Why don't we love?

Donald Holliday

That you may know • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

1 John 3:16–18

Love

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We often hear about love but we don't love as we should.

Notes

Transcript

Introduction

I’ve been in the church long enough now that I have heard quite a few sermons on love. Whether it’s loving God, loving others, even the love between a man and wife, I’ve heard them. My goodness, I’ve even preached a few myself. Not only sermons, but add in the Bible Studies, the books, the seminars, the blogs, the social media posts… I know what the Bible says about love. I mean for a preacher, love is sort of a perennial favorite because of the vast reservoir that can be tapped as the preacher carefully crafts his sermons each week. I can’t verify this but I would make the argument that the most preached topic is love, either God’s love for us or our love for Him and others. I was I preparing this sermon this past week, I began thinking about this passage and the previous sermons that I’ve heard and I began to question how I would I approach this text. Yet, as I considered this, I have to be honest and come to this convicting revelation: for all the teaching that I’ve heard and the sermons I’ve preached, I don’t love as I should. This sort of embarrassing for the preacher to admit at the very beginning of his message but the reality is, it’s true. The truth is, I should be a love expert! I should be living a life of love vibrantly and sacrificially but I don’t always do that. So my question is this: why is this the case? Why do we fail at loving others? That’s the path I want us to take this morning as we approach this text. However, I want to add a little disclaimer on the front end. If you can listen to this message and think of all the reasons why other people don’t love you well, then you are hearing this message wrong. This isn’t some sort of scorecard, where you can say, “They haven’t loved me well. They haven’t loved me well.” This message is for you and me… let God deal with everyone else. Here’s the reality: if you are breathing, you have the capacity to love.

Read 1 John 3:11-18

We forget the sacrificial love of Christ

One of the primary reasons that we have a lack a love and don’t love as we should is because we forget about the sacrificial love of Christ. Now, that statement might seem impossible being that we regularly talk and sing about the love of Christ that was shown to us on the cross. Guess what? We don’t forget intellectually about Christ, we forget experientially or relationally. I think that we have this idea that our conversion to Christ begins at the cross and as we grow we progress past the cross. Listen, we don’t progress past the cross, we are always progressing to the cross. The death of Jesus Christ isn’t basic Christianity, it is central Christianity. It’s the very heartbeat of our faith and it is what brings life to all areas of our spiritual life. The love that Christ showed for us was the perfect sacrificial love, that we call Agape love. He is our example. He gave his life for us. When we begin to drift away from this truth and try to move on, we can’t understand what love is. The farther from the cross we get, the less we understand what true Christian love is all about. John highlights this when he writes, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” We can never purely love, until we truly understand the pure love of Jesus Christ. As the old hymnist wrote, “I will cling to the old rugged cross.”

We shun personal sacrifice

We live in a world in a society that has a complicated view of sacrifice. In one sense, there are many who are touched by the sacrifice of others. We recognize the great sacrifice of those in the military. We look at firefighters in California and we are awed by the sacrifice that they make for people they don’t know. However, it seems as a society, we tend to applaud sacrifice… in others. Yet, when it comes time to make personal sacrifices for the good of others, we are less and less willing. Or we make sacrifices that are on our terms. In an age of instant-gratification, sacrifice is becoming a quaint idea that existed in years gone by. Yet, built into love, is this idea of sacrifice. In this passage, John writes, “… and we ought to lay down our life for the brothers.” The Bible not only applauds sacrifice but commands it. In fact, this passage is going as far to say that there could be a time that I show love by sacrificing my very life for someone else.

I cannot help but think of the four chaplains of World War II. On January 23rd, 1943, the USAT Dorchester, a ship, left New York bound for Greenland. The ship held 902 officers, servicemen and civilians. This included for chaplains: A Jewish chaplain, a Catholic chaplain and two Protestants. In the middle of the night, a German torpedo struck the middle of the ship causing catastrophic damage. It was chaotic and the chaplains helped and served the men on board. There weren’t enough life preservers on the ship and the four chaplains gave their own life-preservers to the men. The last visual of them was the four chaplains coming together in prayer as the ship went down. We rightly remember these four chaplains: John Washington, Alexander Goode, George Fox and Clarke Poling.

We sometimes are indifferent toward the need of others

While we sometimes recognize that sacrificial love, such as this, is important, we forget that love may not be giving your very life. John says, “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?” We often fail at love because we do not pay attention to the needs of others or we are indifferent. We become so self-focused on our problems, that we miss the plight of others. This is true on a local level and a global level. We see the needs of others and we just sort of throw up our hands and say, “what can I do about it?” It could be local issues such as homelessness or hunger or global issues that are magnified when you consider the extraordinary poverty that exists in the world. The issues seem so prevalent and overwhelming that we have a tendency to shut our eyes and not see the overwhelming needs around us. Almost like a small child who closes his eyes when something scary happens because they believe this will make the problem go away. Do you see the language, “…and sees his brother.” This represents an action of seeing and observing the needs around us. We ought to live life with eyes wide open.

