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When we read 1 John we’re dropping into the middle of a story that is already in progress. The Apostle John is not preparing the recipients of his letter for something that might happen in the future. He’s not laying out general guidelines or doctrine that might be equally useful anywhere. No, something specific has happened to these people, to this church, and John’s letter is the cure. From previous sermons we know what the event was: this New Testament church has split. And not simply along lines of ministry strategy or secondary theological issues, but along lines of fundamental doctrine and essential ethics. This is not a church split out of which two good, if different, Christian churches emerge. This is a church split that has resulted in one true church and one heretical sect. And the one true church that remains is wounded and weak. And it is in that context that John’s letter is written.
There are a few different ways that I think the faith of John’s readers might have been shaken by the conflict and heresy.
First, some of them may have had genuine uncertainty about which faction in the dispute was right and which one was wrong. In other words some may have doubted the accuracy of their confession of faith. And the Apostle John, indeed, identifies and defines orthodox doctrine in his letter.
Second, some in the church may have been struggling with assurance of salvation because of their own sin. In other words some of the Apostle John’s readers may have doubted the authenticity or efficacy of their confession of faith. And John, indeed, offers guidance and relief to those saints in his letter.
But there is, I believe, a third kind of doubt that afflicted John’s readers and it is one that can afflict us, too. It goes like this: if those people fell away - friends who I’ve known for years; people whose baptisms I witnessed, and with whom I prayed and worshiped and served; people who sat under the same teaching as me and who ate the Lord’s Supper with me - if they could walk away from the true faith, then who’s to say that one day I won’t do the same thing? In other words, a third dimension to the doubt that John addresses in his letter is this: they did not doubt the accuracy of their confession of faith, and they did not doubt the present authenticity of their confession of faith; they doubted the endurance of their confession of faith.
Surely, in our time of apostasy and Christian deconstruction, that is a feeling that we can relate to also. Will we keep the faith?
The title of our series in 1 John is “That You May Know.” Our text this morning serves this purpose: That You May Know Whether You Will Endure.
To minister to this church, though, the Apostle John does something interesting: he reaches back. Maybe some of the phrases that Jake just read sounded familiar to you. Maybe you started glancing at the cross-references in the margin of your Bible and wondering where else you had read something like that.
This isn’t by accident. The Apostle John had witnessed something like this before and, to meet this moment, recalled that earlier one. In this letter, John uses an old teaching to cure an equally old affliction.
Can you think what it was?
In the history of the world, I think, there has been no night like the one on which Jesus was betrayed.
And in the history of the world, I think, there has been no room like the one in which Jesus met with his disciples to eat that final meal.
And in the history of the world, I think, there have been no words like the ones Jesus spoke there to his friends and that John, himself, recorded in chapters 13-17 of his gospel.
No other portion of scripture combines the pathos of high drama with the profundity of high doctrine. It is a feast for the senses and a feast for the mind. The bread and wine; the wash basin and dusty feet; the protestations of Peter; the intrigue of Judas; the whispering of John. And Jesus, himself: teaching in a complex braid of comforts and commands, riddles and rebukes, promises and prayer. Some of it opaque. Some of it childishly simple. All of it is sublime.
And yet in his gospel John records that after washing the disciples’ feet Jesus says not all of you are clean. (John 13:11).
After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table close to Jesus, so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ (John 13:21-25).
The Upper Room can, I think, be seen as the quintessential picture of the church. And the washing of feet and the sharing of the meal and the teaching and prayer of Jesus can be seen as the quintessence of every corporate gathering of saints. But even in the glorious picture of Christian community that the Upper Room presents, a terrible truth is revealed: A traitor is present. Even worse, a traitor is present and we don’t know who it is. And worst of all, a traitor is present and it might be me!
The elderly Apostle John writes this letter to his “little children”, in part, to answer the question that the much younger John had asked Jesus that night and which had so troubled the disciples: “Lord, Who is It?”
“Father John”, his church seems to ask him now, “Who is it? Is it me? Will I, too, fall away?”
And John, writing the letter, answers the question in a sort of paraphrase or gloss of how Jesus had answered it all those years ago:
“Do you not love one another? Do you not believe that Jesus is the Christ? Then no, you will not fall away. He will hold you. Having loved you who are in the world, He will love you to the end.”
