In our studies in this first epistle of
John, I think we have had good reason
already to see that the Apostle paints his
word pictures in black and white.
He never mixes his paints.
You find no grey in the entire epistle.
Things are either black or white.
His categories are very, very clear.
You will notice that things either belong to
light or darkness, according to his terminology.
Things are either from God or Satan.
They can be classified as either truth or
error.
They are either righteous or unrighteous.
Such a contrast from what we are accustomed
to and acclimatized to in our modern world,
where we spend most of the time in
a kind of dull grey moral atmosphere.
Nothing is black, nothing is white.
Everything is a kind of shaded in-between,
not so here.
And this apostolic habit of seeing things in
their stark, unvarnished nakedness as either black or
white, appears again in this second application of
the social test of love that John would
apply to all those who profess to be
Christian.
He does not equivocate and he does not,
let me repeat, mix his colors.
Men are, he says, either lovers of the
brethren or murderers.
That will take your breath away as it
took my breath away the first time I
read it this week.
We may even want to quarrel with him.
But he says quite categorically that really, in
our attitude to the Christian church, to the
body of Christ, we are either lovers of
the saints, lovers of the brethren, to use
the more normal language, or we are virtually
murderers.
There is no in-between here, apparently.
Now, John has introduced this subject, you notice,
with verse 10, the end of verse 10
in 1 John 3.
You might like to have your Bibles open
with you.
By this, he says, it may be seen
who are the children of God and who
are the children of the devil.
Now, that's black and white.
Whoever does not do right is not a
God, nor he who does not love his
brother.
That introduces us to our theme today, which
begins then with the following verse, verse 11,
and proceeds to verse 18.
It is again the social test of love
for the brethren.
John is addressing Christians, and he's concerned here
particularly with the way that Christian people, members
of the body of Christ, should get on
one with the other.
It isn't sufficient, says John, to tolerate one
another.
We must, if we are children of God,
we must realize that God would have us
love one another.
We must be lovers of the brethren.
Nothing else will do.
Now, let me stress, of course, in passing
on that John is not taking away from
what he has said about the need for
righteousness.
Last time, we saw that he stressed the
importance of habitual righteousness.
Not simply doing occasionally that which is right,
but a habitual mode of righteous living.
But now today, he comes and he tells
us something which we need to see alongside
of that, namely this.
As well as living on the plane of
righteousness, a life of consistent righteousness, we must
live a life of consistent love for one
another.
He's got some very challenging things to say.
He moves, of course, from one aspect of
truth to another quite simply, because as one
of the commentators says, obedience is righteousness in
relation to God.
Love is righteousness in relation to our fellow
Christians.
Righteousness simply means doing what is right.
What is right in relation to God is
that I should obey Him, always, under all
circumstances.
What is right in relation to the people
of God, my brothers and sisters in Christ,
is that I should love them everywhere, all
of them, at all times.
And so we come then to the second
application of this importance test of love.
Do we love one another?
There are three main things that John has
to say here.
We'll look at them in turn.
First of all, verses 11 and 12, love
and the Christian revelation.
Now, we'll read them in a moment, but
let's divide this down, let's subdivide it just
a little.
The first thing that John says about love
and the Christian revelation is this.
Love has been part of the message from
the very beginning.
Look at verse 11.
For this, he says, is the message that
you have heard from the beginning, that we
should love one another.
What he has in mind, of course, is
this.
It's the charge that he's introducing something novel,
something new into the Christian faith.
Not on your life, says John.
It's been there from the beginning.
I've not added anything.
When I am demanding of you people, he
says, you should love one another under all
circumstances.
I want you to be quite sure of
this.
It's there.
It was in the original message that Jesus
taught his disciples.
It was in the message as the apostles
formulated it and took it into the world
after Pentecost.
It's there from the very beginning.
We're reminded of our Lord's words in John
13, 34, and 35, where he told his
disciples that they must love one another even
as he loved them.
And he commands them in John 15 and
12 that they must love one another.
Now, says John here, it's there from the
beginning.
And if it is there from the beginning,
my good friends, you and I cannot, cannot
like a liberal, come to the Bible and
say, now this doesn't please me.
I must therefore whittle it down a little
bit or tone it down.
We can't do that.
It's there, and we have to apply it
to ourselves, ruthlessly to ourselves, and graciously to
one another.
Over and above that, however, Jesus stressed that
we must love everybody.
I would like us to see John's reference
here in the larger context of the New
Testament.
Jesus says we must love our neighbor as
ourselves.
