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7/23/2017
Love is a Verb
Several things came to mind when I was thinking about this thing, Love,
that John talks about here in verses 16-18.
50 years ago last month, the music Group, the Beetles,
released what would be one of their top songs…
some of you may remember, some of you know the song even today…it was, “All you need is love.”
Plus, When I was growing up back in the 60’s,
there were lots of songs about love…
perhaps because it was also the time during which our country was involved in the unpopular Viet Nam war.
Maybe the song writers were expressing what people were longing for…
maybe that’s why the 60’s generation had the reputation of being the ‘love generation.’
It seems though that back then, that most of the time though,
whenever someone talked about or sang about ‘love,’
it usually had to do with the act of
‘making love,’
or ‘longing for someone to love them.’
Another thing that came to mind was that one of the more popular older Sunday school class names was the
“Love in Action Class”…
These classes tended to always have some project going on to try to ‘show love’ to others…
maybe to a missionary serving far away;
maybe to a poor family that lived across town;
maybe to some children at Christmas time.
If nothing else, that name, ‘love in action,’
seems to be what John is talking about here in this passage…
so maybe it might be appropriate for each and every one of us who are Christians
To remember that just maybe Jesus wants us
to be living our lives in such a way that we truly are showing
HIS ‘LOVE in Action’
in our lives.
So keeping that in mind,
Let’s read them…
(ESV) 16 By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
17 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?
18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
In a way, John’s telling us that to show Christian love
is more than just getting some ‘good feelings’
when we read about God’s love towards us;
It's more than a 'good feeling' when we read about or hear about how this group showed love to some people…
It's more than a good feeling when we read God's Word about how a Christian is supposed to love both God and others…
in other words, just making general statements or getting spiritual highs as we read about how a Christian should
act or has acted,
really isn’t the final result…
That’s because being a Christian is instead,
as we’ve seen as we’ve moved through 1 John so far…
Being a Christian is always about a lot more than reading about or hearing or talking about Love…
it’s more than us quoting simple clichés about loving others…
it’s more than speaking holy sounding words…
Being a true Christian is about who we are…
it’s about Jesus Christ IN us…
it’s about Jesus Christ being allowed to work in our lives…
it’s about Him working IN us and THROUGH us so that HIS presence IN us SHOWS OUTWARDS towards others…
so that it SHOWS in everything we say, everything we do,
and in everything about us.
That’s because we supposedly have been transformed by Jesus the moment we were saved,
and our relationship with HIM now is guiding our relationship with Him,
and to everything and everyone else.
So what does this ‘loving in deed’ which John speaks of look like?
Well, one of the things that I love about God’s Word is that it never leaves us having to guess when it comes to how we as Christians are supposed to live our lives.
No guesswork…
of course the drawback is that we have no excuse either.
God gives us the details of what he expects…
probably because God knows us so well that He knows He can’t leave anything to us to take for granted,
because we’d no doubt get it wrong, or ignore it.
Ok.
So here we have 3 verses that in fact give most people some problems at times.
And that hinges on our understanding of the word ‘love’ that is used here.
Something else that enters into the picture of our understanding is that too often,
we tend to equate the word, ‘like’ with that of the word, ‘love.’
But there are miles of difference between them.
Thank goodness this passage does not say we have to ‘like’ everyone…
Believe it or not,
IF I have to ‘like’ everyone,
then I’m in trouble, because I don’t like everyone…
so if ‘like’ and ‘love’ were tied together,
then I wouldn’t be a Christian,
and probably none of you in this room would be either.
This is because
to ‘like’ someone means that I am naturally interested in that person…
I like most of their qualities…
I like how they look…
I like their behavior…
I like their way of talk…
I like their attitude most of the time.
But the problem with LIKE, is that it boils down to this…
to like someone is not tied to anything very deep.
On the other hand,
we have to understand that this other word, LOVE,
which by the way is the Gr.
word, agape…which means unconditional love…
we have to understand that to love someone the way the Bible is describing it,
Means that
we have to think in the same TERMS as God using HIS definitions…
And it starts with the main fact that God, Himself, is love…
Take a look at (ESV) which says...
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
That kind of love, agape, goes way beyond my intellect…or my emotion…
YES...it does include intellect and emotion, yes,
but it goes even deeper…
agape love overcomes all the obstacles
and all the excuses
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