The summary of John’s teaching in our passage this morning is this: Confirm your love for one another to reassure your heart before God.
We have three points for this morning:
(1) the signs of life, (2) the content of love, and (3) the blessings of obedience.
For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another….Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him…This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. (vs. 11-15; 23)
The Apostle John lays out two proofs of our salvation in verses eleven through fifteen: first, that we love one another and, more subtly, that the world hates us. Then, in verse twenty-three he repeats the love command of verse eleven and adds this crucial sign of life: that we believe in the name of Jesus Christ.
For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (1 John 3:11).
Well, John was there at the beginning and had heard it from Jesus himself in the Upper Room:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another…By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35).
Christian love is proof of Christian life.
But how much love? How pure, how unwavering, how perfect?
Because the purpose of John’s letter is to encourage saints who are anxious of their spiritual state before God, I do not believe that the love that John holds up to them is a distant, unreachable, love. What is being held up as proof of life is the natural love of the reborn heart. But because that love was common to them they had forgotten that it was supernatural. And because that love consisted of a thousand tiny, automatic, unremarkable gestures of the heart, they had forgotten it was still a miracle. They took for granted the very thing they should have cherished as the hereditary mark of being in God’s family.
Here is how Augustine describes the family trait of love in the Christian.
Love alone puts the difference between the children of God and the children of the devil. Let them all make the sign of the cross; let them all respond, “amen”; let all sing Alleluia; let all be baptized, let all come to church, let all build the walls of churches: there is no discerning of the children of God from the children of the devil, but only love;. They that have love are born of God: they that have it not, are not born of God. A mighty token, a mighty distinction!
— (Augustine. Ten Homilies on 1 John: Fifth Homily)
Remember, John’s words are not rebukes to a wayward people but encouragements to a people who had forgotten the significance of the very thing they already had. Our proof of life is the offering to others that love which we first received from Christ. We can’t give what we don’t have. And if we are able to give Christian love, then it means we have already received Christ’s love. And what he gives once, he gives forever. We should be bold to trace our love back to its source. This common life we share together is the outskirts and first taste of the empyrean love of God - yes, even of that love that is the eternal emanation of the Godhead that “moves the sun and other stars” and which, through the Holy Spirit, abides now in us.
Here’s a story about that love.
My wife, Kate, was raised in a home consisting of her mother, step-father, and two older sisters. Kate’s step-father was a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University in New York, so that’s where they lived. In the space of three months, when Kate was twelve years old, both her sister Leslie and her step-father died. Her remaining sister was already grown and so a few years later Kate’s mother decided to move back to the south where she was from. Kate was left by herself in New York and, as a high-schooler, was enrolled in the best private boarding school in the area. It was largely irrelevant to Kate and her mother that The Stony Brook School happened to be Christian or that it had received as students over its history the children of Billy Graham, Tim Keller, David Powlison, and other prominent evangelicals. (It is to the school’s credit that Franklin Graham had actually been expelled from it). Kate would eventually graduate from the school as its valedictorian. But far more importantly, she would graduate from there as a Christian. And if you ask her how it happened she’ll tell you: they loved one another. Not just the teachers, but the students, too. And not just friends, but even the kids passing each other in the hall. They simply loved each other. They were the kind of kids who would split a cookie with you without even being asked and give you the bigger piece without even thinking. Kate was not won with arguments, she was won with love. Yes, the love of Christ. But the love of Christ was first tasted in her friends. It was a sourdough love they had, pinched from the master loaf and implanted in their own young hearts to be given, in turn, to a lost girl who, because of that love, passed from death to life.
Remember what even the pagans said about the early Christians: behold how they love one another.
Here is a word to the children and teenagers: there’s a lot you don’t know; there’s a lot you can’t do. But this you can do and this you know: love one another. Especially the lonely ones.
True Christians love one another and true Christians are hated by the world.
Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. (1 John 3:13)
This particular proof of life in 1 John would be easier to glide over if it didn’t so explicitly echo these words of Jesus spoken in the Upper Room.
