Love, The Mark of True Christians (1 John 3:11-18) | Adult Sunday School

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All right, good morning, everyone. If you'll find your seats in here, we'll get cracking. Good morning, everyone. Sure good to see ya. Good to be in the house of the Lord. Never a dull moment. Yes. We're gonna be in the book of 1 John, chapter three today, but before we get going, let's have a word of prayer.

Father, we just wanna come before you and just praise your name. Because you're an amazing God. And we just thank you so much for the scriptures, for the truth that we can read it, we can understand it.

Lord, give us your wisdom to apply it to our hearts today. Help us to be open to the truth. For anyone that doesn't know Jesus, we pray that you would open their hearts and minds to the truth of your word, that they would be saved, and that they would wanna live their lives for you, Lord.

We just thank you for your love at Calvary, how you sacrificed willingly your life to bear the wrath of God for our sins, that we might be called children of God. What an amazing blessing that is to be called the child of the king because of the sacrifices that you've made for us, Lord.

Thank you so much for all you do. We just praise your name now and go before us in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we've covered quite a bit of ground since the beginning of this letter. And a lot of it's been talking about the marks of a true believer.

The Marks of a True Believer: Changed Life, Sin, and Fellowship

And we've illustrated that consistently throughout this book. Primarily, we looked at a changed life because God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all. The true believers that believe that are called to holiness.

We wanna live our lives in a holy fashion, glorifying the Lord out of obedience. That faith that's in us allows us to want to keep the commandments of God. It's the changed life that does that. And I don't know about you, but when someone ever comes up to me and says, hey, I'm a Christian, the first thing that automatically goes to my head is prove it.

Because talk is cheap. And it's hard to just listen to somebody say those things when we know that many have walked an aisle, they've prayed a prayer, they've done all these things, but their lives just don't reflect that godly character through a changed life in Christ because that's the proof that we're looking for.

Not the talk that's cheap, but the proof of their actions. And we've talked a lot about the hatred of sin in this book. We understand that sin is destructive as a believer. It's not something that we take lightly, and we strive to do everything we can to eliminate that in our own lives because we know that to get a foothold in our lives, sin is ultimately going to destroy us or bring us down.

And so we certainly don't practice sin in our lives. That's for the unbelievers. The unbelievers are said to practice sin in their own lives, but for a believer, we have a hatred of sin and we don't practice it in our lives, but rather we are told that we confess it.

1 John 1, 9, we confess our sins to him and we don't engage the world system. That's one of the things we don't do because if we engage the world system, what happens? We get drawn in and the sin that happens because of that leads us away from Christ.

And we've talked a lot about the fellowship with the brethren. That was one of the first things we talked about in this book is the purpose of the letter is that John says is that the reason why Christ came and why he's telling us about these things is so that we might have fellowship with him and with other believers.

And so fellowship is an important component and the common denominator to fellowship is what? It's a relationship with Christ. We have to have a relationship with Christ to even care about our fellow brothers and sisters.

That's an important component. We're bound together as brothers and sisters in Christ by the blood of Jesus. That's what we're told in scripture. Nothing can ever destroy that fellowship. That's the beauty of it, nothing.

So you're stuck with me forever, sorry. Gonna have to put up with me. But now we move into a section of scripture that deals with another true mark of a believer and that is the love for our brothers.

Love for the Brothers as Proof of Salvation

We're gonna be looking at chapter three, verses 11 and on if you wanna get to that passage. We're gonna look there. But when we were dead in our sins, we didn't really care much about the people in the body of Christ because we were dead in our sins.

But now that we do know him, loving each other is really comes down to proof of our salvation. It's proof of our salvation. Our new nature produces in us a new love for those in the body of Christ. So we're gonna read our passage.

It's 1 John chapter three. We're gonna start in verse 10. Last week I ended in verse 10 but I never really touched on the end of verse 10 because I knew that we're gonna cover that today so we'll read it again.

But we're gonna read on verse 10 on down to 18. By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifested. Everyone who does not do righteousness is not of God as well as the one who does not love his brother.

For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. Not as Cain who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.

Do not marvel, brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. The one who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

By this we know, we have known, love, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth. So in verse 10, children of the devil are noted as such because they do not love the brothers. They do not love others.

There's no need for the love in the Gnostic teaching because as we've talked before, is that they're climbing the ladder of knowledge that is secret. They're not interested in the love aspects of it. They're looking for that secret knowledge.

