Love Is Not Sentimental. Sin Is Not Trivial.

 

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So here is John writing to a community very much like this, probably a little smaller, a bunch of house churches, a lot of little communities learning to love one another, learning to follow Jesus. And he writes this:

Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. Whoever says, ‘I have come to know him’, but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked.

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says, ‘I am in the light’, while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.

I want to declare to those—to us dying in darkness, to people dying in darkness…

The light of love is shining. And the darkness cannot, will not, and is not overcoming it.

The light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.

I was walking in this parking lot this Saturday, going to go look at the fence that was demolished by someone in the middle of the night. You know, I don’t know what happened. I just came—the fence was demolished. So this parking lot’s full of folks getting meals on Saturday.

And there’s this one guy—person. I said just said person. He’s a guy or a girl, but he’s probably years ago. All right. So, but he was here a couple of weeks ago. And believe it or not, this person does not like me. Can you believe it? Who doesn’t like me? I don’t know. This guy does not like me.

The last time I talked to him, he was here like three or four years ago, and he just said some really mean things and doubted my intentions in this place. He says he just doesn’t like me. Well, he came and he’s in here, and he kind of ignored me. He asked me some kind of, like, smart-aleck question, like, “Do you feel good about what you’re doing here?”

Jesse was like, “Most days, but always, like, I’m not perfect.” No. Anyways, this guy, we’ve got some—there’s something between us. Well, he’s in the parking lot, and I make eye contact with him. I’m like, “Hi.” And he just ignores me. Like, “Hi.” And I, like, get in his face. “Hi.” And he just ignores me. And that made me a little angry.

So then he looked back around, and I said, “Hey, man. Hi.” He accused our friend of selling drugs. And I was like, “Well, are you buying them?” That was a funny joke, right? Because I was just mad. I was like, maybe I should go buy something.

And then I felt that, and I came back around and I was like, “Sorry, man. I shouldn’t do that.” He shook my hand really hard, a little too hard, like he’s trying to hurt me. But it was fine. We made it up.

So all that to say, I’m not good at loving people that don’t love me. I’m not really good at liking people and being kind to people that aren’t very kind to me. I get pretty smart-alecky pretty quick. I get a little bit defensive. I kind of hold back my time and my energy from people that I don’t get good vibes from. Does anyone wrestle with that at all? Or you guys are pretty good at loving people that don’t like you or love you? I have a hard time with this.

Love can be hard on the ground. We talk about love in, like, sweeping terms and beautiful terms, and “love’s all you need.” But when it comes down to the person in your house, the person—your son, your daughter, your husband, your wife, your spouse, your coworker, the person on the street, the person that ignores you—it’s a little bit hard. Like, all that poetic love, like waxing eloquently about love, kind of falls out the window and you just give them the mental middle finger, right?

And sometimes the real one, if you’re my wife and you have the— So love is hard. Love is hard. But she—if you know, if you know, you know. All right. So, sorry. She’s not a good—she’s great. She’s awesome. Sorry. I mean, okay, so stay—to stick to the script here.

All right. Why does John write this to this community?

First John 5:13. He says, “I write these things so that you who believe in the name of the Son of God may know that you have eternal life.”

This is a community of ruptured relationships. They’re a small community, a collection of house churches in what is now modern-day Turkey. They had a group of people leave, and they left painfully. They left accusing and causing—casting doubt on the salvation of those that remained, casting doubt on if they really knew God and who he was and who he is. They are questioning their faith.

And so John writes to encourage those who remain and remind them: What is this eternal life? How do you know—you know that you know—you know God, that you have eternal life?

Now, let’s remind ourselves of what eternal life is. Eternal life is a quality of life, not just a quantity. It is not good news if you have a miserable life, right? Let’s say you live in a toxic home, or you’re struggling and you’re hurting and your body aches, to say, “Hey, good news, this is going to last forever,” right? You just, for eternity, as long as you can imagine, you’re just going to be in this pain. No, that’s not good news.

The good news isn’t the quantity part. The good news is the quality part. And yes, it will go on a quantity of years—an eternal life—because your life is connected to the life of God, and God is eternal.

But the good news is that it’s a quality of life. And what’s the quality of life? The quality is a heaven-on-earth kind of life. It’s a with-God kind of life. It’s the kind of life that we talk about around here: a shared life of love. The Hebrew word shalom—wellness, wholeness in all directions—a loving relationship with God and humanity, with humans and humans, with creation.

