The Other John 3:16

 

Text: 1 John 3:16-24

Focus: Sacrificial love

Function: to help people see the extent of the command to love one another

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

¹⁸Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. ¹⁹And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him ²⁰whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God, ²²and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

²³And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. ²⁴All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

Good Morning. Sometimes one has to try to forgive us preachers for trying to be clever with the hopes that the cleverness will drive home the point. So, I was going to title this lesson from 1 John as “The Rest (instead of The Other) of John 3:16.”

But then I realized that the rest of John 3:16 is John 3:17. John 3:16 is probably so familiar to us that we could all quote it together from the King James: For God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have eternal life.

It is the first bible verse that I learned to memorize and it speaks to us of our great hope.

I should preach a sermon on it sometime.

But the rest of John 3:16 is john 3:17 which is the rest of the paragraph that the famous verse mentions. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world would be saved through him.

God sent Jesus to save the world.

And it comes, the next verse after that, to everyone who believes in Jesus.

We are going to focus on what it means to believe in a few weeks when we are doing the membership class. Let us understand that it means to acknowledge more than the fact that he existed, or that God exists. It means like a marriage, we place our trust in him. We become permanent partners with him. He makes a covenant with us to adopt us into his family and the metaphors are either as his bride or as his children.

We are united and we place our hope and trust in the fact that he raised from the dead. When we face the difficulties that actually following him entails, we can remember that after suffering is resurrection..

So, the rest of John 3:16 is John 3:17 and I changed the title to “The Other John 3:16.”

And that is from 1 John.

The first John 3:16, “for God so loved the world…” ends in “...eternal life” this 2^nd John 3:16, from the letter we are reading this morning speaks of what that eternal life is.

I dusted off my Greek New Testament and looked up the word for eternal life. And the world literally means “without boundaries.”

At times it can indicate life after death, but for the most part, it indicates a life limitless in its possibilities. He is speaking of a life full because it is a life lived in God. God is in the world entire and by faith all the possibilities are opened up to us.

John 3:16 speaks to the path to this full life in God through trusting in Jesus. Sadly, we might have reduced it to mean that if we believe the right thing, then when we die, we get to go to heaven.

That is so limiting, I believe, as to what Jesus is actually trying to do with us for the rest of the world.

Believing in Jesus is walking in Jesus’ way of living and loving.

So, John 3:16, the one familiar to us speaks of God’s gift of Jesus to the world for the salvation of the world.

Jesus came to save the world. And again, it isn’t about getting into when we die, Jesus came to set the world back to the right.

The light of the world came to cast out the darkness. The darkness resided in the Political and religious authorities powers that didn’t include prosperity for everyone. And they were not too happy about his message, so they had him put to death in order to silence him.

So, 1 John 3:16 comes along and redirects us to the the current group of people who are here to change the world. In a second, I’ll tell you who that is.

The text says that we know love by this, Jesus showed us how to love by laying down his life for us. Jesus commanded us to follow in h is footsteps. So we should do likewise and lay down our lives for others.

And then he goes into our passage explaining to some degree just what he means by laying down our lives and loving others.

He tells us to look at our brothers and our sisters and see their needs and see if we have the abundance, help.

Several places the scriptures tell us to lend without the possibility of repayment.

No wonder his message upset the powers that be so much.

But the disciples took these words literally and started a community where everyone shared all of their resources so that there was enough for everyone.

And amazing thing happened then. It was similar in my mind to the feedings of the 5,000 and the 4,000. God supplied abundance back to them and the church grew. It didn’t just grow, but raced across the Roman empire and throughout the world.

Nobody was hoarding their resources anymore and there was enough to for everyone and such an abundance that they were able to take action and lift the poor in their communities out of poverty, who then joined the community and contributed back and the prosperity of the few became the prosperity of all as God promised.

So, the first paragraph of our passage calls us to follow the example of Jesus and be willing to sacrifice ourselves for others.

Romans 12:1 picks up the idea and calls us to present ourselves before God as living sacrifices.

And then, he doesn’t actually command us to kill ourselves in a sacrificial way, but to be generous to the point of sacrifice.

And it worked. And Jesus came to set free the oppressed and to change the story for those being exploited.

It means we care for others as much as we care for ourselves.

John does a masterful segue into the next paragraph. He picks up the theme of loving not just with our mouths but with our actions, “Word and deed,” he says. And then he talks about our conscience.

He mentions that there are times when we have doubts. Our hearts condemn us. We recognize the times when we have not loved as we should have when we know, according to this passage, that God sees our hearts.

I know that God’s grace has forgiven me and made me at peace with God through Jesus. But at times I don’t feel it.

And John is telling us at those times, recall the times when we have obeyed. When God’s Spirit has prompted us to do a good deed and care beyond our comfort zone, kind of like the joy we feel when we bake Kairos cookies because we know we can never be paid back.

John tells us to remind ourselves of those times and to let them be an inspiration to us.

And then he introduces a whole new subject that I am going to end with.

And he emphasizes that we do this because the Spirit of God is filling our hearts with the same compassion for others that God has for us.

It is the Spirit that leads us to do good.

How do we walk in the Spirit?

We learn to walk in the Spirit through prayer, contemplation, study of scripture, fellowship here at Church, enjoying art, walking in nature, getting lost in music. All those things that draw us into the light of the creative power of God.

Let the gentle nudges of the Holy Spirit lead you to do the good works we are called to. When you wonder if Christianity is working, recall the times when the Spirit lead you into an act of kindness, or forgiveness or generosity. It comforts our heart.