But for us, it's important for those who love the Lord because it is proof of our faith and it must be demonstrated. And so in verse 11, it's the message of love. It's the message of love. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

It's from the beginning of what? That we heard about love. So the beginning of our faith is when we heard about this message of love. We heard about how Christ loved us and came for us. And eventually we believed in him and repented of our sins and we trusted him.

And that's what started the whole process out. That is from the beginning of our faith, we heard that. We heard that we were to love God. And what's the second greatest commandment? We're supposed to love others.

Love God and love people. That's the message that we heard from the beginning. And I think the readers of this letter would have understood that because in John 15, 12, it says, this is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you.

Certainly they would have heard this in their lives that Christ came and that we must love one another because of that. And this isn't the first time that John has mentioned this in his book, is it? 1 John 2, 9, it says, the one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.

1 John 2, 10, the one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. And in chapter two, verse 11, but the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness blinded his eyes.

Do you hear the children of God and the children of devil in these verses? The one who loves and the one who hates. The one who loves is a child of God. The one who hates, a child of the devil. This theme has been spoken of already.

You can hear that in those words. And I think it's important to know what love that we're talking about in this passage because it says that we should love one another. What love are we talking about here in that verse?

It is agape love. It's a deep abiding affectionate love for our brothers and sisters. It's to set a high value on loving those in the church. It's, we don't take it lightly. We care about them and we want to follow after them.

1 Corinthians 13 is a good example of agape love. Love is patient, love is kind, it's not jealous. Doesn't brag, it's not puffed up. Then he moves on to the, in the next verse, in verse 12, he moves on to a negative example of love.

Cain, Abel, and the Progressive Nature of Sin

A negative example of love. Look at verse 12, not as Cain who was of the evil one and slew his brother and for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.

This passage should be relatively fresh in your minds because Jim preached two messages on the faith of Abel. But we're gonna turn back to Genesis chapter four and look at this passage briefly. If you would turn back there, Genesis chapter four, we're gonna look at a couple things.

Cain and Abel represent the third and fourth person people of humanity. We're gonna pick it up in verse one of chapter four of Genesis. Now the man knew his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain and she said, I've gotten a man with the help of Yahweh.

And again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of the flocks, but Cain was a cultivator of the ground. So what happened in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to Yahweh of the fruit of the ground, Abel on his part also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

And Yahweh had regard for Abel and for his offering. But for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then Yahweh said to Cain, why are you angry?

And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is lying at the door and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Then Cain spoke to Abel, his brother, and it happened when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.

So we're told in our passage in 1 John that Cain was of the evil one and he slew his brother. Why did he slay him? It says, because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. So what sin did Cain commit that were so evil that we learn of it in this passage is that he knowingly offered the wrong sacrifice.

He knowingly offered the wrong sacrifice. We know this because Adam and Eve were provided coverings of skin from an animal sacrifice given by God. We know that. We also know that a period of time had passed before Cain and Abel came on the scene, so there had to be some teaching there from Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel.

They knew that because also, Abel offered a righteous sacrifice. He offered the sacrifice of an animal, but Cain offered the sacrifices of the fruit. And so we know that he knowingly offered the wrong sacrifice.

He came to God in the wrong fashion. He came to God in the wrong fashion. But notice one thing in verse five. Excuse me.

Let's see.

Verse six, then Yahweh said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? Look at verse seven. Look at what he says. If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? I love that passage because God's given him another chance.

You're angry, but why are you angry? You're the one that offered the wrong sacrifice. You're the one that came to me according to the wrong way. But now, look at this passage. If you do well, your countenance is gonna be lifted up.

If you just come back, offer the proper sacrifice, you're gonna be accepted. But he didn't do that, did he? He got angry. And it says, but if you do not do well, sin is crouching, kind of like an animal crouching at the door.

That's what the image is. And he said, we're supposed to master our sin. That's the idea. And one thing that we can learn from this passage is sin is progressive. It's progressive in our lives. It starts in our hearts, just like it did with Cain here.

He knowingly offered the wrong sacrifice. He became angry at God inside. He was jealous of Abel's sacrifice because his was righteous and Cain's was able, or was evil. And those thoughts took root in his heart.

They cultivated. When you process it and continue to let these actions of bitterness and anger in your heart, eventually, they take root and they spring up into something that is ugly. And in this case, it was premeditated murder.

Premeditated murder. It just didn't happen. It was premeditated. So what can we learn from Cain about love? What do we learn from Cain about love? Well, what I took from this is sin is an attack on relationships.

Sin's an attack on relationships. It divides friendships. Have you ever been around that? Have you ever had that happen in your life when you're trying to live your life righteously for God and your friends are not?

