Unseen

You can't see the wind, you can only see what it does. That truth is found in scripture and a lot of other writings, ancient and modern. To see what the wind is doing, we look at trees and flags to find out how fast and what direction. 

In the same way, people ought to be able to look at me and see what God is doing. After all, I'm one of the ones who gets it, who understands what Jesus did for me, who knows exactly what I owe to God's grace. So when John writes, "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." (1 John 4:11-12), I have to think that my love is the visible evidence people around me can see of God. 

On the other hand,  when I proclaim my faith with my mouth and then use that same mouth for snarky comments, gossipy innuendo or name-calling, what does that show people? My own weak sinfulness, sure, but they probably see it as evidence that I'm a hypocrite and God doesn't really change hearts. 

Love is serious business for Christians. It's how I know I've been changed, and it's how my neighbors see God is real. 

Love Indeed

It boggles my mind, what Jesus did. What God did in sending Jesus. 

1 John 4:9-10 "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

I’m a Jesus follower, one of His own, and I know how I treat God sometimes. The best I can say a lot of days is I pretty much blew him off; the day got busy and so did I and at the end of it I barely gave God a thought. If I treated Dawn that way she wouldn’t tolerate it for very long.

But what about all the people who scoff and mock, or worse, attack God. The ones who post those “Where is your God now” memes on the Internet? The ones who call belief in God a superstition? The ones who live lives of open, blatant debauchery with no sign of shame?

For all of us, God sent Jesus. Every one of His image-bearers is dear to Him, no matter how odious they are to me. I’m no one to judge. Someone once said if Adolf Hitler marked one extreme and Jesus the other and the rest of us were rated on that scale, all of humanity would be crowded at Hitler’s end. Even Mother Teresa would be 1% removed from Hitler and 99% of the scale away from Jesus.

There isn’t a human being who ever lived who was worth what God did for us. Certainly not me. This is love, indeed.

Love . . . again

Again? Honestly, John was fixated on love. I feel like half the meditations I’ve done on 1 John were on love. And here we are, at 1 John 4:7-8, reading this: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

I get it already. God is love, God’s people love.

Except maybe that’s John’s point. After all this ink spent on the topic, when I think of how I act, I’m not a lot different. Maybe I really do need to be beat over the head with this.

Because it’s important, it’s a fundamental behavior that is the basis for a lot of other Christian acts. I need to get it through my thick skull, and then act that way: The defining characteristic of my life has to be love. Any other gift or talent or attribute I have only functions the way God means it to if I first have love. And not just love for God. John says here, “Let us love one another.”

So, here I come. Crabby church member who always complains about the music, I’m going to love you instead of blowing you off. Annoying salesman who commits me to something I can’t get done, I’m going to love you instead of getting frustrated. Loud neighbor who wakes me in the middle of the night, I’m going to love you instead of calling you an inconsiderate jerk.

I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I will. I have to. If I can’t do that, I don’t even know who God is.

Viewpoints

World view is a big deal. When I was in school teachers talked about it a lot, noting that unless you understand someone else’s world view you’ll never understand them. You need to know what they value, who and how they worship, what their moral code is, to have a chance to understand what they want.

That’s the problem I have as a Christ-follower: So often, I just don’t get why people do things. What made them think that was a good idea? Can’t they see they’re on the road to misery?

That’s because their world view is, literally, the view of the world. Or as John puts it, (1 John 4:5-6): "They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever does is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood."

“They” in this verse refers to false spirits, false prophets, and anti-christs. I used to think of the anti-christs as Satanic cultists in blood-red robes who practice filthy abominations of worship rites. Really, though, they are just people with a worldly viewpoint. They don’t say, “Come to the dark side,” they say, “If it feels good, do it.” “Life’s too short to be unhappy.” “YOLO.” “Show me the money.”

Sounds like pop culture, but that’s because that’s exactly what it is. Pop culture is our world’s culture, the views of the world. It doesn’t reflect God, because those worldly people don’t listen, John says.

That means I have to be careful what parts of our culture I participate in. Even if I don’t completely buy it myself, I can strengthen the message for others. Then I’m at risk of become one more of those anti-christs, preaching a gospel just distorted enough to please worldly ears.

