Read with Me
1 John 3:16-20 (HCSB)
This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need but closes his eyes to his need—how can God’s love reside in him?
Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and action. This is how we will know we belong to the truth and will convince our conscience in His presence, even if our conscience condemns us, that God is greater than our conscience, and He knows all things.
Listen with Me
Love for our brothers and sisters a clear, non-negotiable commandment of Jesus, as John points out here. And the standard Jesus used in His commandment was his own self-sacrificial love: “This is My command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12-13).
So, as John points out, the only way we can know the proper definition of agape love and the action it requires is from the example that Jesus set by His own life. No one could claim to have agape love in our hearts unless it is positively demonstrated by our actions as well as by our words.
As a practical illustration, John uses the situation of a brother or sister in need. If that need is seen by someone with the means to help but they don’t help, they cannot claim to have agape love in their heart. James gave a very similar illustration in James 2:14-17, proving that professed faith without works of agape love is useless.
The solution John puts forth here, really the only solution, is to make sure that our love extends beyond mere theology or words and is freely expressed in our actions as well. If we if we only have fine sounding professions of love but are not actually loving in our actions to the point of real self-sacrifice, the love we profess is theoretical, not real.
But, as John points out, if we see genuine love acted out in our day-to-day lives, that is powerful proof that our hearts have been genuinely transformed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Such strong assurance goes a long way towards silencing the accuser when he tries to cast doubt in our mind, or if our own mind begins to doubt what God Himself has told us that he has accomplished in us. All that is needed is to look at the fruit of our lives, the loving, self-sacrificing actions that rise naturally when we see a brother or sister in need, to be assured that the agape love of Jesus is really in our hearts.
Pray with Me
Father, this is really a good point. As both James and John point out, genuine holiness, real agape love, is more than simply not sinning. It is positive love shown to our brothers and sisters in Christ. As Jesus pointed out in the so-called Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), for the disciple of Jesus it is not adequate to merely avoid doing to others what we wouldn’t want done to us. Our love must be proactive, actively doing for others the things that we would appreciate if they were done for us. Without that powerful and consistent outward expression of the presence of Jesus in our hearts, agape love is reduced to a mere theological principle, and is worthless. Thank you, Lord, for helping me see this more clearly today. Amen.