What Love Is
1 John 3:16
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. – 1 John 3:16
Introduction
It was a morning like this one. In the pre-dawn twilight Mary goes down to the grave, carrying the spices and perfumes that would be used to anoint the body of Jesus. They were the same spices that she had carried just a few weeks before for her brother, Lazarus, after he died. They were the same perfumes that she had poured over the feet of Jesus and wiped with her hair, when he forgave her and sent her away in peace.
Now she comes out of the city, to the tomb-a cave in the hillside. The body was wrapped hurriedly before the Friday sunset that marked the start of the Sabbath day. Two of Jesus’ prominent followers laid the body, torn by the piercings and beatings and spears, onto a shelf in that cave. There, per Jewish burial customs, it would remain for a year until the family returned to claim the bones and place them into a special box, called an ossuary. Jesus’ enemies posted Roman guards and sealed the tomb to make sure no one could break in and steal the body.
So , as the sun rises, Mary comes. Not alone. There is another Mary, James and Joseph’s mom. There is Joanna, the wife of Herod’s household manager. And Salome. Fearful. Disappointed. Hopeless. Taking comfort together, they are hoping the guards will make an exception and roll away the stone and allow this one last act of devotion.
But when they got there, there were no guards. There was no stone. There is no body. There is no Jesus. In a comical scene, Mary doesn’t recognize him. Even though he has spent time at her brother’s house. Even though she watched him suffer on the cross. Even though she washed his feet…It is not until Jesus speaks and she hears the sound of his voice, that she knows that it is Jesus and not a gardener or grave robber.
It sort of begs the question: would we recognize Jesus if he were here this morning? We don’t even have the advantages that Mary had: We have never seen him. We have never heard his voice. We have some clues; we have written records of his patterns of behavior, we would have to use careful observation to see whether our “suspect” matched up with the rap sheet we had on him.
How Do We Know What Love Is?
This is how we know what love is… - 1 John 3:16a
Love is not our native language. Selfishness is. Sin is. Every conversation, every action seeks to reorient the world (relationships, spiritual lives, thoughts) so that it revolves around us.
The good news is: the Bible has no illusions about what we are really like. The people who put down the words in the Bible didn’t try to hide the fact that we all, whether followers of Jesus or not, get it wrong.
The good news is: when God begins his work in us, he begins the renewal process-the regeneration process-so that we can reject the impulses of sin. The first fruit of the spirit is love.
But even if we can love, we don’t know how to love. Just as we need to teach our children that whacking them on the side of the head is not “loving”--we all need to learn, because the habits of selfishness are so deeply ingrained in our character. So, the writer John helps us out in 1st John 3:16, where he writes: “This is how we know what love is…”
Love Is…My Life > Jesus’ Life
…Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. – 1 John 3:16b
So, how do we know? By imitation.
When a baby duckling hatches out from its egg, it imprints on the first thing it sees. It usually sees its mama duck, walk likes she walks, quacks like she quacks, swims where she swims. The duckling learns its pattern of life from the mama duck, a pattern it will use the rest of its life.
We are like that, except that something has gone horribly wrong. Instead of imprinting on God our Father, we have imprinted on almost anything else imaginable. That is sin. Our pattern of life is set by that imprint.
But, incredibly, God gives us a chance—I believe he gives us each a chance during our lives—to reverse the pattern—the imprint—and get it right this time. We don’t get to throw off all patterns and live without. That isn’t the way we are made. But we can choose again whether to imprint on God or elsewhere. The Bible calls this “the new birth” or “being born again”
You see, we don’t know what love is by default, but we can learn to walk like Jesus walked, speak as Jesus spoke, live like he lived. And we know this, not as an impassive, external observer who watches what love is like with some sort of emotional, spiritual microscope. No, we know this because we are the beneficiary of Jesus’ love which considered our life is more important than his own.
And that is the pattern. That is the imprint. That is the seed. That is trying to grow and fruit in your life and mine.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” – John 10:11.
Now, we could stop there and dwell on how wonderful it is that we are loved by God.