If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:18-19)
This is an easy proof to misunderstand, though. Remember, John states in verse 12 of his letter quite clearly why the world hates us: because their own deeds are evil and ours righteous. The friction that produces the world’s hatred should be at the contact point of their wickedness and our righteousness. They might be honking their horn at you because you’re a bad driver, not because you have a Christian bumper sticker. Your neighbors might not like you, not because you drive to church every Sunday, but because you run over their tulips while doing so.
So check yourself when you experience the hostility of the world. But if your conscience gives you a clean bill of health in the matter, own the world’s hatred as a badge of honor. You are suffering as your master suffered. It is proof that Christ has chosen out of the world.
Christian love is necessary but not sufficient for demonstrating proof of life. The Great Confession is also necessary.
Our text states it simply: And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ. (1 John 3:23).
In the Upper Room, the Apostle John had heard that command from Jesus like this:
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. (John 14:1)
The Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. (John 16:27)
The notion of belief is an essential concept in John’s writings. And while this is the first time we’ve encountered the word in 1 John, we will see it eight more times before the end of the book. In the Gospel of John the word “believe” appears eighty-four times. As a point of comparison, the word “believe” appears in the Gospel of Matthew only eight times.
It is only twelve verses into John’s gospel that we first encounter it: to all who received the Son, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12). Just last week we heard these words: see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. (1 John 3:1). Across John’s writing, belief and love are the heads and tails of our sonship.
Andreas Kostenberger writes,
John divides all humanity into two classes of people: those who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and those who do not. Those who believe have eternal life; those who do not will be condemned at the final judgment. Those who believe walk in the light; those who fail to believe walk in darkness. (A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters. Page 470).
That division is no different today. Belief in Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God and Man and the only means by which we may abide in him and he in us remains the defining feature of our personhood.
And in John’s letter we see that belief in Jesus Christ is not just the entry point to life and truth but the continuous command of those who are truly alive. This is one reason why our church is a reading church. Maintaining Biblical, historical, orthodoxy is a daily project. Belief is a blade that dulls without constant sharpening. Reading deeply and widely keeps it sharp. Sitting under good preaching and teaching keeps it sharp. Intelligent conversation keeps it sharp. We should whet our blades continually.
Our world has perverted the Christian doctrine that “God is love” into the humanist doctrine that “love is God.” Word order matters. “God is love” leads to eternal life; “Love is God” leads to death. One of these is proof that eternal life is yours; the other one is proof that you remain in your sin and abide in death. The difference is not always their love; the difference is their God.
Before moving on, let's review the signs of life: (1) the love we have for the brothers; (2) the hatred of the world that we experience on account of our righteousness; and (3) belief in Jesus Christ.
In verses sixteen through eighteen, John moves on to defining and explaining what Christian love is like.
I want us to look at these next verses, though, not so much as commands, but as an inspection of the gift of love that we have already received from God at our regeneration. Read this passage like the reading of a will, like the reading aloud of the gifts of love given to you in Christ Jesus: brothers and sisters, as heirs of Christ, you have been empowered by his Holy Spirit to love like this!
But love like how?
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:16-18)
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. (1 John 3:16).
Again, the Upper Room discourse fills out this picture.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends… I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (15:12)
The laying down of one’s life that is described here is a feature of Christ’s friendship not a feature of divinity. It is not Christ’s substitutionary atonement that we are to model, but his willingness to suffer for those he loves.
In the same way that it is said at our weddings that Jesus adorned the institute of marriage “by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana”, I believe that Jesus adorns the office of Christian friendship by stating, here, in the Upper Room, “I have called you friends.”
For this reason, the emphasis in verse sixteen should land on “brothers” as much as on the laying down of our lives. History is full of soldiers who have died for their country, and full of revolutionaries who have died for their cause, and lovers who have died for their beloved, and parents who have died for their children. These are the stories that fill our bookshelves and televisions. Yet Jesus says that there is no greater love than this: that someone would lay down his life for his friend.
The fact that friendship rarely requires death does not mean that we should not honor the institution by preparing ourselves for its possibility. Nor does it mean that we should not pay tribute to that possible end by taking our friendships seriously. We should each strive to be the kind of friend for whom it would be sweet to die.
