Read with Me
1 John 3:11-15 (HCSB)
For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another, unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. The one who does not love remains in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
Listen with Me
John is known as the Apostle of Love for a very good reason: the theme of agape love is threaded through his whole gospel, through all three of his letters, and it even appears in the Revelation. When John was nearing 100 years old in Ephesus, he rarely spoke publicly. And when he did speak, he frequently said simply “Children, we must love one another.” When a young disciple questioned him about why he always said pretty much the same thing every time he spoke, John looked intently at the young man and simply said, “It is the command of the Lord.” (John 15:12).
And that command is the focus of these verses. Love for one another was the central command of Jesus, because He knew that only God’s divine agape love can bind together the disparate group of people that is the Church through thick and thin. Hatred of one another will smash the Church to bits, while indifference will allow the fire to die and lead to spiritual coldness, and ultimately death.
To illustrate this truth, John points to an unlikely model: Cain. Cain is used not as a model of agape love, but as a model of the opposite: the hatred and envy that destroys everything where it is allowed to flourish. John declares unapologetically that anyone who hates his or her brother has murder in his heart in the place where agape love is supposed to be securely rooted. And someone with that kind of dark, evil heart is not living in the light, in relationship with God, no matter what they might profess.
For John, the surest sign of a person having passed from death to eternal life was simply the powerful presence of divine agape love operating freely in his or her life. All other “signs” of salvation, emotional displays, loud professions, and even speaking in tongues, can be imitated or pretended. But true agape love results not only in a transformation of attitudes and actions, it affects every area of a person’s life. And it cannot be pretended for very long without the mask slipping in the truth being revealed.
John does warn, though, that when we allow this kind of agape love to operate in our lives, we will become a target. The reality of that kind of love becomes a source of envy and even hatred by those who lack it, just as Jesus was unjustly hated by the Jewish leaders who all lacked this essential element in their own lives.
Pray with Me
Father, thank you for this truth today. But I know that it also comes with the understanding that true agape love is not something that can be worked up or developed through practice or disciplines. It is a divine endowment that only comes from Your hand through the presence of the Holy Spirit living in the very center of our lives. Lord, fill me with Your agape love, full to overflowing, so that I will live it out every moment of every day, so that You are glorified through me. Amen.