Easter 4: How to Be a Christian, 101

1 John 3:16-24
…We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How 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? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

And 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. 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.


Welcome to How to Be a Christian, 101.

You didn’t know it when you walked in here today, but this lesson from the first letter of John to a broken community offers us a very succinct lesson on what this Trinitarian faith is all about.

A word of context about the original audience of this letter is important. 1 John, unlike the other 2 which you’ll find just after it, close to the end of the Bible, is less a letter and more a homily or essay. As with all epistles, there is an anticipated audience for it—likely a religious community that has experienced a kind of a split. There is evidence throughout the letter that there is deep antagonism between this community and the ones who have left. The writer often refers to anti-christs and spirits that must be tested for truth, leaving us to believe they may have split over disagreements on what constituted proper Christian belief and practice. Our passage for today contains a commentary on how to truly practice one’s individual and the community belief in the Holy Trinity: God the creator, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

First, you must understand that God is love and that to believe in God is to practice that love toward others. Apparently this has been a problem for the people in the community since the exodus of the others who had broken away and gone somewhere else. And so to be sure that the remnant here was continuing on in the proper worship of and faith in the true God and the true Christ and the true Spirit, the author wants the community to understand that the children of God who follow Christ must first and foremost love others.

Second, you must believe that Jesus was truly the Son of God, meaning that not only was he holy because he was of the same being as God and sent from God but he was also truly human, a real Son, who lived and breathed and died and rose from the dead among us. This had also been an issue in the newly formed and divided Christian community—that there were lots of groups and individuals running around at saying that Jesus was not actually human, that there was no way it could have been true that he was fully human and fully divine. This is the origin of the concern about anti-christ. The author likely meant to use that word to describe people who were against the true identity of Christ: Son of Man and Son of God. And belief in Jesus Christ meant abiding by his commandment to love one another. That meant that the kind of thing the community had been experiencing with people who once called each other brother and sister now calling each other anti-christ and bogus teachers and prophets, did not reflect the both human and divine person of Christ, his love, or his commandment to love.

Loving others was the way to know that Christ was present in your life, and that leads us to the third piece of commentary on how to be a practicing, Trinitarian Christian: recognizing the Spirit in your life through the commandment of Christ to love and be loved. The writer says that the way you’ll know that Christ is dwelling in you and in your life is by the Spirit—the Spirit that Christ has given us. When Jesus was with the disciples as they hid in a locked room, he gave them the Spirit, which he had promised to do before the crucifixion, and told them that the Spirit would be with them always. So how would they be assured of the Spirit’s presence? When they felt and gave love. And we can know the Spirit in the same way—that feeling of overwhelming love that we know can only come from God; the same feeling we are called to give away to others.

So, end of context lesson. Back to How to Be a Christian, 101. Take out your text books and turn to today’s lesson: 1 John 3:16-24. Here you will find the story of all of our Christian journeys:
1. how to respond to God’s love;
2. discovering the purpose of Jesus and what Jesus means for us;
3. letting the love of Jesus (both what he showed us and what he commanded us) show in what we do in the world, and that is our assurance that the Spirit is with us.

1. We cannot be in this world to which God’s love has been so freely given without feeling it for and sharing it with our neighbors, especially those who are in need. Did you hear the story this past week of a Dekalb County school child who took his own life as a result of bullying at school? Or how about the residents of Grant Park who don’t have life as good as most of us do? Or how about when one of our community of faith is facing a hard time? “How 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? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Reach out to children in every school, especially the ones where the kids have the roughest time and the smallest shot at making it. Lend a hand to your neighbors here, even the ones you wish didn’t live down the street. When you see a brother or sister shedding tears of pain, offer your shoulder and your heart. This is the most straightforward definition of who God is that we will find—God is the love that you feel and the love you give away. Only the hearts that feel or share no love are the ones that “condemn” us. But let God’s love live in you and through you in me.

2. Jesus came as an ultimate demonstration of that love. He was practically a broken record—“Love your neighbor,” “Love your enemies,” “Love one another,” “Abide in my love.” So understanding who Jesus was and is is knowing that he is nothing more or less than the love of God housed in flesh, blood, and now eternal presence, and making sure that others come to know that same love through how you treat them. And we’re not just talking about the people you already love here, or even the people you just like. We’re talking about the people that God loves—even the ones you don’t like very much.

3. The Spirit’s presence in our lives—that still, small voice; that feeling of someone always being there for you whom you cannot see—is the proof that Jesus’ commandment to love is the ultimate fulfilling of the love of God. Jesus did lay down his life for us—for those who went before us and for those who will come after us—and that proves God’s love toward us. We are reunited with the love of God in a way that cannot be changed now. The words of our prayers at the communion table say it best: “When we turned away and our love failed, God’s love remained steadfast.” And we have known that love through Jesus Christ, through the Spirit, and through one another.

So friends, there is only a short test for our class session today, and you can all answer at the same time:
a. Does God love us? [yes]
b. Does God want us to love others? [yes]
c. If we accept God’s love, should it be possible for us to withhold that love from other people? [no]
d. What characteristic of God did Jesus show us and command us to show others? [love]
e. What do we call that feeling of God’s presence we have when we follow Christ’s example, especially when we are loving each other? [the Spirit]

Last question: do you believe it?