loving // people

Our small group is currently working through the book of 1st John. This morning I was continuing on in chapter three, a chapter I’ve read many times before, but this morning was one of those mornings where the words were kind of “jumping off of the page,” if you will. But verses 11-20 hit me pretty hard. They read:

¹¹ For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹² 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 brother’s were righteous. ¹³ Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters,^[a] if the world hates you. ¹⁴ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

¹⁶ 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. 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? ¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

¹⁹ This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰ If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

According to most scholars, John wrote this book when he was very old. He had a lifetime of pondering and recalling all that Jesus said and working out the day to day life of “loving your brother” as he is calling us to in this passage. I can imagine John thinking about the first time he ever heard Jesus say, “I am the good shepherd and I lay my life down for my sheep,” as John writes “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

We are hearing these words of instruction from the mouth of a dearly loved brother of Jesus, one who had witnessed the suffering of Christ and one who had witnessed and celebrated the glorious resurrection that we celebrated only days ago. But John does not make this heady for us or too highly theological. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m often the first to take the words of Scripture to these places. John is making this “commandment” very practical, however. He says, “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 in truth.” That’s about as straightforward as it gets.

I journaled this today:

I have so much to learn about walking in you. Mostly, it revolves around loving people when I think it’s all about the heady stuff of doctrine or theology. I get caught up on words like, propitiation, sanctification, predestination, justification, etc. when I should be more concerned with how I am doing just loving people…