A Sermon Based Upon 1 John 3: 1-10, NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
2nd Sunday of Easter, April 15th, 2018
(2 of 6) Sermon Series: 1 John
Almost two dozen years ago, in 1994, a campaign of vicious genocidal slaughter began in Rwanda. In just three months, 850,000 Rwandans were killed.
Baptist Theologian and ethicist David Gushee asked how such brutality could have occurred in "the most Christianized country in Africa." Churches, seminaries, schools and benevolent organizations were scattered all over the country. Ninety percent of Rwandans claimed to be Christians. "And yet," Gushee writes, "all of that Christianity did not prevent genocide, a genocide which church officials did little to resist, in which a large number of Christians participated, and in which, according to African Rights, 'more people died in churches and parishes than anywhere else.'" (David P. Gushee, "Church Failure, Remembering Rwanda" in The Christian Century, April 20, 2004, p. 28)
Pondering the failure of the church and Christians to prevent Rwandan genocide, we are reminded that Germany was a pervasively Christian nation, yet the vast majority of German Christians were loyal to--or at least silent in the face of--Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Christians were complicit in the Holocaust. White South African Christians were the architects of apartheid. Most American slaveholders were Christians, and America was predominately Christian when the Indians were push off their land onto reservations. Also, we must not forget that during the Crusades, Christian soldiers, marching behind the banner of the cross, killed thousands of Muslims and Jews.
Who knows how much damage has been done by Christians who have failed to live by the ways of Jesus? Reflecting on Rwanda, David Gushee concluded with one more sobering note: "The presence of churches in a country guarantees nothing. The self-identification of people with the Christian faith guarantees nothing. All of the clerical garb and regalia, all of the structures of religious accountability, all of the Christian vocabulary and books, all of the schools and seminaries and parish houses and Bible studies, all of the religious titles and educational degrees - they guarantee nothing."
EVERYONE WHO DOES WHAT IS RIGHT (3:7)
Why is that? Why is it that saying you are Christian, or wanting to be a Christian does not make you a Christian? The answer comes directly from our text today from First John.
Near the end of these verses, John reminds the churches what being God’s children means. He strongly asserts that, “no one who abides in him sins…”(6). Before that John also argued, “…”He” (Jesus), “was revealed to take away sins…” (5). Then, as the final part of his argument, he concludes with all pastoral tenderness, in verse seven: “Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous” (7).
The argument John makes is simple, almost too simple. How in the world can a person live without sin? Is this realistic? And this is not all John says. He continues with an even stronger tone, saying: “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil….”(8). Why would the nice, elderly pastor talk like this?
No one knows what specific situation, sin or sins, which motivated John to write, but he gets more personal and direct than others New Testament writings. While the apostle Paul named himself ‘chief of sinners’ and wrote about receiving God’s grace and living in by the Spirit, John seems to say that you can actually overcome sin altogether. This chimes a distinct tone from the rest of the New Testament.
Either John speaks ideally, or he is referring to specific sin that resulted in a constant sinful attitude of constant rebellion against God in the churches he addressed. By the content of this letter, there seems to be a kind of ongoing destructive and specific behavior that threatened the life of fellowship in the churches (CH Dodd). It sounds like John’s is a pastor who is confronting the hard kind of truth that can occur in free, open, voluntary churches, because not everyone who claims to be Christian obeys Jesus' command.
In chapter two (1 John 2:7ff), John names this command as the primary command of love, specially Christ’s “to love our neighbors as ourselves" (Matt. 19:19). The greatest threat to the mission of the church in the world is that some who name Christ as Lord still haven’t fully understood the lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which teaches that ‘Everyone is my neighbor’.
The truth is, we can never be sure of the motivations that bring people to church. As one pastor in Asheville told his congregation: “We are here in worship for more reasons than we know, probably for more reasons than we can imagine. Besides, Christian people are influenced, not just by Jesus Christ, but by social, economic and political systems and by assumptions, ideas, loyalties and feelings that are at odds with the core of the gospel” (Guy Sales). In other words, it cannot be assumed that Christians are actually following Jesus. Unfortunately, everyone who says they like Jesus do not always live or love like Jesus.
SEE WHAT LOVE THE FATHER HAS GIVEN! (3:1)
The “right” and “righteousness” God wants us to have, John clarifies, is to love like Jesus loves. The central theme of this letter is that ‘we shall be like him’. John believes that a new age has arrived, when humans can reach their full potential in Christ’s love. That is the clear message of our text: "When he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is." God intends to work in us, with us, and on us until we fully reflect the spirit and character of Jesus. John believes our hope in Christ’s perfect love should be perfecting us now.
It is urgent, for the sake of the church and of the whole world, that we are people who are unswervingly committed to obey the loving way of Jesus. People who are using the energy of their lives to become more and more like him will be agents of reconciliation and understanding, of healing and hope, of love and mercy in this world where people can get lost in hate and hurt. To put it simply, "Jesus people" will make the world a better place. We make the world a better place because we love each other, and we show the way to the only hope the world has, which is God’s revelation of perfecting love in Jesus Christ
It is with a great declaration about God’s love, that John begins this text. “See what love the Father has given us…!” This exclamation brings an important question into focus: What do you do and I do with the love that has been given to us? Love can be hard to talk about. Feelings can be difficult to express, even to those we love. While words of love are important, the most important thing is what we do with it.