But let us also marvel and thank God for this: the difference between the kind of heroic Christian love that dies for a friend and the kind of everyday Christian love that cooks for a friend, is not, ultimately, a difference of kind but of degree. The everyday love that cooks is the seed form of that heroic love which, in its fullest flowering, dies. If dying for a brother is a lion-sized love, we shouldn’t think of cooking a meal as mouse-sized but simply cub-sized. A mouse will never become a lion, but a cub may. The love that bakes and the love that dies, when housed in the breast of a Christian, is the same love only in different circumstances.
But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? (3:17)
Christian friendship is not only concerned with spiritual needs, but material ones, also. It's gratifying to be able to say that ours is a kind and generous church. To prove it, all we would have to do is take an inventory of all the cars and couches and cribs we have that used to belong to someone else in church. In fact, probably half the kids in Sunday School are dressed right now in clothes that used to belong to the other half. And that’s to say nothing of the rent-money covered, the employment offered, the tuition paid, the rides given, or the three successive evenings last year when John McLawhorn crawled around under my house after work trying to figure out what was wrong with my wiring. And none of those things were grudgingly offered. Most of them probably weren’t even consciously offered. They were reflexively offered because something of God’s heart resided in each of those who gave. It's just what Christians do.
And that’s what the Apostle John is getting at here. John’s concern is less with laying down commands than identifying the instinctive heart response of the authentic Christian. What is the proof of eternal life having residence in our heart? Well, that our heart resembles God’s own. And God is indeed generous. Consider the world he made and gave to us, consider the life he made and gave to us, consider the gifts of health and family and country and wealth he gave to us. Most of all, consider his Son he gave to us so that we might glorify and enjoy him forever. How could it be that a portion of that love, a pinch of that sourdough loaf, resides in one who is unwilling to give likewise?
Let’s not move too quickly past verse seventeen.
Look at it again: But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his _____against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
If you had to fill in the blank there, what would you put? Hand? Wallet? Checkbook? But no, John says “heart.” It’s an important reminder that Christian love, even in its most practical moments, is one that engages the heart.
Again, we need look no further than the Upper Room to see this demonstrated. Thirty-four times the word “love” appears in those four chapters in the gospel of John. Forty-six times the word “love” appears in 1 John. Not romantic love or pity or empathy. Not even familial love is exactly in view here. Love among Christians might share bits of those other kinds of love, but really it's its own thing - a special kind of reverent ardency in the borderlands between a family and an army. David, it was said, loved Jonathan as his own soul. And that can sound like an exaggeration until you read the apostle Paul’s declaration to the Corinthians:
For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. (2 Cor. 2:4)
Cut open the heart of any who possess eternal life and that’s the kind of love that will bleed out.
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed.
This is an easy one to understand, but a hard one to do. But let's remember: Christian love, the kind of love that is proof that eternal life is active within you, is one which manifests itself in actions, not in words only. Christian relationships should not consist of little prayer-hands emojis that never lead to actual hands actually being laid on someone in prayer. Do the thing, don’t just talk about the thing!
Relationships tend to exist in concentric circles. There’s the inner circle of your household; a slightly wider circle of parents and siblings and close friends; another circle of folks that you do ministry with or work colleagues or old friends who have moved away; and only then, after that, does the wider church come into view. The difficulty with that model is that about 99% of our time and energy and money is exhausted in those first two or three circles. When we run up against a passage like this one in 1 John, it can feel overwhelming to imagine doing much more than we already are.
A practical way to love in deed and not in word only, may be to try to integrate those concentric circles. If you’re already taking your son to the batting cage, call up another guy from church to come along. If you have a long commute home from work, use that time to call a brother from church and check on him. If you’re a homeschool mom, call up another family next time you’re going to the museum. If you’re going on a date-night with your wife, call up another couple and make it a double date. Hire each other. Babysit for each other. Think of the things you’re going to do anyway and then ask yourself, “is there room for one more?” More times than not, there is.
