Love = Life A Study of Love in I John 3

 Love = Life   A Study of Love in I John 3                       by   Kelly Durant   2-3-13

Money can buy a dog, but only love can make his tail wag! You can give a beggar bread, but if you put butter on in, then that is love!

When I was in college years ago and I was studying all the religions of the world, I was hoping to find one that could meet my spiritual needs and my desire to be loved. Even though my mother was nice, I actually was disappointed in the lack of love that existed in most everyone I knew. God made us to hunger for love! Only His love can satisfy us!

In the early 70’s Buda was popular, transcendental meditation was popular, and I tried these for a while but they did not fill the spiritual emptiness of love that I longed for. It was only when I was invited in the home of some non-judgmental (say this because my hair was long then), loving Christian missionaries that I experienced a hug and love as I had not known it before! It was their love and sincere interest in me that touched my heart my to want to hear what they had to say and make me want serve Jesus and be an on-fire Christian as they were. Love=time: we must show it in some way to prove it!

Today we are in the month of love and will do a study on love as the Bible describes it in I John. I want to tell you, when the news gets back to me that one of you did something loving for another my heart jumps for gladness and I praise God for you!

In the same manner, when someone reports on someone doing something unloving mine and Regina’s heart gets very sad, angry, and disappointed. God has no other hands to serve others with but ours and they do nothing good if they are not motivated by love!

Remember John the disciple was called the beloved because he got that good name from understanding and practicing his master’s love. John is my favorite disciple!

1 John 3

3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are, children of God or of love! That is our main characteristic!

No Christian should ever say that they are unloved or do not know or have love, because only the lovers and followers of Jesus get to be the sons of a God love! You are very special! If the entire world treats you like you are trash, if all your family rejects you, if your life gets complicated, you can still sleep in peace to know that you are special and that you could die happy because you are loved by God!... and that love is enough to make you cry and sing, and praise Him for the rest your life!

2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

The greatest love of all is that Jesus will not let us die just as He did not die! One day we will get to resurrect and have a supernatural body as He has. That is what the verse is stating; that we will be like Him one day! Love is sharing with another the same gifts you have, and Jesus’ love includes giving us in the future a supernatural body as His is! 

3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

Here is an important detail, just as Jesus is pure, we must be pure in order to feel and experience being in His beautiful love!

Pure people wake up in the morning and purify themselves, and they use God’s word and prayer like bleach and they clean their minds and hearts. Those who are not pure wake up and start throwing dirt on others and in the process get their selves dirty! How pure are you? Love means making your thoughts, your heart, and your spirit clean by prayers, obedience, and the Word.

4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

I want you to see the shift in the context in which John explains it. It implies, you either have God’s love and live in it, or without it you will have sin and with sin you will be separated from God!

This is a good thesis statement for the day: You either have love, or you have sin!

When people do wrong things they are breaking the law. Do not worry, all of us have broken the law in our days of ignorance and Jesus forgave us, but Jesus tells us to go and sin no more! In other words, you will not be able to feel nor enjoy God’s love in your life if you keep on sinning and doing wrong, unloving things. These words in this chapter are of love but they are strong; they say that you do not even know Jesus if you keep on sinning and hurting God and others which means you will not have eternal life and go to heaven if you do not stop doing your sins and start loving God, Jesus, and everyone!

7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

Isn’t that clear, it is as simple as this, if a person does good and loves and stops sinning, then they are in God’s righteousness. People can distinguish between a rose and a weed right away! Unjust people are unjust in everything! Good and righteous people are good and righteous in everything!

 8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.

It does not matter what addiction, what sin, what problem you have, Jesus came to free everyone from it; and if we are letting His love work, all the chains of the flesh will be cut off and Jesus will be the victorious one governing in your life and mine!

Often we forget to remind people that Satan is real. He comes into our minds and even in our lives in this world through evil people to temp us to be participating in a sin, to be cold hearted, selfish, and proud, and to destroy others that are of God that expose your unrighteousness preventing you from getting your wants.

 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

In the end you will be judged to be a child of God or a child of the devil according your actions, whether you loved your brother or not! And you are either of God or of the devil according to who you love. Did you choose to do what is right or did you not care and sin against God knowing it causes everyone to stumble by seeing your horrible example?

11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

My brothers and sisters, up until now we are getting this message over and over to 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.

Now we are seeing a new element that destroys the love between us…jealousy! Cain killed his brother because Able was loved, or accepted by God more than Him over the sacrifice. Able was simple, he just loved and obeyed God; whereas Cain did not want to love and obey God as God wanted and his sin caused him to hate and  attack his brother.

Everyone sees this sin of attacking and killing others verbally every day in the news media and in families. This hate and jealousy is even within the churches and everywhere, and this is a product of having no love, God, or forgiveness at all; It is sin as the jealousy leads to hate, and then it leads to murder!

13 Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

Here we are getting a repeat of how not having love makes a person a murderer whether there is a dead body or not! He wants us to understand, if you hate your brother you will not have eternal life! In the world the non-Christians hate us because we proclaim Jesus, and anyone hating will have to pay with eternal death for their charge of being a murderer. And as stated here only being in God’s love brings us into life eternal!

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.

There is the ultimate test of love, have you laid down your life as Jesus for dis for us? Many people will not give up $10, or even one hour for someone in need! True Christians, however, do what ever they need to for Jesus and for their brothers! Ask your self, how much do I lay down my life for the brothers and sisters? What have I done lately that is proof of a real sacrifice for others? How much love do you have?

 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

In other words, this love is not just talk, “I love you”? No, love makes sacrifices to help and shows pity. That is what the Salvation Army, and every Christian should be about, that we should be doing actions to prove we are loving and showing God’s love by doing actions from our hearts. Many times I have given away my furniture, clothes, and things.

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

Only you know how you are in your heart, if you feel condemned or not. When you go to bed at night, do you feel restless like there was something you needed to do that God brings into your mind? It says it here clearly that God knows everything! If something is not right, then fix it as soon as possible! If you were unloving, go back and doing something loving!

21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God

So when a person feels guilty for not being loving due to sinning and not helping someone as we are clearly taught to do; it is judgment and consequences that they will have. They will have a disturbed, sad, and restless heart, not just now on earth, but forever in hell as there is nor rest for the wicked!

22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.

The implication here is God will answer prayer if we are in Him, loving and obeying Him, but if not, God does not answer our prayers! That is only fair right? You do not reward a child with an ice cream who has been disobeying you all week! But those who love by doing deeds of love, these are the ones who have a good relationship with God, and a confidence that He is close and they get their prayers answered in the way God sees fit.

23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

Does your spirit sense God near you? You know or not if you really believe in Jesus love: you measure your love by how much you believe, obey, and live in Him! Let’s love and obey all the way! Amen? Ask God for more love!