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1st John 3:11-18
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Well, welcome today. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Jeremy. I'm so glad that you've taken at least a little bit of your day to be here with us because we are wrapping up our launch series for this year. And we have been in the book of first John these past couple weeks. We wanted to start this new year together, this this third season together as a church, rooting ourselves in some of the common values and ideas and assumptions that define our collective experience here at Commons.
Speaker 1:And so we talk a lot about being intellectually honest and spiritually passionate and keeping Jesus at the center of everything that we do. Well, it's that last one that we really keyed in on last Sunday. Because we read the opening lines of the book of first John, which are that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. For this we proclaim concerning the word of life. Now we talked about some of the background of that last week.
Speaker 1:The creep of this particular world view that we call Gnosticism into the early Christian community. And you can backtrack on our podcast or on our YouTube channel if you want to get the details around that. But when the writer of first John talks about this Christ that we have heard and seen and touched. This is very intentional, pointed, prophetic language to say, guys, listen. The divinity of Christ isn't the problem.
Speaker 1:It's the solution. Because yes, God is beyond us. He always will be. And anytime we try to take theos, God, and put it into logos words, we are going to fall short. But now, anytime we wonder about God.
Speaker 1:Now, anytime we get confused about our theology. Anytime we wrestle to make sense of conflicting accounts of what the divine is or how God might act. Now, we can go back and look at Jesus again. Because the core conviction of the Christian faith is that the most clear image you will ever encounter of the divine is the person of Jesus. And so anything that doesn't start with Jesus is a bad hermeneutic and any conception of God that isn't at least as beautiful as Jesus.
Speaker 1:This is less than Christian. And before we think that this is all just high minded theology that struggles to put feet on the ground, nothing could be farther from the truth. Because what would Jesus do may have been a crop culture fascination that tried to sell you disposable plastic bracelets, but it's still a pretty good starting point for life. Make Christianity look like Christ again. That's the heart of first John.
Speaker 1:Now, one last thing before we move on. Last week, I made a joke about how the Johannine community of writings has these little linguistic quirks. These phrases that keep popping up over and over again in the writings. And as a joke, told you that my son has this new fascination with a certain phrase that he keeps saying over and over again. Not too bad.
Speaker 1:Except he says it like he's from Jersey for some reason. Well, just in case you thought that I was making that up, on Tuesday night at dinner, Rachel and I are having a glass of wine with dinner and Eaton insisted that he drink his water out of a wine glass. And so I say, okay, fine. I put his water in a wine glass. I tell him to be careful.
Speaker 1:I hand it to him and I ask, does it taste better now? This is the response that I got. Take a look at this. One more time here. See what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:What is that weird accent he's got? Anyway, just in case you are wondering if I make these stories up, there is my proof. He really does sound like that. Anyway, this week we move into first John chapter three and we're gonna start today in verse 11. So if you have a bible, can flip there and I'll put it on the screen here.
Speaker 1:So let's dive in. For this is the message you heard from the beginning, we should love one another. Now, do you remember chapter two from two weeks ago? Verse seven chapter two. Dear friends, I am not writing to you a new command but an old one.
Speaker 1:One which you have had since the beginning. And yet I am writing to you a new command. For its truth is seen in him and in you because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. So this new command that we see lived out in Jesus, which is really an old command, in fact, the oldest command, one that came from the very beginning. There's that word r k from last week.
Speaker 1:Now the writer comes right out and says it here in chapter three, the message is love. But if you notice also, chapter two verse eight, the truth of this command is seen in him and in you because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. So the command is love and I see it in Jesus. But you know what? I also see it in you, he says.
Speaker 1:Because the darkness is passing, the light is shining, the world is changing because God is at work healing his creation through you he says. I mean come on. That'll preach. Anyway, let's keep going here. Verse 12.
Speaker 1:Do not be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brothers were righteous. So do not be surprised my brothers and sisters if the world hates you. We know that we've passed from death to life because we love each other.
Speaker 1:Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, How can the love of God be in that person?
Speaker 1:Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. First John chapter three verses 11 to 18. Let's pray. God of love, we bring today, whatever baggage or hurt or confusion we have carried with us through this week. And we recognize in that our inability to completely grasp you, to take hold of you in our minds and to make sense of this incredible, indefatigable love that you have shown to us in Christ.
Speaker 1:And yet, as we have already come to your table this day, help us to know that whatever hurt we brought with us, whatever we have carried here into this room, we have left it there at your table. That we don't need to carry the weight of our hurt anymore. That our confusion can be swallowed up in your embrace. That our sense of separation from you can be overcome by your grace. In fact, remind us that you welcome and you invite us to your table.
