Love In Action
LOVE IN ACTION
1 JOHN 3:11-24
You cannot claim to believe the truth about Christ if you fail in love.
While “that we should love one another” (3:11) represents the goal of the message rather than its terms, we may well ask how far this could be affirmed of the normal presentation of the gospel today. Though none of those who reads this is likely ever to murder another person, Christ has warned us that anger and insult rank along with it in God’s sight (Matthew 5:22). So many of us criticize, impute motives, quietly stand in another’s way because their life is an implicit criticism of ours, and their acts are more clearly blessed than ours (3:12). We should not wonder if the world hates us (3:13); indeed the wonder should be, if it does not. But what are we to say of the petty hatred and spite of our fellow Christians? We have to hold in spiritual balance the truths that hatred, ie lack of love, is murder (3:15), and that love is not natural but the result of rebirth (3:14). The love John is writing about is Christ’s love (3:16; 4:19). “He laid down his life” (3:16): the translation is unsatisfactory. He gave up his self and this culminated in death (Philippians 2:5-8). Similarly, we have to give up our selves; whether this ends in premature death—unlike Jesus we have to die—or not depends entirely on God’s will. “The world’s goods” (3:17): the NEB captures the sense with “enough to live on.”. The giving out of our superfluity is taken for granted; it is the lowering of our own standard of living that is being considered. Note, too, that John is not writing about turning away beggars, but of responding to what our eyes have seen. Love sharpens vision.
The fruit of love is confidence (3:19; 4:18). The Greek of 3:19-20 is not easy. The sense seems to be that if our heart, ie our conscience, condemns us (there is no suggestion that the condemnation is mistaken), then the knowledge that we love the brothers and sisters enables us confidently to trust in the grace of God, who has given us new life, for he is greater than any shortcoming of ours. On the other hand we do not have confidence for unrestricted asking (3:22) until the voice of conscience is satisfied (3:21), for we could be asking wrongly. The summary of the Old Testament law (Mark 12:29-31) is here rephrased as trust in Jesus Christ (“believe in the name”) and love for one another (3:23). There is a double abiding. Our abiding in him depends on our doing his will. His abiding in us is by his Spirit (3:24).
Thought Tragic is the plight of those who resist the urge of the Spirit to unite them to Christ.