We all need reassuring that God loves us. Even the most confident person can start to wonder. Am I really in God’s family? What does God think of me?
Sometimes other people make these doubts bigger in our heads. If you meet Christians who are more mature than you. More knowledgeable than you. They don’t mean to make you doubt. But you somehow suspect they must be looking down their noses at you
That is part of the reason why John wrote this letter of 1 John. In chapter 5 verse 13 he says: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And we learnt in chapter 2 that a group has splintered off from the church he’s writing to. They’ve unsettled these Christians. Are we really on the right track? Or were the naysayers spot on in their criticisms?
Today, John returns to something he said earlier. One way we can be reassured is this: If you know God, that influences your behaviour. So we can look at how we live. Does our behaviour betray the fact that we know him? And if it does, that’s very reassuring.
John points to two ways that our behaviour changes when we know the true and living God. Again – these are not new. He pointed to these same traits back in chapters 1 and 2. He comes back to them, and looks at them again from a different angle.
Right Living, Not Sin
Here’s changed behaviour number 1: Right living, not sin. Right living, not sin.
We have to remember how the Bible defines sin. Sin is not a few people behaving unusually scandalously. It’s an attitude we all have. It’s saying that the world revolves around me. That I matter more than the people around me. It’s saying that I matter more than God. It’s living in the world God has made, as though God were not God.
And John tells us two things about Jesus. Firstly, in verse 7: He is righteous. Jesus is the only person who has ever lived who has never done anything wrong. Remember his trial? Even his enemies couldn’t make mud stick. If he was around today, even the tabloid papers would find nothing on him. That’s who we’re following. It should rub off, says John.
Second, in verse 5: You know that he appeared to take away sin. That’s why Jesus was born. To take away sin. Literally, to carry it away. He did that when he died on the cross. He quite literally carried your sin and mine on his own back. It was just as if he had done those things wrong. He was punished for our wrongdoing. But then our sin was paid in full. Gone. Carried away. Removed.
Therefore, says John, the person who knows Jesus, the person who is born of God, cannot carry on sinning. You can’t follow Jesus, and just sin merrily as if nothing’s changed. Verse 6: No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. John exposes the lie in verse 7: Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. You can’t claim to be righteous, to be rightly related to God, without righteous behaviour to match. Right living, not sin.
Now we mustn’t misunderstand John. We have to remember chapter 1. Verse 8: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Or verse 10 of chapter 1: If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Everyone sins. If you say you’re the exception, you’re lying! When we looked at chapter 1, we said that we mustn’t deny our sin. Instead we bring it out into the light. Confess it. And find God’s forgiveness for it.
So what does he mean here in chapter 3? He can’t mean that you can tell a true Christian because they never sin. He’s talking about two things.
Firstly, he’s talking about progress. It’s not that the Christian has stopped sinning. It’s that we are in the process of stopping. God’s changing us by his Spirit. He’s making us less sinful, and more righteous. And second, he’s talking about habit. We don’t make a habit of sinning. We don’t sin happily. We don’t just keep on sinning as though nothing has changed. As though it doesn’t matter one bit. As though that’s just fine.
Perhaps it helps to think of an example. Picture the person who starts to follow Jesus. Before they became a Christian, they had a real problem with a foul temper. They would fly off the handle. Their family found them hard to live with. They twice came very close to a written warning at work. Their friends walked on egg-shells. But then the man became a Christian.
A year later, and he still loses his temper. What’s changed is that it now bothers him. Every time it happens, he knows immediately that God is not angry with him, and that God wants him to be patient with others. He brings it to God, and asks for forgiveness. He asks his friends to pray for him. And little by little, he’s gaining control. His family can see the difference. His friends have begun to relax a little. Something’s changed.
You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
You see it’s very different from the other story. This man becomes a Christian. Before he became a Christian, he used to go out with his work colleagues every Friday night. He’s be out from 6 till 10. He’d drink as much as he could. He’d collapse home at the end of the night. At the pub, he’d often say things about other people that were unkind; confidences would get broken; a few times he was violent. His wife resented the money he spent on the drink. But then the man became a Christian.
