The world we live in can be a very dark place to be. One of the things that makes it so is when people are selfish. Think only of themselves. When someone scratches your car in a car park, but doesn’t bother to leave a phone number. When you’re queuing to buy 6 items at the checkout with twins in tow, and someone else races to get to the belt first with their £200 trolley-full. Selfishness. Lovelessness.
The Christian message is good news for people who live in a world like this. The Bible reading we had came from a little letter called 1 John, written by one of Jesus’ first followers – John – to some Christians in the first century. He tells the good news using language of light and dark. Lovelessness and selfishness are symptoms of the darkness of the world. The arrival of Jesus is like the glow on the horizon when it’s nearly dawn. It’s getting lighter.
And the best bit is that we can be a part of this new lighter world. That, by the way, is one reason why we give a candle when we baptise people. The candle symbolises light. And baptism symbolises someone’s wish to be a follower of Jesus. To take a step into the light that Jesus brought into the world.
I’d like to point us to three things this passage tells us about living in the light.
Light comes through knowing Jesus
First, the light comes through knowing Jesus. The light comes through knowing Jesus.
Look again, if you would, at verse 7: “Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.”
It’s not new. It’s old. It is new. What is he talking about?!
The commandment he refers to is the instruction Jesus left his first disciples, that they should love one another.
This is not a new command. It was not new for these Christians, because it’s part of what Jesus taught several decades before, and it’s been part of basic Christian instruction ever since. After all, we’re not surprised, are we, to find in our Bibles the command that Christians should love each other. It wasn’t even new when Jesus first said it. You’ll find this in the Old Testament. The book of Leviticus was written 1400 years before Christ, and the command to love each other is in there.
On the other hand, Jesus’ command was brand new, because he said this: Love one another, as I have loved you. He didn’t just tell us to love each other. He showed us how. He lived it. He loved us.
How did he love us? Well those of you who were here last week will remember that we met some of the Bible’s teaching on sin. Sin is not just when a few people are unusually naughty, but the attitude we all have that we are more important than God and more important than other people. Jesus came so that everyone who trusts him can be forgiven for this. So we can be friends with God again.
But it cost him his life to give us this. He had to die in our place.
That is how much Jesus loved us. He died, so that we might be forgiven.
The baptism service is designed to focus our attention on this love that Jesus has shown to us. The parents and godparents repent of their sins. This is a chance to turn our backs on that rebelliousness towards God. But we don’t turn instead to try and be good enough for God to be impressed. Instead they say: I turn to Christ. And the reason why turning to Christ does any good is spelt out as we declare what we believe: “Do you believe and trust in God the Son, who died for us.” “I believe and trust in him.”
Love one another said Jesus. And it’s a brand new command – as I have loved you.
Lots of people have taught about love. Gandhi said that love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable. Aristotle said that love is composed of a single soul, inhabiting two bodies. Confucius said that it is easy to hate and it is difficult to love, but that this is what you’d expect because all good things are difficult to achieve whereas bad things are very easy to get. Even our own government talks about love. One of the reasons why citizenship should be taught in schools is because democracies depend on citizens who are concerned about the welfare of others.
And yet not one of these people has done anything to love us. Gandhi, Confucius and Aristotle have never given up anything for you. They’ve never heard of you! There are lots of people who have loved you. You’ve known many good neighbours and friends in your time, and your family make all kinds of sacrifices for you. These new parents will give up all kinds of things for their children. But nobody has ever given up their own life to rescue you from hell for heaven for all eternity.
And yet Jesus has done just that. He’s loved us to that extent. And we can love others in the same way as well, because John says that this can be true in us, as well as in him.
When someone turns to follow Jesus, Jesus puts his own spirit in that person, so that they can start to be like him. So that they can start to love like him. So that we can start to live in the light.
So the light comes through knowing Jesus.
Light is lived by loving Jesus’ people.
Second, the light is lived by loving Jesus’ people. The light is lived by loving Jesus’ people.
How do you know whether someone is living in the light? How can you tell if someone knows Jesus, and has been forgiven by God?
You can see it, John says, in the way they relate to other Christians. That’s what he means when he talks about loving his brother or sister. Other Christians. And there are, at the end of the day, two ways we relate to other Christian people. We love them, or we hate them.
Which is it? Love, or hate?
Here’s the test to see if we really know Jesus. Do we love other Christians in the way that Jesus loved us? Because that’s what knowing Jesus looks like in practice.