It’s harmony and shalom. It’s a shared life of love lived together. That’s the quality of life. That’s eternal life.

And so, last—couple weeks ago, we talked about—we jumped into these verses, and I want to kind of scope out and look at chapter one, verse five, and then look at—that starts a section, and then it ends in chapter two, verse 11.

I want to start by reading verse five of chapter one. All right. “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you”—remember, he’s talking about Jesus, who they saw and talked with and ate with, right? They touched. “We heard this message and we declare to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him”—that koinonia, kinship with him—“yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not have the truth.”

That’s verse five, chapter one. Go all the way to chapter two, verses nine through 11, and it says, “Anyone who says, ‘I am in the light,’ while hating a brother or sister is still in darkness.”

All right, we’re getting some definition here. God is light. In him there is no darkness. Now what does it mean that God is light? What does it mean to walk in darkness or not walk in darkness? How do we know? It says, “Whoever says, ‘I am in the light,’ while hating a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go because the darkness has brought on blindness.”

All right, in between these two verses is what we talked about last week, right? In between chapter one, verse five, chapter two, verse 11: light. God is light. Walking in the light is a life of love, and walking in the dark is hate, right? In between, that was all that talk about sin and confession of sin, right? If you sin, you break fellowship.

Remember, I defined sin as fundamentally a break in relationship, a fracture, a distortion of love between God, between people, between creation. It’s a breaking, a fracturing, a distortion, a betrayal of that shalom, that wholeness, that shared-life love relationship that we are to have.

Now we see that this is true: to sin is to break. It’s to walk in the darkness, which is to hate your brother. To walk in the light, as God is in the light, is to love your brother or your sister.

So I think—I’ve been thinking about this. When we frame sin in relational ways, it’s not just breaking rules. It’s not just offending our God because he set these arbitrary rules, and because you broke them, he’s mad, he’s gonna get you. It’s not that.

Yes, it is a rebellion against God, but it breaks God’s heart because it breaks relationship with God, the kind of relationship we were intended to have and to share with God, with one another, with creation. So it’s a relational fracturing.

And so there is always a way back, as we talked about the confession piece. When we sin—we all sin, we all sin—and the wages of sin is death. It’s the death of the relationship. It’s the death of the world because it breaks shalom.

And so when we sin, there’s always a way back into love, right? Confession: to bring what we have done and to bring our full self into the light. The light of God’s love—the light of God’s love is a healing light that purifies, that forgives, that transforms, that heals, that restores when we bring it into the light.

If we keep it in the darkness, we grow blind increasingly, because the darkness has brought on blindness, right? We don’t know the way to go. We stumble over ourselves. So we bring it to the light, and the way that we can bring it to the light is only through Jesus.

Jesus, who is the righteous one, the one always in right relationship with God, with human beings. It says in Corinthians, he was on the cross reconciling the world to himself—that is God. He’s the advocate. He’s the reconciler. He’s the forgiver. He’s the one who brings us back into the way of love.

Now, I talk about love a lot, don’t I? And we talk about love around here a lot. Do you ever think, “Am I a part of some kind of weak flower-child hippie church?” Do you think that?

Do you think, “I wonder if Jesse takes sin seriously. Do we take sin seriously around here?” I think sometimes people maybe push back on that. I think so. I don’t know.

I want it to be real clear about this, though, because I think here’s what we have a tendency to do. We always have a tendency to sentimentalize love and to trivialize sin. This is human nature. We do. I do. We do have a tendency to sentimentalize love and to trivialize sin.

So I want to just say plainly, as we talk about sin as fundamentally a relational fracturing, betrayal, distortion of love—let’s talk about how serious that is real quick here.

I want to declare clearly, as clear as I can: love is not sentimental, and sin is not trivial.

Can we start with sin is not trivial? Sin is not trivial. Scripture describes sin and the effects of sin in horrific terms. We see metaphors of darkness, enslavement, oppression. We have images of children being dashed on rocks. We see weeping and grinding of teeth. We see deep suffering described, all because of sin.

We see in Romans 8 Paul says all creation groans. Groans—how? You don’t know the depth of the groaning—as a woman in the pangs of childbirth. All creation groans under the weight of sin and death, and they long for the redemption, the restoration, the release, the liberation of the world from the grip of sin.

So sin is described in horrific terms.

