Loving Like Jesus

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in 1 John chapter 3 this morning. 1 John chapter 3. A few years ago, when Madeline was close to a year old, so Benjamin was already up walking around and getting into everything, and Madeline was getting close to the point where I could tell she was going to very soon be getting into everything.

So I decided that to protect my investment on my iPhone, I ought to get one of those life-proof cases. That’s what they’re called. is life-proof.

They’re supposed to be dust-proof and waterproof and shock-proof. I mean, you could all but just whack it with a hammer, I think, and the phone would survive. I thought, well, that would be a good investment.

I’ve gotten to where everything’s synced up together. I use that iPhone for work. I use it for contacts, keep track of appointments, and I couldn’t afford to replace it.

So I thought, I’m going to get one of these life-proof cases. So I ordered one online because they’re really expensive in the stores. And I got a great deal, like an unbelievable deal on one online and had it shipped in.

And they tell you to test it first. I followed all the instructions. You’re supposed to seal it up without the phone in it. And you’re supposed to submerge it in water for a few hours to make sure it doesn’t leak.

As long as it’s dry on the inside, it’s good to use. And so I checked it out. You know, it didn’t leak.

It had all the little things where you could close the openings on your phone where they wouldn’t get dust in them. I just thought this thing was great. But I would be using this.

It worked fantastic except for one thing. I would be using this to talk on the phone, and I’d be in the middle of a conversation with a church member, and I would lose the call. I think, well, this is weird.

And I thought, well, maybe it’s just a glitch with the phone or something. Well, it started happening a lot. And so I started paying attention to what was happening, and the phone would get real hot too.

And I finally realized what was happening was the screen was still on. You know when you put these new phones to your head, the screen goes black? Well, the screen would still be on, and apparently what was happening was because the screen was still on while I was talking on the phone, my ear was sticking out and hitting the off button or the mute button or one of those.

I said, well, this is a problem. What’s wrong with this? So I went to Googling it because that’s what you do when you have problems. I went to looking it up on Google, and it said it may be a problem with the switch.

There’s supposed to be a switch in one of these like there is on the iPhone that’s supposed to turn the screen off when it comes up close. A sensor, the screen is smarter than I am. It knows when the phone is close to my head.

So I got in contact with the company that made the LifeProof case. I said, is there a problem? Is there something that I’m not doing right?

Is there a problem with this particular one? Did I get a defective case? And I gave them the serial number and all of that, all the information.

And they asked where I bought it, and I told them. And finally they came back and said, what you’ve got is a counterfeit. So I’ve got a counterfeit?

I spent $30 on a counterfeit. I should have known because they’re over $100. And it came from China, so I learned something there.

But I’ve got a counterfeit. Now, this case was great. It kept the water out.

I could hear. It kept the dust out. It kept it from getting whenever the kids would try to grab it off the table and there’s sticky fingerprints on it or they’d grab it and drop it or I’d drop it as I’m getting out of the car or carrying a child.

It was great, except there was one characteristic that was missing. It wouldn’t turn off the screen. And for all the other good that it did, this one missing characteristic made me realize that it wasn’t the real thing.

And the Bible sort of speaks about Christians in the same way. That regardless of all the other good that we do, we can do all sorts of wonderful things and still be missing one characteristic that gives away that we’re a counterfeit. And Paul talked about this when he said that, you know, if you prophesy, if you speak in tongues, if you do this, you do that, you can do all these wonderful things, you can give your life, but if you have not love, he said you’re nothing.

Love is the missing characteristic. Love is that one thing that no matter how much good we do, no matter how religious we appear to be on the outside, no matter how scrupulously we follow every jot and tittle of the law, if we’re missing love, it’s sort of that one characteristic that shows, that proves that something is missing and proves that we’re counterfeits. We are not what we claim to be.

