21, 22. Hatred is an intense emotional feeling, the desire to get rid of a person, even hoping he will die. Hate is the first step toward murder. A person who hates is no different from a murderer in his attitude. The person who hates is potentially a murderer as illustrated by Cain. John continues his logic: hate is attitudinally no different than murder, and no murderer possesses eternal life. The question is not so much, what did you do but what did you want to do? The English Romantic poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, “I have several times seen the stiletto and the rosary come out of the same pocket.”⁹

Recall that our Lord taught that what makes an act sinful is not only the act itself but also the motive behind it. In fact, oftentimes what makes an act good or bad, sinful or not sinful, is not the act itself, nor its consequences, but its motive.¹⁰/ When Jesus passes judgment on our actions, he looks first at the motive behind the act. If our heart is right, he is long-suffering with us even when our deeds are incomplete or flawed in some way. If our heart is wrong, none of our spiritual acts can ever be pleasing to him. Our love should not be limited only to believers, according to John. Notice he tells us not to be surprised if the world hates us, and immediately proceeds, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers” (v. 14). The emphatic use of “we” in the Greek text contrasts the way Christians love and the way the non-Christian world loves. But there is no emphatic contrast if Christians love their own little group in the same way that the world loves its own. When John goes on to say, “Whoever does not love . . .” notice that no overt object is stated. In fact, some manuscripts add “the brothers,” but the best textual reading leaves it out. As Brooke says, to add the object “the brothers” “narrows down the writer’s meaning unnecessarily. In his more absolute statements he shows himself fully aware that the duty of love is absolute, and has a wider application than the Christian society, even as the Christ is the propitiation for the whole world.”¹¹ This passage actually demands that our love be more inclusive than the love of the world, which loves only its own. Our love should include everybody, whether Christians or not, just as God’s love includes everybody.¹²

 

Love Must Be Demonstrated in the Christian Life (vv. 16–18)

Everybody knows John 3:16. But do you know 1 John 3:16? Like John 3:16, 1 John 3:16 talks about the love of Christ for us as evidenced in his death on the cross. We have known (perfect tense) this love in its essence and meaning because we are the direct recipients of it. This knowledge is based on the historical event of the crucifixion where Jesus “laid down his life for us.” What a simple yet sublime statement! Here is a direct statement that Jesus’ death on the cross was voluntary. In John 10:17, 18 Jesus said that he lays down his life and no one takes it from him, but he gives it of his own will. Jesus’ death on the cross was also a substitutionary death.¹³ Most people consider the first law of life to be self-preservation. Jesus teaches us that the first law of spiritual life is self-sacrifice. He not only teaches us this truth, but he demonstrated it on our behalf. Who can fathom the love that drew salvation’s plan?

When Jesus came to die for our sins, there was nothing lovely about us. It was like the sunshine shining upon the garbage dump. The pristine son of God stepped into this kind of world and let his love shine. The epitome of love is seen at the cross. Jesus is the walking definition of love. Only in the cross can we understand the love of God.¹⁴

As if speaking directly to the Savior himself, Spurgeon said in his sermon on this passage, “Ah, Lord Jesus! I never knew Thy love till I understood the meaning of Thy death.”¹⁵ The most astounding thing in all the world is the fact that Jesus was willing, out of love for us, to die in our place as our substitute.

There is a famous picture by a great artist of an angel standing by the cross of Christ. With his fingers he is feeling the sharp points of the thorns that had pierced the Savior’s brow, and on his face is a great look of wonder and astonishment. The angel cannot understand the marvel of that love.¹⁶ In fact, no one can fully fathom such love. During his only visit to the United States, the eminent Swiss theologian Karl Barth lectured at Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. After his formal address he engaged in some informal conversation with the students. One young man asked Barth if he could state the core of what he believed. Barth took a moment to light his pipe, and then, as the smoke drifted away, he replied, “Yes, I think I can summarize my theology in these words: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’”¹⁷