Greater

“My Dad can beat up your Dad!” I never actually said that, nor did any other kid say it to me, but everyone recognizes the phrase. Supposedly that’s what kids say on the playground. It’s what I think when I read 1 John 4:4: "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world."

The “them” that we’ve overcome are those false spirits, the ones we talked about yesterday that don’t acknowledge Jesus. To those, and all the people out there spouting that nonsense, I can say, “Hey, my Father in Heaven owns your father in Hell.”

Satan is powerful compared to us, but compared to God he’s just another angel, one that He already beat up twice: Once when He cast Satan out of Heaven, and once when Jesus defeated death on the cross. 

All those false spirits and false prophets, those people telling me there’s a better way than Jesus, those talking heads and bloggers and liberal thinkers mocking me for my faith, all of them are backing the wannabe. The true Lord of this universe is far greater than anything in this world, Satan included.

Spirits

We used to talk about unplanned, spontaneous actions and say, “I just did what the spirit moved me to do.” Back in the day that wasn’t a spiritual thing, it was more rooted in the 60s, but you hear the same thing in contemporary worship these days. Only in that case they’re referring to the actual Spirit.

Here’s the problem with the whole spirit-moving thing: Sometimes the spirits we hear aren’t ones we should listen to. John explains (1 John 4:1-3): "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and even now is already in the world."

There’s only one Spirit I should listen to, and that Spirit will be telling me variations on a single theme. “Jesus is risen! Jesus is Lord! Follow Jesus and live!” He’ll nudge me toward Jesus and discourage me from drifting away.

If I’m getting a different vibe than that, it might very well be a spirit but it’s not one that cares about me. It doesn’t want anything that will be good for me.

Contrary to what we used to think, letting the Spirit move me requires a lot of awareness and careful thought. Acting on a whim isn’t going to do it. Being closely attuned to God, so in touch that I’m Spiritually sensitive, will.

Co-Habitation,The Right Way

Americans make a lot out of the idea of independence, but that's actually kind of an immature notion. Stephen Covey notes that inter-dependence is the sign of a mature, balanced person. When I try to live by myself, to do it on my own, then I will always be limited to what I can do with my own two hands. Join with others, and there are few limits to what we can accomplish. 

That's true in spades when the other person is God; then there are no limits at all. And that's what I gained when I gave up my independence to follow Jesus. 1 John 3:24: "The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us." 

God and I are now inseparable. We're more than joined at the hip; God's Spirit lives in me. He never leaves me alone. That's how things are now: I live in God, and He lives in me. 

Think of what that means. I can do anything God asks me to. Serve at the mission? Sure. Preach? That too. Move to Africa? No problem. Whenever I think I can't do something, that's because I'm looking at it like I need to do it myself. Really, it's God saying, "Hey, I'm going to Africa to save some people. Want to come along?" 

Want to go along with God? Yes. Yes I do.  

One Job

There’s a meme that’s popular on the Internet these days, and it’s “You had one job!” Usually this phrase is tagged to a picture of some sort of spectacular fail, an instant when someone messed something up, and the implication it should have been simple and yet . . . .

Well, the sad thing is that I have one job. Well, kind of two, depending on how OCD you are, but here’s how John puts it in 1 John 3:23 "And this is his command: To believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us."

It’s easy to imagine my face plastered all over Pinterest, or Facebook, or Tumblr. Picture: Me rushing past someone after church. Picture: Me watching TV while Dawn works on supper. Picture: Me zeroed in on the iPad while my grandchild plays on the floor. Picture: Me cutting short someone who walked into my office. Same caption for all of them: “You had one job!”

It’s hard for me to remember that the task at hand isn’t my real job. When I believe in Jesus, when that’s where I put my faith, then I get a new boss and a new job, just one job. And that job is to love and serve his people. How can they see Jesus in me, or even that I’m a Jesus-follower, when I launch into each day with an agenda of tasks that make me impatient or even oblivious to people?

Just one job. The rest is context, meant to get me out into the world so I can do my job.

My Heart Knows

My heart knows. I used to say I could feel it in my gut, but I guess it's really my heart. At least that's what John says.