Even if we’re waterproof, even if we’ve got the serial number, if we’re missing that one characteristic, there’s something wrong. John writes about this in the book of 1 John in chapter 3 that we’re going to look at this morning. And starting in verse 10, he continues on from what we looked at last week where he’s talking about the characteristics of the children of God and the children of Satan, those who are under God’s authority and those who still remain bound to Satan.

And he says in verse 10, in this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil. Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, which we discussed that last week. What it means is doing righteousness doesn’t mean, oh, I did good things and so God loves me and I’m one of his.

All sorts of people do good things. But for us to do the things that God tells us to do, for us to be obedient to God with a godly motive, that is righteousness and that is something that we are incapable of doing apart from the righteousness that Jesus Christ puts into us. And there are all sorts of good people by human standards in the world, and they do good things.

But we can’t do righteousness. In other words, we can’t do anything that is acceptable to God apart from the righteousness of God in Christ that is put into us. And so when he says do with righteousness, if we do righteousness, it’s a sign that we belong to God.

If we don’t do righteousness, in other words, if we’re not being obedient to God, then it’s a sign that we do not belong to him. And he, but notice what he says at the end of this verse here. He says, neither he that loveth not his brother.

He ties the two in. You can do all sorts of religious things and you can look religious outwardly. He says, but also if you don’t love your brother, it’s evidence that you don’t belong to God.

And that word brother, we need to talk about who is my brother. Because as human beings, we’re always looking for a loophole. Sort of like the guy who came to Jesus when Jesus told him the story of the Good Samaritan.

He said, what am I supposed to do? And Jesus said, what does the law tell you to do? He said, well, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

He said, oh, very good, you’re right. And so he said, well, then who’s my neighbor? We’re always looking for a loophole.

God, does that mean I love the people who go to my church? Does that mean I love the people who think and look and act just like me? Does it mean I have to love those people, those people?

And you can fill in the group in your mind, whoever those people are, because we all have a different probably idea of who those people would be, but it’s the people that you have a hard time loving. And Jesus tells him the story of the good Samaritan. And y’all are familiar with the story.

The man was beaten by the side of the road. He was on his way down to Jericho to do business. A Jewish man, he was beaten and robbed and left for dead.

And a priest comes walking by one of the important religious guys. Surely he’ll help him. Now he wanders over the other side of the street.

A Levite, one of the helpers in the temple. Not only is he a religious guy, but he’s a helper. Surely he’ll help him.

Now he just goes to the other side of the road. And it too because there’s a thought in there of, wait a minute, is this a trick? Have they laid him out here as bait and they’re going to beat me next?

I understand it, but they still weren’t showing love. It was the Samaritan. The guy that would have hated the Jewish man and the Jewish man would have hated him.

The Samaritan came along and picked him up and tried to bandage his wounds and clean and care for him and then took him to the inn, took him to a place where he could be cared for and left him there and said, here’s money to cover his care and anything else that it costs, I’ll cover when I come back. And then Jesus said, who was his neighbor? Who really was his neighbor?

It was the Samaritan. Okay, we’re always looking for a loophole. So who is my brother?

Our first thought is, well, your first thought may be your siblings, a family member. That’s not, that’s probably not what he’s talking about here. My first thought when I read brother in the Bible is it’s talking about a brother in Christ. It’s talking about somebody in the church.

But I noticed there are times in the book of 1 John where he uses the word brother and it indicates somebody who is not, who is not living the way they’re supposed to. As a matter of fact, sometimes that term is used for somebody who is not at all living the life of a Christian. And I don’t think it’s going beyond what the Bible is teaching here to say that when he uses the term brother and says if you hate your brother, if you don’t love your brother, that it’s a sign you don’t belong to God.

I don’t think it’s a stretch, and I don’t think it’s going beyond what the Bible’s teaching to say that that terminology, that brother, applies to just your fellow man, to hate those around you. And there’s another place, and I believe it’s in the book of 1 John, where he says, how can you claim to love God who you’ve never seen and hate your brother who you have seen? If we can’t even love the people that we see sitting in front of us, how do we credibly claim to love God, who we’ve never seen with our own eyes?

