Rather than taking the time to have a separate conversation about the context and commentary that helps to explain today’s verses, I am embedding them into the verses. Think of this as Anthony’s Amplified Version :)
3 We know we have joined Him in fellowship because we live out His commands. 4 If someone claims, “I am in fellowship with Him,” but this big talker doesn’t live out His commands, then this individual is a liar and a stranger to the truth.
5 But if someone responds to and obeys His word, then God’s love has truly taken root and reached its ‘end stage,’ its final act; it’s love for God functioning at full capacity. This is how we know we are in an intimate relationship with Him: 6 anyone who says, “I live in intimacy with Him,” should walk the path Jesus walked.
7 My beloved children, in one sense, I am not writing a new command for you. I am only reminding you of the old command (to love your neighbor as yourself). It’s a word you already know, a word that has existed from the beginning. 8 However, in another sense, I am writing a new command for you (to love one another as Jesus loved you[1]). The new command is the truth that He lived by laying down His life; and now you are living it, too, because the darkness is fading and the true light is already shining among you.
9 Anyone who says, “I live in the light,” but hates his brother or sister ( everything from detests them to esteems them less than they deserve, or even simply devalues them as image bearers of God) is still living in the shadows.
10 Anyone who loves his brother or sister lives in the light and will not trigger a self-made trap of sin because his conscience is clear. 11 But anyone who hates his brother is in the darkness, stumbling around with no idea where he is going, blinded by the darkness.
John is going to say a couple chapters from now (3:23):
“And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”
Here’s where we are landing today: Knowing doctrinal truth about God without expressing love and esteem for others is worthless.
The skin and the soul are connected. Our bodies express the priorities of our heart.
Two caveats that must be said.
#1. Sometimes the sin done to us is so impactful – it lands so hard – that we act out in ways that do more to reflect the dark priorities of other people’s hearts that they have imposed on us. We can feel caught, or trapped, or so broken that we do things that we despise. We don’t lose our free will – this is a sermon for another time – but sometimes we choose things we loathe. I’m not talking about that when I say that our bodies express the priorities of our heart.
#2. This cannot mean perfect obedience all the time. That is an impossible goal while living in corrupt and unglorified bodies on this side of heaven. But it must mean that our lives are characterized by a dedication and passion for obedience where what we do in our skin connects with a genuine commitment we have in our soul for the things of God.
So, in that context, hear: our bodies express the priorities of our hearts.
Remember those pesky Gnostics from the intro to 1 John? Among many problematic things, they insisted that knowledge of God required neither obedience nor love of others. John rebukes them sharply: love is demonstrated by obedience that manifest in love of others. God’s commandments are an expression of His love (His commands are for our good), and our obedience is an expression of our love. We abide in his love when we walk in His path. The Venerable Bede[2](I love that name) once wrote:
“In vain do we applaud Him whose commandments we do not keep.” (Bede)
When we keep His commands, we are in the light of God’s love, like spiritual solar panels, absorbing God’s light of truth, salvation, holiness, etc. and then shining with the same. This is why loving God and walking in His light (fellowship) is so closely related to loving others. Bede, once again, who had a lot to say about this issue:
“[We] cannot in any way have put off the darkness of [our] sins when [we do] not take care to put on the fundamentals of love.”[3]
Adam Clarke unpacks verse 9 a bit more:
And there is no stumbling block in him; he neither gives nor receives offense: love prevents him from giving any to his neighbor; and love prevents him from receiving any from his neighbor, because it leads him to put the best construction on every thing.
Okay, wait.
You mean that walking in the light not only leads me to the kind of love that gives the best to others, but assumes the best from others?
It not only constrains me from putting stumbling blocks in the paths of others – it requires me to assume that others are trying really hard not to put stumbling blocks in my path?
Love demands I give others the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible?
Love demands that I climb up on the altar as a living sacrifice[4] not just before I interact with people, but after they interact with me?
I assume I am just doing my best to get through life with difficult people. I think, more often than not, loving others and esteeming/valuing them properly requires me to walk away from my interactions with others thinking, “I suspect they are doing their best to get through a difficult life with difficult people like myself.”