And Jesus says we must love the Lord
our God with all our heart and with
all our mind and with all our soul
and with all our strength.
Now, we recognize that.
A neighbor is anybody, not just a fellow
Christian.
A neighbor is any man who has need.
He may be an outright pagan.
You remember the parable of the Good Samaritan.
And Jesus stressed that.
You and I have a duty to men,
whether they're Christian or not.
We are in duty, bound to love them
in the sense that we should do what
God requires done for them.
And even before that, we have a love
that we must exercise that is Godward.
But here, here, it is the love of
one Christian, not for another Christian, but for
the whole body of Christ.
It is contained then, this message, this thrust,
is contained in the original message, in the
original Christian revelation.
But now John goes forth, goes forward in
his reasoning, to contrast that demand of the
message with its opposite, which, as we've already
indicated, he terms as murder.
He contrasts this basic and original ingredient in
the divine revelation with the opposite which he
forbids.
Look at the next verse.
We should love one another, he says, and
not be like Cain, who was of the
evil one, and murdered his brother.
First part of verse 12.
We should love one another and not be
like Cain.
Here is a forbidden course.
We are not to be Cain-like.
As we shall see in a moment, we
are to be Christ-like.
Christians are forbidden, then, to do anything that
might savour of following in the footsteps of
Cain, who murdered his brother.
The reason, of course, is quite simple.
We don't belong to the same father as
Cain.
Cain was of the evil one, says John,
and because he was of the evil one,
he hated his brother, who was of God,
spiritually.
Now, this antithesis to love really takes us
by surprise, doesn't it?
The antithesis to love of the brethren is
murder.
It even gets under the skin.
None of us want to acknowledge that, however
much we lack in love for the body
of Christ and the church, none of us
want to agree that our fault is so
black.
At worst, it's but a kind of grey
shade of misdemeanour.
It's nothing as serious as this.
How can John the Apostle say that if
we haven't love for the saints, we are
really following in the footsteps of Cain, that
we have murder in the heart?
Well, of course, John is thinking of hate
in terms of what it becomes.
You see, hate, fundamentally, is just the desire
to get away with someone, get rid of
someone.
If you hate someone, you don't want to
sit next to that person.
Should there be someone, God forbid, should there
be someone in this church this morning that
you hate, if you came down and you
saw that person in the pew, you'd go
to the other side.
You don't want to be near.
You don't want to talk.
You don't want to pray with that person.
You don't want to get too near.
Hate is the desire to get rid of
someone, and when hate comes to full bloom,
it becomes murder.
Murder is the act of getting rid of
someone, getting someone out of the way that
I do not love.
Now, you see, John wants us to see
it in those black and white colours, because
he wants us to see where the absence
of love and where hate leads to.
Very few of us, in our hearts, could
possibly remain on that plane of simply not
loving anyone.
We want to get rid of them.
We want to be without them.
And ultimately, says John, that is murder.
Murder in the heart.
We may not have the courage, of course,
to take that life away.
We might not have the opportunity.
But the fact of the matter is, this
in our hearts, we want to get rid
of them.
And we keep away, and we sever connections.
Hate is the attitude of soul which leads
to the act of murder.
Jesus, of course, taught his disciples that murder
and hate are very intimately related.
You have a passage like Matthew, chapter 5,
verses 21 and 22, which make this very,
very evident.
You remember these words.
You have heard that it was said to
the men of old, you shall not kill.
All right.
Don't take away a life, don't murder, don't
kill.
And whosoever kills shall be liable of judgment.
But now, says Jesus, but I say to
you that everyone who is angry with his
brother shall be liable to judgment.
Anger is as serious as murder, he says,
because anger so often leads to murder.
It is incipient murder.
It is murder in embryo.
Angry with his brother shall be liable to
judgment.
And whoever insults his brother shall be liable
to the council.
And whoever says, you fool, shall be liable
to the hell of fire.
John, linking anger and hate in this context
wants us to get the challenging point that
they are the first fruits of what develops
into something that Jesus speaks of as deserving
of the hellfire.
Love of the people of God, then, is
and always has been an integral part of
the Christian revelation.
We are not to be like Cain, we
are to love the brethren.
Now, come to the second main thrust here
in verses 13 to 15.
Love and spiritual regeneration.
Love is of primary importance.
Its vital and essential role was stressed from
the beginning.
It has always been central to the Christian
revelation.
But now, says John, notice this.
Its presence is an infallible mark of spiritual
life, whilst its absence speaks convincingly of spiritual
death.
Now, we really are in a very challenging
arena of Scripture today.