So he says here that this is a sign of not belonging to God, if we can’t love our brethren. He says, verse 11, for this is the message that you’ve heard from the beginning, that you should love one another. So he says in verse 10, this is how it’s made manifest. If you want to put that in today’s language, it can mean that’s how you prove it.

Here’s the evidence that you love God, that you belong to God, that you do righteousness, and that you love your brother. And then he says in verse 11, because this is the message, this is what you’ve been taught all along. This is what God’s truth has been from the beginning, that we should love one another.

That we should love one another. That’s totally consistent with what Jesus taught. Love your neighbor as yourself, which also goes back to the Old Testament.

For all the concerns about the harshness, or what people would say is the harshness of the Old Testament law today, and I will say, thank God that we’re under grace and not under the Old Testament law. Because the point of the Old Testament law is to show us we can’t be good enough to earn God’s love. But God is loving and sent his love to us even though we couldn’t deserve it.

The law just shows us that we need that forgiveness and need that grace. But even in the Old Testament law, they were taught to love their neighbor as themselves. Some of the harsh punishments were meted out for people who would abuse their neighbor, who would harm those around them.

So all throughout God’s word, he’s taught us to love one another. He says this goes back to the very beginning. This is what you’ve been taught in verse 11.

This is what you’ve been taught all along is to love your neighbor, is to love those around you. So the main point of this message this morning is that if you want to be like Jesus, you have to love like Jesus. Let me say that again because it’s too important to just skip over and miss it and go on to the next thing.

If you want to be like Jesus, if you want to be like Jesus, you have to love like Jesus. Because I’ll tell you what, if we’re the goal of the Christian life, God’s will for us is our sanctification. God’s plan for us from before the foundation of the world has been to take us and pluck us up out of our sins and translate us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light and to conform us, the book of Romans says in chapter 8, to the image of his Son.

That whom he foreknew he did predestine to be conformed to the image of his Son. I’ve told you before, I don’t believe that that means God chose some for heaven and some for hell. I understand there are smarter people than I am who believe that.

But my understanding of that passage is that he’s not saying I picked some for heaven and I picked some for hell. My understanding of that passage is he’s saying that my plan all along has been that those who would come to me through Jesus Christ, I would not just save them and leave them unchanged. But I’ve had a plan for them, and their plan, their predestination all along has been for me to make them more like Jesus Christ. That that’s been his plan from before the foundation of the world.

That’s God’s will for us, and that’s our ultimate goal, is to be more like Jesus. Now if we try to be like Jesus, but we lack this one characteristic, it’s a sign of being a counterfeit. We’re like that life-proof case that wouldn’t shut the screen off.

Everything else worked. Everything else was great. But that one missing characteristic showed it all to be a lie.

Brothers and sisters, this morning, if you want to be like Jesus, you have to love like Jesus. If you’re trying to be like Jesus, you can’t be like Him and follow His example without loving like He did. You can do all the religious stuff.

And you can look like the best person in town. But if you don’t love, it means nothing. And again, I want to clarify.

When I say be like Jesus, I’m not teaching that we ever become gods. I’m not saying that anything about our nature ever becomes divine. We are still created.

God is different from us. God is uncreated, no beginning and no end. We are created with a beginning and no end.

We are different. And when I say be like Jesus, I mean to follow His example. To follow His example.

To be more like Him in terms of the life that we live. And will we ever get there perfectly on this side of eternity? No.

Will we ever have complete victory over the sin nature on this side of eternity? No. Not until we are reunited with Him in our glorified form.

and he puts that new nature in us. But there’s been a change that has taken place where we now have two natures battling it out, the flesh and the spirit, but we actually have a capacity through the spirit. We actually have some ability through the spirit to follow Jesus Christ, and God will strengthen us and form us to be more like him.

But here’s the point of this. You can follow his example in every other area, but if we don’t love like him, it’s all just a counterfeit. Christ-like love is evidence that he’s given us eternal life.