John essentially says three things about Jesus’ death on the cross: it was voluntary, it was vicarious, and it was victorious. Jesus laid down his life for us once for all. His work on the cross is done and cannot be undone or redone. On the basis of Christ’s death for us, John states emphatically¹⁸ that we are under moral obligation to love, if necessary, by laying down our lives for others. I remember when I first read about Boris Kornfeld. I have never forgotten his story. I was in my second year as pastor of my first church in 1983. Chuck Colson’s book Loving God had just been published the previous year. Colson told the riveting story of the Jewish doctor in a Russian concentration camp known as a gulag. What crime against the state he had committed no one knows. Kornfeld met a fellow prisoner, a committed Christian whose name we don’t know, who engaged him in conversation about Jesus. He often heard the prisoner recite the Lord’s Prayer and found himself strangely drawn to the words. While carrying on his medical duties amidst filth and squalor day after day, Kornfeld began to see the parallels in the Jewish people who had suffered so much as a nation and the suffering of Jesus. He became a Christian. When Kornfeld discovered an orderly stealing food from his patients, he reported him to the commandant. Though there had been a rash of murders in the camp, with each victim being a stoolie who had ratted someone else out and then paid for it with his life, Kornfeld didn’t care. He knew his life would be in danger as soon as the orderly was released from his cellblock. Kornfeld felt a sense of newfound freedom in Christ. He wanted to tell someone about it, but the prisoner who had spoken to him about Christ had been transferred to another camp. One gray afternoon he examined a patient who had just been operated on for intestinal cancer. The man’s eyes were sorrowful and suspicious, thought Kornfeld, and his face reflected the depth of his spiritual and physical misery. So the doctor began to talk to the patient, describing what had happened to him to change his life. Drifting in and out of the anesthesia’s influence and shaking with fever, the patient heard the doctor’s testimony about Christ and how all of our suffering is in one sense deserved on this earth for our sins. He hung on the doctor’s words until he finally fell asleep. The next morning he was awakened by a commotion in the area. He wondered where his doctor friend was. Then a fellow patient told him of Kornfeld’s fate. During the night, as Kornfeld slept in the infirmary, someone dealt him fatal blows to his skull with a mallet. Kornfeld died, but his testimony did not. The patient pondered the doctor’s last, impassioned words about Christ, suffering, and salvation. He too became a Christian. He survived the prison camp and went on to tell the world what he had learned there. His name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970 for his major work The Gulag Archipelago, which brought international exposure to the Soviet Union’s labor camp system. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.¹⁹

Although it is possible that Christians would be called upon to give their lives for others as did Boris Kornfeld, more often we are called upon to show love in less drastic ways. John moves to practicalities and details of loving in verse 17. Notice he shifts from the plural “brothers” to the singular “brother” to individualize our duty to love in specific circumstances. Saying we love everybody in general may become an excuse for loving nobody in particular! Like the little boy on the crowded elevator who was overheard to say, “Mommy, I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand,” many of us find clever ways to disguise our dislike or hatred of someone. “How often does polite civility disguise undisclosed feelings of antipathy and aversion?” is a question well asked by Gary Burge.²⁰

If we are to love everybody, does that mean we have to like everybody? How do I go about loving people I don’t like, even in the church? I’m just asking the question I know you are asking right now in your mind! It seems to me there is a very clear, practical distinction between liking and loving. Common sense coupled with life experience makes it evident that we simply cannot and will not like everybody we meet, even in the church. Personalities being what they are, not to mention temperament, appearance, behavior, and mannerisms, make it inevitable that in life’s journey you are going to like some people more than others. Remember, not everybody likes you either! Liking is a matter of personal preference. Loving is a matter of obedience to Christ and the Word of God. Love penetrates beyond the superficial and moves to the essence of the person. It overcomes obstacles and excuses. Love sees beyond what it does not like in a person and minimizes it in order to see the person as Christ sees him. Then seeing the person in that way opens the door to acting toward that person in a Christlike way. Loving people you don’t like means treating them as if you did like them! You choose to act toward them in a way that is pleasing to Christ and that exhibits how Christ would act toward them. The nature of Christian love is that it acts, it gives, it expresses itself toward others.²¹

John paints a vivid picture in verse 17. First, he speaks of having “the world’s goods.” The word in Greek is bios and conveys the meaning of “livelihood.” John does not describe someone here who is rich in this world’s goods, but the average, ordinary person who has the basics of livelihood at his disposal and could help someone in need. John speaks of “seeing” a brother in need, using a word here meaning much more than a casual glance but rather a careful awareness of the situation where you understand the need.²² When he speaks of someone who would “close his heart” to a brother in need, the word “close” conveys the notion of slamming the door,²³ locking it, and throwing away the key! The word “heart” in Greek is the word that includes not only the heart but the lungs, lower intestines, and liver. The Greeks regarded the “heart” as the seat of the emotions. The word connotes compassion and pity. Fellow Christians in need should arouse our compassion and pity to the point that we act to help. If we don’t do so, John asks a pertinent rhetorical question: “how does God’s love abide in him?”

