Free to love

Text: 1 John 3:16-24

Focus: Loving others

Function: To help people be free in the New Commandment

Form: Bible Study

Intro: First, I want to thank God for the way I was raised.

Although my tradition was more closely related to American Evangelical Christianity than it ours here which more closely relates to Historic NT Christianity, I was taught, like most of the Brethren, that we are called to be radical disciples of Jesus.

That, I believe, is great.

My Church was part of a holiness movement. Holiness movements were modern forms of the Pietist movement that informed early Brethren and the Puritans.

I heard some great holiness sermons during my day.

And in one sense, it was great preaching.

The movement was/is biblical.

James 1: ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Holiness movements concerned themselves with the second part of that verse, “Keeping oneself unstained by the world” as their marching orders.

We didn't allow the women to cut their hair, the women were covered in one way or another, the men didn't leave the top buttons of their collars open. No tobacco. No alcohol of any form. No movies. No dancing, even for a little while, no fellowship meals at church. I'll explain that one later for anyone interested.

And it made for great preaching.

A friend of mine pastored a Nazarene Church downtown Detroit and one Sunday come forward during the altar call to confess a -what I would call very big- indiscretion that he committed just the week before.

The pastor talked to him about it later asking how he could have done such a thing with another woman and he said: “but preacher, last Sunday you didn't mention it as a sin, so I thought we were okay for a week.”

I don't know if that preacher was kidding. When he told the story, it didn't sound like it.

Within this holiness movement, there is a lot of doubt about one's motives.

We were raised in a particular holiness tradition that indicated that if we died with unconfessed sin in our hearts, there could be no salvation.

I believe it was wrong, but this whole church was built on this doctrine and again, it made for great preaching.

There was so much to preach about!

There are so many ways that healthy, normal things can be taken out of balance in such a way as to provoke a form of idolatry or dependency, and that was sin.

We believed that in the power of the Holy Spirit, Christians can and should live sin free lives and if they commit a sin, and it can be as small as a white lie to help someone's feelings, or even enjoying secular employment more than going to Church, we were sinners.

So, I grew up thinking that I was indeed a miserable sinner who was really lucky to have such a church to point it out to me. I was told that they were faithful to the Word.

So image the doubt and shame I carried when I was first a pastor and I constantly read this verse 1 Corinthians 11: ¹follow me as I follow Christ.

I imagined that the man who wrote that verse was such a perfect, sinless saint to be able to make that claim.

In my imperfection, and my awareness of it, every time I read that verse, I realized that since I was not yet perfect, I could not make that claim.

It lead me to a sort of spiritual competition with others. As long as I was more dedicated, more holy, more pure, more pristine, more innocent and more whatever than all the members of my church, I could make that claim.

But it isn't a competition. No. It is a journey. And we are not proving who is the most righteous by our actions and calling out those who do not measure up. No. We are partners who enable and encourage each other to be more like Christ.

Now there are two ways to react to this problem of moral purity.

One is, we can throw it out altogether and say that there is no such thing as immoral actions. I mean that. We can say immoral actions are merely evil actions. But actions that are not evil, ones that don't harm others, ones that make us feel better, ones that we enjoy are all okay as long as no one is harmed in the practice of it.

We can say that. And for the most part I do believe that sin is best defined as evil. It is defined as injustice. It is defined as greed. It is defined as bitterness and unforgiveness but it, as the scripture states, has nothing to do with the things that we put into our bodies. As Colossians 2:20-23 states.

Or, we can also strive for moral purity along with our taking care of widows and orphans in their distress.

You see, I believe that the emphasis only on the modern description of what moral purity meant, and the ignoring of the taking care of the widows and orphans in their distress became such a huge call to this holiness movement because it gave them the right to be greedy and to not be concerned with the plight of the poor since they were so involved, so energetic, about holiness.

And the problem is that in so doing, we neglect the weightier matters of the law.

It ignores the passionate teachings of Jesus, the prophets and even the apostles.

This passage sets me free from that false standard of good Christianity.

Vs. 19 “This then, is how we know that we are serving the truth...”

That is an huge claim. It gets even bigger when our claim of “the truth” is different from the claims of “the truth” given by the world's other religions.

But God does not give us these verse to compare ourselves with others.

I thank God, we all do, we thank God for the saints whose Christian sacrificial lives have shown us how to be Christians.

We are all grateful for those whom we followed who followed Christ.

This verse is not given to compare ourselves with others at all.

It is given to compare ourselves with Jesus, on a personal level.

Does our conscience convict, or condemn us?

It is a personal question.

And the answer is not in the way we feel about it.

The answer is not in a false dichotomy of what is and isn't morally pure, that changes with the culture, it always has and always will.

Nope, the answer is in this questions that we all have to ask ourselves. Do we love our neighbor as ourself?

Look. I believe that he is saying that compared to God, compared to Jesus, we all have room for improvement. There is always something for us to be working on.

There is always something for the preacher to be encouraging, enabling and helping his or her congregation see through passion, the word, stories and life experiences.

Always more to be done.

But there is no room for shame.

We can overcome negative spiritual notions through one discipline.

And it isn't a list of things that we do not do.

The discipline that proves the reality of our faith before God, Jesus, the Angels and the whole world is this: Vs 18 from today's text: My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action.

At the end of 2 Corinthians brother Paul also tells us this: “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith.”

The answer, both times, is not if we can recite the right prayer, gave the right amount, attended worship the required amount of times, dressed the right way, nope. The answer is this: “when we have doubts, do we have experiences of love and charity that prove us to be lovers in deed as well as in words?

When we walk in love, we walk with God. Period.

I didn't figure this out until about 7 years ago.

As we do good for others, not as we don't do the things that others do, but as we do the good, we are able to say, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

Before that, I was bound by the fear that I did not measure up.

But that isn't what God expects, wants or desires.

God wants us to love others.

And as we do that, we do God's will.

We are not bound to fear, but free to give, love and help others.

Join me.