This is a very, very piercing, penetrating, challenging
thrust of the divine Word.
Let's divide it down into one or two
main statements.
First of all, verse 14.
Love of our fellow believers in the body
of Christ proves the possession of eternal life.
Let's read verse 14.
We know, says John, that we have passed
out of death into life because we love
the brethren.
Have you seriously pondered that statement?
Now, we know that we have passed out
of death into life because we love the
brethren.
Regeneration is beautifully described by John there.
This is incidental, but it's very important.
Regeneration is a passing out of one sphere
into another.
It's an exodus out of Egypt into the
promised land.
It's a movement out of the territory of
death into the territory of life.
This is what it means to become a
Christian, is to be born again, and it's
this kind of exodus, this new beginning, this
coming out of death into life.
But now, what are the evidences of such
a regeneration?
How can I know that I have been
born again?
How do I know?
Well, John doesn't say that this is the
only test.
It isn't.
There are others in Scripture, but John says
that this is one test.
One feature that infallibly proves a person to
be regenerate is that he loves the people
of God.
He loves the brethren.
Now notice, he doesn't say loves some brethren.
He doesn't say loves one or two that
are very sweet to him and very responsive
to him.
That's not what he's getting at.
But John says he loves the brethren as
the brethren, the community as community, the church
qua church, the body because it is the
body of Christ.
He loves the brethren.
Now I'm sure that within the fellowship of
Christian people, you and I have friends with
whom we're very intimate, and we find that
we can get nearer to them, perhaps, because
they know us and we know them a
little better, and we can be very intimate
with them.
John doesn't condemn that.
But that's not what he's talking about.
What he's talking about is this.
We know that we have passed from death
unto life because we love the brethren as
brethren.
For this sole reason we are the children
of our Father.
They are indwelt by the same Spirit.
They are subject to the same Lord.
They've been bought with the same blood.
They're going to the same inheritance.
They are ours in the bundle of the
one eternal life.
We are ours.
We belong.
This is not a liking, but this is
a loving.
We all have our likes and our dislikes,
but over and above that, says John, we
love the brethren.
We love them because they are our brethren
in Christ, with all their warts and oddities
and, you know, all the world's a bit
crazy, except me and me.
Even he's a bit crazy sometimes.
Do you not tell your wife or your
husband that occasionally?
Or your friends?
But here it is.
Isn't it challenging?
Tell me, my friend.
In all the world, who are your people?
Where do you find your element?
To whom do you belong?
Where do you find yourself at home?
In any foreign city?
In any territory?
Do you find that the people of God
are your people?
Can you say with the servant of God
in the Old Testament, thy people shall be
my people?
We belong.
A bond binds us together, and it's the
bond of love.
Now, in order to make the point as
challenging as possible, John says, do not wonder,
brethren, he says, if the world hates you.
We shouldn't wonder, he says, if the world
hates us.
You see, he's been telling them to practice
righteousness.
I should say telling us to practice righteousness,
as well as the people addressed here.
He's been telling us to live on a
plane of practical righteousness every day, consistent righteousness.
Well, all right.
What will happen if we live on that
plane?
This, the world will hate us.
It is not true.
It's not true to fact.
We should not expect the world to respect
us more and more if we are godly
and Christlike.
The world, being what the world is and
related to God as the world is, the
world will react to us as it reacted
to the Christ of God, His only Son.
You and I cannot, cannot expect the world
to love us if we, out of love
for God and His people, are loyal to
Him.
We cannot.
The world will ultimately hate us.
Now, says John, there's no wonder to that.
You shouldn't be surprised at that.
Marvel not that the world hates you.
Righteousness in the sense will always provoke hostility
from sinners.
But by sheer contrast, he says, you notice
he brings, he will get this across, by
sheer contrast to the predictable hatred of the
world, we may count upon the love of
all those who have passed out of death
into life.
And in order to stress it, he adds
this in the second part of verse 14,
he who does not love, that is, the
brethren, he remains in death.
Now, that's a categorical statement which is a
tremendous challenge.
Now, moving forward to verse 15, hatred of
the brethren proves the presence of spiritual death.
Let's take up that strain.
Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer,
and you know that no murderer has eternal
life abiding in him.
John's very logical here.
The apostle has already shocked us, as we've
noted, by speaking of the alternative to love
of the brethren as murder, incipient murder at
any rate.
He now returns to explain himself just a
little.
He doesn't want us to get that image
out of our minds.
He wants it to soak in a little.
He wants it to sink.
He wants it to shock us.
