Sermon Text: 1 John 3:18-24
Date: April 28, 2024
Event: The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B
1 John 3:18-24 (EHV)
Dear children, let us love not only with word or with our tongue, but also in action and truth.
19This is how we know that we are of the truth and how we will set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God. 22We also receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight. 23This then is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and that we love one another just as he commanded us. 24The one who keeps his commands remains in God and God in him. This is how we know that he remains in us: We know it from the Spirit, whom he has given to us.
Love One Another? Why?
If you’re trying to motivate someone to complete a task, explaining why the job needs to be done can be really helpful. If a boss, a parent, or even a police officer tells you to do something and you don’t understand why you need to do it, perhaps you’ll be a bit reluctant to do what they ask. What is happening? Why this course of action? Am I safe? Is our business safe?
For the next two Sundays, we’ll focus on Jesus’ command to his disciples to “Love one another,” but John’s commentary in his first letter will guide us. This command to love one another (one of the commands that Jesus gave to his disciples on Maundy Thursday evening) will always have Jesus as the focus; the love that we show to others will be the fruit produced because of our connection to the Vine, our Savior.
But loving other people, especially those who seem not to love us, can be very difficult. Next Sunday, we’ll see more concrete examples of how we can love one another, but this morning, we need to answer the more fundamental question: why? Why should we love one another? And beyond Jesus’ command, why did he command it? What is the point?
Our reading doesn’t answer that right off the bat. Instead, John says there are right and wrong ways to show love (or at least, to appear to show love), which will get into the whys of this command. He begins a heartfelt call to people he loves dearly, “Dear children, let us love not only with word or with our tongue, but also in action and truth.”
Perhaps you’ve been frustrated with people responding to some tragic event by assuring everyone that the people affected are in their “thoughts and prayers,” but then don’t seem to go any farther than that. Perhaps you’ve been irritated with people speaking against prayer in these situations while minimizing or simply not understanding the true power of commending someone to the almighty Creator of the universe. But, the tension in this frustration is an understanding (or lack thereof) of what is being done in prayer.
If I tell someone that I’m praying for them, it could look like I’m loving them only with word or with… tongue. And truly, maybe it is. “I’m praying for you” can be used as an empty nicety to move the conversation on from an unpleasant topic rather than showing genuine concern for that person. We might think of James’ direction in his letter to somewhat apathetic Christians when he wrote, “If a brother or sister needs clothes and lacks daily food and one of you tells them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but does not give them what their body needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16).
John is following up on this idea with the command that we should not love in this empty, words-only way; instead, we should love in action and truth. This truth is central to the “why” of loving one another. Two verses before our Second Reading, John had written, “This is how we have come to know love: Jesus laid down his life for us. And we also should lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). This is the truth that John is referring to in v. 18. What should motivate us to love one another? Jesus’ love for us.
In our reading, John expounds on this truth: “This is how we know that we are of the truth and how we will set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”
John sets up a scenario where “our hearts condemn us,” that is, when we feel guilty, when our conscience is screaming at us for something we’ve done wrong or something good that we’ve left undone. You and I know this well. And while our consciences can get mixed up and be wrong, they’re not always wrong. Your conscience continually points out that you have not done what you should do. You have not been the perfect person that God demands you to be. And for that, there is punishment. Guilt is that fear and dread of what we brought on ourselves. This is your heart and my heart condemning us.
The conscience can be a helpful tool, but there’s a huge, glaring weakness. Your conscience doesn’t know anything about Jesus. It doesn’t know anything about God’s mercy or his forgiveness. It only knows that God’s punishment for sin is unbearable. It may not, on its own, be able to articulate the suffering of an eternity in hell, but it knows enough to continually warn us, “BE AFRAID! YOU’VE MESSED UP! THIS IS GOING TO BE REALLY, REALLY BAD!”
John says that when that happens, if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. What does God know that your conscience doesn’t? What does God know that can be so easy for us to forget as guilt sweeps over us? He knows what Jesus did. He knows that Jesus suffered in your place and in my place, so we would never endure the rightful punishment for our sins. He knows that our sins have been washed away in the blood of Jesus shed for me and you and that we stand before him as perfect people because Jesus’ perfection has been given to us.
Yet still, our hearts will rage on about our failures and, in doing so, speak directly against God’s decrees. Earlier in his letter, John had mentioned that saying we had no sin was deceiving ourselves and calling God a liar (1 John 1:8-10). But the flip side is also true. Saying that we are not or cannot be forgiven is also deceiving ourselves and calling God a liar because he said he has forgiven us for Jesus’ sake. This was Judas’ downfall. He’s not in hell because he betrayed Jesus or because he committed suicide. Instead, Judas believed that God lied when he said he forgave his sins and rejected the redemption that Jesus promised and would win.
And so, here is a battle between our hearts and God. And what’s the end result of that battle? Well, as John says, God is greater than our hearts. Dear Christian, when your heart condemns you, send it to God. Let your conscience ask Jesus what it should think. Let Jesus direct it to the nail marks in his hands and his feet, the opening when the spear pierced his side, and to the once-occupied but now-empty tomb. Let God silence that raging, fearful heart within you.
A quiet conscience means a good relationship with God. If our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God. This confidence doesn’t come from our innate, natural “goodness” but rather from the perfection Jesus gave us. Along with that, God gives us everything that serves our eternal good.
How do you respond to that? How do you wrap your mind around the reality that God has forgiven you your sins, that God literally died to save you and has given you eternal life in heaven as a gift with no strings attached? Well, at the risk of sounding trite, you respond with thanks. You don’t and can’t respond by repaying God, but you can say “thank you.”
And how do you say thank you? By doing what God commands. And what does God command? That we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and that we love one another just as he commanded us. I can’t help but assume that John, as he wrote these words, was thinking of something Jesus said during his ministry. When the crowds looking for free bread asked him, “What should we do to carry out the works of God?” Jesus responded, “This is the work of God: that you believe in the one he sent” (John 6:28-29). Do you want to thank God for saving you? Trust that he is telling you the truth; trust that he saved you.
And lest we go too fast, John also mentioned one other way to thank God: that we love one another. It is wild to me that the primary way we express our gratitude to God is in how we love one another. God has set up a system that we love him by loving other people. We will hear next week that all of our love originates with Jesus’ love for us. So when I love someone else, I’m reflecting Jesus’ love. When I love someone else, I’m thanking God for loving me. Why should I love others? Because God has loved me.
My dear brothers and sisters, God remains in you. He gave you the Holy Spirit to create and sustain your faith in Jesus as your Savior. You will be in heaven, despite your many failings, because Jesus has removed them all. Your sins are forgiven; you are perfect in God’s sight. What can we do in response to this? Love one another.
Take heart, dear children; Christ is risen; he is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.
