Sermon Text: 1 John 4:7–11, 19–21
Date: May 5, 2024
Event: The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B
1 John 4:7–11, 19–21 (EHV)
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. 9This is how God’s love for us was revealed: God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we also should love one another.
19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen? 21This then is the command we have from him: The one who loves God should also love his brother.
Love One Another? How?
Have you ever stared at the assembly instructions for a piece of furniture or some other thing you had to put together yourself and wondered what you were looking at? Perhaps the jump from step 6 to step 7 didn’t make any sense, or the images suddenly were reversed for some reason, or it referenced a piece that didn’t seem to come in the box. In these cases, it’s not enough to have a final goal or step-by-step directions, but those directions need to make sense to finish the project.
We opened the box last week and pulled out the instructions for Jesus’ command to love one another. That exact command followed hot on the heels of Jesus’ vine and branches analogy earlier in John 15 that we read last week, and this morning’s Gospel has Jesus stating it directly. But, like last week, we’re continuing to examine this command through John’s commentary in his first letter in the New Testament.
Last week, we answered the question, “Why?” Why should we love one another? Well, not only did Jesus command it, but it is a way (arguably the primary way) we show our thanks to God for rescuing us from our sins. John reinforces what we said last week in our Second Reading for this morning: This is how God’s love for us was revealed: God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we may live through him. This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we also should love one another. We love because he first loved us. Why should we love each other? Because God loved us and gave us his only Son to rescue us from sin, death, and hell.
I don’t want to zip by that truth because it’s vitally important. The love God showed us in Jesus is something we did not deserve and could never earn. Jesus came to give his life for us to take away all of our sins and promise us a perfect, eternal life in heaven, even though we were his enemies. Last week, we heard that the truth (1 John 3:18) motivates our love, and John summarized that truth in this way: “This is how we have come to know love: Jesus laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16).
When writing to the Roman Christians, the apostle Paul described it this way: “At the appointed time, while we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly. It is rare indeed that someone will die for a righteous person. Perhaps someone might actually go so far as to die for a person who has been good to him. But God shows his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6–8). Note how much Paul emphasizes that we didn’t deserve God’s love, but he gave it to us anyway. He rightly calls us helpless without Jesus and stresses that Jesus died for us while we were still sinners, that is, while we were still God’s enemies.
Sin is disobedience toward God. It is having anything in us that makes us flawed and makes us fall short of the perfect people God demands us to be. This is common to our human condition. All of us here are sinners. All of us here are imperfect and have fallen far short of the expectations—the demands—God has for us. And that sin separates us from God and sets us against him. In our sin, we pick a fight with the almighty Creator of the universe. That is not a battle we have any chance of winning.
This is God's love: Though we set ourselves against him, he did not want us to perish. He did not want us to face what our sins truly deserved—an eternity of separation from God in hell. So, God took it upon himself to fix what we had broken. Jesus took our sins on himself to rescue us from the punishment that we deserved. He loved us when we did not deserve it in the least.
That love of God shown to us is why we show love to other people. While we can’t contribute to our forgiveness, nor can we ever pay God back, we can thank him. And we thank him by showing love to others. The way we treat others shows our thanks and refelcts the love God has for them as well as us. Jesus, before our Gospel for this morning, had told his disciples that this love for others would make it evident to all that they trusted in him for forgiveness: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
So, how does this play out in our lives? How do we love one another? John gives us a bit of an explanation by showing us the negative: If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen? “Hate” may feel like a strong word. Often, we associate hate with wishing harm on someone else or hoping things go poorly for them in their life. But we are dealing with extremes here; love is the opposite of hate.
To love someone is to want what is best for them. To love someone is to want to help them in any way you can. To love someone is to be willing even to sacrifice yourself—your plans, desires, time, earthly riches, whatever we might consider valuable—in service to that person.
Yet how quick we are to be angry with someone and even to hate them! Sometimes, we even call it justified anger or righteous anger because we’ve been hurt or harmed in some way! We deserve to feel upset! Our anger makes sense to us, therefore it is justified!
But consider this from God’s point of view. Does God love with that kind of love? If he did, we would be lost to our sin. More than we’ve ever been hurt by anyone else—no matter how grevious the hurt—we have harmed God more. A sin may be harm against a fellow person in this life, but every sin is an attack on God. So if anyone deserved to feel upset, to burn with righteous anger, it would be God against us. And yet, what did God do? This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin. God loved us when we did not deserve it.
And there’s the key: true love does not love because it is loved; true love loves even if it is not loved in return. The husband or wife may not treat their spouse poorly simply because they feel mistreated. A child may not treat a parent with contempt just because they don’t appreciate the parent’s decision on an important matter. A person trying to be generous may not lash out at someone because that person tried to exploit their generosity. True love seeks out the good for the other, even if such care isn’t or doesn’t feel reciprocated.
But love also doesn’t mean ignoring when you’ve been wronged; it doesn’t mean pretending like it never happened. Love does not condone sin actively by confirming it or passively through silence. True love confronts hurts and wrongdoing. It addresses the problem when it is present. It is unloving to let sin go unchecked, unaddressed.
This might lead us into a position where loving someone means we have “tough love” for them. Tough love is not being mean to someone in a misguided attempt to make them stronger. Tough love might be the parent saying “no” to the child’s request which will be bad for them or even dangerous. Tough love is confronting sin not because you’re angry about how you’ve been hurt but because you care for the person who wronged you, and you do not want them to be swept away by their sin. Tough love may mean confronting a problem that, by that very confrontation, threatens the relationship.
None of this is easy. Real love is not the butterflies of joy when you see a person whose company you enjoy sharing. Real love is sticking with your fellow sinners, even through the hurts, and seeking the good of everyone involved. Real love is genuine concern for the other person, not a shallow, surface-level-only string of words. Real love works through the hurt and pain and loves even when it is not loved in return. Real love patterns itself after Jesus’ love for us.
This brings us back to the whole reason we endeavor to love all people, even when they might be very difficult to love: We love because he first loved us. Why should you show love and compassion to that coworker who frustrates you, that person on the train who is annoying you, or to the family member who is on your very last nerve? Because Jesus first loved us. He sacrificed his very life to rescue us from our sins.
So, this week, note where you get irritated with another person and find yourself drifting toward grudges, anger, or even hate. Note them; pay attention to them; maybe even write them down if that’s helpful. Then, ask this question: how can I show love to them? How can I show true love to them like Jesus has shown to me? Perhaps that love will express itself in swallowing my pride and forgiving them. Perhaps it will be confronting the harm they’ve done that you might work through it. Perhaps it will be confession on my part for not loving my brother or sister as I should.
In all of it, hold fast to the love of God that rescues you from all sin and makes you his dear child. Hold fast to that love, best summed up in Jesus’ death in our place and his glorious resurrection from the dead. Christ is risen; he is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.