What happens? There's a divide. Sin separates a father from their son. Sin separates a mother from their daughter. And sin separates brothers, as we see in Cain and Abel, don't we? The sin is what divides in this situation.

And we're supposed to guard it and protect our lives for Christ, and sin starts in the heart. And I look at this and I think Cain represents the world's love. The world's love. Cold, jealous, hatred, murder.

Cares more about the outward appearance of things than he does the inward character of a person. And I think, well, why was Cain jealous? Why did he care, you know? Because Abel's offering was accepted and because the outward appearance of Cain's faulty sacrifice and offering was exposed.

It's exposed his heart. Exposed his heart that was sinful and inerrant of God. And that's the problem. He was concerned with his offering being accepted instead of having a heart attitude that praised and honored God.

And that's the difference. Because of that, he became angry and jealous and it led to murder. And that's where it starts, right? The heart, that progressive pattern. That's verse 12. Is there any questions on that, 11 and 12?

Any comments, thoughts?

Okay.

All right, let's move on to verse 13. The world hates us. Look at that, verse 13. Do not marvel, brothers, if the world hates you. Cain is our example of why the world hates us. Look at how he came to God on his own terms.

Came to God on his own terms. This is what the world does. They come to God on their own terms. They don't want to follow after God that way. Look at how he harbored jealousy, bitterness, anger in his heart.

He did that. And it's all characteristics of the world. And you see when a righteous standard is implemented within that world, this is what happens is the world begins to hate us because the standard is righteous.

The standard is righteous. So why does the world hate us? Why does the world hate us? It's a good question, right? Well, the first thing is they don't accept the message of Christ is the only way. I think in our world we want options.

And when options are not provided, then people buck up against that. Why is Christ the only way? Why isn't, you know, the Oprah way is many paths lead to God and you can get there no matter where you are.

But that's not the way it is with Christ because he said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father except through me. There's no other way to Christ. And another reason why they hate us is because we point out sin.

See the righteousness of Abel pointed out the sin of Cain and the world hates that. The world hates when we point out sin. Our very presence often condemns them in their sin. And we see that when we stand up for the rights of the unborn.

What happens? They gnash their teeth, they're angry. They condemn, when we condemn ungodly lifestyles that we see all over the place, the alphabet people pushing their agendas on us. And when we say, hey, that's wrong, according to the Bible, what happens?

What happens? Brute force opposition is what's happening right now. Either you comply or we're going to destroy you. That's what they say. We believe in a marriage between a man and a woman and when we say, hey, you can't just marry anyone, what happens?

Yeah, they get upset. They get upset so much now that there's laws against it. They're forcing us through the legal system to comply to these standards and as a believer in Christ, we cannot. We have to stand up for what the truth of the word of God is.

And as a result of all this, the world wants to stamp out the light of God. So they are not being confronted by the righteousness that we have that exposes their evil deeds. Cain put out the light of Abel because he was a righteous man.

The world does the same thing. That's why they hate us. That's why they want to extinguish the light of God in us and all around us. It's because they don't want their sin to be exposed for what it really is, an opposition to God, an offense to a holy God.

That's the difference. The world hates us because in their zeal for inclusivity, we have this now all over the place, policies within my own company and your companies, diversity, equity, and what? Inclusion.

There's whole trainings on this in corporations all over the country. And in their zeal for inclusivity of every kind of evil, what happens is they exclude those who belong to the household of God. We're inclusive to everyone but the Christian faith.

That's what they say. Children of the devil really have no regard for children of God. That's verse 13. Any thoughts on that? Any questions on verse 13?

Yeah, yes.

That's a very good point because I think in the midst of all this opposition towards our own faith, we cannot forget that we still have to preach the gospel. We still have to be loving. We have to be kind in the face of this.

And that's a good point that you brought up there. Thank you for that.

Yeah.

I remember exactly, but that's difficult.

Right.

When you see people behaving to have that, when God sees, Jesus sees, he died for our sins. Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah.

During COVID, with all the riots in Antifa, in Seattle, and all over the place, there was a lot of killing and destroying of property. And the comment was, it's hard to love in those situations. It's hard to extend that.

But this is what we're called to do. It's what we're called to do, no matter what the situation is, is to share Christ's love to anyone that will listen.

Yeah, anybody else?

Yeah.

I think it's important.

Right.

Why, when we're working, we're speaking to people, and they wanna bring up love as some sort of absolute, like it's somehow bigger than God's justice, or God's wrath, or God's righteousness. All of his attributes are perfect within each other.

Right.

Do not compromise. They're trying to promote this idea that we should compromise.