Sin is described as something we cannot save ourselves from. We can’t just start doing better. We can’t just start, like—we can’t just say, “Okay, today I’m going to stop it, and I’m going to move forward.” And we can’t do it. We’re unable to save ourselves.

One reason is because sin is described in Scripture as something bigger than the sum of its parts. So if I said, “Hey, you know what? You want to know how bad sin is?” and we just started to count, if we could possibly count, all the ways that human beings betrayed people, abused people, overpowered people, hurt people, broke love—all the greed, all the violence, all the pride—we just named and counted them.

And we just had a ticker counting, counting, kind of—since we have billions and trillions of sins throughout history, right? There would be a lot, and we would be like, “Whoa.”

But sin is way bigger than that because sin is bigger than the sum of its parts, because it’s described as a system. It’s powers and principalities.

Scott McKnight is a theologian. I love this. I want to get a little practical. It’s not my strength to get practical, so here’s that.

Here’s how he defines love: a rugged, affective commitment to be with a person—that’s presence—to be for a person—that’s advocacy—so that the lover and the beloved grow together in virtue, in Christlikeness.

That’s direction.

So love is defined. It has a shape. It’s the shape of the cross. It’s the shape of Jesus’ life. And it means to be with someone, to be present in their life, but not only to be present. We’re not just hanging out. We’re not just letting every evening—we’re with him for someone. We’re advocating for someone.

And don’t we see this in the life of Jesus? Do we see the presence of God in the life of the world? Like, God himself came, did not count equality to God as something to be held on to, but let go, came into the very vulnerability and to this entangled mass of sin. He was willing to be wounded by it, betrayed by it, hurt by it, hungered by it, right?

He walks with us.

The presence of God shows us what love lives like. He’s present with us. He’s not just with us. He’s hurt with us. He advocates for us.

I think of the story of the woman caught in adultery as a beautiful example, right? With a woman caught in adultery in the very act, and the religious leaders come and throw her naked in front of everyone, shaming her, and with rocks—little rocks that they were going to throw at her to kill her because they said the law demanded it.

What does Jesus do? What does his presence do? What does his love look like?

He gets on the ground in between them and her, and he says, “Who is without sin? You cast the first stone.”

They all drop them.

But you know what? Jesus is the only one who could have held on to the stone. He was not—he’s without sin. He’s the righteous one. He could have thrown it.

But does he do it? No.

He doesn’t pick up a stone to condemn. He gets down and he looks at her in the eye and says, “Is there not anyone left to condemn you?”

“Neither do I. Go and sin no more. Go into this life.”

So there’s presence. There’s advocacy. There’s also direction.

“Go and sin no more.” Go live this life of love that you’re invited to. Don’t break the covenant of marriage or whatever. Don’t—don’t live—you don’t have to live like this anymore. You’re free to live a life of love.

So this is love: presence, advocacy, towards a direction, towards Christlikeness.

To be with, to be in the shape of Jesus.

First John 3:16 says, “We know love by this: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

Love has a shape.

Love is not sentimental. Love is not weak. Love is not of mamby-pamby flower-child hippie songs. It’s not.

Okay, when I talk about love, this is what we’re talking about.

And this is the kind—but it is the thing that will save us from sin, from death, from Satan, from the systems.

This is what will save us.

And so, bringing it back to First John, in this letter to these little communities, he says, look, God is light, and there’s no darkness.

Now, if you want to walk in the light, you walk in love.

I give you—there’s an old commandment. I give you a new commandment.

And we’ll look at that real quick.

Look, he says, “I am not writing you a new commandment, but an old one you have had since the beginning. The old command is the message you have heard. I am writing you a new command. Its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”

That’s such good news, by the way.

It says in John, the Gospel of John, that he is the light of the world—Jesus, light of the world—and the darkness could not overcome it.

Here he says the light is shining. The darkness can’t overcome it. It’s already shining. It’s already here. It can’t be taken back.

All right. But here, what’s the old commandment?

The old commandment—different scholars say different things—but here’s the deal. The old commandment is saying that the command to love is as old as it gets.

Deuteronomy 6:4: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Leviticus—Leviticus 19: love your neighbor as yourself.

The Ten Commandments. Have you ever noticed how they’re broken up? The first five all have to do with loving God, putting God first, having a Godward direction. The second five all have to do with loving your neighbor. Don’t steal. Don’t covet. Don’t take your neighbor’s donkey. You know, don’t do it.