Now, some people might say that this is all a bit narrow of John. Why does he talk about loving other Christians? Shouldn’t we also love those who don’t share our faith? And the answer is that of course we should – it’s just not what he’s talking about here. John’s being far more focussed. He has to be – for his test to work. He’s not asking if you’re considerate. He’s asking whether you love other Christians precisely because they are Jesus’ people.
This is a tall order. When you think about the extent of Jesus’ love for you, it’s no small thing to ask us to show that kind of love for other Christians. And for this reason, we try to soften the blow.
One way we do this is by making this all about feelings. In the West, love is all about how we feel about someone. Feelings have their place, but in terms of whether we’re being loving or not, how we feel really is neither here nor there. It’s much easier to feel good about someone than it is to really love them. Jesus didn’t feel good about us. He surrendered his life for our benefit.
Loving other Christians means actually doing things for them. Visiting them if they’re sick. Taking a meal round if they need it. Praying for them. Picking up the phone to find out how they’re doing. These things are a challenge to us, because they take up our time. And it means coming to church on a Sunday so that you can see them regularly. It’s very hard to love someone if you never see them.
The other way we try to soften the blow is by keeping it general. We like to think that John is asking us to love all Christians everywhere. He’s not. He’s asking you to love the particular Christians that you know. This isn’t about Christians in general. It’s easy to say, “I love other Christians. I’d do anything for them.” Much harder to love the person in the pew next to you.
Actually, it probably isn’t the person in the pew next to you that you find hard to love. Otherwise you wouldn’t have sat in that pew. Most of us sit next to people we like. It’s more likely to be the person two pews in front that is hard to love. But that’s exactly what John calls us to do here.
Tertullian was a Christian author from North Africa at the beginning of the third century. He wrote how the non-Christians of his day could not take their eyes off the ways the Christians freely gave money to look after the poor, the destitute, the shipwrecked and the housebound. He wrote this: “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another.” The Christians, he says, had a reputation. They were known for something. They were known for having a love for one another that was unlike the love found anywhere else.
Is that the reputation of our church? Ask the people of this area to describe the life of this church what would they say? Would they say: “I tell you what, they really do love each other, and it’s like no love I’ve ever seen.” Sadly, for many churches, the reputation would be “see how they bicker”, not “see how they love”.
There’s John’s test – how you can tell if someone has been forgiven by God, loved by Jesus, and come to know him. The light is lived by loving Jesus’ people.
Light is something to be certain of
The third thing to say about the light is this: The light is something to be certain of. The light is something to be certain of.
All of this could sound a bit scary. We like the idea of living in the light. But in practice this means loving other Christians in some fairly committed ways. Can I do it? Would I fail the test?
Well this is why John wrote his final 3 verses. He wants us to be sure that we don’t work our way into the light, by trying to score enough points at being loving. We come into the light as a free gift. We simply choose to entrust Jesus with our lives.
So John writes to reassure them. You’ll see that in verses 12 to 14 he addresses these Christians as children, as fathers, and as young men. That’s a poetic way of saying he’s writing to all of them. Never mind for now why he uses those 3 labels.
The point is this: He’s writing to them as people whose sins have been forgiven. He’s writing to them as people who know him who is from the beginning – that is, they know Jesus. He’s writing to those who are spiritually strong. And so on.
He wants us to know that he has not written these few paragraphs to scare us. To make us feel inadequate. To make us give up at ever loving others enough. He’s written these paragraphs to reassure us that we are in God’s family. And then we’ll have the strength to live like we are.
We are not meant to be uncertain: Am I in the light, or not? Provided you are one of Jesus’ followers, he wants you to be certain that you are. “Look at your love for other Christians,” he says. And then, being confident, we can live it out.
Imagine being asked to play sport for your country. At one level, it’s many people’s dream. Until you start to imagine the pressure. You find yourself on the football pitch to play for England for the first time ever. Am I up to standard? Is this real? Can I do it? Here’s a simple test for you – look at the your shirt. What shirt are you wearing? An England shirt. The same shirt that 9 other people around you are wearing. Well there’s you answer. Someone has given you that shirt to wear. Now play like someone who’s wearing that shirt.
Conclusion
So we live in a world that is frequently dark. But Jesus has come, and the world is getting brighter?
Let me ask you: Where are you in that story? Are you still in the dark. Or are you in the light?
You can be in the light! Anyone can follow Jesus and know the joy of having their sins forgiven. It’s your choice, but it’s open to anyone.
And if you are in the light, let’s live like people who are in the light. Let’s live with a growing love for each other.