At no point is the contrast between one of John’s tests and its opposite more important for contemporary men and women than the contrast between love and hate. This is so simply because the meaning of love has become so debased in modern culture that practically anyone will claim to have love according to his own definition.
Just as jealousy and hatred in a life indicate that the person involved is of the world and not of the family of God, so also do love and self-sacrifice indicate that such a one has passed out of the world and into God’s family. John therefore turns to an analysis of Christian love, elaborating his statements over against the background of the world’s hatred and murderous designs. In this section he restates and elaborates upon the social test itself, digs deeper into love’s essential nature, and finally suggests two ways in which Christians may show love practically.
Here the continuing contrast between Cain the murderer and Christ the Savior is seen in sharpest focus. Life is the most precious possession anyone has. Cain showed his hate by killing righteous Abel. Jesus revealed His love by sacrificing His own life for those foul creatures of sin He chose to make His brethren.
A second area in which self-sacrifice must be practiced is in the Christian home, particularly in love between a husband and wife. Today’s culture glorifies self-satisfaction. It teaches that if one is not personally and fully gratified in marriage, one has a right to break it off, whatever the cost to the other spouse or to the children. But this is not God’s teaching. God teaches that we must die to self in order that the other person might be fulfilled, for it is only as that happens that we will find the fullness of God’s blessing and personal satisfaction.
To this point much of John’s letter has been given over to developing the three tests by which a person who has become a child of God may know that he truly is a child of God. They are: the moral test, which is righteousness; the social test, which is love; and the doctrinal test, which is the test of truth or of belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as God incarnate. The tests have been developed one by one, but it has been obvious even as John talks about them that they belong together and that each is important.
John begins with a passionate exhortation to his readers to “love one another,” a phrase which is repeated three times in verses 7, 11, and 12. This is his great concern, and the reasons for that concern are given in connection with this threefold repetition. The first reason is that love is of God’s own nature; therefore, Christians are to “love one another.” The second reason concerns God’s gift in Christ; therefore, Christians are to “love one another.” The third reason is God’s present activity in and through His people; for this reason, too, Christians are to “love one another.”
The fact that the Trinity is involved in these statements leads naturally to the second of John’s reasons why Christians must love other Christians. The second reason is God’s gift of Jesus Christ His Son for our salvation.
Yesterday, we concluded by speaking of the first two factors that enable us to measure God’s great love for us in Christ. The final factor is that God gave His Son to die for sinners. As John says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (v. 10).
There are three reasons why Christians are to love one another: first, because God is love and we are of God; second, because God loved us in Christ and so revealed His love to us; and third, because God is at work in us by His Spirit to bring that love to completion.
In the last verse of the preceding section John has concluded that if we love one another, two things may be said to follow: first, that God abides in us, and second, that God’s love is perfected in us. These two conclusions give the outline for the next two sections of this chapter. In the first section (vv. 13-16) God’s indwelling of the Christian is discussed in greater detail; in the second (vv. 17-21) the perfection of love is analyzed.
The confession of Christ is mentioned as the first evidence of the Spirit’s activity because it is at the point of confession that the Christian life may properly be said to begin. “And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (vv. 14-15). Once again, as in numerous spots throughout the letter, John phrases his confession of Christ in words which would be especially challenging to those faced with the Gnostic heresies. He emphasizes that God the Father sent the eternal Son to be the Savior and that the historical Jesus is that eternal Son.
In verses 13-16 John has developed the first of two ideas introduced for the first time in verse 12, the indwelling of the Christian by God. Now he returns to the second of those two ideas, the perfection of love, and explains what he means practically.
The sinner must begin by fearing the God against whom he has sinned; but, having believed in Christ who has atoned for sin, he may put away fear and grow in confidence before Him.
The second area in which love finds perfection is in reference to our love for the brethren; for it is there, according to John, that real love is to be seen and measured.
At the end of the preceding chapter John has spoken quite sharply about the need to love, saying, “If a man says, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?” But it is entirely possible that a person might try to escape this demand by asking, “And who is my brother? Just whom precisely am I to love?”
In John’s understanding, the potential child of God is first made alive by God, as a result of which he comes to believe on Christ, pursue righteousness, and love the brethren.
When a birth takes place the individual involved is not born into isolation, nor is he a totally unique individual in the sense that his characteristics and attributes have no connection with those who have gone before. For one thing, he is born into a family and into family relations. For another, he possesses at least some of the characteristics of the one who has engendered him. Spiritually, this means that the child of God exhibits those characteristics about which the letter has been teaching.
The second thing that John is probably thinking of is suggested by this passage. Here he is writing of the new life which Christians have from God and of the resulting love which they bear to Him. Without this life and love the commands of God, even in the form in which Christ gave them, could be burdensome. But now, the life of God within makes obedience to the commands possible, and the love which the Christian has for God and for other Christians makes this obedience desirable.