1 John 3:19-22 "This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. "

Those gut feelings that say, "This isn't a good idea," or, "I don't feel good about what I just did" are my heart condemning me. That twinge of conscience, or the Spirit guiding, or whatever phrase you want to use, is God letting me know that I'm not meeting His standard.

On the other hand, when that hard-to-name voice inside, or feeling, is good, that's really good. That means, John says, that I can be confident of God's affirmation. I can ask anything I want. That sounds like the key to the mint, but there's sort of a catch: When I'm living that way, what I want is what's good for other people, for God's will to be done, for peoples' hearts to be moved, and God will always grant that.

That's the greatest blessing of all, to be so attuned to God that I forget about myself. No way my gut can feel bad about that.

The Gold Standard of Love

There's a phrase from my Army days that moved to business, where it became one of those buzz-words that can get old. I still like it, though, because unlike most buzz phrases, it communicates an idea that's hard to capture otherwise. The phrase is, "Show them what right looks like." In other words, behave rightly, be the good you want to see.

Of course, as a Christ-follower I've been looking to Jesus to see what right looks like for a long time now. And with this topic of love and hate, as with everything else, He doesn't disappoint. 1 John 3:16-17: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."

That's what love looks like. Self-sacrifice. Generosity. Service. Action, not words.

What does my love look like? Not always like that. Sometimes it's pretty stingy. Sometimes it's generously giving of my cast-offs, and the dregs of my time. But sometimes I get it right. Sometimes other people get the very best I can give them, and all of it too.

That happens often enough to give me hope, and more and more all the time. But it would never happen at all if I couldn't look at Jesus and see what right looks like.

Why I Can't Hate Back

Here's my problem with this whole topic of love and hate: They can hate me, but I can't hate back.

I want to. Oh boy, do I want to. Someone yells at me, or flips me off, or cheats me, and I want to do some damage. When I read hate speech against Christians, I can start hating people I've never even met. And you don't want to see what's inside my head any time someone hurts one of my family.

John says that's off limits now. That was the old me. "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer,and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him." (1 John 3:14-15)

Hate is the Devil's way, not the way of Jesus. Hate and death are partners; hatred and murder have the same root. One is emotional thought, the other an action, but both are caused by looking at people through worldly, self-centered eyes. Both come from a world-view that says I must be respected and listened to, and even catered to. Don't cross me! Murder is just the ultimate extension of the emotion of hate.

Since I've died in Christ and risen again hate has no place anymore. Jesus was mocked and tortured to death, yet He didn't hate. Instead He forgave; He forgave me. And gave me a simple job: Go and make disciples of other death-deserving reprobates like me. That's hard to do when you want to kill the guy. But it's harder to hate when I remember that I've behaved far worse toward God than anyone ever has toward me. I can't be grateful and hateful at the same time.

Why They Hate Me

1 John 3:13: "Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you."

I'm always surprised when anyone hates me. Why would they? I'm a nice guy! Average, by most measures, reasonably clean, not completely ugly, nice to people, do my work, don't make waves. I can see why maybe they don't love me, by why hate me?

I've noticed something, though: Most of the hatred people express isn't toward other people, it's toward ideas. This is especially noticeable now that the Internet has given everyone a voice, and anonymity to go with it. But when people curse Muslims, they really seem to hate the crazy way the world has changed since 9/11; most of them don't even know any Muslims. When they bash gays, they hate something else that gays represent to them; most don't even know any gays. When they flame the president, what they really hate is that the other party is in control. And when they hate me, what they really hate is what I stand for.

That's what I wrote about yesterday, with Cain and Abel. I don't believe Cain hated Abel;

he hated the fact that God approved of Abel and not him.

The defining characteristic of hate is extremism; when I hate someone, then everything he does is hateful. If I'm being reasonable, then I'll see some good even in people I don't like. That's why I'm embarrassed at the way so many of my brothers talk about Obama.

Because it hurts when the world treats me that way, just because I follow Jesus. But John says I shouldn't be surprised. They hate me because I remind them of Jesus, and that their behavior is sin. If they don't hate me, it's because I seem just like them. Which is worse?

Age-Old Message

"If I told you once, I've told you a thousand times!" My friend's mom used to say that, and then he'd say, under his breath, " . . . to never exaggerate." It's unusual for us actually to say something that often.

