(REFLECTIONS ON 1 John 3:11-18 )

What is love? How would we answer this question? When we think about love, do we immediately think about relationships? After relationships, do we think about things that we love, or things that we love to do?

What is love, and what does it mean to love one another? In our Christian faith, the answer to this question is presented in today’s Scripture. It is a simple answer in many ways, being it is just a one sentence answer. Although a simple answer, how many people if asked on the street “what is love,” would give this answer? More importantly, is this the love that we share with the world?

John writes,

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

What is love? It isn’t just a feeling, an emotion, just about human relationships, or our relationship with the world and things of the world, but love is that Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. Love is sacrifice, it is giving up for the other, it is not looking to be loved, but to be an outpouring of love.

Jesus Christ laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Do we want to be like Christ? Then we need to love like Christ. How did Christ love? Jesus Christ laid down His life for us, and so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Can we practice this kind of love in the church, in our homes, and in the world? Can we love the way Jesus loved and not just the way the world loves? If we think about the way the world loves, we will find that it is often times more self-focused than other-focused.

Lest we think this type of love is only a spiritual love with no practical application, John continues writing,

17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

The love of Christ is action based love, it isn’t just that Jesus talked about sacrifice and the cross, but He actually walked to the cross and sacrificed His life. We too are also challenged to love, by action and not just by words. Our actions need to be in truth, meaning that we don’t use our own definition of love to love, but should learn to love the way Jesus loved.

Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Oh Lord, have mercy on us, for if this is love, then we realize that we have not loved, that we don’t know how to love, and that we sometimes refuse to love.

This is love, that Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. The challenge then for us as the church is to struggle with and figure out how to overcome our own deficiencies to love the way Christ loved, and to do so not using our own love, but by the love Christ has shown to us.

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: 1 John 3