He wants it to pierce.
Hatred of God's children points to murder in
the heart.
Just as a lustful look, you remember Jesus'
words, he that looketh after a woman to
lust after her has already committed the adultery,
he says, in the heart.
Now, don't let's miss this.
He's looked and he's looked to lust, not
just seeing a person pass by on the
street, that's not it, not a casual look,
but he's looked with the intention and the
desire, and his heart has gone out after
it, and in his mind he's committed it.
God looks at the heart, says the Bible,
and not simply at the outward action.
Now, just as that is true of adultery,
so also it is true of murder.
God looks at our attitude toward one another,
and when he sees an attitude of remoteness
to the sense and of aloofness, this speaks
of, yes, I have to say, this speaks
of murder in the heart.
That heart condition needs changing.
It is desperate, because that person cannot know
that he has passed from death unto life,
even if he has.
He may be but a newborn bird, and
he hasn't grown yet, and he hasn't cast
off the works of darkness as he may,
and he may need the food of the
Word and the fellowship of the saints to
bring out what is there.
All right.
He may be a Christian, a very young
Christian, or a carnal Christian, but he can't
know that he is.
Christian certainty he cannot have, Christian assurance he
cannot have, even if he is a baby
in Christ.
Any assurance that he has will be presumption
if it is in the absence of love
for the bread.
You know, it is very easy for us
to call presumption assurance.
Murder in the heart means the absence of
eternal life, as John goes on to say.
And you know, he says, that no murderer
has eternal life dwelling in him.
Now, I don't need to expound that.
It's very obvious, isn't it?
The man who takes away the life of
one of God's creatures, which is contrary to
his commandments, that man cannot have eternal life,
the life that Jesus had living in his
soul, abiding in him.
It's inconsistency, John.
The two things don't make sense.
Now, let me say one word here.
This does not mean to say that a
murderer cannot become a Christian, cannot be forgiven.
This does not mean to say that a
man who has committed murder has no place
in the kingdom of God.
For the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son,
cleanseth us from all sin.
But what it does mean is this.
There must be repentance and faith.
There is no eternal life for a murderer
as murderer, but as a penitent sinner who
flees for refuge to the cross of Christ
and who clings to him and pleads for
his mercy and depends upon him.
You remember that terrible list that Paul addresses
to the Corinthians?
Don't you know, he says, that the wicked
will not inherit the kingdom of God?
And you think when he's going on giving
us the list, it's a little bit shocking.
You wonder where are we going to get
to.
Do you remember how he puts it?
Do not be deceived.
Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers,
nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves,
nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor
swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
Where are we getting to?
Do you notice the next verse?
And that is what some of you were.
Oh, there's music in that statement.
Because he goes on to say this, that
is what some of you were, but you
were washed.
You were sanctified.
You were justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of
our God.
In other words, you belong to one or
other of these categories, but you're washed.
So when John speaks so strongly about murder,
he does not mean to say that a
murderer cannot find his way into the Christian
fellowship.
He can, by the grace of God, if
he repents of his sin, turns to the
Savior, he too can be received and can
become a brother beloved of the Savior.
Love and the Christian revelation, love and a
person's regeneration, and lastly, love and its realization
in life, verses 16 to 18.
John here gives us, first of all, the
identification of the kind of love that he
has in mind.
He identifies it.
By this, he says in the first part
of verse 16, we know literally the love.
Not just love generally, but by this we
know the love that he laid down his
life, that is, Jesus laid down his life
for us.
Love is one of the most abused words
in our vocabulary.
It's become so terribly debased that you can
have a common song which goes something like
this in one of its lines, everybody loves
somebody sometimes.
You know that?
No, you don't, but you may have heard
it.
Everybody loves somebody sometimes, or you know what
I listen to now.
There were various kinds of loves in John's
day too, and because of that, John feels
that he's got to distinguish.
He's not talking about what is currently recognized
as love.
He says, no, no, no.
By this you recognize the love that I'm
talking about with a definite article.
Later on in this epistle, in chapter 4
and verse 10, John will even distinguish, he
will even sharply distinguish between the Christian's love
for God and this divine love expressed towards
us.
Whilst in the words just quoted from 3
.16, by this we know love, he actually
puts a definite article alongside of the word
in order to stress the unique quality of
the love that he is talking about or
writing about just here.
It is a special love.
God's love for us is a love for
the worthless, and we do not deserve it.
As Paul says, God commends His love towards
us in that while we were yet sinners,
and he goes on in the same context
to speak of us as enemies and hostile.
