Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on 1 John 3:11-24.
A few weeks ago, we celebrated Easter. Easter is the finest example of God’s love we can have. God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that we can have eternal life. John took that statement to heart and became known as the Apostle of Love. No where is his view of the importance of love so well defined as in our study for today. Before we get to that, we have to make sure we are all on the same page when it comes to the word "love." Unfortunately, our language has only one word for love. We have to apply it to the relationship we have with our husband or wives, our brothers and sisters or the way we feel about the flavor of ice cream. Hopefully, we’ll sort some of that out today.
“Love is a Many Splendored Thing.” “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes.” “Love makes the World Go Round.” “That Lovin’ Feeling.” Love was made for songs. What are some of your favored love songs? I miss those old love songs. They were written to get you in a romantic mood. Today’s love songs make you want to go out and break something.“Who loves ya, Baby?” Who said that? While Kojak never answered that question, he sure implied that he was the one. But, this question has been the cause of a lot of people suffering from depression. The feeling of a lack of love can make anyone feel depressed. When did “love” and that other bookend to our emotions, “hate”, start to impact on our lives? Probably, as babies. Babies love apple sauce but hate strained spinach. As we grew up, we developed the theme of love and hate. For guys, it took a dramatic turn when we hit about 12 years old. It was about then that the other part of humanity began to look less like a object of our scorn and more like the source of emotional pain. Hearts began to beat faster around some girls. Palms became sweaty. A dryness in a guy's mouth yielded a little boy hardly able to stutter his name. It was then that we began the process of redefining “love” into tastes and preferences and love became confused with infatuation.
After fighting through those teen years with the testosterone going totally unchecked, guys finally settled down and began to discover what love is all about - I mean real love, not infatuation. What are the elements of true love? Completeness. Sharing. Wanting to see the other person happy. Sacrificing your wants for the other person’s needs. Never having to say you’re sorry. How many remember the movie “Love Story”? As I remember, it was about the first movie I had seen where the girl had a trash mouth. In those days girls didn’t cuss or use crude language. In fact, guys would say damn and hell around other guys, but, never in front of a girl. Remember the stir that happened when Rhett Butler told Scarlett, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Well the Aly McGraw character "Love Story" couldn’t get through a scene without saying something that made my skin crawl. Of course it was pretty tame stuff compared to how girls talk in movies and TV today. Anyway, when Aly finally died, I nearly cheered because I was convinced that this would be the only way to stop this girl from cussing.
Love might be a many splendored thing, but it is sometimes hard to recognize. What is love anyway? An emotion. A warm caring feeling. But, there is more to love than a warm fuzzy feeling. That’s what John tells us in today’s acripture. John is an old man writing to the churches in and around Ephesus. A problem had arisen where some in the church were trying to make being a Christian a closed club. These guys were the Gnostics who didn’t believe Christ was ever human - always a spirit. In pushing this belief, the bond that held Christians together was being torn apart. As John saw it, that bond was love. So, where did this thing called “love” start? And why is it so important? Well we get our answers in today’s study. John fills us in on the one source we can blame for all of this business about love - God.
1 John 3:11 For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
We covered some of this last week. This week John says that they have received what? The message. What message? What Jesus had told his followers - the Good News of salvation. We got this “message” from Christ but, John said, it really originated when? In the beginning. Just what beginning? The beginning of time when God created the universe? Could be. That would mean that this “message” had been around for a long time - as long as there had been a universe. So John isn’t presenting a new idea or a previously unknown command. So the concept of love had been there right in the beginning with the creating of the stars and the forest and all the things that make up our world.
But, John may have meant“beginning” as that time when we first became Christians. In this sense, John is saying that when we heard the “Good News”, part of the “News” was that we were exposed to the concept of true love. A love that was deeper and more profound than we had ever known before. So, as long as there had been a Christian experience, this message of love had been present. That means that love is at the heart of being a Christian. So much so, that when a person accepts Christ, he makes love a mainspring of his life.
1 John 3:12 We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. 13 Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you.
John asks why Cain murdered his brother. Why did he do it? John comes right to the point. He said that Cain was evil because his actions were evil. Of course, killing Abel was a horrible evil thing to do. I can understand that after trying to hang my brother, but John is speaking about Cain’s actions before he murdered Abel. What were the sacrifices that Cain and Abel made? Cain had offered a sacrifice from the crops he grew while Abel had sacrificed an animal - a first born lamb. So why did God reject Cain’s sacrifice? Does this prove that God wasn’t a vegetarian? I mean, lets be honest here, a sacrifice is a sacrifice. Does it look like to you that God was being a little picky? Is Cain being unfairly treated? After all Cain was a farmer with crops not a shepherd with flocks of sheep like Abel was.There are three things that came into play with Cain’s sacrifice that bothered God. First, Cain’s offering was gown in ground that was cursed. In Genesis 3:17 God had cursed the ground because Adam and Eve had eaten that apple. By Cain making his offering from something that was grown in ground cursed by God was to show disrespect for God’s authority. It was an "in your face" kind of thing.
