1 John chapter 3 and verse 10,
we read this, And this, the children of God are manifest, and the
children of the devil. Whosoever doeth not righteousness
is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this
is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should
love one another, not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and
slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him, because
his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous? Marvel
not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have
passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.
He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth
his brother is a murderer. and ye know that no murderer
hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love
of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought
to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this
world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his
bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God
in him. My little children, Let us not
love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And
hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our
hearts before him." Now the Lord has given us in
the law that He has written in the
hearts of every man that we ought to love one another even as ourselves. And that's demonstrated every
time that we look at how we desire for others to treat us. Now it's
not demonstrated by how we treat other people because We often
fall, we always fall quite short of being what we should be in
our love one to the other. But we always know what love
one to the other is because we always know how we desire for
other people to love us. And so the Lord has demonstrated
that. In fact, that's what He said
here, that this is that which we have had from the beginning. Ever since we were children,
we wanted somebody to love us, did we not? And we wanted them
to think about us, and we wanted them to care for us, and we wanted
them to do things for us. We wanted them to make us happy.
Isn't that written in the heart of every man? Do you know somebody
that doesn't want people to make them happy, or doesn't want them
to love them, or doesn't want them to care about them? Not
anybody like that. The Lord has written that law
in the heart of every man. And the Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world to demonstrate very clearly how that is to be
carried out. And it says that He loved not
His life even unto death, which we have demonstrated before us
in the bread and the wine that we partake in remembrance. of His death, because that's
what He told us to remember. He said, Remember my death till
I come again. Now, there's a lot of things
that we can remember about the Lord, all the good things that
He did, and He went about doing good His whole life. I mean, every step of His life
was something that was taken in order to do good and benefit
those who were around Him. But he didn't tell us to remember
that, even though we do remember it and it's recorded for us.
But John, they didn't even write all the things that they could
have written. John said that if all the things
that the Lord Jesus Christ had done were written down, there
wouldn't be books in the world enough to contain it. And so
he did many things, but there is one thing that he did that
he told us specifically to remember, and in everything that he would
describe to us to manifest our love, one for the other, is in
the example that he gave. And that's what he said right
here. Because he loved us. And he showed us that. He said, Hereby we perceive we
the love of God because he laid down his life for us. Now John goes on to say that
we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Now is he telling
us that we need to go out and kill ourselves? for the brethren? No, but he's saying you need
to love the life of your brethren as much as you love your own
life so that if it be necessary, you would lay down your life
for them. Now that's true love. Now when,
you know, people, I hear people all the time saying, oh, I love
everybody. Biggest lie a man ever told.
When a man starts saying that, you need to just turn ahead and
go ahead and walk on away from him because he don't have any
understanding of what love is and he certainly don't understand
the nature of his own heart. Because we don't love everybody.
We love ourselves. There's not a person in this
room that doesn't love herself. Now, of course, you listen to
the modern philosophers, they tell you that's what you should
do. I mean, you're supposed to love yourself, you know. That's
like, you've got to love yourself and all that. I never needed
anybody to encourage me to do that. Did you? I never met anybody that needed
to be encouraged to do that. Because we love ourselves. That
is the way we are. We want what we want. If we could somehow or other,
by the grace of God, have an understanding of what it is when
we love ourselves that we love our brethren in the same fashion,
then we might understand something of what it is that the Lord Jesus
Christ came to do, because He came to lay down His life for
His brethren. Without getting into a deep theological
discussion, we need to understand that the Lord Jesus Christ was
under no obligation of any sort to lay down His life for His
people. Redemption is not something that
the Lord came up with as a stopgap means. have plan A, and that went awry,
and he said, Oh no, what am I going to do next? Oh, I'm going to
have to send my son to die. I don't have any other choice.
That wasn't it at all. He designed the world to turn
out exactly as it did, turned out like it did, because the
Lord would demonstrate the magnificence and the glory of His grace in
the redemption of a people that He loved with an everlasting
love. Now that's a mouthful, but when
you come to the place where you can see that, then you can see
the grandeur and glory that this One who took upon Himself the
likeness of human flesh and came and dwelt among men in order
to redeem them did so totally without obligation of any kind,
but because it pleased Him. And you see, that's what true
love is. It is laying down one's life
because it is pleasing unto you to do so. Now, you sit there
and I sit here when I think about that and I say, well, that's
totally outside of the realm of my capability. And certainly
it is. But you see it was not outside
the realm of his capability because that's exactly what he told Pilate. He said, you don't have power
to take my life. He says, I've got power to lay
down my life and power to take it up again. And thus he would
demonstrate for us. And though we are called upon
to love one another even as he loved us, Yet the reality of
the matter is that we cannot possibly do so except that that
which He has done, that He be the performer for us in the love
that we demonstrate one to the other. You cannot learn how to
love somebody. The Lord has to give you that.