Building on Christ’s ‘commandment’ to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ in John’s gospel (John 13:34), this letter clarifies that ‘Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light,…But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.” (2:10-11). Since God has lavished his great love on us in Christ, there is no excuse in the church for people not learning how to love. John reminds believers that if they have God’s forgiveness, they know him, have conquered the world, and God’s word abides in them, they should love each other (1 Jn. 2: 12-17). Love is not only the great commandment, but displaying God’s love is the greatest work of the church.
BELOVED, WE ARE GOD’S CHILDREN NOW (3:2)
If I understand what John implies about love, is that being able to love is a gift. Love does not automatically come our way. People can be ‘wired’ to be unable to feel, know, or express love.
Think of the notorious Charles Manson, who died at the end of last year after years in prison. He had a warped mind, and he was a person unable to love, who attracted other sick people into his ‘family’ of hate and violence. If you research Charles Manson’s life story you will find a child born to a 16 year old mother who was in and out of jail. Manson was named ‘no name’ at birth and never knew his father. Living without love at so young an age, Manson spent much of his school life in truancy and reformed schools, and his young adult life was spent in and out of prison. The one moment of time he was able to spend with his mother, he called the ‘highlight of his life’ until she abandoned him again. This proves that, while Manson wanted love, the lack of love was starving his moral soul to death.
If you were to get into the mind of other serial killers or mass murderers, and if you analyzed their backgrounds, in most every case you will see people who have not known or are unable to love. Such people have been permanent damaged in their soul, so that they live as people of hate, all because they lacked the gift of love from parents, from homes, or from society. This is the kind of ‘darkness’ John means must be challenged by the light of love among God’s people. Love is not just a matter of religion, or a volunteer option of morality, but love is a matter of light or darkness which for the church and for the hope of the world is also a matter of life or death.
So, here is where it all comes together for John. He says that because the Father shows his love to us, we are now part of a God’s family, which means, we are God’s children, now 3:2).8 Since we are loved, we have the gift of love, so we have the great prospect of having our lives transformed by God’s perfecting love. John’s point is that this ‘perfecting’ by love begins now. Now, we are loved. Now, we are God’s children, and now, we are to be loving toward each other and becoming like Christ in his love.
Guy Sales, pastor of First Baptist Asheville, says that growing up in a Baptist church he “got the impression that God was mainly concerned about life after death.” He thought that “nearly the whole point of salvation seemed to be to stay out of hell and get into heaven.” But he adds, that if that was true, “conversion would ideally have been followed, not by baptism, but by a funeral”. But that is not what happens, Baptism is a sign of death, but it is a sign of a kind of spiritual ‘death’ to self that should led us to live a new life in the light of Christ’s love. “God's concern is that we become like Jesus Christ-people who live with a passionate concern that the will and way of God be done on earth as they are in heaven.”
In her autobiography, Gertrude Stein described an exchange she had with Pablo Picasso. Even though he had painted a portrait of her, he did not immediately recognize her. Stein wrote: "I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, somebody said that she does not look like it, but that doesn't make any difference, she will."
You and I are supposed to be living in the light of love that is growing into the image of Jesus. Even though their may be days we do not seem to be very much like him, we will be one day ‘be like him’. In the end, as Carroll Simcox beautifully put it, "You and I shall be our real, complete selves for the first time ever. We think of ourselves now as human beings. We really aren't that - not yet. We are human becomings… If you are living in Christ, believing in him and trying to follow and obey him as the master of your life, you are by his grace, becoming ever more and more like him." (Carroll Simcox, in James W. Cox, ed., Best Sermons 5. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1992).
To say that God is in the process of making us like Jesus Christ does not mean that God is cloning us into exact replicas of Jesus of Nazareth. The wonderful and gracious truth at the heart of the gospel is that the more we become like Jesus, the more we become our truest selves. "To be yoked to Christ is to be a soul companion so we become the authentic person God intends for us to be” As we discover deeper dimensions of Christ-likeness, we uncover more and more of our honest-to-God selves (Don Wardlaw, in Thomas G. Long and Neely Dixon McCarter, eds. Preaching in and out of Season, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990) .
How can we become as fully human as Jesus? Genuine transformation is not a self-help exercise or a do-it-yourself project. It is God's work. Transformation happens as God convinces us we that we are loved-that, like Jesus, we are God's beloved children. It is God’s tender and strong, reassuring and challenging, nurturing and empowering love that makes us who we are and who we will become. God's arms of welcome and affirmation are always open to us. We are God's children. We are loved.
It is this kind of love that was missing in Tina Turners’ relationship with her husband Ike that she sang about in the song that I titled this message after. The brokenness in his abusiveness toward her, in spite of him pretending to be a Christian, caused Tina to leave Ike, and the Christian faith, as she turned to deal with pain in Buddhism. That’s what happened when the church fails to realize what love has to do with it. Love has everything to do with it, or Jesus means nothing. But because Jesus does mean love, when we live in him, and give ourselves to him, Jesus means everything because God is love. This is the kind of love that not only changes everything, it also changes us. Amen.
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