Speaker 1:And we need only to come and sit and eat and speak with you. And so incredible creator, you have shown yourself in Jesus. You have shared our story and walked our paths. May we now also die to ourselves so that we might give to your world and find and discover this life that you intend for us. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. First John chapter three. Now we're not working through this entire letter here. We're just jumping through a couple of the highlights over this three week series.
Speaker 1:And I would love to come back someday and do a proper walk through. But in the meantime, we're gonna move on next week. But I would encourage you to take some time this week to just read through first John. It is five short chapters. It will take you maybe half an hour to read it front to back.
Speaker 1:But I hope, especially after this series and after these conversations, reading through it will give you maybe a new, perhaps slightly different appreciation for this letter. Because it really is a remarkable little sermon about love. But today it's chapter three, and we started in verse 11. And we read, for this is the message you heard from the beginning, we should love one another. Now we talked about that, so we'll keep reading here.
Speaker 1:Do not be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his actions were evil and his brothers were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. Now what's interesting here is that we talked about beginnings last week.
Speaker 1:And I casually mentioned the phrase in the beginning from Genesis one uses the same word, arche in the Greek translation. We call that the Septuagint that the writer of first John is so fond of. Well, now he says, the message from the beginning was love one another. And he then immediately jumps into a story from the beginning that is certainly not about love. So from the beginning, the message was love, but from the beginning, the response has been less than loving.
Speaker 1:So whatever dilemma we are caught in, whatever struggle we have to love well, that person that you work with that you think just ending the day without murdering them, that's a win, That has been going on since right after the beginning. Okay? But he says something really interesting here. He says, do not see surprise then if the world hates you. And this is another one of those Johannine references.
Speaker 1:Comes from the Gospel of John chapter 15, verse 18. There Jesus says, keep in mind that if the world hates you, they hated me first. And I have heard all kinds of terrible uses of these verses. As if they mean that if we are belligerent and rude and self serving in our faith, or if we try to bash people over the head with the bible and then they're kind of annoyed with us, we can say, well, you know, they hated him first. Not really my fault.
Speaker 1:That's not exactly the point here. Okay? If you read to the end of the chapter in John, Jesus says that they hated me without reason. And so if you love people and then they hate you in return, then yes, you are like Jesus. If you are obtuse and people get annoyed, then please don't compare yourself to my lord.
Speaker 1:Those are two different things. Okay? Because the real reason that the writer here uses this Cain and Abel story is to set up what he wants to say next. Verse 14, he says, we know that we have passed from death to life because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.
Speaker 1:Because anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer just like Cain. And you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. What's fascinating here is that this is exactly the opposite of how we generally talk and think about life and death. Isn't it? We know that we've passed from death to life.
Speaker 1:Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates does not have eternal life residing in them. So we generally think of something we call life. And then there is something we call death, which is not life. And life precedes death because when death comes, there is no more life.
Speaker 1:And so the question that often gets asked over and over again in new ways with new language is, can there be life after death? I mean, we know there's life before death because we're living it. What about life after death? And generally, that's where the question goes when we speak of eternal life, and that's what makes us think about heaven. But the equation, life and then death and then maybe life again, doesn't really make sense of what we read here in first John.
Speaker 1:We know that we've passed from death to life. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates doesn't have eternal life living, residing in them. So for this writer, death is where we start. Life is where we go.
Speaker 1:Love is how we get there, and eternal life, well, that's something that lives inside of us right now. Now to be clear, none of this negates our questions about life after death or how we imagine heaven or whether it's appropriate to wonder about those things. That's just not what this is about. This is about something else. One of the problems is this word eternal.
Speaker 1:It's the word in Greek. And we talked about this a little bit back in a series we did called Jesus on Judgment. We looked at some of the hardest parables there. But one of the questions around the parable of the sheep and the goats that relates to our question here in first John is, what exactly does this word eternal, aionios, mean in Greek? Because there are at least a few different options.
Speaker 1:In fact, if you look this up in a Greek lexicon, the first definition is likely going to be a long period of time, an age or an epoch. That's actually the most common use of aionios. You'll likely find two more definitions too. Something like without beginning or end, as in the eternal god. Think the one who was from the beginning.
Speaker 1:And then finally, you'll get something like this, a period of unending duration. It starts, but it never ends. All of those are valid. In fact, I would suggest that the way the biblical writers use aionios, all three ideas are probably present in some sense in their intent. But the thing is, buried in that first definition, if you keep reading, a long period of time, there is more than just the passage of time.
