Knowing God Becomes Visible

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In the previous passage, what we talked about last week was how John told us that knowing God wasn't just a claim that we make, right? It wasn't like the box you check, like I'm a Christian or I follow Jesus. It wasn't a prayer one time, a long time ago. John is saying that when we claim to know God, it becomes visible on the outside through acts of obedience. And today he's we're gonna continue in reading through this letter and we're gonna see how what does that look like? Because otherwise we can get kind of caught in this pull of like obedience becomes a checklist. I gotta look the part on the outside, and maybe stuff on the inside isn't actually changing. And that's that's an issue in Christianity. And and John, that's not what he wants. He's going to argue against that. And what he's going to propose, or what I'm going to propose to you today, that John is saying is that God's love reaches its intended purpose as our lives increasingly come into alignment with Jesus. This is a daily thing.

The Old New Command To Love

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And so let's read from 1 John, that is, chapter 2, verses 6 and 8. John says, Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did. Dear friends, I'm not writing a new commandment for you. Rather, it is an old one you have heard from the very beginning. This old commandment to love one another is the same message you heard before. Yet it is also new. Jesus lived the truth of this commandment, and you also are living it. For the darkness is disappearing, and the true light is already shining. And so we're talking about following Jesus. And when we talk about following Jesus, one of the things we need to like clear up is that he's not saying like your life has to look exactly like Jesus did in the first century, you know, wearing sandals, walking around like that. Rather, he's describing a life shaped by the love of Jesus. When we talk about following Jesus, that's what we're that's what we're ultimately after, is that our lives reflect the love that he has for me, for you, for us, for all of humanity. And this is a love that moves towards people. It's a love that doesn't allow you to be still in your own silo, in your own house, doing life by yourself. This is a love that moves us toward one another, friend and foe. It's a love that tells the truth. It's a love that serves one another, even if it's inconvenient to us and we don't get anything out of it. It's a love that forgives those who are asking for it, but it's also a love that forgives those who aren't asking for it. Remember, Jesus' prayer on the cross is forgive them, Father. They don't know what they're doing. They believe they're right, they're deeply convicted they're correct, but they're wrong. And yet Jesus still interceded for them. It's a love that confronts what harms people, you know, injustices all around us. It's a love that doesn't allow us to be silent. It's a love that doesn't allow us to look the other way. It's a love that causes us to confront what harms, it's a love that gives itself away, as we just sang. For John, walking like Jesus becomes visible. How? In the way we treat one another. In the way that we treat one another, known and unknown, especially when relationships become difficult. And if you've ever been in a relationship, you know they become difficult. It's a love that does it. Christianity isn't simply, cannot be reduced to believing the right things about God, about Jesus. Christianity is learning how to live the way of Jesus.

Abide In Christ While Moving

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John talks about abiding, and abiding means to remain, to dwell and to make our home in. So when he talks about abiding in Christ, it is to remain, to dwell, and to make our home in Christ. Not imitating Jesus from a distance or through our own determination. I'm going to make myself a really good spiritual person. I'm going to be really religious. But rather, it's connecting with him and allowing him to shape us, to change us from the inside out. So we are to abide in Christ, to make our home in Christ, but we're also to walk with him. And those might seem like two different ideas, but we have to remember our God is on the move. It's not simply like you were once out and then you prayed a prayer and now you're in, and now you just got to focus on staying here. God is moving right, left, up, down, all around. God doesn't stay still. So to abide in Christ, to remain in him, is to also be on the move. Where is God going? Where is God leading us? It describes the direction and the pattern of our lives. It suggests that you won't be perfect, that imperfection is part of the journey. As God moves, we're learning and discerning. Where are you going? How do you want me to get there? And there's going to be ups and downs. Practice and continuing to learn how to become more like Christ. John's concern and what we talked about last week, what we're talking about this week, rather, isn't that you live a perfect life, but it's questioning the space between where you are right now and where Jesus is. And when Jesus says move, how long does it take you to move? When you know the thing God wants you to do, how long does it take you to do the thing if ever? It's the distance. And that's kind of one

Spiritual Maturity Is Response Time

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of the things we've we've talked about, you know, over and over throughout the years is that spiritual maturity isn't measured by all the do's and the don'ts. Like, oh, well, I, you know, I read my Bible twice today, or I prayed 10 times today. I went to church, I went to small groups, I did all of these things. But rather, spiritual maturity is measured by how quickly we respond to God when we know He's telling us something. This comes from John. This idea that obedience is how quickly do we move when we know God is moving. The standard, our scorecard, isn't the person sitting next to you, or the person who's really popular on TikTok or Instagram, or the pastor down the road. The standard is Christ. And am I becoming more like Christ? Not am I doing better than the person sitting next to me or the people out there, but me. Walking as Jesus walked, it includes compassion, humility,