A year later, and nothing’s changed. If anything, it’s got worse. He’s out later. He’s drinking more. And it just doesn’t bother him. He’s got no wish to change at all. When his drinking mates ask him what his friends at church think of his habit, he says that they’re not bothered. God doesn’t mind either. There’s no issue here.
John would say that if following Jesus hasn’t changed a thing. If you don’t even care about the way you live. If you write off your bad habits as “just my little weak spot”. Then you’ve never truly known Jesus.
That’s the first way our behaviour changes: Right living, not sin.
Loving your church family, not hatred
There’s a second one. Loving your church family, not hatred. Loving your church family, not hatred.
John brings in this new issue in verse 10: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, (that’s what we’ve been saying so far), nor is the one who does not love his brother.
The other members of our church are family. We’re brothers and sisters. And if we know God, that comes out in the way we relate to them. Do we love our church family? Or do we hate people here?
John is beautifully practical. Not, he says, like Cain. Cain committed the first murder in the Bible, in Genesis chapter 4. Not like that, says John. That’s not how you relate to others in the church family.
Oh, you say, I wouldn’t murder anyone here. No, says John, I’m sure you wouldn’t. But remember what Jesus taught in the sermon on the mount? Verse 15: Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
That’s what Jesus taught, isn’t it? The only difference between hating someone and killing them is opportunity. That, and the certainty you wouldn’t get caught. Hatred is in your heart. Murder is with your hands. But they boil down to the same thing. Maybe you wouldn’t kill anyone on this church. But might there be people you hate? People you wish weren’t here? The church would be better off without them. It’s not so very different.
What’s really beautiful is our motivation for loving our Christian brothers and sisters. Verse 16: By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. Jesus laid his life down for you. That’s how you are forgiven. That’s how you are adopted as one of God’s children. That’s how you’ve moved from death to life. Jesus died. He laid down his life, and he did it for you. That is love. That is real love. And if you’ve been loved like that, it’s time to show the same love to others.
Illustrate: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Brief background to book (and film). Read parts of pages 398-400.
And John says: If Jesus loved you like that, you ought to love your Christians brothers and sisters in the same way.
John doesn’t want to leave this love up in the clouds. It would be too easy to think we’d lay our lives down for someone. If we had to. But we secretly know that’s never going to happen. John comes right back down to earth. Verse 17: If anyone has the world’s goods and sees is brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
Love is very practical. Do you have something that someone else needs? Then let them have it. How could you close your heart against them. Shrug your shoulders. Feel nothing. Say it’s not your problem. They’re family. If it was your biological brother or sister, you’d care. Other Christians are your brothers and sisters. Don’t shut yourself off from them.
This is why the loaves and fishes scheme is so important. Here are people with a real need. And we have something we can give that really helps. It’s the least we can do. But John’s talking about brothers and sisters. That’s where this comes home to roost. Within our own church family. Treating others here with the same affection, the same practical love, the same costly giving, that you would your own family.
There’s the second way John says our behaviour will change. Loving your church family, not hatred.
Conclusion
We want to be certain what God thinks of us. We want to know that he loves us. We want to know that we’re in his family.
John wants us to be sure as well. So he points us to how our behaviour will change if we truly know God. We’ll live rightly, not sin. We’ll love our church family, not hate them.
For some of us, this may be unsettling. You may be thinking: Do I really know God? I know this is supposed to reassure me, but actually, I’m starting to wonder. Please don’t let that thought flit away as the service finishes. Talk to someone, and take this opportunity to look again at the person of Jesus.
I hope that for most of us, this is reassuring. It’s true, I do still sin. It’s true, I don’t always love my fellow Christians. But I can see these things in my life. I am on the right track. I just need to keep going.
If that’s the case, be reassured. Be encouraged. And then let’s allow this to stir us up. To provoke us to live like people who really know God.