Living to Please God
I want to talk about how we can live to please God. But first I suppose I should check whether that is one of your desires in life? Do you want to please God? Do you ask yourself regularly will this activity, this conversation, this friendship please God?
Well, if that is your desire, let me tell you how you can achieve it. In fact, let me tell you how John says we can do it. He tells us in 1 John 3:21-23. If you’ve got your Bibles with you have a look. What does he say? “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. 23And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” It so simple isn’t it? If you want to please him, believe in his name and love one another.
Well, it’s simple but in practise it’s often not easy, is it? John obviously doesn’t think it’s easy, because he spends his entire letter reinforcing these two points. He begins by reminding them of the witness of the apostles to the historical Jesus, truly human, and truly divine. He reminds them of the need to obey Jesus’ commands and to turn back to him for forgiveness when we fail. He reminds them that the whole law can be summarised in the command to love one another. He exhorts us to remain faithful to what we first heard. And then he reminds us of the greatness of the Father’s love that he should call us his children and he says those who don’t love their brothers and sisters are not from God.
Well, today we find these two themes being developed further. First the call to love one another, and then the call to remain faithful to what we’ve been told about Jesus Christ.
He begins, as John often does, by presenting us with a contrast. With a negative that highlights the positive. It’s a contrast between one who loves and one who hates. He contrasts the origin of each emotion, the way it expresses itself, and the practical outcome of each. Let’s look at what he says.
Origins
First he reminds them of what they’ve heard from the beginning. What is it? That we should love one another. This was Jesus’ new commandment to his disciples. But how do we do that? Well, he doesn’t tell us straight away does he? Rather he begins with the opposite. He takes the example of Cain who murdered his own brother.
Now why does he pick out Cain? Well, because Cain in a sense represents all of humanity since the fall. It’s significant isn’t it, that the first child born of Adam and Eve ends up killing the second-born child? Sadly, this is what human life is like after the fall. Not that everyone ends up killing their brother or sister, but that human relationships break down. In Cain’s case when the time came to offer a sacrifice to God he chose the easy way out. He brought some of the grain that he’d grown, while Abel brought a choice fat lamb, a costly offering. So God was pleased with Abel but not with Cain. And how did Cain react? He didn’t repent and ask for forgiveness. No, he reacted with jealousy and rage towards his younger brother.
Have you noticed how, even in the closest relationships, in the family and even in the church, jealousy and envy can creep in, anger can take over, petty rivalries can grow into deep divisions. Why does that happen? Well, he tells us in v12. He says Cain did it because he belonged to the evil one. Cain had allowed himself to be brought down by Satan. John here may well be thinking back to Jesus’ words in John 8:44 where he says to the Pharisees: “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” (John 8:44 NRSV) Why does he say the devil was a murderer from the beginning? Because the murder of Abel by Cain was the devil’s first success following the fall. Because the fall itself brought death to all humanity.
But what’s the murder of Abel got to do with love and hate? Well, think about what Jesus said about hatred in the sermon on the mount? “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council...” (Mat 5:21-22 NRSV) So John’s simply following Jesus when he says “All who hate a brother or sister are murderers.” (v15)
Hatred of someone else is the work of Satan: v12 “Do not be like Cain who was from the evil one.” And how does such a feeling express itself? Well, it expresses itself in jealousy, in rage, in envy, in spitefulness, in malicious gossip. And it ends in murder. If not physical, then emotional. In character assassination, in wishing the person wasn’t around, in avoiding them, in undermining their character or their worth. All acts of death, of one sort or another.
Well how does that contrast with Christian love? Well, where does Christian love come from? What is its origin? It comes from God. It’s the love of God that John is talking about, expressed in the life of the believer. Just as hate indicated a bond with Satan, this sort of love indicates a bond with God.
Expressing Love
And how does it express itself? In self-sacrifice. Jesus is the prime example of this type of love. This is how we know what love is, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. Notice the contrast with Cain. It’s the nature of hate to take life, but it’s the nature of love to surrender life, to give it up for another. There’s a lovely quote in Tim Winton’s book, “That Eye the Sky.” One of the characters is talking about the difference between personal survival and healing another. He says “Healing is what you do for someone else. Survival is what you do for yourself. You can eat people if you want to survive bad enough. Or you can die if you want to heal someone bad enough.” That’s the contrast between hate and love isn’t it, between self interest and self-sacrifice? One is willing to take away life, while the other is willing to give up its life for the sake of the other.
