Love is known in action

18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 1 John 3:18

Love is known in action.

How do we know God’s love for the world? It is through God’s action in sending Jesus Christ into the world to save the world from sin, as demonstrated by Christ’s action of laying down his life for us. The actions of God show what God is like – LOVE!

And the same applies to us and our love. How do others know what is in our hearts? It is by our actions. Just as God’s love is known to us through the visible action of Jesus Christ, so our love is known to others through our concrete actions that seek to mirror Christ’s actions. And that is what non-Christians look for from us.

Mahatma Gandhi once said:

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

In other words, Ghandi saw that those who claimed to be Christians did not behave in a Christ - like manner. Love is known in action.

In 1 John 3:16 we read

16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

“Lay down our lives for one another”

Words we know so well. Often on war memorials. And we speak them with a sense of hushed awe. And well we should, for the words suggest sacrifice. Yes in the context of members of the armed forces too. But also in terms of members of the emergency services or someone who carries out a courageous act to save others. And in a wider context too. Just the other day we heard the story of the parents of a baby called Teddy, who knowing that Teddy would die just after his birth, gave permission for Teddy’s kidneys to go to someone else.

Laying down their lives for others is the ultimate demonstration of love. It is the ultimate demonstration of Love in Action.
As Christians, we know that Christ calls us to a sacrificial ministry. And in challenging words, John tells us that (verse 16) we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 1 John 3:16

John’s words suggest that this should not be some grand heroic Christian gesture. Rather it should be an everyday thing. We should live our lives everyday as if we are prepared to lay down our lives. The Christian life is a life laid down for others, a life built on self-sacrifice.

Sometimes self-sacrifice will mean physical death. American nurse Kayla Mueller was murdered by Islamic terrorists in Syria earlier this year. Kayla Mueller was a Christian and in one of her letters to her parents she wrote:

"It should not be a question of 'my people' and 'your people': wherever there is injustice, that is my problem."

And we know, that if we are prepared to go and stand beside victims of injustice, hate or racism, we might become the next victim. If we go in love to those who are under daily threat of violence or war and share with them as a witness for healing and peace, we have to expect that the next bomb or bullet might find us. In every age Christians have acted with Christ - like love, going where they do not have to go and suffering what they could easily avoid.

More often the stakes are lower. But the principle is the same. Laying down our lives can mean any number of ways in which we must lay aside our claim to our own lives. We lay down our lives when we put others first.

We lay down our lives when we put the good of others before our own. We lay down our lives when we make time for others. To love others is to lay down our lives for them. When we lay aside the normal human desire to live for ourselves and when instead we allow the love of God to make others our focus, then we are laying down our lives for others.

Laying down one’s life for sisters and brothers seems by definition to be a once in a lifetime act of heroism at best. And the vast majority of Christians are unlikely to ever be put in that position – thank God! So perhaps for this reason John offers the matter of fact example of what he has in mind: practical attention to those lacking life’s basic necessities, paid by those “who have the world’s goods” (v17)

John is hard on those Christians who say they have the love of Jesus in their hearts, but who do not share their material goods with those in need. We can only imagine what he would say today when, in the sixth wealthiest country in the world, many people are reliant on Foodbanks while according to the Sunday Times rich list published today, the richest in this country have doubled their wealth in the last 10 years.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/26/crisis-what-crisis-britains-richest-double-their-wealth-in-10-years

We can only imagine what John would say today when with all the wealth in the world according to UN figures:

• 925 million people do not have enough to eat - more than the combined populations of USA, Canada and the European Union;
• Nearly half the world’s population, 2.8 billion people, survive on less than $2 a day.
• About 20 percent of the world’s population, 1.2 billion people, live on less than $1 a day.
• Nearly 1 billion people are illiterate and 1 billion do not have safe water.

http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/food/vitalstats.shtml

16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17 How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister[f] in need and yet refuses help?

And note. John doesn’t refer to “the poor”. He uses the term “brothers and sisters”. In other words, as Christians, we are called to see all people as our brothers and sisters. Whether the drunk clubber helped by Street Pastors on a Saturday night or the drowning child rescued off the coast of Italy. They are all our brothers and sisters and we are called to lay down our lives for them.

Nigel Farage in commenting on the refugees being rescued in the Mediterranean said Britain should rescue the Christian ones and offer them asylum and take the others back to Libya.

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2015/04/22/refugee-crisis-only-take-in-christians-insists-nigel-farage

That’s not how it works John reminds us. All people are our brothers and sisters.

If we close our hearts to our brothers and sisters then we are closing our hearts to God.


This blog is an abridged version of a sermon preached at Lyneham Methodist Church on Sunday 26th April 2015