My favorite consumer-awareness radio show originates here in Atlanta. The host is intelligent, although like anyone else he is not always right. His show broadcasts nationally and offers an amazing source of financial information. Aside from his knowledge, though, what draws me to this particular host is what I perceive as his driving sense of ethic. One of his theories that I often ponder is a core conviction about the nature of big businesses. He holds that there is a corporate thought pattern woven into the American economy. Simply stated, as most companies grow larger, their “brains” grow smaller. Obviously, we could come up with a few exceptions to this pattern. Large companies can keep their functional edge and do perceptive things. But by and large, bureaucracy and groupthink kick in frequently enough that there is credibility to the host’s theory. Companies can grow to a point where they begin to exist more to sustain the company than to do the work that serves the customer. When they reach that point, several fronts suffer. Customers lose their use for the company transaction by transaction. Then market share and profitability drop. Stockholders become nervous and begin to react. Soon, the repercussions spread across many sectors.

A well-worn story illustrates this. For a long time, the Swiss were known as the supreme makers of fine watches. Even today, a Swiss-made watch is a fine item to own. But a couple of decades ago, a new technology was developed. Today, most of us wear timepieces that run on quartz technology. These watches are accurate and inexpensive to manufacture. Supposedly, the Swiss were approached first with this breakthrough. As the benchmark of prestigious watchmakers, the Swiss industry largely passed on the opportunity to use quartz technology. Many other companies snatched up the quartz-movement idea, and accurate watches were soon mainstreamed at affordable prices. While heritage and brand recognition remained on the side of many Swiss companies, the watch-buying public reacted decisively. The Swiss lost a large piece of market share, and today they are said to hold much less of market share. The lesson? A case could be made that the established watchmakers forgot that they existed to make accurate timepieces for sale. Instead, they protected their heritage at the cost of their business. I think this is sometimes true of churches and individual Christians.

Too Busy In Jesus’ Name?

First John 3:11-24 serves as a reminder to people and churches alike. We can become so busy “doing” the work of church that we lose sight of core values and callings that identify us as “being” church. For John, acts of loving are beacons toward Christ-likeness. Love is like true north on a compass. Love is center-cut evidence of the abiding presence of God. For John, the Christian should never lose the focus of love. Sentimentally, our first reaction might be to wonder why this is even an issue. We would all vote that the call of Christ into “loving” is universal. No one would vote against love. The problem is that we can forget to love. We can become too busy, too distracted, or too important to love, both individually and corporately.

The writer of this letter must have felt that the first-century Christians were losing critical focus. This is a timeless problem for the church. At every stop, I’ve noticed church members who are busy little Christians. They speak the prevailing “heart language” of the faith. They shop only at Christian businesses and listen only to Christian radio. They are present at every activity—except the missional aspects of church life. These eager hearers of sermons and studiers of the Bible were conspicuously absent when it was time to fill food sacks or drive nails. I have witnessed church bureaucracy slow practiced love to a crawl. Legalism, Bible trivia, congregational management, and internal politics quickly become the danger zones for most church members.

Whereas John has couched some of these writings in contrasts of righteousness and sin, here in 3:11-24 he employs the language of love versus hate. In verse 11, the writer reminds us that the original message continues. He says, “you have heard from the beginning . . . that we should love one another.” Note that the word used for “message” was intended as a declaration or an imperative. This is not a suggestion. John sees loving one another as universal and not optional for the genuine Christian. To emphasize his point, he invokes the image of Cain from Genesis 4. John asserts strongly that we are capable of “murder” when love or righteousness is absent.

And They’ll Know We Are Christians . . .

In verse 12, “love one another” should remind us of the words of Jesus in John 13:34-35. In the Gospel, Jesus not only issues the “command” to love, but also says love is the identifying quality of his followers. John drives home the point that we do wrong (or neglect to do right!) when we concentrate unduly on ourselves. Left to our natural selves, we are guided by evil or selfish motives. John 8:44 reminds us that Jesus was candid about who we become, apart from the transforming presence of an abiding God. Perhaps today’s culture inserts the notion that right and wrong are individual matters of choice. There is much resistance to the notion of a guiding Christian “ethic” today; we support the ethic according to each individual. This contrasts with the identifying benchmark declared by Jesus and affirmed here by 1 John. John says love should guide our decision-making and our living.

