1 John 3:18-24
18Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
19This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24The 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 Is Greater than Your Heart
Have you noticed how much blue and orange you see around town these days? Flags on cars. Jerseys on babies in grocery stories. I see some in here today. And I’m not going to fault you for it. Cheer for your team. But I do have a confession to make: I always dread wearing my Oilers gear for fear that someone is going to ask me a question about it.
“Did you see the game last night?” No. I didn’t.
“What do you think about the year Draisaitl has had?” I couldn’t even tell you his first name. Is it Neon?
And then you get the inevitable look: “You’re not really a true fan, are you? You’re one of those bandwagon fans. If you were a real fan, you would have been wearing that jersey when we were 5-12, not just now that they’re in the playoffs.”
Now, I’m not here to tell you how to be a hockey fan or what true fandom looks like. I bring this up because it’s easy to ask similar questions about our Christian faith and life. Are you just wearing Jesus’ jersey or are you a real fan? If you consider yourself a fan of his – a follower, disciple even – what have you done to prove it?
The Apostle John has a suggestion:
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.[1]
In fact, what prompted this suggestion was a question he posed immediately before it:
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?[2]
That’s a penetrating question, isn’t it? What do you typically think makes a person a Christian? They go to church. They read their Bible. They say their prayers. Maybe you do all 3, which, to be fair, is no small thing. Did you know that a study was done in 2021 that showed that only 23% of Canadians attended any kind of group religious activity – Christian or not, something like what we’re doing right now – at least monthly.[3] So, even if you only come to church once a month, you’re already more Christian than 77% of our country! Kudos to you. Golf claps and slaps on the back all around.
But John’s not buying it. Even for those who go to church every week, who read their Bible and pray every day – even for the top 23% - John would say that’s not enough. You’re not a “real Christian” unless you love with actions and in truth. And that’s a harder thought to think.
Do any of you have extra clothes in your closet? What about food in your pantry or so much food in your fridge that you can’t eat it all before it goes bad and you have to throw it away? How many of you have more than one vehicle at home and can afford to have at least some gas in each? Then you’re doing better than a solid portion of our society. Then you have material possessions, as John would say, but do you see your brother or sister in need?
We sit on the doorstep of a metropolis of over a million people, many of whom are worse off than we are. I can’t tell you how many phone calls I get every month asking for gas cards or food hampers. We have members in our own congregation who are victims of tragedy and are in tangible need of worldly, material assistance. John wants you to take a good hard look at yourself and consider whether you’re the kind of Christian who just wears the jersey or whether you’re the kind of Christian who walks the walk of faith.
Is there more that you could do with what you have? Could you be more shrewd with your resources to make them stretch further and help more?
Or think about it this way. Why are there so many unwanted children in this world who float through foster care – or worse, never live to see it? Why are there so many teenagers so lacking for a sense of belonging within or from their family and friends that they resort to radical shifts in identity or biology? Why are there people so lonely or made to feel so useless that they feel their best course of action is to seek medical assistance in dying?
Could it be that the love of Christians runs cold? That we are better at talking the talk than walking the walk? Is the problem that you are content to wear the jersey, but not put in the time or effort on a daily basis?
I don’t know about you, but when I read John’s words here, my heart is shot through with a whole quiver of arrows. When I take a good, hard, honest look at myself, my heart condemns me. For a lack of love. For insincere love begrudgingly given. For willfully turning a blind eye and hiding behind excuses.
John doesn’t make it easy to be a Christian, does he?
But then he does, actually.
John is so right to call us out on our hypocrisy and insincerity. He nails us to the wall with our sin and leaves us feeling about this big. But then he reaches down and picks us up with the only thing that matters:
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.[4]
The way to know that we belong to the truth – the way to know that we have a real place in God’s family – is not to look at our resumes, not to stack up good days, not to fall back on our good deeds. The way to know that we belong to the truth – the way to set our hearts at rest in God’s presence – is to look away from ourselves and to the God who is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
He knows your sin, even better than you do. But he knows something else, too. He knows himself and his heart which is infinitely greater than yours.
We miss it a bit in our English translation but the very next word in John’s letter is one of the most special in all of Scripture: Ἀγαπητοί. Literally, it means “beloved,” or, “loved ones.” But its use in the Bible makes it even stronger than that. Ἀγαπη is this one-sided, unconditional love for someone else. Ἀγαπη is the kind of love that doesn’t wait for someone to be loveable before making the choice – the conscious, willful decision – to love them anyway. Ἀγαπη is the love that is best put on display in the cross of Jesus.
Here's a bit of a paradox – you have to love sincerely to be a “real” Christian, but it’s not your sincere love that makes you a Christian. Christ does. In love, Jesus named you his sister or his brother. In love, Jesus left heaven behind and claimed human flesh and blood to be your Saviour. Jesus’ love for you extended beyond words and speech. It wasn’t just lip service when he said he cares for you or promised to save you. He did something about it. He took action and showed true compassion.
He met people in their need, and he fed them, or he healed them, or he spoke to their troubled hearts words of consolation and peace. But above all, he died for them. He died for you. He looked at you with such love and compassion in his heart that he wasn’t content to wait for you to be worthy of him, as if you ever could. He took action and showed the sincerity and intensity of his love for you by dying for you to take all your sin away. He sacrificed his life on a cross to forgive all your sin. He rose from the grave to free you from guilt and shame.
That’s what real love looks like. We’ll never live up to it, but we don’t have to. Jesus did. And his life and his love are what God remembers even when we forget. His death and his resurrection are what God sees even when our hearts look with shame at the sins we commit. God remembers his Son. He answers the accusations of our hearts with the accomplished salvation that Jesus won for us on the cross.
And then he reminds us that we do belong to the truth, whether we deserve to or not. He reminds us that he lives in us by his Spirit who works in our hearts every time that we hear his word. And by that same Spirit, he even empowers us to do what John encourages us to do here: to love with actions and in truth.
Your record is not perfect. No one’s is. But you do love with actions and in truth. I’ve seen it. It’s not the reason for you to set your heart at rest before God, but it is cause for rejoicing because it is evidence that God is at work in you. Even if you don’t always remember, God does.
It’s like what Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 25. To the people that Jesus calls righteous – to the Christians who do more than just wear his jersey – Jesus says,
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?”
The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”[5]
God is greater than your heart. He knows your sin. He knows your Saviour. He even knows the deeds of love you do in the Spirit without knowing it yourself. When your heart condemns you, look to him, believe in the name of his Son Jesus, and love one another. Amen.
[1] 1 John 3:18
[2] 1 John 3:17
[3] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2021079-eng.htm
[4] 1 John 3:19,20
[5] Matthew 25:34ff