I mean, he makes that pretty clear. Let’s skip down to verse 14 for just a minute, and we’ll come back. He says, we know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren.

Now, in that case, in that context, it does sound like he’s talking about fellow believers, talking about the brethren, the brothers in the church. I don’t believe, though, that he says that to the exclusion of the world at large. But it’s okay if you hate your neighbor.

But I think for us to love one another is a minimum of what we’re supposed to do. How can we claim to love a lost and dying world? Here’s the point.

How can we claim to love a lost and dying world if we can’t even love each other? How can we love people we don’t have Jesus in common with, that we cannot unite with around the single most important aspect of our lives? How can we love people that we don’t have him in common with if we can’t even love our brothers and sisters in Christ?

So is this saying that you only have to love your brothers and sisters in Christ? No. I think that’s where we’ve got to start.

If we can’t nail that down, we can’t love anybody else. But he says here that that kind of love, that love in us for one another, is evidence of eternal life. It’s evidence of the change that he’s made in us.

He says in verse 15, Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. So if we hate each other, it’s the same as murder. We are murderers in our hearts.

Do you ever get mad at each other? Sure. Have you ever been mad at somebody in church?

Anybody else? Just me? I’m the only.

. . Chuck’s shaking his head no. I am the only unspiritual one in here, but hey, I’m spiritual enough to admit it.

I’ve been mad at people in church. I’ve gone to church with people I didn’t want to speak to. Now thankfully, the Holy Spirit nailed me in the conscience and we got that cleared up and got that taken care of.

We’re still going to get sideways with each other sometimes. We’re still going to get mad at each other sometimes. But hating each other is a totally different thing.

Hating each other says, I got mad at you and I’m not willing to let it go. And I’m going to let it fester and I’m going to hold it against you from now on. And I hope bad stuff happens to you.

Have you ever seen that in church? Maybe you felt that way in church and you need to get right with Jesus about that. But you may have seen it in church.

You may have seen it. I have seen it. Now, I can’t know for sure what’s in somebody else’s heart, but I’m fairly certain I’ve seen this.

When I’ve seen people in church, when I’ve seen one person in particular in church, out to destroy somebody else because they didn’t get their way. It’s hatred. And it’s evidence.

It’s evidence of not belonging to Jesus Christ. It said, whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. Now, we are talking some serious anger there. but Jesus equates it with being a murderer and I think if you’ve ever seen somebody that angry that they hated each other so much I mean good lord look at these hate filled and I’m not taking his name in vain Lord I don’t understand it look at these hate filled people that were marching in the streets of Charlottesville some of those people in that crowd do you think if they had the opportunity to get their hands on an African American or Jewish person without any repercussions?

Do you think they wouldn’t have done him harm? Hate in your heart leads to the capacity to do these things. It’s why Jesus equated it with murder.

It’s not just John here, although he is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said if we’re angry with our brother without a cause, it’s the same as murder. Because murder begins with that anger and that hatred in the heart.

And he says, and if that’s there, if we have the capacity to hate somebody like that, then it’s evidence that eternal life is not in us. You know what? I get mad at people.

I told you all this last week. I now have two schools to drop kids off at, and that means twice as much frustration, twice as much anger, twice as much road rage. I get mad at people.

I’m not immune to that, but you know what? God doesn’t let me get away with it. As a child of God, He disciplines me, and He chastises me.

He says, you’re not going to act that way. Just like I tell my kids, you’re not going to act that way as long as you’re part of my family. I feel like sometimes God says the same thing to me.

You’re not going to act that way as long as you’re part of my family. And that’s the bottom line. If we are truly in Jesus Christ, we may get angry at people, but it cannot go to this level.

We should not have the capacity in us to feel hatred for another person. And if we do, we need to take a look and check our spiritual condition, because he says eternal life is not in and never has. This Christ-like love, on the other hand, is evidence that eternal life has been given to us.

Let’s look back at verse 12. In verse 11, he had said, this is what you’ve been taught all along, to love one another. In verse 12, he said, not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.