Verses 13-15 should catch the attention of individual and gathered Christians alike. In his time, the writer of 1 John says in verse 13, “Do not wonder, brethren, that the world hates you.” Today, many of our fellow church members struggle to realize that we do not live in an American culture that is as friendly to the church as it once was. Perhaps the prevailing times never favored the church to the extent it appeared. As far back as the late 1960s, some honest churches began to whisper of a change in generational churchgoing habits. Although the heyday of churchgoing in our country probably extended through the 1970s, clearly a decline is identifiable today. With that decline, many ministers and churches have seen their seats of influence in communities diminish. Church scandals, especially involving money and sex, have cost Christians dearly. Even history is viewed from a more jaded angle, with people building a case that the church has done more damage than good in the name of Christ through war, conquest, and discrimination. In an increasingly secular society, some even generally “hate” the church.

We might be surprised to discover different reasons the church and Christians are less than popular. John speaks to assurance and honest identity in verse 14. He begins by saying we can “know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.” In contrast, though, “He who does not love remains in death.” It is easy to reason that the church might be frowned upon for its human foibles. Many resent us because we sometimes fail to measure up to Christ’s standards. But there is another surprising angle to why the world might hate Christians who are supposed to love. We must be honest about the various human reactions to love. Many times, love inspires more love and goodness. Good deeds bring out more good deeds.

To the truly evil-hearted, though, the presence of love conjures a guilt-driven anger. Doing good in Christ’s name irritates those less inclined to live like Christ. Hear John’s observation through these filters: “Do not wonder, brethren, that the world hates you.” If love means health and growth, then the absence of love brings about decay. In a consumer-driven culture that is perhaps growing more selfish, the presence of love makes many uncomfortable. Verse 15 continues to make the case that God’s abiding love cannot yield hate. It is likely that people who knew precisely who he was, rather than enemies who did not understand him, executed Christ.

Called toward Loving Acts

In verses 16-18, John reiterates the prescription. We cannot be responsible for the whims of a selfish culture. We cannot give in to our own natures. Nor can we throw our hands in the air and worry about negative reactions to being Christian. One could say, “Well, they hate us for being imperfect, and they hate us when we get it right!” John does not flinch. Verse 16 marches on by reminding us that Christ gave his all to a fickle world. I wonder who was in the crowd calling for the release of Barabbas, when earlier they had waved palm branches and declared Jesus’ triumphant entry as the coming of a king: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Just as Jesus has done, so must we do also. The use of “love” here is an imperative form. It is absolute and refers back to a past revelation that John’s reader should have known. Thus, the phrase “he laid down his life for us” simply ensures that the reader doesn’t miss the tie to Christ himself.

If Christ did so, “we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren,” John reasons. Christ’s absolute form of love is so unmistakable that one African woman is said to have responded to her first Christian missionary sermon with, “There! I always told you that there ought to be a God like that” (Wilder and Hoon, 263–64). In addition to being compelled by Christ to love, there is a moral component to our need to love. Verse 16 couches our responsibility not only as an act of obedience, but as an “ought.” We are not only bound to love; we are called toward acts of loving. As Christ would have compassion upon need, so are we led to respond in helpful ways to those who need us.

Verses 17-18 bring into play a proof of love. That is, if we have resources and capability, then we are compelled to respond by sharing them. If God’s love truly abides in one of us, then we are called to give what we have in order to better those around us. According to John, without loving action, there is reason to wonder if God is present in us at all. Or, to our church-addicted brothers or sisters, “let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth.” Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13 should come to mind here. Karl Marx is thought to have said that the Church of England of his day would more readily pardon an attack upon one of its thirty-nine Articles of Religion than upon one thirty-ninth of its income (Wilder and Hoon, 264).