Love That Confronts Harm

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courage, truthfulness, mercy, service, and a self-giving love. It also means recognizing that the love of Jesus was never just passive or sentimental. It wasn't passive, it wasn't sentimental. A Christ-like love confronts hypocrisy. That's what I'm talking about. When it's not passive and it's not sentimental, it protects vulnerable people. It established boundaries and it refused to preserve superficial peace at the expense of truth. I think sometimes when we think of Christ-like love, we think, well, I just gotta ignore this, or I just need to get over that. And maybe sometimes that's true. But more often than not, the love of Christ compels us to confront injustice and challenges and difficulties in our lives. What's fun though is that you get this, he's like, this is an old message, but it's also new, and it's new, but it's also old. It made me think of a I heard a pastor talking about this idea a long time ago, probably 10 years ago, and he was talking about Nike's new shoe. And he was talking about how like 10 years ago Nike had this new one, and the advertising was like, you're not gonna believe this, but this brand new shoe is just like running barefoot, just like you were meant to run. Okay, well, it's a new shoe, but it's based on this old idea that like before I ever needed shoes, I was just out running barefoot. But but I need this new shoe so that I can do the very thing that I can do without the shoe. And it's like, yeah, exactly. And that's what John's kind of getting at. He's like, it's this old idea, you know, love God, love people. Jesus talks about it, but it's also new. It's new, but it's old, and it's old, but it's new. And he said, from the very beginning, and he said, This is the message you heard, the love one another. And he's saying, This is the very foundation of our faith. It's old, but it's new, but it's the foundation. John is reminding, and and recall, we we bring this up every week, that the reason John writes to this church is that they're fractured, they're divided, there's been a split where some people claimed this superiority over the others. They knew better, they knew God better, they had secret knowledge, and and that causes the division. And John is not writing to those folks. John is writing to the church that remains, who are probably having a lot of self-doubt, like, oh, we're not as smart as them, we're not as good as them, we're not as X, Y, Z, fill in the blank. He says the solution to a spirituality that is based on Christ is not secret knowledge or spiritual novelty. It's not a sophisticated version of Christianity that looks like this or talks like that. You don't need a new revelation. He says simply just return to what you already know. The truth isn't out there, the truth is in here, and you already know it. They already knew that following Jesus means loving one another. He's saying, guys, the problem isn't that you lack information. And I think that sometimes that's where we get caught in our own discipleship journeys as we follow Jesus and as we we hit the wall and as we start to get stuck, we think, you know what I need? I need more information. I need a new spiritual breakthrough. And John's like, oh, just maybe more likely than not, it's returning to what you already know. It's a love thing. It's a love thing. Faithfulness is often less about discovering something new and more about living what you already know. This is especially important in a divided community like the one that John writes to. Because when conflict occurs, people often search for a new argument, a different strategy, a new person or another person to blame. But John brings this divided community back to the beginning,

Return To What You Already Know

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which is to remain in Christ and to love one another. So again, this is an old commandment. Love God, love people. So what's the new part? Well, let's go back to that idea we've talked about before when Jesus tells him right before he goes to the cross, he says, There's a new commandment I give you. Yes, love God, love people, but as I have loved you, so you must love one another. That's the new part. Yes, it's old. Love God, love people, but there's an escalation of it. Not how you think you should love them. Not love them like you think they deserve to be loved. Jesus says, love them as I have loved you. The love that you have from God every single day, when you wake up, when you go to bed, your mistakes, your flaws, your secret thoughts, the things you don't want anyone to know about, and yet Jesus still loves you deeply and more than anybody. He says, Extend that love. Extend that love. And that's the work of becoming like Christ. Because it's hard. It's hard to love people like that. It's hard to love people we like like that. People that we like. It's hard to love them like Christ loves us. And yet that's not the command. Not just the people you like, not just your family, your mom, your dad, your brother, sister, not just your kids. Everybody. The person who cuts you off in traffic, the person who's rude to you at the grocery store, the people you don't know, the people you read about in the news doing heinous things around the world. Love them as Christ loves you. This is not just love as an idea, not just a pleasant thought, not a vision statement for the church. He embodied it with his life. Jesus shows us what it is. And he showed us not just through his life of obedience, but his obedience to death and the power of the resurrection. Remember, Jesus moved toward people that everyone else avoided. Everyone else in society was like, nope, that person isn't worth it. Do you know what they've done? Have you seen their rap sheet? That person is not worthy of love or dignity or anything. And that person deserves whatever they get, right? Those were the people that Jesus moved toward, though. Oftentimes. He welcomed outsiders. He touched those who were suffering. He served those beneath social status. He forgave his enemies. He challenged oppressive religion and systems and politics and policy. He gave himself for others. So love cannot be defined by us because it was not defined by him as affection or sincerity, even, or good intentions. Rather, love is Christ-like in that it gives itself away. It is not self-serving. John says that this commandment is true in him and in you. What was perfectly visible in Jesus begins to become visible in us every day as we follow Christ? The longer

