should love one another”: 1 John 3.11 (NIV)
The story we read in Genesis
4, is a story of the two sons of Adam and Eve -
Cain and Abel……..
Right at the beginning of the Bible,
then, we are shown in these two men what human life is like; at the same time
we are given an insight into the human heart.
We are told that
Abel kept flocks, he was a
shepherd, and Cain worked the soil, he was a farmer.
Abel brings some of the sheep
from his flock
as an
offering………
The LORD accepts what Abel brings
Cain brings some of the
produce of his fields as an offering to the LORD.
and
the Lord does not accept it………
and
here is where the trouble begins………
instead
of coming in sorrow before the Lord,
instead
of waiting in patience before God,
Cain is filled with bitterness
and anger.
his
heart is filled with jealousy, and hatred……..
and
inviting his brother Abel out into the fields
Cain kills him
This is what the human heart
is like, Genesis tells us;
where,
like Cain, men and women, made in God’s image,
fall away from God
and
from all He intends for them,
The human heart is filled with
jealousy, hatred, murder……..
In his first epistle the
apostle John turns back to the story of Cain and Abel,
to
speak of love.
To declare that love marks, fills, shapes,
drives,
draws, moves, motivates,
our
life in Jesus Christ, the live that we live in Him:
Do not be like Cain, who
belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother,
says
the apostle, instead, verse, 11: This is
the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
The apostle John then goes on
to unfold what Christian love is like:
And what he says is this:
That as followers of Jesus
Christ,
love
for others grows, develops, unfolds within us:
As we are restored to life in
Jesus Christ
as we
are restored in Jesus Christ to what God intended for us,
so
our love for others grows, develops, unfolds within us:
as
the image of God within us is restored
and we
become what God intended…………..
This was what God’s
purpose was for Adam and Eve. Human
beings, Genesis declares, were made in God’s image. And in that original image, was deep,
unchanging love for others. This was God’s purpose from the beginning;
In Jesus Christ, as we are restored to all that God meant us to be,
as the darkness in us
fades, and the true light shines ever more strongly,
so we learn to love ever
more deeply……..
Instead of jealousy and
hatred,
we
are called to pour out our lives in love for others,
as
Jesus Christ Himself did……..
In fact: we grow spiritually as Christians as we learn to love others
In Dostoevsky’s novel The
Brothers Karamazov, a poor woman comes to talk with a holy man about her faith.
She says, suddenly, I
ask myself sometimes "What if I've been believing all my life, and when I
come to die there is nothing but weeds growing over my grave? ... I ask myself
- How can I prove it? How can I convince myself? of
faith ?" The holy man says to her: " The
more you love, the more you grow in loving others the more you will grow surer
of the reality of God and of everlasting life"
This is why the apostle John
says: 18 Dear children, let us not love with words but with actions and in truth.
19 This then is how we know that we
belong to the truth,
and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence
we grow spiritually as Christians as we
learn to love others
our spiritual life, our
faith, grows through loving others -
our ability to follow Jesus,
grows as we grow in love
In verse 23, John draws what
he writes about love to a close with these words:
this
is God’s command: to believe in the name of his
Son, Jesus Christ, and to love
one another .
These are words of Jesus we
read in John’s Gospel chapter 13:
When Jesus was about to leave the
disciples, He said, “A new commandment I
give unto you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also
love one another.”
What might that have meant to those disciples ?
What did they make of these words of Jesus ?
“A new
commandment I give unto you, That you love one
another; as I have loved you.”
What did the mention of Love suggest to
them?
Surely they must have thought back to
the love and compassion that they had seen in Jesus: who sat by the well in the
heat of the day in Samaria, with the woman who came to draw water; to the day
in which, out of all the sick and desperate men and women at the pool of
Bethzatha, Jesus spoke to and healed a man who had lain there 38 years,
or the moment when Jesus
stepped forward in deep compassion and saved the life of a woman about to be
stoned for adultery……..
Jesus had walked with them in love, His
words, His actions,
were all of love.
Surely that would come back to their
memory
when He said those words:
love one another; as I
have loved you,
But what of ourselves………
we have no experience
parallel to theirs, how can we be called
on to
love others, as Jesus did
?
How can these words, this command of His to us,
love one another; as I
have loved you
come to us with power and lifegiving energy?
Well, yes, it is true that we do not
have the same personal experiences that the disciples did, but Jesus assured
His disciples that it was good that He should go away, for He would send the Comforter, the
Holy Spirit upon them.
And through the Holy Spirit
we are brought near to
Jesus Christ
For through His Spirit, we have the daily
experience of His Love as really, as personally as the disciples had.
We too, can know the Love of Christ -
His living Love, in its tenderness, in its purity, in its searching holiness -
seeking to bless us,
And in His patient love for us, so we become loving
to others
Though we know little of the things of
God – though we have so little experience of the Love
of God in Christ – though we have so little fellowship with one another in the
Love of Jesus –
may His Spirit work
within us to deepen, and enrichen our lives
in the power and life of
His Love.
AMEN.