He has to work it in you, and He, by His grace, has imputed
His righteousness to you. If you be in Christ and you stand
before the Lord in the final day when He shall judge the secrets
of all men, as the Scripture says, then those who are in Christ
will stand in Christ as they have loved their brethren perfectly. Why? Because His righteousness
is theirs and He has loved His brethren perfectly. You see,
there was not one thing that the Lord Jesus Christ ever did
in a self-serving fashion. He didn't even take glory to
Himself. He says, I came to do the will of my Father. And He
did the will of His Father, His Heavenly Father. When He was
born on the earth, He took no glory to Himself. But He said
the glory belongs to Him. And so it is, dear brethren,
as we see what love is the demonstration of what we have before us here,
may we learn what it is to love one another with a pure heart,
fervently, not out of obligation. Now, some people think that,
oh, well, we've got to love them. Well, you know, obligation is not necessarily
a bad thing if we have a pure heart that is moved by the obligation. Because you see, we have an obligation
in a measure to serve the Lord, to love the Lord, to do the things
that He says. We're obliged to do that. I mean,
if He did that for us, are we not obliged to do the same to
Him? Of course we are. But the moment that we serve
Him because of obligation alone, Without the work of the Spirit
in us to work that by the love that He has given us for Him,
then it becomes an empty thing and it becomes just a work of
the flesh and of no value, no real value. And so He says here, Hereby we
perceive the love of God, because He laid down His life for us,
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Now how
do we do that? But whoso hath this world's good,
see if his brother hath need, and shutteth up his bowels of
compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him. Now,
remember the rich young ruler? When he came to the Lord, he
said, what can I do to inherit eternal life? And the Lord said
to him, well, you know what the commandments are. He said, yeah, I know what they
are. I've done that from my youth up. The Lord never contradicted
him. He said, well, I'll tell you
what, if you be perfect, if you've kept them all then, if you be
perfect, then go sell all that you have and give it to the poor.
And then come and follow me, because after all, this is what
he said to him, after all, now he didn't say this, but the rich
young ruler knew what he said, because I believe the Spirit
of God convicted the heart of the rich young ruler. And he
went away sorrowing. The Lord looked on him and he
loved him. And he told him the truth. And he said, if you really
loved... Now, again, I'm paraphrasing
what the Spirit of God said, what I believe the Spirit of
God said to the rich young ruler. Well, if you really loved everybody,
if you loved your neighbor as yourself, which the six laws,
the six laws of the Ten Commandments, the last six laws of the Ten
Commandments, the last six commandments, center in men. And that's what
the Lord said when He summarized the law. He said, Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as
thyself. So the rich young ruler knew
what it was that the Lord was saying when He said, Well, if
you'd really be perfect, because you see, that's what it takes.
Who shall dwell in the house of the Lord? That man who's perfect. Tall order, is it not? And the
thing is, we're behind the eight ball when we were born. And before
we ever knew what to do, we'd already broken the law many times
before we ever even really knew anything about it. And if that
wasn't enough, we were already corrupt in Adam and the corruptibility
of our heart. The depravity that dwells within
us had already made us where we could not possibly gain entrance
into the presence of God because he that hath pure hands clean
hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,
nor sworn deceitfully." I'm guilty on all counts. So if that's who's going to enter
into the presence of the Lord, how can I go there? Not going
to happen, except that one came in my place as my substitute. and demonstrated a perfect righteousness
and love for my neighbor. I could not enter there. But
by His grace and according to His mercy, He has imputed His
righteousness to us. And so He said, My little children,
let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and truth. Now the Lord Jesus said, and
by this shall all men know that you are my disciples. Because you are going to have
a worship service where everybody is rolling in the aisle and shouting
and carrying on and all that stuff. That you are going to
send missionaries to the foreign fields. that you're going to
do all many wonderful things that people say is the evidence
that people are following the Lord? No, what did He say? He said, By this shall all men
know that you are my disciples because of the love that you
have one for the other. Now the true people of God can
be known because they love one another. That's what He said.
By this we know that we have eternal life because we love
the brethren. Now, if you don't love the brethren,
dear brethren, according to the Scripture, not according to me,
if you have no love for your brother, and we're talking about
specifically our brethren in Christ. Now, we have a brotherhood
of a with the people of the world. So we're not off the hook from
the standpoint of we can't look at anybody around us, whether
they're our brethren in Christ or not, and have hatred towards
them. Now, we can have a pure hatred
towards the things that they do and be vexed in our soul,
but you see, we don't have the right as men to hate one another. You know, the Lord's able to
judge. That's why He said, Judge not lest ye be not judged. We
don't have a standing and a place, a platform from which we can
hurl out vindictives against others. Now, we can hurl out
vindictives against false doctrine. false message deceivers that
would go out and deceive the people of God, but that is not
a personal thing. That is because the Lord has
given us a love for the truth, and we must stand for those things. But let us not love in word,
but indeed in truth, because the One whom we come to celebrate
this day has demonstrated perfect love. in the laying down of his life
in our behalf. May the Lord give us a mind and
heart that loves not simply in word, where we just say, well,
we love you. How empty is that? We love you. You say, the Lord
said to his disciples, You say that you love me, then why don't
you keep my commandments? If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, do the things
that I say. If you love your neighbor, demonstrate
it. If you love your brother, show it. Thanks be unto God that He has
done all those things for us. Because, oh dear brethren, as
much as we know we should love one another, we know how little
that we have of that. And we know that that shame of
that is that which the Lord uses to convince us of sin and to
move us towards obedience unto those things that the Lord has
called us to do. May we be a people that are known because we love
one another. And if a brother stands in need,
that we stand with him, that we bear one another's burdens
and so fulfill the law of Christ, that we're not easily offended,
that we're not easily turned, you know, we don't have fickle
love. love somebody one day and because they didn't do something
like we thought they ought to have or whatever, we turn aside
and then we're of another mind. Thanks be unto God that the Lord
Jesus Christ never had but one mind. And that was His mind and
purpose to demonstrate His love to His people. by the giving
of His self, the pouring out of His blood, and the breaking
of His body on our behalf.