But John doesn’t leave it at that. In his meddling sort of way, John expects the response to Jesus’ love is not just to bask in the warmth of the heavenly glow, but lead to us acting like Jesus acted. There is an implication; there is a result; there is a response that says: if we are loved so greatly, we should respond in three specific ways:
Love Is…Their Life > My Life
…And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. – 1 John 3:16c
First, if we want to know what love is and we want to imitate Jesus, we need to have the same regard for others that Jesus had for us. If Jesus acted so that our lives more valuable than his, he also asks that we consider others’ lives more valuable than ours. So, are we lovers or are we leeches? Are we blood suckers or blood donors?
But let’s get practical here. There are a lot of needy people in the world. There are a lot of needy people just in my family, and among my friends and acquaintances. I only have one life to lay down. I just don’t have the time or the energy to “lay down my life” for everybody. I’m not God.
So what are we supposed to do? Let me make two comments here:
1. Sometimes we aren’t asking this question with honest motives. Sometimes we are asking because we would like to reserve some right to “have fun” or “do our own thing” or “avoid pain”. We would like to keep our God devotion to some level where we do enough so we don’t feel too guilty, but not enough where it would make us do something uncomfortable. When selfishness gets ahold of our spirituality, faith stops being the spark that lights our fuse and becomes the cement that reaffirms our mediocrity. Don’t lie to yourself.
2. Sometimes we are exhausted loving the people God has given near us. We were talking about this in our small group and, as I looked around the table after we’d prayed, I realized what an amazing way God was using them, both in their families and at work and I realized how maxed out we all are. I would be doing a disservice if I made people feel guilty who are already maxed out. My goal is not to lay down my life for the world. That’s Jesus’ job. But my experience is that those of us who have pushed ourselves to the utmost of what we can give, find that God expands our ability to love to one more. So we should always look for that one more, who we can encircle with the love of God.
John says that if really see how much God loves us, there is a sort of no-holds-barred attitude to giving ourselves for others:
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! – 1 John 3:1a
But still I hold back. How do I look? How do people think about me?
· Is it really about whether you look good or not? For the God of the universe, Jesus looked pretty bad up on that cross, so that you could be presented unbroken and unstained at the end of your life. Can you help the broken be whole, even if it makes you look bad?
· Is it really about whether you win or not? Whether you get the credit or not? Recently, whenever I’ve had a disagreement with my wife, Helen, I’ve had to stop and tell myself: this is not about me being right, or justified, or looking like I’ve got it together.
Love Is…Their Life > My Stuff
If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? – 1 John 3:17
Second, when we know what love is about, we realize not only that their life is more important than our life, but their life is more important than our stuff.
John Piper, in his book “Don’t Waste Your Life” comments on the “story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. At first, [Piper] thought it might be a joke. A spoof on their American dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically this was the dream: Come to the end of your life-your one and only precious, God-given life-and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ and the great day of judgment: “Look, Lord. See my shells.” That is a tragedy.”[1]
John asks ‘How can the love of God be in that person?’ Let me give you an illustration. In computers, the most basic building blocks, transistors, are built up into logic gates. These gates transform one or more inputs on one side into an output on the other side. For example, an AND gate says: IF this input is TRUE AND this input is TRUE, THEN the output will be TRUE. But if either input is FALSE, the output will be FALSE. On the other hand, an OR gate says: IF either this input TRUE OR that input is TRUE, then the output will be TRUE. Only if both are FALSE is the output FALSE. The relationship between the inputs and the outputs is called a TRUTH table.
Now, let’s look again at John’s TRUTH table. What are the inputs? He says: IF ‘anyone has material possessions’ AND (there’s the AND gate) ‘sees a brother or sister in need’. What is the output? ‘No pity’
Imagine for a moment, someone gave you a random computer chip from a bucket and said: you figure out what kind of chip this is. So you, being the good computer scientist who knows your truth tables, begin to test by trying different sorts of inputs and watching the outputs you get. By comparing those results against the TRUTH tables, you can determine what sort of chip you don’t have until you find an exact match.
John’s conclusion: If you have the stuff, and you see the need and the output is not pity, then the TRUTH table says: must not be a person who has experienced the love of God. Because someone with their inner workings revolutionized by the inventor of souls give some other output.