Speaker 1:The idea is more like the fullness of time. So when we talk about the age of the Roman Empire, we're not just talking about any five hundred year period. We're talking about the time, the age, the epoch when Rome was Rome. When when the idea of Rome was really embodied in history. In fact, when we talk about the Roman Empire, we generally don't include the period when Rome was technically still around, but it just wasn't really Rome in its glory anymore.
Speaker 1:We don't count that. Because the age of Rome was when Rome was Rome. You with me? Well, when we talk about eternal life, something similar is going on. Now I happen to think that eternal life means a life that can never end because that's what life does, it lives.
Speaker 1:But just keeping something alive forever, that's not eternal life. See, eternal life would be life that looks like life. Flourishing life. Vibrant life. Loving life.
Speaker 1:Life that does what life was supposed to do. It just does it forever because life was meant to live. See that's where the writer of first John can say, listen, you can be alive and you can have a blood pumping through your veins right now and still be in death. Because sometimes we confuse the biological functions of our body with the spirit intent, the vibrancy of this eternal life. The writer speaks of.
Speaker 1:You can be alive and still need to come to life. Am I right? There's this comedian Louis CK. And some of his stuff is pretty crude so I'm not endorsing him. Enter at your own risk.
Speaker 1:But he is also, like a lot of comedians, incredibly insightful at times. When he was on a talk show a while ago and he talked about how sometimes we use technology, cell phones, smartphones, on demand access to music and movies and whatever distractions we think we need to keep ourselves from being fully present to life. Tells the story about how he's driving one day and the sadness hit him. He describes that as the knowledge that it's all for nothing and you're all alone. Now that sounds pretty dreary, but stick with me here.
Speaker 1:He tells a story about how that feeling just hit him. And his first response was to turn on some music, to grab his phone, to text somebody, to distract himself from this. But he said to himself, no. Don't do that. Just let yourself feel it.
Speaker 1:And so he says that he pulled over and he just cried in his car like ugly cries on the side of the road alone in his car. If you can picture Louis CK, you can imagine this scene. And as he's telling this story, everyone is laughing because he's a comedian and that's the social cue. But then he says, actually for him, it was beautiful. Because sadness is poetic and you're lucky to be alive and have sad feelings, quote.
Speaker 1:He realized that he was lucky to feel that deeply. And he says that that once he let himself be sad, then happy feelings started flooding in, and he remembered all that he had to be thankful for. He says, once I was thankful to be sad, I was filled with true profound happiness. And sometimes, because we don't want that first sad moment, we unconsciously rob ourselves of that truly happy moment that follows. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about a vibrant, loving, flourishing life.
Speaker 1:Not just talking about being happy. I'm talking about really being alive and present and full and responsive to the graciousness of God with which you live and breathe and move and act. I'm talking about knowing that everything is gift, even the sad parts of life. See, this is why the writer here can speak about moving from death into life. In fact, he says you can pass from death to life.
Speaker 1:The Greek is here. And meta means after, but has this sense of transition or change as in metamorphosis. Embino is to go or to move, but the roots of this word are actually to stretch your legs. So he says you can choose to get up and to walk from wherever you are into something that looks like eternal life. And for the writer here, the question of eternal life isn't can you live after you die?
Speaker 1:Of course you can. And that's a given. We know Jesus. We have heard and seen with our eyes. We have looked and our hands have touched for this we proclaim concerning the word of life.
Speaker 1:Life after death is easy. The question is, can you live before you die? And according to the writer of first John, the answer is also resoundingly yes. But the way you get there, well that's pretty simple too. He says we know that we've passed from death into life because we love.
Speaker 1:And when we do, the eternal life, the life that looks like life, it comes and it resides. It it makes its home in us. So what does that mean? Well, verse 16, for this is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. So eternal life, life that really looks like life, looks like giving your life away.
Speaker 1:That's the paradox of first John. And that's great, but here's the thing, most of us are not gonna be martyrs. Right? I mean, just purely statistically, that is not gonna happen to you and I. That is likely not what God has in store for us.
Speaker 1:And so we have to ask, what does it mean for us then to give our life away so that we can move from death into life? And thankfully, the writer wants to make sure that we get this as well. Verse 17. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and truth.