And wherefore slew he him, because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. Now think back to this story of Cain and Abel. Abel was a shepherd, And so when they were bringing sacrifices to the Lord, he brought an animal sacrifice as he was supposed to.

Cain was a tiller of the ground, the book of Genesis says, and so he brought God a sacrifice of vegetables. And just like many of us, if we were brought only vegetables, we would not be happy. But that’s a joke.

But God was displeased because it was not what God had set up. God had set the precedent in the Garden of Eden when he killed the animal to make a covering of skins For Adam and Eve after their sin, he had set the precedent that led all the way to the cross that the innocent die to pay for the sins of the guilty. And when Cain was bringing a vegetable offering, he was saying, God, whatever I deign to bring you is good enough.

I will worship you in my own way. No, no, God deserves to be worshipped in the way he sets up. And so God wasn’t pleased with Cain’s offering, but he was pleased with Abel’s.

Abel obeyed God and brought him the animal to sacrifice. So Cain looks at this, and instead of looking at his own self and realizing his own problem, he looks at Abel and he gets jealous and he gets mad, and the hatred builds up, and he kills his brother. And then tries to lie to God about it.

When I was teaching, I heard a parent get mad at their child and say, you ever do that again, I’ll kill you and tell God you died. And I thought, I know she was joking. That was just the way she talked.

But I thought, that’s what Abel did. I’m sorry, that’s what Cain did. He killed his brother and then tried to tell God, oh, he just died like God didn’t know.

But not only did God know what Cain did, God knew what was in his heart. He knew the hatred and anger that led there. And that has nothing to do.

God has nothing to do. The Spirit of God in us has nothing to do with that kind of anger and hatred. And so he says in verse 12 that we’re not supposed to treat our brothers, not supposed to treat those around us like Cain did, who got angry and hated and slew his brother because his own works were evil and his brothers were righteous.

But verse 13 says, Marvel not my brethren if the world hate you. So what he’s telling us here is that we are supposed to love those around us. He said, but don’t be surprised when the world around you hates you.

So we look at these two things together and what is he really telling us? As we’ve already set the scene that if we want to be like Jesus, we have to love like Jesus. We set this scene where we’re then told, here’s how you do that.

And he said, love your brethren, love those around you, and don’t do it like Cain, and actually love people around you, and don’t be surprised if the people around you hate you. So clearly there’s a condition on it here. Wait a minute, we’re supposed to love people, but oh, some of them hate us, so we can hate them right back.

And he says, no, no, don’t be surprised if the world hates you. And God doesn’t want us to be surprised, and he’s telling us not, And God’s not surprised either. God’s not surprised by anything.

But God, you don’t know what they said about me. Yeah, he does. But God, you don’t know how they made me feel.

Really? But God, you don’t understand. That statement is never true.

God, you don’t understand. You know what? Let me let you in on a little secret.

God saw before you were ever born, before you were ever thought. God looked through time and space and saw your life. And he saw what that person was going to do to you.

Saw how they were going to make you feel. saw how they were going to treat you, and still he said to love them. Don’t love like Cain, or don’t be like Cain, but love, and don’t be surprised when they don’t love you back.

What we see here is there’s not a condition put on this. And if we want to love like Jesus, Jesus’ love is unconditional. It’s unconditional. The appropriate response to hate is love. And I’m telling you that this morning, recognizing full well that that is a very difficult thing to do.

The only way we are able to do that is by allowing God to love others through us. But he tells us to do that. He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who despitefully use us.

So he’s looking at us and saying, even the fact that people hate you and mistreat you is not a condition that exempts you from the command to love. And so I would tell you, look at those who’ve treated you badly. And we really do.

I mean, I complain about this and that and the direction of the country. But when we look at other places in the world and when we look at the world throughout history, we really are living in one of the freest periods we possibly could be. And for all our concerns about religious liberty, we face a very minimum of persecution here in this country right now.

