1 John
1Jo 4:19-21 - First Love and its Implications
by Joe Holder
We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also. (1Jo 4:19-21)
Occasionally we hear someone extract the first sentence in our passage from the context. It certainly stands alone. If a person truly loves God, the cause must go back to God Himself. But this isolated application does not honor the full context of the lesson. A person might say he loves God and claim the comforts of the sentence in the midst of anger and retribution against a brother or sister in Christ. What does John say about such inconsistency? He rejects the idea that a person can do so with sincerity. The moment a person treats a brother or sister hatefully he ethically rejects God and His love. He may no longer say, "I love God."
This chapter will seem rather direct, to some readers perhaps blunt. The directness grows out of a concern, an urgency, in John's writings that we take our Christianity far more seriously than we often do. And it requires that we gauge our Christianity on Scripture more than on our private sentimentality. We may "feel" like a Christian and act like a pagan. History is full of people who did precisely this. The love of which John writes has little to do with how we feel and everything to do with how we act. Our Western culture struggles with this idea. It is so foreign to our way of viewing love.
If we approach this passage from the perspective of emotional or sentimental feelings of love, we must confess that some people make it far easier for us to "love" them than others. It sets the stage for, and actually defends the idea of, partiality. At times some people demonstrate an uncanny way of pushing our emotional hot buttons, of touching tender spots that trigger strong angry reactions in us. If they make this conduct too much of a habit, we begin to wonder if they know what they are doing, if they actually do it intentionally. Then we've all met someone whose habits and attitudes almost constantly rub us the wrong way. We barely can tolerate being around them. Perhaps they view life so differently than we that we struggle to find any kind of common ground with them. Like them? It almost seems more than we can bring ourselves to do. And of course we eventually encounter the person who seems so self-absorbed that they have no interest in anyone or anything outside their immediate focus and desires. Now imagine some of these traits in a person in the church with you! How do you deal with it? How do you react to these Biblical commands to "love" this person when they make it so difficult for you even to like them? This becomes indeed challenging!
Redefine love as used by John here in terms of your conduct toward this person. Can you find a basic moral and ethical foundation in your own character that will enable you to treat this person with reasonable grace? Can you build a relationship on your own moral convictions? What better way to remind ourselves that God's love for us does not stand on our being irresistibly lovable in His eyes. It grows out of His intimate personal being. Thus if we adopt His kind of love toward these people, we must build a moral and ethical love based on our own moral and ethical convictions, not on a reactive posture to their conduct. You will find this process amazingly challenging, but in the midst of the difficulty remind yourself that this at least in kind represents God's love toward you! Practice God's kind of love toward them. This is Christ-like Christianity at its best, perhaps also for us at its most difficult!
If love retains the idea of action, moral and ethical conduct toward others, then hate must also hold the idea of the opposite kind of action. If love does not intend a sentimental or emotional feeling for the person, then hate does not intend the opposite emotional reaction against them. Regardless of the meaning of the two terms, think of the absurdity that John describes. You say you love God, and supposedly you develop traits in your life that are consistent with God-love. But then you discover a reservoir of resentment and anger against someone, perhaps even someone in your church. How do you regroup and deal with it, and with the person, in a Christ-like ethical manner? John will not permit us to love God and hate our brother. In fact he says if we make such a claim we are liars. We just compounded an already bad situation with yet another sin.
Take some time to compile a list of attitudes and actual habits that might credibly witness to others that you actually do love God. Don't go to sentimental creativity for the list; go to the Bible. Cultivate the practice of using Scripture, not how you feel, to steer the course of your faith. If you love God, what kind of actions will you show toward Him, both in His presence and when you do not consciously regard Him as present. I use this term because one of God's essential attributes rises in our consideration of this exercise. Feel His presence or not, God is omnipresent. We may have no immediate thought of Him, but He is just as present at that moment as when we "felt" His most powerful presence. So when you vented your anger against this person, God personally saw every hateful gesture and heard every toxic word you uttered. He even knew every poisonous thought that entered your mind against that person. If you were called before God at that immediate moment to account for the action, how would you answer? You can't deceive God. He will not accept self-absorbed rationalizations. Perhaps His first question to you would be this. Do you love me or hate me? Do you love this person or hate him? One answer directly relates to the other. You can't convince God that you love Him while treating this person hatefully. If this line of thought doesn't make you flinch, you are one of a very few human beings who ever lived on this sinful earth who could stand up to the test! Or do you really?
Put a specific measure to your habits.
Conversation with others. If you put a stopwatch on each segment of your ordinary conversation with another person in your family or in your church, how much time would you talk? How much time would you listen? And how much time while listening would you turn off your mind to what the person is actually saying, barely enduring the conversation until you find an opening to start your own speech again?
Energy invested in activities for others. Imagine situations in which you will never possibly warm in the limelight of praise from others for your good deed. No one will ever know. But you actually went out of your way. You expended significant personal energy and other resources, even wallet resources, for that person's benefit.
We could go on, but these two simple points make the point. This kind of activity speaks to your love for God. No typo here, John wants us to understand that the way we treat other people actually mirrors our true view of God. Go back and read Mt 25:31-46, particularly those verses that contain terms like "...inasmuch as ye did it to...ye did it unto me" and "...inasmuch as ye did it not to...ye did it not unto me." How does the King-Judge gauge our conduct toward Him? He goes directly and immediately to how we treated other people.
I spent over twelve years in full-time employment in public education. The general attitude among teachers was that because they were "certificated," they were better than, anyone else. Yes, thank God, there were exceptions. The only thing their certificate did was to verify that they had completed certain educational requirements. It made no commentary on their moral or ethical outlook. It made no conclusions on how they viewed their students. And it certainly did nothing to make them superior human beings to the janitor or other employees with far less education. We may celebrate education and accomplishments honorably, but when we use anything to justify an attitude that we are inherently better than another person, we step across a Biblical ethical boundary. You will find this same attitude among many other professionals where education or structured accomplishment measures position or success. And sadly even in churches at times people will think a certain criteria makes them a more important person to the church than others. Rather than justifying such faulty attitudes, John and other Scriptural writers bring this whole worldview up short. It runs contrary to the whole Biblical concept of love for God and others.
1Jo 5:1-3 - Faith, Assurance and the New Birth