When John talks about us like this, he reminds me of another sort of computer chip. This sort of chip takes any number of valid inputs and produces no output. We call it a NOP or “No Operation” A placeholder. The Bible says that, if you have the blessings, the means and you see the need, but there is no pity, your soul is, in effect, a big fat NOP. A paperweight. A dead-end.
You know, the best estate sales are also the saddest. Beautiful stuff, useful now only to the highest bidder. Reexamine your walk-in closet, your storage unit, your freezers, pantries, boats, your parked cars, front and back yards, your IRA, bank account and your time card. Compare that to the needs of your brothers and sisters, and beyond. Because their life is more important than your stuff.
Love Is…Action > Words, Truth > Rhetoric
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. – 1 John 3:18
Third, when we know what love is about, it moves our motor, not just our mouth.
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. – 1 John 3:18
Someone once said that there are two types of people: those who believe that words mean something and those who don’t. Preachers and politicians unfortunately fall in the former category together. It’s not that John doesn’t believe in the power of words. After all we’re reading his book and he even called Jesus ‘the Word’ (‘In the beginning was the Word’ (John 1:1). But John knows how easy it is to substitute words for real compassion. Just make the right sounds, the right speech, to make it sound like you really care.
Husbands, you know exactly what I’m talking about (or at least you’ve heard about this), that if you make the right agreeable sounds and nod at the right point, you can sort of float through the conversation with your wife. But at some point, there is the dreaded pause or the key word that signals that you are expected to respond with more than agreeable words or platitudes or “yes, dear” Now you race through your short-term memory to piece together what your wife was saying to figure out what you’re going to do.
This verse is exactly that point is God’s conversation with you. “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
1. Your Family. Families seem like dysfunctional need bundles sometimes. God is redeeming your family through you. How will you act?
2. Your Community. So many are lonely, powerless and hurting. God is redeeming this community through you. How will you act? (Block Party, Help-A-Neighbor)
3. Your School and Office. Widgets and sales quotas and grades. What profits it someone if he gains all the good grades or promotion and forfeits their soul? So many are forfeiting their soul. God save us from the American dream. God is redeeming your school and your office through you. How will you act?
4. Your World. God is redeeming your world through you. How will you act?
Conclusion
So where is the gospel in all of this? John said, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” Sometimes Christians get (rightly so) accused of hit-and-run evangelism, show up long enough to hand out a tract or give a prepared speech, but not long enough-not to love. Isn’t sharing the gospel loving? Yes, but it is not all of loving. Remember, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” I know it’s not all of loving because I know how those I love and how I treat them. I lay down my life for their every need. Four times in the gospel, it says that Jesus had compassion on the people. In three of them, the result was food or healing. In one, it was teaching. It is never one or the other, it is both.
The Bible says that when we come to Christ, the Spirit of God is like a seed planted in our hearts. And when that seed matures in our lives, it produces fruit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23)
Thirteen years ago or so, a little girl and her mother came and stayed with us for what turned out to be a month in our little house in Fremont, because of family and marriage struggles. A few years ago, during my family’s travels, we went to see her again. She was getting ready to start college, so we brought her a Bible. We keep in touch, but college was getting ahold of her. Then recently we started seeing signs that something was changing. Then she wrote this note to my wife: “Auntie Helen, I want to thank you for the kind notes. I was recently in a Christian bookstore and I wanted to buy a Bible, but didn’t have enough money because I also wanted to buy Crazy Love and I Kissed Dating Goodbye. So I went home and I found the Bible you gave me before, still in its box.” Truth and action together.
When we visited my wife’s family, we left a Bible with one of her aunts. Not much interest. This year, we had a chance to help her family in a small way. Helen was talking to her on the phone later and she said, “I never thought about God, but now I find I am praying all the time. When can you come again and convert me?” Did we help her family so that she would listen? No, we did it because we love our family. But that love packaged with truth, is the fertile ground in which the Spirit of God can work. Truth and action together.
What a difference a sunrise made for Mary. Darkness to light. Despair to hope. Death to life. Easter morning is the promise that the life that exhaust, Jesus replenishes. He told Mary, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”(John 11:25)
[1] Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper, p. 46
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