When I have conversations with other people about Trump and Biden and mask wearing and vaccinations and how churches should or shouldn’t be meeting right now and how the Holy Spirit works today and what we should do about immigration and how we deal with racism and as Christians and how we best respond publicly to Christian leaders who fall and how church should be run and how old the earth is and how End Times will unfold…
When I have those super fun conversations, I assume that other people who love me ought to give me the benefit of the doubt about my heart, my intentions, my love for God while I am struggling to express myself wisely in a complicated and fallen world. Barring a habitual history that proves otherwise, I believe that's a biblical expectation.
So….. barring a habitual history that proves otherwise, I suspect I must also give the benefit of the doubt about their heart, their intentions, their love for God struggling to express itself in a complicated and fallen world….
Loving them and esteeming them require that I do the same for them that I want them to do for me.[5] #goldenrule
Is it possible that I am actually committed to getting up on the altar and “dying to self” only half the time (before something I do) while I’m expecting others to do it all the time (before something they do and after I do something)?
Because the altar was made for both of those things: actions and reactions.
Jesus’ love wasn’t just demonstrated on the cross by what He extended to us. Jesus’ love was demonstrated on the cross by what He endured from us. When Jesus demonstrated His love toward us,
He absorbed our sins and extended life
He took our unholiness and gave us holiness
He carried our grief and sorrow and gave to us hope and joy
If we are to live in the light of what Christ demonstrated by His life, we must live in this place. When we take up the cross of Christ, we “die to self” as an act of a grace-filled carrying of the sin done to us and a love-motivated offering of the costly grace of Christ passed on through us. To be sure, abuse and sin must be confronted and not glossed over. We can love mercy and do justice at the same time. I’m not talking about helping people avoid consequences. I am talking about how we position our hearts.
Back to the altar analogy of presenting our bodies as living sacrifices.
I am realizing I almost exclusively think of it in terms of how I surrender what I am planning to do: my words, by attitude, my actions, by presence. If I want to love my wife as Christ loved the church, for example, I give my life for her proactively by purposefully ‘dying to self’ before I instigate something. I get that.
But being a living sacrifice is also required when something is done to me, at the times when I do things reactively. If I want to love my wife as Christ loved the church, I must climb back up on that self-dying place when she interacts with me from a place of darkness and draws darkness out of me.
It’s not just marriage.
Church, we live in a world full of darkness, but it is not God’s plan that it will overcome the light. The reverse is true. The true light is shining among us. We know how to live in the light of Christ. So, I wonder what it looks like to present our lives as spiritual sacrifices
before and after we come to church
before and after we go on Facebook
before and after we have coffee with friends who, “bless their hearts,” push all our buttons some days
before and after we read commentary about that politician who is an idiot (as best we can tell)
before and after we watch coverage of CPAC meetings and Black Lives Matter rallies
before and after we turn on sports matches where some people kneel and some don’t for the national anthem
before and after we speak out for the pro-life stance
before and after someone attacks our faith
before and after EVERYTHING THAT tempts us to detest people or esteem them less than they deserve or even simply devalues them as image bearers of God.
Now, if we see ourselves in this list, where one of those situations tempts us to detest people or esteem them less than they deserve or even simply devalue them as image bearers of God in our actions or reactions, then we have some repenting to do.
“Love prevents us from giving offense to our neighbor; love prevents us from receiving offense from our neighbor.”
What if God’s love inspired us to minimize the possibility of giving offense to our neighbor, and maximized our effort to not only remain unoffended by our neighbor but to move even closer to them?
What if we esteemed and valued people more than they deserved when the going was good - and worked even harder to do the same when it was not?
What if laying down our lives as an act of love for the sake of Christ never stopped?
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[1] John 13:34
[2] A Benedictine monk from the 700s.
[3] From St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology, quoted in Bible Gateway’s resources.
[4] Romans 12:1
[5] (SIDE NOTE: That’s not to say there is no place for hard conversations about hearts and intentions and actions. I point you back to the past two weeks of sermons. When we sin – and we will – we need loving confrontation. There are times we need out hearts and intentions and actions challenged in light of God’s Word. For more on that, honestly, listen to basically every sermon so far in 2021 this year. Repentance and confession has been a theme because sinful darkness is a big deal. Today’s focus is different. I’m talking about another aspect of love that John focuses on: those who hate their brother or sister (and I mean everything from detests them to esteems them less than they deserve, or even simply devalues them as image bearers of God are living in the shadows, not the light. This is about our hearts.)