It’s love. It’s all love.

Jesus says the Law and the Prophets are summed up in: love God with all your heart, soul, mind; love your neighbor as yourself.

This is the law. This is the prophets. This is what it’s all about.

So is love— is it sentimental? Weak? Talk about love? No.

Here First John reminds us that Jesus is—he’s reminding us of this old command. But then he says it’s a new command as well.

Now, how is it new?

Jesus said in John 13:34—I think we have that up there—Jesus said, “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

I preach in the morning at another church the last couple of years. It’s coming to an end. But one guy says, “You always preach the same sermon. It’s always about love. You always— I’m just going to talk about—it’s about love.”

Yeah, well, Jesus has the same sermon too.

I’m not saying, like, I’m Jesus, but look at this. I mean, you got nothing new: a new command, love one another.

But here’s the deal. That’s because that’s all that Jesus is about. It’s all that Jesus is about.

But it’s not a sentimental love. It’s a love that looks like Jesus on a cross.

And so here, how is it new?

It’s new in its scope and its power.

Okay, it’s new in its scope.

Number one, he says, look, love one another not just as yourself, but as I have loved you.

Takes us back to the cross.

Love one another as I have loved you—an other-centered, self-sacrificial, noncoercive, noncontrolling, non-dominating, other-centered love.

So it’s expansive from the cross. It’s, “Father, forgive them.”

Those that sacrifice here, killing him or torturing him: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

It’s an enemy kind of love. It expands it to love—not just love your neighbor, not just yourself—but love, again, your enemy.

But the good news is it’s also a new power, right?

Because the Spirit of God, and through the resurrection, the very Spirit of God lives in us, empowers us to be able to live this kind of love.

So now we have—it’s like before, you’re a sports car with no gasoline, right?

You’re supposed to be a supercharged love car. That’s such off the note—a supercharged love car.

But now you got fuel, so now you can go fast.

You’re a supercar with gasoline.

And there’s nothing more ridiculous than a car that can’t move. But a sports car, a muscle car that can move—that’s power.

So we have the Spirit of the living God, the loving God, at work in our lives.

So it’s a new command because it’s expanded, but it’s also empowered.

It’s fueled with the very Spirit of God.

All right. So I’m going to call it—I’m going to call it soon. Here it is: to obey God is to love God. To—to—to obey God is to know—to know God is to obey God. To obey God is to love.

A new commandment I give you.

So love is the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.

I have more here than last year. Let me just ask you this.

As you look around, we’re a group of people from different backgrounds, different histories, different experiences. Some of us live in homes. Some of us live in tents. Some of us live in trailers. Some of us don’t know where we’re going to sleep tonight.

Some of us are married. Some of us are single. Some of us want to be those things.

How are we to be a community? How can we follow, know that we have eternal life?

It’s by loving one another, being present with one another, advocating for one another, pointing one another to Jesus.

So I have been accused at points of sentimental love and trivializing sin, and I will confess that that is undoubtedly true, because that is the great deception. That is the challenge of living in this world, is that we will sentimentalize love. We will fall short, and we will—we will try to be blind to the radical call of love on our life. And we will trivialize sin because we don’t like to look at the horrors of it.

But I want, as a community—this is where it starts. The world begins to change as we allow God’s love to heal us.

We submit and surrender to God’s love made known in Jesus on the cross, and you say, “That is the love that will save the world, will save me.”

I can’t rescue myself from it. I can’t rescue my friends and family from it. I need God to save me. I need to give my life to him.

And then you’re invited into that story, that love story, and you are fueled with the power of the very Spirit to live this kind of life of love, to walk in the light as God is in the light.

And so it feels small to love your spouse in your home. It feels small to be kind to the person next to you at the grocery store. It feels small to not make a stupid comment to someone in the parking lot who makes you feel insecure.

But that is where love begins. It’s in this community.

So First John writes: love one another. This is where the world begins to heal and change.

And so, in light of that, I want to do something that the church has done—millions of Christians have done this today all around the world—and I’d like to join them in it.

It’s called the Passing of the Peace.

I want us to get up from our seats and say—we have a slide for this? Because in case it’s too hard to remember another one—you say, “The peace of Christ be with you.” Look at each other in the eyes, and then return it, “And also with you.”

Make sure that you connect with everyone. It’s small enough.

Just get up.

“The peace of Christ be with you.”

“And also with you.”