Yeah, yeah, we can't compromise our God-given knowledge and for the love, you know, I think the love in and of itself is a righteous standard, and we can't compromise that. Anything else?

God loves everyone, therefore, he must love the sinners and unspoken, and their sin.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good point there. Just because God loves everybody doesn't mean he's not a just God, and sin can't just overrun that, because there are standards within that. Thank you for that. All right, loving our brothers proves our salvation.

Loving the Brothers Proves We Have Passed from Death to Life

That's verse 14. Loving our brothers proves our salvation. Look at verse 14. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. The one who does not love abides in death.

So how do we know we have passed out of death into life? How do we know that we are a believer in Christ? It says right there. It is because we love the brothers. We love the brothers. It comes from a changed life.

And what kind of life and death are we talking about here? Because it says we have passed out of death into life. What does that mean? We've passed out of death into life. It means that there's a spiritual component to it.

Okay?

Before salvation, we were dead. We were spiritually dead. There's no way to please God. There's no way to understand the scriptures fully. There's no way to really love the brothers like we do now as a believer.

So that's the spiritually dead. And then that's represented by Cain. Cain, the spiritually dead, worldly individual. And then we see the other side is the spiritually alive, those with life, those that have been regenerated for Christ.

That's Abel. By faith, he came and offered a sacrifice that was acceptable to the Lord. He was regenerated. So that's what we're talking about with the spiritual life and spiritual death and spiritual life in all of this.

The proof of life is what? Love of the brothers. John 5, 24 says, we do not come into judgment, but we've passed from death to life.

That's a beautiful verse.

When we come into salvation, we have moved from that life of sin and death and separation from God, where we will spend an eternity in the blackness of darkness forever. That's the death that is before salvation.

And we've moved now into the spiritual life that is everlasting, that's eternal, that we're going to be with him forever and ever. That's a beautiful thing. And for anybody that doesn't know Jesus, is a perfect time right now to seek him.

While you still have time, come to him, follow after him, learn more of him, turn your life over. And then we look at verse 15, where hate is equal to murder. Verse 15, everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.

And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. So how is hate murder? How is hate murder? That's the question here. It's because God doesn't differentiate between the hard attitude and the actual murder.

It starts here and God doesn't differentiate. Here's a quote from a commentary I read this week. Hatred is the wish that the other person was not there. It is the refusal to recognize his rights as a person.

The longing that he might be dead.

That's hate.

The longing that he might be dead. And I'm sure we've all probably done this where we said, oh, I hate that person. And I don't think we've really taken into account what the word hate means and what this does when it's equated to murder.

We probably weren't thinking about those things when we said, oh, I hate that other person. It's not something that we tend to think about. And in the scripture, Christ himself equated anger with murder.

In Matthew 5, he says, you have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not murder. Whoever murders shall be guilty before the court. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court.

And whoever says to his brother, Rokkah, shall be guilty before the Sanhedrin. And whoever says, you fool, shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Rokkah, empty-headed or good for nothing. And then he goes on and says later, you fool.

Just the act of calling someone those names is on the same level as murder because murder comes out of the heart. Murder comes out of the heart. And the question is, how do we approach God, brothers and sisters?

What is in our heart? That's what Matthew 5, 21 and 22 is talking about. It's how do we approach God and do we do it with hate in our heart? And he says, if we do, if we have these things against any of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are supposed to leave our offering immediately, go to our brothers, tell them that we have sinned and we are forgiving, asking for forgiveness from them, and then come back and offer our sacrifices to God.

That's what that passage is talking about. And so we have to have a heart attitude that is pleasing to the Lord. And it's really a heart condition, isn't it? It's a heart condition. Jesus called the Pharisees and the Sadducees whitewashed tombs.

Why did he do that? Why did he call them whitewashed tombs? That's really offensive and not tolerant.

They were dead.

They were trying to do all these things externally, keeping the law, doing everything externally to prove that they were righteous, to prove they were righteous, when they should have been caring more about their heart attitude.

Because Matthew 15, 19 says, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adultery, sexual immoralities, thefts, false witness, slanders. The ability to love the brethren well comes from within through a life that has changed in Christ.

Think about Cain, a negative example of love. What was the condition of his heart? What was the condition of his heart? His rejection by God turned his heart to anger. Anger turned into jealousy and hatred.

That hatred turned into action by murdering his brother. So the motives of a heart play an important role in all of life. And we all have experienced that. Deep down, there's that little kernel that says, this is the real reason why I'm doing these things.