Verse 19 begins another pastoral effort to assure his people. Of course, he also wants to correct distorted and damaging behavior in the church. John wants believers to be freed by certainty. No doubt he finds that the desire for certainty could be a driving influence toward better living. In verse 20, John acknowledges that there will be doubt in the presence of God “. . . whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.” He continues in verse 21 by making a powerful observation: the guilty or condemned heart is of less use to the kingdom. We have all known the person whose core attitude is, “Why bother trying to be good if I’m just going to fail?” Like Winnie the Pooh’s perpetually down friend, we take up the voice of Eeyore and wonder why we should bother trying to live like Christ. It seems that all we see is failure among God’s people to measure up. John asserts that if we live lives of love, then our hearts are not as likely to condemn us. (See Paul’s work in Romans 5:1-5.) Without condemnation, we have confidence before God.

With verse 22, John shifts to another reason for confidence in loving. When we are in tune with the heart of God, our prayers reflect it. John suggests that we “receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments.” Many pluck words like these from Scriptures and carry them around like a genie’s bottle. They rub that figurative promise and petition God for their heart’s desire. Of course, the risk of deep and confusing disappointment comes with this type of faith. John’s assertion here is more reliable if we hear it as an affirmation of how our prayers will reflect the desires of God in the first place. We are not as likely to ask for riches, impossible outcomes, or frivolous goods when an abiding God guides us. We are not as distracted and gullible when we keep God’s commandments. John 15:7 captures this same Johannine mindset as we hear, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” Jesus would not intend to fool us about prayer. This is as corrective as it is an open-ended promise. Still, there is assurance when we frame it in its intended light.

What are these “commandments” that we are to keep? In his closing thoughts, John specifies. Verse 23 says we are to “believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another.” This is the imperative laid down by Jesus himself. Not that loving one another is easy. The church has perhaps failed in making the tasks of love, forgiveness, truth, and righteousness sound too simple. These are not sentiments that happen by the flip of a switch. There is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Likewise, if we are honest, our belief is not always easy, either. We have doubts, and we must hang our faith on a framework of unanswerable mysteries. Again, many Christians do not reward honesty about those dimensions of our faith. They prefer black-and-white answers that eventually fail under the strain of life. However, John closes by pulling the reader back toward these commands to believe and to love anyway.

In verse 24, John summarizes by stubbornly adhering to his convictions. If we keep these commandments we abide in God. Conversely, God surely abides in us. By this, John says, we will find assurance that we are God’s children. In John 6:29, belief in Christ is represented as a “work of God” in itself. This work of God is commanded of Christians, but we are not weighted down without help. The term used for “work” is the type that utilizes assistance (Wilder and Hoon, 271). Thus, in verse 24, mention of the Spirit of God reminds us that we live far from alone here on earth. The encouragement of verse 23 to believe, then, rewards us with the assurance in verse 24. First John drives the reader with a hard assignment. Faithful loving and action is not easy. As I remind my young adult learners occasionally, Christ himself was killed for living the lifestyle we are called to take up. I don’t believe many of his followers died of natural causes either. To live as Christ exacts a cost at times. Living counter to the prevailing culture, even in a more positive manner than others, sometimes isolates the believer. Still, John says, we must practice love in deed and in truth. Then we will know of the abiding presence of God.

Resource Questions

1. What do you believe makes a “Christian” unique from others in the world? From other “good” people in the world?

2. What might be a way to understand the differences between “believing,” “doing,” and “being”? How do these three realities differ?

3. This chapter includes an illustration about Swiss watchmakers. Using the principle of that story, what might be the church’s blind spot? In what ways might we lose our focus from time to time?

4. When the church loses focus, what are typical excesses or distractions that cause this to happen?

5. When you hear, “He who does not love remains in death,” what meaning do you draw? How can this be so?

6. Among the other teachings, our text indicates that we may ask for whatever we desire and it will be given. In light of your life experience, how are we to hear this?

7. If we are destined to fail, what is our incentive for trying to live as John suggests?

8. This chapter suggests that the act of believing is in itself a work of God. In other words, one of the realities is that we will have to work at believing. How does that fit with what you’ve been taught? How might this be a helpful insight?