But what does that mean in practical terms? I mean you don’t show love to someone by simply giving up your life for no purpose. It’d be a bit stupid for me to go home to my wife today and say I’ve been convicted by that passage from 1 John and just to show you how much I love you I’m going to kill myself. No, it isn’t the ending of your life that John wants. Rather he wants us to expend our lives in service of others. Look at vs 16-18: “we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? 18Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” So here’s how we love one another: by caring for them. By sharing our material wealth with them. By giving them some of that most precious of commodities, time. And notice that there’s something very ordinary about all this?
One of the difficulties we have in thinking about love for others is that the very concept of love has been hijacked by popular culture, by Hollywood, by Mills and Boon, by television, so that we think that an act of love has to have some sort of razzmatazz involved. At this time of year in particular we’ve just been inundated by images of people sending their loved ones Valentines of various sorts: flowers or chocolates or dinner at expensive restaurants. And we’re told this should lead to some sort of heightened emotional state. But anyone who’s raised young children, or nursed a sick relative, or experienced a marriage for more than three months, will know that loving another person is far more down to earth than that. Love involves giving of yourself in practical ways. Ways that look to the needs and desires of the recipient not the giver. Ways that often aren’t very romantic. We’ll say more about this next week when we think about how God’s love is to be the model for our love. But for now, look at what he says in v18: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Loving others is seen in truth and action. In truth, because love doesn’t pretend. It doesn’t cover up the bad things, but exposes them so they can be fixed up. And in action because so much of loving has to do with how we care for others in practical ways.
The Practical Outcome of Love
Here’s a word of encouragement for us. He says, “by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him.” There’s an immediate benefit to the believer that comes from loving in this practical way, and it’s this: that we’re reassured in our hearts that we belong to God. Last week George talked about the paradox of God’s expectation that we’ll live lives of purity while knowing that we’ll fail. But here John gives a more practical way of checking whether we’re from God.
Not that it comes naturally to us. In fact the opposite is true. He says this will be the case whenever our hearts condemn us. I guess all of us have had the experience of feeling like failures. None of us has the energy or the resources to adequately love all those who would like us to care for them. So there are times when we feel like failures. But God knows what’s in our hearts and he’ll give us the assurance we need. He says God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything. In v24 he says “All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.” The Holy Spirit is the one who’ll reassure us that we’re on the right track, that we’re remaining in Christ and that Christ is remaining in us.
In fact the Holy Spirit is the key to all of this, both what we’ve said already and what we’re about to go on to. You see when he says in v 22 that we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him, I get the feeling that what he’s saying may be that we get whatever we need in order to obey him and to please him. And what is it that we need most? It’s his Holy Spirit, the guide, the counsellor that Jesus promised to send to be with us, who both empowers us to do what God wants, that is to love one another, and reassures us that God is with us when we do it.
Remaining Faithful to Christ
But the other thing the Holy Spirit does is to remind us of the truth of the Gospel. Look back briefly to 2:27. “As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him.” (NRSV) What’s the anointing he’s talking about? It’s the Holy Spirit. Do you remember how Jesus told his disciples that he’d send the Spirit to be with them? Here’s one of the things Jesus said: (John 16:13-14 NRSV) “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” So one of the major roles of the Holy Spirit is to declare the truth about Jesus, to remind us of it, to keep us faithful to it.
So John says, at the start of ch 4: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” And how are we going to test the spirits that claim to come from God, that claim to give us the truth from God? (4:2): “2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”
Again, it’s a simple test isn’t it? Do they declare Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, come in the flesh? Do they bring glory to Jesus Christ? Do they encourage us to worship him, to serve him better? Let me suggest this is a great test to use to determine whether various sects you might come across are of God. eg. it’s the one place that groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons will fall down.
We need to understand what’s happening when we come across these people. John says that they’re from the world and therefore what they say is from the world, so the world listens to them. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself in the minority when it comes to beliefs about Jesus Christ. Just remember that the truth we have about Jesus Christ has come to us from God. It isn’t made up by human beings. It’s the word God has spoken to his people over thousands of years through the prophets, and in these last days has spoken to us by his Son. When he says in v6 “we are from God” the ‘we’ he’s talking about, I take it, is the apostles, who have passed on the message that they received from God through his son Jesus Christ. So it’s a message that can be relied upon. And the assurance we have that we can rely on it is that God’s Spirit has been given to us to reassure us of its truth.
So how are we to live a life that pleases God? First, by showing God’s love to those around us, particularly to those of the household of faith, in practical ways. And second, by holding firm to the truth of the gospel, that Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, came in the flesh to die for our sins and has risen again to bring us eternal life with the Father. It sounds simple, but it requires perseverance and sacrifice. Make sure that what you first believed remains in you. And the assurance we have then is that we will also remain in the Son and in the Father.