And I would remind you that the Lord knows what those motives are. Because he sees those. Proverbs 23, 7, for as he calculates in his soul, so is he. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. That's kind of what that is.

Hate becomes the person. Hate motivates destructive behavior and hate is murder. That's what he's saying. And it's serious because in Revelation 21, 8, it says, but for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

You see how important and serious that is? And then in verse 16, Christ is our supreme example of love. By this we have known love, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Why is Christ's example the supreme example of love? You ever thought about that? Because it was the self-sacrificial love that we couldn't do on our own behalf to be righteous before him. Believers have known this love.

That's what it says, by this we have known love. You see that in the passage? We have known love. How have we known love? We've known love because we're saved. We have a relationship with him. We have known love and we know love today because that relationship continues to abide and we follow after him no matter what.

And we've learned here that true love is self-sacrificing. Self-sacrificing, because it says in the second half of that verse, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Christ is the example of that, isn't he? The self-sacrificing love that he did for us. John 15, 13 says, greater love is no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. The greater love is that we lay down our life for his friends.

And the greater love sacrifices self for others like Christ did for us. That's the greater love. It's like giving someone a kidney. You self-sacrifice your own body for the good of another. You're giving up something to help someone else.

We meet the needs of our brothers and sisters no matter what the cost is. No matter what the cost is. And the reason for love is what? We're following his example. We're looking for Christ and we're saying, okay, this is what he's done for me.

How much more am I gonna do it for my brothers and sisters because I've been saved from the destruction to come? We love because he loved us. This love we have is permanent. We should not be walking in and out of love.

We have the love, we're saved forever. We can't lose our salvation. So we shouldn't be falling in and out of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should be continuing to focus on their needs as we see them.

Because Romans 8, 38, 39 says, for I'm convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Not gonna be separated. And then in verse 17, we have the generous heart. 17 and 18, we're talking about the generous heart and the love that is shown in action. So verse 17, but whoever has this world's good and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

Whoever has the world's good and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against, how in the world does the love of God abide in him? We're motivated to give. There's the basics of life. And know what it says right there in the middle of the verse.

But whoever has the world's good and sees his brother in need, sees his brother in need, we're looking for it. We should be looking for the needs around us. Are you looking for your brothers and sisters and looking at them and seeing what needs do they have?

And if so, are you actively meeting those needs or are you closing your heart? We should be seeing the need and then doing something about it. Because it says, if you see the need and then don't meet it, how does the love of God abide in us?

It's not possible for a brother and sister in Christ. We extend that to them. And so when we see those in the church and do nothing to help them, John says, how does the love of God abide in him? The answer is it doesn't.

And then 18, love is shown in action. Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. Love is an action.

Have you ever heard that?

Love is an action. We should be looking for needs. Sometimes people don't know what they need. And sometimes it takes someone like us to be looking and seeing what the need is. We had a friend of ours a while back that their husband died suddenly.

And so obviously the wife had a great need. And the problem is everybody would come to her and ask her,.

Well, what do you need? What do you need?

Well, in the midst of that kind of trouble, you don't really know what you need. And so people would come by, she said, and would see something and just do the need without even asking her. They just see it.

Oh, you need a door fixed? I'm coming over to fix that. And that's the example. That's the example right there is meeting that kind of a need. There's three areas you can meet needs if you think about it to the brothers and sisters in Christ.

You can meet the physical needs, right? The physical needs. Paint a house, mow a lawn, cut firewood, replace a roof, you know, shovel snow. There's material needs, food, clothing, jobs, money, housing, and then there's the spiritual needs that we can look to for our brothers and sisters.

We can comfort someone when they need a hug. We can gather around them and just be there for them. We can share the gospel with people, right? Encourage those who are weary and heavy laden. We can come around them and embrace them and show them the love of Christ.

And also we can confront someone in their sin. That's love, right? Confronting someone in their sin, showing them that they need to come back to God's righteous standard and to follow him.

Absolutely.

And we can pray with someone. So in conclusion, what have we learned from today's lesson? The children of God and the children of the devil are further revealed to us in the story of Cain and Abel. That's for sure.

And we've learned also that sin destroys relationships. When anger, hatred, bitterness, jealousy make up the conditions of the human heart, it leads to division. Leads to division. What comes out of the heart proves what that person believes.

It shows who they really are, their character. Cain proved that his heart was evil when he killed his brother. And we also learned that don't be surprised, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you.

Remember, Cain hated his brother because his deeds were righteous. Proverbs 29 .10, men of bloodshed hate the blameless, but the upright see the well-being of his soul. See that? Men of bloodshed hate the blameless.