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
That last word, “truth”, represents a shift from the practical to the philosophical. Truth, like belief, is an important concept in John’s writing. Think about John 4, when Jesus tells the woman at the well that worship is to be in “spirit and in truth”. This verse is similar to that. It reminds us of Jesus’ promise in the Upper Room that the Spirit of truth would dwell with us and be in us and guide us in all truth. (John 14:17; 16:13). And it reminds us that the Christian’s heart is inexorably bound up with him who is, himself, the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Truth isn’t just the absence of deceit. It is a whole-person commitment to the fundamental reality of all things as expressed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The heart that is truly alive is the one that is aligned with ultimate Truth.
We should be careful here, though. We are a people who are theological, ethically, and, frankly, life-style rigorous. That comes with its own set of relational pitfalls. There are times when we survey the surrounding culture, even the surrounding Christian culture, and can see ourselves as an embattled remnant. And that’s all well and good. Sometimes it might even be true. Except that it’s not immediately clear from Romans 11 that the seven thousand who didn’t bow the knee to Baal were always good at sharing their cookies with the new girl. In our commitment to capital-t Truth, let's not forget to teach our children - and remind ourselves - how to execute the basic blocking-and-tackling skills of kindness, courtesy, and a warm smile.
19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him ... .24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
Remember the summary statement of our passage this morning: confirm your love for one another to reassure your heart before God. “Confirm” can mean to check to see what’s already there. When you confirm that your front door is locked you don’t just kind of squint and look at it; no, you grab the door knob and give it a good shake. Well that’s what some of this morning’s sermon has been: a good shake of our hearts to see if we’re loving one another well. Are we loving sacrificially? Practically? With an open heart? In deed? In truth? Does the deadbolt hold? Good.
Now what kind of blessings do we receive from confirmation of this love? John’s letter shows that we receive (1) comfort from our conscience and (2) comfort from God.
Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. (1 John 3:21)
What John describes here as “heart-confidence before God” is, essentially, a good conscience. Obedience to the love command emboldens the voice of our inner selves to rightly claim and lay hold of those promises of salvation that are ours in Christ Jesus. Obedience doesn’t produce salvation, but it does accompany it. And it isn’t works-righteousness or sinful confidence in the flesh to look at what God has done in your life and say with amazement “surely God has done great things!”
JC Ryle puts the matter bluntly: “Where there is the most holiness, there is generally the most assurance.”
In Pilgrim’s Progress death is described as a river that all pilgrims must pass over on their way to the Celestial City. Bunyan writes several different accounts of how different pilgrims pass through the river. Sometimes the river is shallow and the crossing over is easy. Other times the river is deep and the crossing frightening. To illustrate the blessing that the testimony of our own conscience can be, I want to read to you about the death of old Mr. Honest.
When the day that Mr. Honest was to be gone had come, he addressed himself to go over the river. Now the river at that time overflowed the banks in some places; but Mr. Honest in his lifetime had spoken to one Good-conscience to meet him there, which he also did, and lent him his hand, and so helped him over. The last words of Mr. Honest were, “Grace reigns”. So he left the world. (Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II)
We should all make such an arrangement with Good-conscience to meet us at our time of dying. He will not save us (remember, “Grace reigns!” is what Mr. Honest shouted as he crossed), but he will comfort us and make the journey easier.
As CS Lewis wrote in That Hideous Strength: “The approval of one’s own conscience is a very heady draught.”
Yet the conformation of our possession of eternal life is not solely dependent on our internal testimony. God himself offers assurance, too.
Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:20).
When our confidence is weak and our conscience uneasy; yes, even when our sins are many and our shame is great: God knows his own. The Lord acquits, who can condemn? Our conscience may speak, but God declares. Our consciences are fickle, but God is steadfast. Some consciences are silent when they should speak; others speak when they should be silent. We should train and guard our consciences but never trust them as the final arbiter of our status before God. That final arbiter is the voice and preserving hand of the Good Shepherd who says, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:27-28).
Bunyan gives us another example of pilgrims crossing the river of death. This time it is Christian and Hopeful. And here we see a picture different from that of old Mr. Honest’s death. In this depiction Christian despairs of his sins and loses all confidence in his salvation. The passage is long so I won’t quote it in its entirety here, but Hopeful, who is crossing the river with Christian, at a crucial moment in the ordeal comforts his friend.