Second, scripture tells us it was “an offering” denoting that it wasn’t a special offering but one that was performed with no real sense that he was showing love for God. We can give money to someone begging while all the time thinking that the person is a pest and it’s worth giving him a dollar to get him to move on to somebody else. Or we can give and hope that our gift will really help him get through a bad time. It is a matter of attitude and Cain’s attitude was “I’ve got to do this offering thing. I just want to get it over with as soon as possible, so I can get back to watching “Dancing With The Stars.”
On the other hand, Abel was sacrificing which lamb? The first born lamb of his flock. He didn’t know if any other lambs would be born. His sacrifice amounted to a risk on his part. Anything that represents a risk means that it has personal value to you. For Cain, there was no risks in his sacrifice because he gave God only a small part of a harvest that was already in. It was a calculated value that would not effect the potential earnings of this crop or any future crop.
You see, Abel had a different attitude than Cain. Cain put his own well being ahead of everything else. But when Abel didn’t follow his lead, Cain couldn’t stand being exposed for the phony he was. At this point, Cain had two choices. What were they? He could change his attitude and recognize that he owed God for everything he grew and then make an offering that truly represented a sacrifice to him. What do you think would have been an offering that represented a sacrifice to Cain? The best of the crop - maybe - all of the crop be sacrificed. Or donate most of the crop to the poor and then take the little that was left and sacrifice most of that to the Lord.
Cain's other choice could be to just eliminate the guy who was making him look bad and hope God would appreciate him more since, with Abel out of the picture, Cain would be the only one left to sacrifice to God. You see, Cain wasn’t ready to change his attitude and his priorities. Cain couldn’t live in a world with goodness like Abel displayed, so he decided to sacrifice his brother and hope that God never found out.
Because of this decision, Cain has gotten his marching orders from who? The evil one. In other words, who? Satan. Later on John will point out that hatred and indifference to need are the same as murder. Recognizing that Cain acted as the world does when confronted with goodness, John tells his readers not to be surprised when the world hates them because of their goodness.
Remember, John is writing this to address a problem in Ephesus. By bringing up the story of Cain and Abel, John sees the split in the church had fostered hatred between brothers and sisters in the church. Are there issues in the Presbyterian Church today that foster hatred between brothers and sisters? Maybe, we need to hear more sermons on Cain and Abel.
1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.
John says that, as Christians, we have passed from death to life. What’s he talking about? When we become Christians, there is a change in our relationship with the world. Now John is going to define life and death. In human terms, what is death? A biological event that marks the end of our human experience. In human terms, what is life? That period of time when we are functioning humans. John says that there is more to life and death than whether we are breathing or not. By becoming Christians, we have gone from an existence without God which John considers as death to an existence where we are able to communicate with God through Jesus Christ and to John, that is life at it’s fullest. Our hearts can be beating, blood flowing in our veins and we’re breathing in and out, but John says we can be dead if we don’t have God. So, we can be alive to the world and dead to God.
If this is true, how do we know that we are alive? The proof is love. Without love, death is present. So, we can know that we have gone from death to life if we love one another. From other lessons we have seen that God is light. So, to love is to walk in God’s light. Since hate is the opposite of love and love is in the light, that has to mean that hate is darkness. You know, somebody in love kind of shows it on their face. A face that smiles telling us that this person is at peace with the universe. Love shows. But the person who is into hate seems to have an unpleasant look. His eyes are narrow as if to shut out the light. His mouth has tight lips drooping down at the corners into a scowl. This person is consumed in the darkness of hate and it shows on his face.The absence of love has even a more destructive side. John says to hate your brother or sister is the same as murdering them. Jesus had said that the old law had forbade murder, but, the new law makes anger or bitterness just as bad a sin. How can John equate hating to murder? At times we might all harbor some degree of hatred, but, we sure don’t pull out a gun and shoot somebody. The point John is making is that if we dwell on hate, say of a person, we may start to imagine ways in which we can harm that person. We would never act on these imaginings, but, in our mind we are doing to that person extreme harm, maybe even wishing that the person was dead. So even if it is only in our minds, we are becoming murderers. For Christ, to lust in our minds is the same is as taking physical action. The same holds true for imagining somebody's harm.