What does the phrase “God’s love” (or in some translations, “the love of God”) mean here? There are several options: 1) God’s love for us; 2) our love for God; 3) the kind of love God gives believers; and 4) the divine quality of love. John clearly does not mean to say that if we don’t love, God does not love us. However, the other three options convey some truth. Our love for God is certainly inhibited if we don’t love by our actions. Furthermore, the kind of love God gives us as believers is not being exhibited to others when we don’t love as we ought. Finally, the divine quality of love that is evidenced in the life of a genuine believer is absent when we don’t love, which then calls into question whether we are truly born again. When John asks, “How does God’s love abide in him?” if we don’t love fellow Christians, the answer, of course, is that it does not.

One question concerning verses 16, 17 is the extent of the meaning of “brothers.” Does John refer only to fellow Christians, or is the word, and the command to love, to be extended to anyone in need, Christians and others? The term brother cannot be limited to Christians since the term is being used in the general sense of “fellowman.”²⁴ Our love for the world is to be translated into helping those in need: “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (v. 17). Leon Morris is right: this cannot refer only to believers.²⁵ You do not have to murder in order to sin; hatred is murder in the heart. You do not have to hate in order to sin; all you have to do is be indifferent. Sometimes the greatest sin we can commit is the sin of indifference. Everyone has to learn to get over the stupor of self.

By returning to his address form (“little children”) in verse 18, John introduces a final exhortation based on his preceding argument. We should not merely love in “word” and “talk.” The two words are essentially synonymous. People in need don’t just need to hear a word of encouragement such as James speaks of when he talks about the person who says to the one in need, “be warmed and filled,” but then sends him on his way without any tangible assistance (James 2:15, 16). Rather, we are to love “in deed and in truth.” The word for “deed” in the Greek New Testament is the noun ergon, which means “work” or “action.” In our culture we use a word the first part of which comes from this Greek word ergon—ergonomics. Ergonomics is the study of how the workplace and the equipment used in the workplace can best be designed for efficiency, productivity, comfort, and safety. It also is used to describe the qualities in the design of equipment used at work that contributes to efficiency and productivity. Our love for others should be ergonomically effective in the sense that its distinctive quality should be that it is Christlike in every way. Our love should be productive; it should accomplish the meeting of needs in a tangible way. In one of his sermons, George Whitfield told the story of the poor beggar who asked a pastor for alms. When the pastor refused, the beggar asked the pastor for a blessing. “God bless you,” answered the pastor. “Oh,” replied the beggar, “you would not give me that if it was worth anything.”²⁶

John further describes how we should love: “in truth.” His use of “truth” here is probably an idiom that means “actually” or “really.”²⁷ Our love should be genuinely demonstrated in action. A modern version of the Parable of the Good Samaritan would have the priest and the Levite saying to the beaten-up traveler, “Man, you need help, but I don’t need you.”²⁸ I sometimes think fundamentally some of us really would like nothing better in this world than to purchase a life membership in the “Association of Bystanders.”²⁹ We can’t just give lip service to love; we must do something about it. When it comes to putting love into action, some Christians are like the occasional lazy student I have had in my class: they want to get a passing grade but do as little work as possible.

If our view of God is skewed, our actions will also be skewed. Many view God as the cosmic policeman, brandishing his Ten Commandments at everything that moves. Others see God as a cosmic bellhop, ready to do anything to make life pleasant and safe without asking for anything more than a reasonable tip. But the true God is neither. He demonstrated his love on the cross. He deserves our love and expects us to love others as he has loved us. But we will never do so as long as we are so focused on Number One. A certain book is called I Prayed Myself Slim. The author, with God on her side and the help of a crash diet, lost eighty-two pounds and for the first time in her life had dates, dates, dates! She was even invited to the Governor’s Inaugural Ball, where praise be to God, she was no longer a waddling wallflower! This book and a hundred like it may have their dietary benefits for those of us who cast inelegant shadows, but I mention it for another reason. It contains fifty-eight prayers by the author, but only four acknowledge the existence of other people.³⁰

By some accounts William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, once sent a one-word telegraph message: “Others!” to encourage his officers around the world. Whether the story is true or not, one thing is for sure: Salvation Army workers were known for their unselfish commitment to others. On May 29, 1914 the Empress of Ireland sank with 130 Salvation Army officers on board. One hundred and nine of those officers were drowned, and not one body that was picked up had on a life belt. The few survivors told how the Salvationists, finding there were not enough life preservers for all, took off their own belts and strapped them upon even strong men, saying, “I can die better than you can.” From the deck of that sinking ship they heralded their battle-cry around the world: “Others!”³¹

May we all pray this prayer by William Sloane Coffin: “We have taken advantage of Thy great and unqualified love. We have presumed upon Thy patience to do less than we might have done, to have been timid where we should have shown courage, to have been careful where we should have been reckless, not counting the cost. We pray now, O Father, to be used roughly. Stamp on our selfishness.”³²