The Pilgrims then approached the water. Upon entering it, Christian began to sink! Crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he shouted, “I am sinking in deep waters! The billows are rolling over my head - all His waves are washing over me!” Then Hopeful replied, “Take courage, my brother - I feel the bottom, and it is firm!”
That firmness of ground was not in themselves. Their final comfort was not their own conscience - as precious as that can be. No, the firmness of ground beneath your feet when sorrows like sea billows roll, is the declaration of forgiveness and acceptance that God has spoken over you on account of his Son Jesus. Praise God that where our heart speaks condemnation, our God declares forgiveness and his word is firm!
God speaks forgiveness and God hears our requests.
Whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. (1 John 3:22)
In the Upper Room, Jesus had made the same promise.
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14)
Before parsing this too carefully, let’s not skip over the most obvious truths of this verse: our good works please God; and our good works are rewarded by God. Both truths should encourage us to live holy lives and to petition God boldly in our prayers.
But what kind of prayers?
What John has in view here, and what Jesus describes in the Upper Room, is not Aladdin's Lamp. If you ask to receive from God an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle and don’t get one, it should not send you into paroxysms of doubt regarding these verses. These verses are talking about something else.
What they are saying is that those who are truly in Christ have, in fact, no desire or request more urgent or ultimate than this: that God’s will would be done; that God’s name would be glorified, and that this poor body would be made a vessel for accomplishing both. Brother and sister, sit beside any godly saint in those moments before the anesthesia mask is lowered and you will hear that prayer from their lips louder than all others. And beloved, that prayer is always answered.
Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3:24)
We end with this great truth: love for the brothers does not find its ultimate blessing in that human friendship, our love for the brothers finds its ultimate blessing in our abiding in God and God in us.
In other words, it was always about God.
The object of all those concentric circles of relationships; the whole point of sharing your cookie with the new girl; the reality of all those human loves that are sometimes great, but are also a mixed bag of my sin and your sin muddling along together for decades - the point of all of that is not one another, but God.
There is an inverse truth to the one expressed in David’s confession in Psalm 51 that his sin was against God and God alone, and that is this: when we love one another, in truth our love is really for God and God alone.
And the King will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these brothers, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)
The inheritance of the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world that Jesus promises the righteous in Matthew 25 is an inheritance that the righteous experience even now by the reciprocal indwelling of them in God, and God in them. That is a gift received at salvation, but it is a gift increased by holiness and love for one another.
Let’s remember where we started this morning: the recipient of John’s letter was a church reeling from having experienced the spiritual shipwreck of those they had once called brothers. That church, while in its Upper Room ministry of sacrament, teaching, and mutual care, had come face to face with Judases in their midst. The purpose of John’s letter is to fortify the foundations that had been weakened by the schism. His purpose is to instruct them That they may know whether they will endure.
But if the Judases have now left the church, what about those Peters who remained? No doubt there were genuine Chirstians in that church, just as there are in this one, who could tally up their sins and find them grievous and Peter-like in their denials and compromises. Not traitors like Judas, not false or apostate - but sinners all the same. How might they, and us, be restored again to the joy of salvation?
On the morning of the crucifixion, if anyone had reason to doubt the endurance of their faith, it was Peter. But while he wept bitterly over his sin, I do not believe Peter despaired.
Instead, I believe he recalled the declaration of acceptance that Jesus had offered to him only hours before: You are clean.
And I believe he recalled the prayer that Jesus had offered only hours before on his behalf: Holy Father, keep them in your name.
The evidence that Peter did not despair is that when Peter heard that the tomb was empty, he did not hold back in shame, but ran to it.
And when he was in the boat and saw the risen Lord at the edge of the water, he did not hold back in shame, but threw himself into the sea and swam to him.
Do you remember the restoration that occurred there beside the water?
“Peter, do you love me?”
And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
This is a different kind of confession than Peter’s declaration that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. But it is great, nonetheless. It is a restorative confession. Here, beside the water, he declares simply, sincerely, unpretentiously, and with complete faith, that love which confirms again his salvation.
It is the same love that confirms ours.
Lord, you know that I love you.
This morning, I believe our Lord’s charge to us is the same as it was to Peter: love one another; feed my sheep.
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