Darkness Fades When Love Acts

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we follow Christ, may every day be defined as loving people better than I did yesterday and last week and last year. And maybe that's a point of reflection for us today as we as we go into the prayer of examine and as we participate in communion with one another, is to just honestly ask, do I love people better than I did a year ago? Or is it the same? What about five years ago? What about last week? It doesn't mean that we're ever going to arrive. Because I would ask you to pray that prayer and examine yourself next year, too. And in ten years. To look back at the person you are today and say, do I love better than I did last year? But to get there, to get there, we have to begin today as we examine ourselves. This is how darkness passes away. This is how darkness passes away. Darkness is not overcome merely because you condemn it, or you explain good news, or you prove that you're right. You thought the right ideas about whatever it is. Darkness passes away when light becomes visible through us, the light of Christ. When truth replaces pretense, when confession replaces denial, when forgiveness interrupts resentment, when service challenges self-protection, love refuses to treat people as disposable. There are no disposable people in the kingdom of God. They're all worth something. The church becomes evidence of another way of living. It says this is possible. So again, as we as we come into this time of communion and examine, are we becoming more patient, truthful, forgiving, generous, courageous, compassionate? How do you respond when someone disappoints you? You know, someone you you know you can count on most of the time, but they they disappoint you. How do you respond when somebody disagrees with you? How do you respond when someone hurts you? And not just superficially, but a wound. A deep emotional heartache. How do you respond then? I'm not asking you to try to be more perfect. My ask and the challenge that I have, that John has, that Christians everywhere that we have on us is not perfection, but it's just to be honest about where we are right now and the trajectory of our lives as we become more like Christ. The truth is you came in today and you might have thought that you needed more information, that you needed this information, but the truth is most of you already know what you need to do. You know about the apology that you need to make. You know you were wrong. Okay. Give it up. Make the apology. It's okay. We know about the resentment in our heart that we continue to rehearse in our head those shower conversations with that other person, and you're just you're slamming them. You know, you got it. You know you're let the resentment go. We know about the generosity, that generous act we need to take a step in, that we keep delaying. Again, spiritual maturity is very rarely like I need to know more. It's just practicing what you already know. Love cannot remain abstract as a Christian value, something that we put on our website that our church, we love God and love people and go forth and do that. Love has to be tangible in the way that we act, in the things that we say, how we respond. It becomes visible through attention and presence and truthfulness, hospitality, forgiveness, service, courage, protection, and sacrifice. One pastor presents it this way. He says, What does love require of me? What does love require of me? I don't know if you've ever thought about it in terms like that, but love requires

What Love Requires In A Wounded Church

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something from you. What has it required from you lately? Does love require the apology? Does love require you to change a habit? Does love require you to make a financial sacrifice? What does love require of me? Because love is credible if and when it costs us something. The love that you claim to have, it only becomes credible when it costs you something. John isn't just speaking to individuals. He's talking to a church that has experienced a deep division. They are wounded, and he's coming to this idea that it's not new information. Just return to what you already know, and it's love. A church walking in the light does not pretend that harm hasn't occurred. It doesn't rush, he's not rushing them to forgive or be silent about their pain, demand reconciliation right away without truth and accountability. He's just saying tell the truth. Practice confession. Extend forgiveness where it's asked and where it's not asked for. Protect vulnerable people. Refuse to turn disagreement into dehumanization. The credibility of our faith is connected to the type of community it produces. Remember, it becomes evident in our lives. And if it's evident in all of our lives, it makes our community. So it can't just be Madison Church is a community that loves. And when you get enough of that together, then you can say, well, the community loves because of the individuals who are a part of it. What I think is most encouraging to me as a pastor studying 1 John is that John hasn't lost his hope. I think

Hope That The Light Is Shining

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I would, I've been discouraged before. I'm sure you've all been discouraged by other Christians and the things that they do. And yet John has this different approach. He still has hope. He's still talking about the future and tomorrow and the things that can happen. He doesn't say that the darkness is passing away, or he says that rather, that the darkness is passing away. The true light in you is already shining. You haven't lost that. And and sometimes I forget that. There's still good things. The light is still here, the light is still shining. It's not that the darkness is gone. The darkness is very much there. The darkness is very much around us all the time. The world remains wounded. The church is imperfect and will continue to be. We won't arrive, guys. I hate to break it to you. You as a human, you remain unfinished. But something new has begun in us through Christ. The invitation for us today isn't to imitate Jesus from a distance or through sheer effort. It's to remain in Him, to abide, to follow Him, and to go and to walk where He is walking. As we do that, love is the evidence.