Don’t you think that Cain went through this evolution of hate? When his sacrifice was rejected, he was first jealous of Abel. As he brooded on it, the jealousy slowly became rage. “It wasn’t my fault for making the wrong sacrifice. It was Abel’s fault for picking one that made me look bad. In fact, I’ll bet Abel did it on purpose. He could have come to me and told me I should pick a different sacrifice. But, no, no. Not Abel. Abel wanted me to get chewed out by God.” It wasn’t long before that anger turned to hate and then hate looking for revenge. One of the revenge options Cain considered must have been Abel’s death. For Cain, hatred stopped being a mental game of revenge when it became physical and he murdered his brother.
1 John 3:16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us --- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17 How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?
But, Jesus said that we had to be ready to die for somebody who personally we might not like. That is the real test of love. It is easy to love the lovely, it is hard to love the unlovely. Again, I call your attention to the Washington Redskins. But, for all of us, the church is made up of both the lovely and the unlovely, and, Jesus said that both are worthy of our sacrifice. Why? Because they share with us a love from God. If God loves them, can we decide they aren’t good enough for our love? The bottom line is that the Christian life is an imitation of the life of Christ. Peter wrote that Jesus left us an example that we should follow - his own life. No man can look at Christ and then say that he doesn’t know what the Christian life involves.
Now we can argue, “How can I follow in the steps of Christ"? After all, he died on the cross. You say that I should lay down my life for my brother or sister, but, to be truthful, I’ll never be called to hang on a cross. That was a pretty dramatic act. An opportunity that dramatic won’t happen to me.” John counters by saying, “True enough. But when you see a brother or sister in need and you have enough to help out, give some to them and then you are following Christ’s example. Even when we become Christians there is a residual of the world in our hearts. Some greed - some selfishness. Every time you give out of love, a little patch of that greed and selfishness in your heart dies. You may not be sacrificing on a cross like Jesus, but you are sacrificing. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was giving love through pain. Maybe, the answer to how we can imitate Jesus’ act is to lovingly give until it hurts.
1 John 3:18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19 and by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
If you close your heart to your brother’s and sister’s need, then you are refusing to show that love of God which came to us in the person of Jesus and you are choosing to keep Jesus out of your life.” You see John is telling us that we will have lots of chances to show love everyday in small ways. It doesn’t have to require that we die. All we have to do is respond to someone else’s need. While Christ ended up giving his life, he really was only responding to our need for salvation. It isn’t the magnitude of the response, but the willingness to respond. Implied here is that to sit around and talk about need and sympathizing with people who are wanting won’t cut it. Fine words or even kind words will never take the place of fine or kind deeds; and no amount of talk about Christian love will take the place of putting that love in action by helping somebody who is hurting.
1 John 3:23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us, 24 All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.
How do we love one another? I want you to take a blank piece of paper and draw a circle on the paper about the size of a baseball. Inside that circle, draw a smaller circle and in the smaller circle, an even smaller circle. When we take this commandment seriously, it means that we will try to love as many “others” as we can. Understanding what others need and what love we can give will vary with the maturity of our faith and our understanding of the world. Look at the circles you drew. That last little small circle might be the persons closest to us in our life. Who would that be? Our family, our husband or wife, our children, those we have included in our family circle. The next larger circle might be dear friends who might not be part of your family circle. Like who? Neighbors or church friends. The big circle represents the extent of the people in our lives that we might love at this particular time. Who would this include? People at work, the mailman, all of those people we come in contact with everyday. Right now, when we say “love one another”, this represents the limits of our love.
Now, draw more circles outside the original large one. Now, these represent people we are going to meet tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Each day we will see that circle expand and include more and more people. All of these people in these new circles need our love too. And we are the only ones who can give them OUR love. As our faith deepens and matures, we will keep adding more circles of people needing to be touched by our love. You see, this is the love John is talking about. Circles and circles without end. So, keep them circles a-coming, 'cause the one with the most circles will win the coveted "Good Neighbor" award.
Kojak asked, "Who loves you Baby?" and John replied, "God!" Songs like “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” make our hearts soar. But, friends, each of us is obligated to bring love into the life of as many people in this world as our lives touch. A love that will not only make their hearts soar, but, will make them in turn be instruments to start their own circles of love. If we really think about love songs that have effected us, I think John might have summed up the command to love by directing us to model our love after that very simple love song we learned as children, “Jesus loves me this I know, because the Bible tells me so.”
Prayer: Father, you demonstrated your love for us when you sent your son to die for us on the cross. We pledge ourselves to imitate that unselfish love by sharing our love with the poor, the needy, the alienated person and the one who feels so alone. Amen.
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