Speaker 1:So now, we are finally getting practical. Because now, this love command that was from the beginning of the cosmos, that leads us into eternal life, that looks like Jesus giving his life away, now all of that love language starts to hit the ground for us. Because now, finally, we're on to how we live and move and work in God's world. And that's the NIV on the screen, and that's not bad. But this is important here.
Speaker 1:So let's look at an alternative. Let's look at the ESV here. If anyone has the world's goods and sees a brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how can God's love abide in him? Now I like that. So we've had, does anyone not have pity?
Speaker 1:Now we have, if anyone closes his heart to a brother in need. I think I like that better. But just for fun, let's try one more here. Let's say we go old school. Let's check out the King James sixteen eleven.
Speaker 1:What did they go with all the way back then? Verse 17. But who so hath the world's goods and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him. Now that's what I was looking for. So what on earth is going on here?
Speaker 1:How do we get from show no pity to close-up your heart to shutteth up your bowels? Because let's be honest here. That's the real question now. I mean, how could shutting up your bowels be anything but a good thing? I don't know about you.
Speaker 1:That sounds like the preferable option for me. And just in case you and I are ever in a situation and you are trying to decide, would Jeremy rather have me shutteth or open his bowels towards him? Like I'm on the record right now. Okay? Well, as bizarre as this is, the King James is actually the closest to the original here.
Speaker 1:And so if someone ever tries to tell you that they want a word for word literal translation of the original languages, you can show them the verse and say, no, you really don't. Because different languages work differently. Right? In English, we tend to associate our heart with compassion and care and concern. We talk about being heartbroken, for example.
Speaker 1:But we all know that when we say this, we don't mean that we have a problem with one of our ventricles. It's a figure of speech. In Hebrew, they used to talk about their kidneys this way. In Greek, they like to talk about their bowels. Technically, was their splachnan, which is fun to say, but also not actually your bowels.
Speaker 1:It was defined as the upper viscera, which meant your intestines, your stomach, your gut might we might say. And so when you wanted to say that something really got to you, that you had a visceral reaction, that's where we get that word from. And something had hit you in the gut or you had a pit in your stomach, you might say that you felt it in your So it's like the way that we use heart, but it's a little bit different, isn't it? So when the ESV says that you see a brother in need, you close your heart, that's a little different than if I said to you, if you see a brother in need and that doesn't hit you in the gut. It's a bit different.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, it's that second one that the writer is really trying to get across here. Remember, he's tying this to the example of Jesus giving his life away. This is not a cute Valentine's card with the heart on the front of it. He's talking about a visceral core of your being, full body type experience, an involuntary drive to serve those around you.
Speaker 1:That's what it means to move from death to life. That's what it means to experience the life of God. That's what it means for eternal life to come and reside in you, to take up space within you, to move into your being right now and bring you to life. Because the point of first John is you can live after you die, sure. But you can live before you die too.
Speaker 1:Fully and extravagantly. And you can be deeply sad and then profoundly joyful. And you can allow the pain of another person to sink itself deep into you. And you can redeem it by caring for them. And you can heal it by serving them.
Speaker 1:You can be part of transforming God's world simply by opening yourself to the full range of human experience that comes when we live in community and we make ourselves vulnerable to each other. See, here's the incredible, surprising, liberating, beautiful thing that first John does for us. It says that the self giving sacrificial love of the divine expressed in Christ can be present in us when we do something as simple as use our resources in generous ways or give our time and our attention to those who need it. When we serve where we can because when you allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to really feel the pain and the experience of those in need, then the love of God is made perfect in you. Because that's what Jesus does for us.
Speaker 1:Right? He enters our story. And he feels our pain. He experiences our joy. And he lives life within us.
Speaker 1:That's divine love. And it starts with something as simple as a feeling in the pit of your stomach. May you sense the divine heart of God today in your gut. And may then you find yourself brought to life as you are compelled to share that. May you love with words and speech, but also with truth and love.
Speaker 1:Just the way that God loves you. Let's pray. God, as we bring this conversation in first John to a close, we pray by your spirit that you would help this sermon of love to sink itself deep into our bones. That we might feel it in our gut as it were. And that the choices that we make about how we think about you, how we experience your love, how it comes to us, but then down into us and through us, how it made perfect in us as we pass it on to those around us.
Speaker 1:May we understand that the more we give that life away, and the more that you will pour deep into us. And that we could never give away more than you are willing to pour back in. God help us to follow in the example of Christ. That we give our resources and our talents, our time, our attention, our care, our concern. The deepest feelings of our heart that we give them to those who are around us.
Speaker 1:Trusting that your spirit is always there to replenish us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.