There is one thing, though, that any Christian has heard a thousand times or more: Love people. 1 John 3:11-12 says, "For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous."

God's been telling us from the very start of time to love each other. Cain is the poster child for what happens if we don't.  And he's the one who personifies the reason we often refuse to love: The other person makes us feel as bad as we really are.

I wonder how much of the anger I feel is really guilt? How much is rooted in the fact that I know that, at least to some extent, I'm wrong and it seems like the other person might expose that? Or maybe the other person just lives the way I know I should. It's easy to hate the popular group, to hate the one who's both beautiful and smart, the one who never is wrong. But maybe that's because I know if I tried harder that could be me; that person reminds me that I'm lazier than I should be.

But that's the thing about love: it's not about me. It's about the other person. To love is to forget about myself and think about someone else. Anger, jealousy, guilt, hurt - those are all emotions that center on me. Love is the one that doesn't. 

From the very beginning God knew that what would destroy me is my own self-worship, my perspective that all events are centered on me. By loving others, I negate my own self-destructive tendency, and I behave like God. It's how I was meant to be.

God's Seed

Sometimes, for me, the meaning of a verse hangs on the meaning of a word. For example, when John writes (1 John 3:9) "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God," my first reaction is this: Well, I sin so I must not be born of God. I think that because I default to a meaning of the word "continue" that means "if I ever do it again."

Not to continue to sin, though, doesn't mean never sinning. It can mean that if I sin I don't remain there, I feel guilt and return to the foot of the cross. Sin is intermittent, rather than constant. And John is saying here that once God's seed has been planted in me, that precious word of the Gospel, the faith in Jesus' blood that alone can save me, then it's not possible for me to be comfortable with sin. I might do it, but I won't continue in it. And I find that to be true. I don't remember who said it, but it resonates: "Going to church ruined me for proper sinning." 

That's why John can be so definite in the next verse, verse 10: "This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister." John isn't talking about the work of the person here, it's the work of God. It's not that I have become so good, it's that the very nature of God and the salvation He so graciously gives has this effect. 

God's seed has been planted, and it cannot fail to grow. What a comfort!

Jesus' Mission

When it comes to why Jesus came to earth, John is simple to the point of being blunt. "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work."

That's the end of 1 John 3:8, and it couldn't be more clear. Whatever the devil has done in this world, Jesus will wreck. He's already done the work, he's just delaying the final destruction. And he's only doing that to give people time.

See, the rest of John's message in 1 John 3:7-8, the part right before, is just as simple and clear: "Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning." We - I - have what is called in my trade a binary choice. It's a fork in the road, two options only, doing what's right or doing what's sinful. If I choose what's sinful, then I become part of that devil's work that Jesus is out to destroy.

So our merciful God waits. He created time, so he has all of it there is. I'm the one who doesn't. I'm the one who'd better choose carefully.

No More Law-Breaking

I used to read a lot of Westerns, and one of my favorite themes was the outlaw who was trying to go straight.  Usually this was a good-hearted person who got in with a bad bunch, and now, later in life, wants a fresh start.

I like those stories, because, theologically, they are my story. John writes in 1 John 3:4-6,  ^"Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.  No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him."

There I was, riding that outlaw trail, sinning whenever it suited me or best fulfilled my needs, and then Jesus caught me. With a big bounty on my head and a noose waiting me, my goose was cooked, but he showed me a better way, and then, when I pledged to follow him, he turned me loose.

So, now, no more law-breaking. I'm riding on the right side of the law now. I almost lost everything, so now I'm living for the One who spared me.

Child of the King!

1 John 3:1-3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

What great love, indeed! As if commuting my death sentence wasn't enough, God set me free, he let me out of the jail cell to walk the streets again. But even more than that, He adopted me and took me home to His mansion.

Because I'm still far closer to my life of capital offenses, I can't even imagine what this means; John says what I will be has not yet been made known. Except I do know, because scripture says so, that when Jesus comes back I'll be like him.

That's the gist of these verses, but they also contain a warning and a challenge. The warning, or maybe just an explanation, is that we'll be at odds with anyone who doesn't know God - "The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him." The challenge is to be as pure as Jesus is pure.

So what! The world might be hard on me, and my calling might be hard for me, but I'm a child of the King!