We are selfish

The other side of indifference is that too often than not, we are selfish. Perhaps we see the needs of others but we aren’t willing to part with what we have. Selfishness is ingrained in us at a very young age. Nobody really has to teach us to be selfish. Lest we become too quick to point fingers at the selfishness of others, why don’t we take a look at our own hearts? What is it in your life that you are unwilling to part with? Have you become obsessed with gathering and hoarding that you are unwilling to meet the needs of others around you? Let me just slow this down a little, compared to Jesus Christ, are you a selfish person? That is John’s approach here. He’s not really asking us to compare ourselves with next guy, he’s asking us to compare ourselves to Jesus Christ. Guess what? If I want to make myself feel better, I can find somebody around me and say, “See, I’m not as selfish as him. I’m good.” Then I consider Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect picture of love. He stepped down into humanity for us. Imagine! He had everything. He didn’t need anything. Yet, He comes into this world and he lives completely free from any sort of selfishness. He didn’t try to preserve His life. He didn’t keep things from others. Not only that, but he didn’t hold himself back from people who hated him. He could said, “I will be kind and generous to those whom love me.” No! He lived completely open to others. He’s our standard. Our standard isn’t the person sitting in the pew next to you. The pastor isn’t your standard. Your standard isn’t the most righteous person you can think of. The standard is Christ. Philippians 2:5-11 is particularly helpful and instructive regarding this. John seems to be incredulous: “How can we say we follow Jesus and yet withhold goods from others.

Action takes effort

Talking and doing are two different things. We can talk about love but actually doing something is actually much different than just talking about it. We do this all the time in life. People love to talk and they love to talk about what they will do or would do. Have you ever heard someone say, “If I was in there position, I would have done this or that?” We love to talk. There is a danger in the Christian life in this regard. When it comes to love we can talk a big game. Listen, I can be susceptible to this danger as anyone else. We can talk about being generous, but what about when our generosity is tested? We can talk about loving our enemies, but what about when our enemy shows up at our front door? The truth is, action takes effort. We have to step out of our comfort zones, we have to deny ourselves and we may have to make hard decisions. But that’s love. Love is an action! Love has hands and feet, not just a mouth. The reality is that we become so comfortable talking about problems, rather than doing something about. There are people who love to sit around and talk about all the problems but aren’t willing to do anything about it. Jesus didn’t live that way. He loved in complete action, not just hollow words.

A new way to live and love

These are a few of the reasons that we don’t love as we should. What I love about this passage is that John is providing another way to live. Another way to be bold in our Christian life. A life of radical giving and radical love. A way of living that isn’t concerned with the stuff of this world and status and popularity but a way of living that is only concerned with glorifying God. Our love and generosity is going to be a reflection of our faith. The more we seek Christ and live in the Spirit, the love and generosity of Jesus will flow out. We can’t really know Christ and not love others. This way of living is very different than the ways of the Lord. Although the world speaks of love as a virtue, the Christian vision of love is not one of love out of convenience, or love that makes you feel good, but self-sacrificial love. That’s John’s point. Love could cause you to give your life. Love could cause you to sacrifice your money. Love could lead you to let loose of possessions. Love will cause you to rethink the way that you spend your time. While John’s presentation of loving this way should not be seen as radical, it is seen as radical because it is not the way that we see it lived out.

Conclusion

Now listen, these aren’t easy things. It’s not always easy to know the right thing to do. There will be times when you aren’t sure if you should do this or that. The truth is, God has blessed us with resources, so we want to make sure that we used them wisely, right? As we are seeking to live lives of love we should keep a few things in mind. Keep your eyes and minds open to the needs around you. John is speaking about seeing things around you that you know are needs. This means we have to get to know people, so we know what their needs are. Seek the Lord’s wisdom through prayer. Honestly, you seek God in prayer. Ask him for wisdom. Know your resources. Sometimes there are needs that are presented to us that we can’t meet ourselves but we may have resources around us. Even at the church, we have several Christian ministries that we and other churches support that we can turn to. For example, N.E.E.D is a ministry that we support. Cornerstone is a ministry we support. We’ve worked with the Community Enrichment Center (C.E.C) in the past. One of the best ways that we can meet needs is by working together. We partner together and we can meet a lot more needs than any of us could meet on our own. This is the beauty of Christian community.

Are you ready to live a life of radical love for others? Have you ever experienced the radical love of Jesus Christ? The Gospel message is this, Jesus Christ came and lived a perfect life for you and I, died on our behalf, so that we could experience eternal life if we will trust in Him as our savior. This is the hope of the Gospel? Have you ever trusted in Christ? Perhaps you’ve made a profession of faith, but you see that your love life for others is quite as strong as you’d like. May the God of Love, fill you with love for others.

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