God loved us like that, but this love
is to be distinguished from God's love for
us.
Our love for the brethren is a different
kind.
It's the love for those who belong to
us in the body of Christ.
It's the love of those whom God has
made fellow earth with us in His kingdom.
It's the love of those who have the
same spirits and the same destiny and the
same Lord.
The love of Christ in His death is
that of a crucifixion to self-interest, and
we should show our love for one another
in a willingness of mind and of soul
to be crucified, to be hurt, to be
denied in order to bring profit and blessing
to the people of God.
Now, I'm sure this has got much to
tell us in our day and generation.
There are people of God who are suffering
this morning all over the world.
How much do we care?
But come nearer at hand.
Come right back home.
These things are happening in the distance, and
I say we ought to know something about
them and to be doing something about that.
But wait a moment.
There may be people of God that are
suffering right here on our doorstep, even within
our fellowship.
How concerned are we?
The identification of love, now the reproduction of
love, of such a love in a Christian's
life is made explicit.
It says, John, we ought to lay down
our lives for the brethren.
Yes, says John, love should do that.
Not just think about them, not just pray
for them.
I'm not minimizing the value of prayer.
My good people, ever in my life, I
appreciated what prayer means.
It is just now.
But says John, we ought to lay down
our lives for them.
This is what love ought to be.
It's not just a handshake, but where there's
need, we should be willing to sacrifice ourselves
for the well-being of the body, for
whom, for which Christ died.
Now, having helped us in clear identification of
love, urged us to see to its reproduction
in our own lives, John concludes the passage
with the exhortation to love the brethren as
he puts it, in deed and in truth.
I like that.
Listen to these verses.
But if anyone has this world's goods and
sees his brother in need, yet shuts his
heart against him, how does God's love abide
in him?
Little children, he says, let us not love
in word or speech, but in deed and
in truth, in deed and in truth, recognizing
that we may be readily required to lay
down our lives for the brethren.
John, oh my, was a wise character, wasn't
he?
John knows what we will say in terms
of reaction.
All right, yes, I might do that if
the occasion required it.
I do love the brethren, I do love
the people of God, and if it was
necessary, I would do that.
Says John, wait a moment.
That may never arise, though it may.
We are living in momentous days, challenging days,
and it may be required of some of
us yet before we're through this life.
But says John, wait a moment.
There's a situation right at hand.
Here is someone who has this world's goods.
He's got plenty, and a little extra.
And he sees his brother in desperate need,
his brother Christian.
And he sees him.
Not just a passing glance, but he knows
what's going on.
He's penetrated the camouflage.
The Christian may not be showing it, may
not be wearing his heart on his sleeve,
but this man sees through.
And then, says John, using a very graphic
word, he shuts up, may I quote from
the King James Version, his bowels of compassion.
The Greeks used to believe that love arose
from the bowels.
Love is something you feel.
Love is something in the depths.
Love is something that makes you sick.
Love is something that hurts.
But this man, says John, he shuts it
off, just like you switch off the lights.
Or you turn off the water tap.
You switch it off.
He shuts it off.
In other words, he doesn't let the compassion
of the Savior flow through him, use his
hands, use his possessions, use what he has
to the alleviation of a man, the brother
for whom Christ died.
Oh, says John, let us love, he says,
not in word, but in truth and in
reality.
It is with this that I close.
I don't need to spend a moment in
closing today to apply it.
The application is so evident.
My good friend, you and I, do we
not?
We need to attend to the fire of
love in the hearth of our hearts.
We need to quicken it, and we need
to purge it, and we need daily to
have the Spirit of God poured in upon
us, that the fruit of the Spirit in
us, in terms of love for the brethren,
in the first place, going beyond the bounds
of the church after that, but first of
all for the brethren, may be an evident
thing that we may know that we have
passed out of death into life.
We may never be charged by the Holy
Spirit of harboring in our hearts what could
ever become the murder of a brother.
Let us pray.
Blessed God, our Father, we thank Thee for
Thy Word.
We thank Thee that even though it hurts
us, it only hurts to heal.
Times without number, we have squirmed under it
and have tried to wriggle our way out
of the implications of it.
O teach us, we pray Thee, with the
psalmist, to say that Thy law is my
delight.
Give us a joy in obeying, the joy
that comes to Thy children in knowing that
even if it be pain for us, it
is glory to our Lord.
We ask of Thee that we may be
known as a people who care more for
Thy glory and Thy good and the well
-being of Thy church and the body of
Christ than for ourselves.
We ask it in His holy name.
Amen.