We look at those who treat us badly for our faith. We look at those who treat us badly just because they don’t like us. We look at those who treat us badly for no reason and God says you’ve got to love them anyway.

There’s no condition on it. And if we’re supposed to love those who’ve treated us badly, folks, how much more are we supposed to love those who maybe haven’t treated us badly, but we just disagree with them, or we know they’re wrong? Am I supposed to love the abortionist?

Yeah, as much as that hurts to say. And I’m not even talking about the mother. Definitely we need to love the mother who’s been pressured into a decision she shouldn’t have ever had to make.

But I’m supposed to love the doctor who’s doing that? It horrifies me with every fiber of my being. Yeah, I’m supposed to love that guy.

I’m supposed to pray for him. Hope that he sees the error of his ways. Am I supposed to love the homosexual?

Absolutely I am. Does that mean I condone the lifestyle? No.

I don’t condone that any more than I condone adultery or drunkenness or gossip or anything. But am I supposed to love them? Absolutely.

And I’m not talking about love the sinner or hate the sin with my own smug feeling of superiority. I’m talking about love the sinner and hate my own sin. and realize that it takes no more grace from God to save them than it did to save me.

Well, what about the family down the road that’s not living right? You’re supposed to love them anyway. There are no conditions that are placed on it.

Other than the unforgivable sin that the Pharisees were committing, and I’m not sure, it’s open to debate whether it can be committed today or not. Other than that one unforgivable sin of rejecting Jesus Christ and attributing His work to Satan, tell me the sin today that God cannot forgive. Anybody?

Is there one sin that God is not willing to love the person and forgive them if they will just ask for his forgiveness? Anything? No.

There’s no condition. There’s no condition and there’s no condition for us. So if we’re going to love like Jesus, we have to love unconditionally.

Because he says, love them but marvel not if they hate you. They hate me and I’m supposed to love them anyway. It’s unconditional. Then we look at verse 16.

We’re skipping ahead a little bit. No, we’re not. Verse 12, I’m sorry.

I’m losing track of where I am here. No, verse 16. All right, I’m sorry.

Forgive me. Verse 16. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us.

And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? One thing I want to clarify before we go any further, when he says bowels of compassion, In the Western world, we see the heart as the seat of the emotions.

I love you with all my heart. My heart is broken. That’s the seat of the emotions.

It was different in their world, and they felt like the stomach area. And sometimes you can get so emotional, it feels like you’ve been punched in your stomach. I see where they get that.

But when he says bowels, shutteth up his bowels, he’s talking about closing, we would say closing off his heart. Whoever sees his brother have need and closes his heart of compassion toward him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? So he says that God laid down his life for us, meaning Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

And he says we should lay down our lives for the brethren. We should lay down our lives for others. Now, does that mean being willing to die?

Yeah. But really, what are the odds that we’re going to be asked to die for our brothers? We’re not facing the persecution that they were.

But laying down your life can mean a whole lot of things. I laid down my life at the altar when I married Charla. I committed my life to her.

And that’s sort of the relationship we’re supposed to have with each other. Because we’ve committed our lives to Jesus Christ, we’re supposed to commit our lives to each other also. And it’s real easy to say, well, I’d die for you.

Okay, but are you willing to live for me? We could say that of Jesus Christ. Oh, if we raised our hands and said, would you be willing to die for Jesus? Probably lots of hands would go up, especially when it’s hypothetical. But are we willing to live for him when it’s not hypothetical?

Are we willing to focus on his good and building his kingdom? Are we willing to look at each other and say, I’m going to put your needs ahead of my own? That’s what he’s talking about here.

He’s talking about making sacrifices. Yes, Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice when he shed his blood and died on the cross, but we’re asked to make smaller sacrifices for the brethren. And he said, whoever has this world’s goods, in other words, if we have plenty, we have abundance, and we look at our brother and we see him in need, and we look at him and say, well, good luck with that, And we shut off our heart.

We close our hearts toward him. We’re not willing to help. How dwells the love of God in him?

How can we say w