The third of John’s tests is expressed in these verses as belief. Indeed, it is with this concept that the section both begins and ends (vv. 1, 5); between belief that “Jesus is the Christ” and belief that “Jesus is the Son of God” is found John’s discussion of both love and obedience. The implication is that, just as it is impossible to have love without obedience or obedience without love, so also is it impossible to have either love or obedience without belief in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.
In this chapter, Joshua gives specific commands and a challenge to the 2½ eastern tribes who were going to dwell on the far side of the Jordan River. And the chapter contains an emotional parting and also an incident that grows out of that which is one of the most instructive incidents in the entire book.
Yesterday we saw the first two things Joshua tells the eastern tribes before going to their inheritance across the Jordan. There is a third item, as he says in chapter 22, verse 5, “But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave to you to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to obey His commands, to hold fast to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul.”
But there’s something else. The war that looked like it was on the verge of starting did not begin at once. Rash people might have simply rushed to the Jordan and attacked the other people; but these Israelites didn’t do that. They were willing to fight for the Lord’s honor, but they were also willing to talk about the situation. So instead of just rushing off to the battle, they elected Phinehas, the son of Eliezer the priest, and ten of the chief men of Israel (one from each tribe) as a delegation. They dispatched this delegation to go down and meet with the others to see if it might not be possible to work to get some kind of peaceful resolution to this terrible error, as they assumed it to be.
The story has a happy ending. When this sort of thing happens in the church today, it doesn’t always have a happy ending, as we know. But it did in this situation. The tribes that had gone down to the Jordan explained what it was that they had done, and that the western tribes had simply misunderstood. First of all, those on the east were greatly shocked that what they had done could be interpreted that way. You have to pick that up from the language. When this great challenge to them was made, they responded by saying that God knows what their intentions were in building the altar, and they now want all Israel to know it too.
At the very end of this chapter, after the two bodies of people had parted, the Reubenites and the Gadites were standing there beside their memorial. And they called it “Witness,” because, as they said, “it is a witness between us that the Lord is God.” Isn’t it marvelous when we can look back on past history to things that have happened, and disputes we have had, and see the way in which it has been worked out according to Christian principles? Isn’t it wonderful to be able to say, “That’s a witness”? When things happen in that way, that’s a memorial. That’s a testimony to the fact that the Lord is God, and He is our God, and we follow Him.
If at some point in my past I had had training as a sociologist, or even in statistics or accounting, I perhaps would have made up a list of the different kinds of questions I have been asked over the years as I have spoken in a variety of places. I would have tried to make an analysis of those questions in terms of their frequency to determine what really are the chief problems that concern Christian people. I think if anybody would ask me what is the number one question in whatever form it has been asked, I would say that it is about the will of God.
The issue for the Corinthian Christians was whether or not a Christian could lawfully before God eat meat that had been sacrificed to one of the heathen idols. There was a system by which the priests and priestesses were supported. Sacrifices were always part of the worship system in the ancient world. When a worshiper would come with one of these sacrifices and offer it, the basic formula is that the sacrifice would be divided into three parts: one part would go to the priest; another part would be sacrificed and burnt on the altar; and the third part would be sold in the market place, which would also support the priesthood by producing currency they could use for other things. That portion sold in the marketplace would get bought by all kinds of people, just as what happens when anyone can go to a supermarket and buy meat.
When we talk about knowing God’s will in doubtful situations, that involves a couple of key ideas. It involves, first, the idea of knowledge. What does it really mean to know something? Is it simply a matter of intellectual awareness, or does true knowing involve more? Second, knowing God’s will involves the idea of the situation. What is really going on? What is the background to the issue, and what are the factors involved?
Once again he lays down some principles. The first one is that an idol is nothing. It is just a piece of wood or stone or some other material. But in terms of anything spiritual, it is nothing at all. Paul gets this idea, of course, not from the so-called knowledge of the pagan academies, but from the Old Testament. In Isaiah 44 the prophet Isaiah is quoting God, who is challenging the idols of the heathen. The observation is made of a man who cuts down a tree. He uses half of it to build a fire and cook his food, while the other half he dries out and carves out an idol, which he proceeds to fall down and worship. This is utter foolishness! This god cannot do anything.
What we do affects others, and part of being a Christian is knowing how your brothers and sisters in the Lord are going to take your activity. Now that does not mean that nobody can ever eat any meat that has ever been offered to any idol. Those with weaker consciences cannot use their weakness as a club over those who regard this as a matter of freedom in the Lord. On the other hand, Paul also has some directions for those who feel free to eat. In verse 9 he says, “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” He is not saying that you can never exercise your freedom, but be careful that your freedom is not used in such a way so as to offend Christians with weaker consciences.
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