Love in Deed and Truth | In light of love | 1 John 3:11–18 | Ep.11

Welcome to Preaching from Bryanston Bible Church, located in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa.

It is our prayer that this teaching would bless you, deepen your love for God's word, and encourage you as you follow Jesus.

And if you are not a Christian, we pray that this message would encourage you as you explore the Christian faith.

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning: that we should love one another.

We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother.

And why did he murder him?

Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers righteous.

Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.

We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers.

Whoever 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 love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in me and closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

It's in deed and in truth.

Now, if you grew up in the 1990s, you are already mouthing the answer to that.

What are you saying?

What is love?

Baby, don't hurt me.

Don't hurt me no more.

Another little riff is stuck in your mind.

So Hathaway isn't the only musician to ask, What is love?

Foreigner sang, I want to know what love is.

Oh, it feels like karaoke morning here in church.

The black-eyed peas asked, Where is the where is the love?

And if you believe, like the Beatles, that all you need is love, then we better make sure we know what we're actually talking about when we say love.

Now, what's confusing is that there are almost as many definitions of love as there are love songs.

Here's some examples.

Love bites, love hurts, love cuts like a knife.

Love is what we make it.

Love is the ocean.

Love is a drug, love is a feeling, love is a losing gave.

Love is an open door.

Love is blindness.

Love is chemistry, which is really bad news for those of us that failed chemistry in high school.

No wonder our love loves are in such a mess.

Or what about Ed Sheeran, who says love is in a photograph?

That means that love is actually stored entirely in the cloud.

Or what about wet, wet, wet when they're saying, I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes?

That means if you have chronic arthritis, that is the strongest evidence that you have experienced love.

See, the problem is that if everybody gets to define love, then love can mean almost anything.

But when John tells us to love one another, he's not asking us to discover our own definition of love.

He's saying God has already shown us what love is.

And many of us have memorized John 3.16, but what about one John 3.16?

This lies at the heart of our passage this morning.

John writes in verse 16, by this we know love.

That he laid down his life for us.

And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

So if you want to know what love is, look at Christ.

But before John gets to Christ in verse 16, he first starts and takes us all the way back to the beginning in verse 11.

This is what he says in verse 11 for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

Now, the false teachers in John's day were boasting about special secret knowledge.

They were boasting that they had new revelations.

And John wants to remind them and us no, this is Christianity 101.

He takes us right back to the beginning and he says, From the moment you became a Christian, God's call upon your life as a believer in Christ is to love one another.

Now, John already told us in our previous sermon, just before we had this beautiful four-part series from the elders, before that, the sermon had verse 10, which told us that one of the strongest evidences of whether we are truly the children of God is our love.

And the logic is simple.

If God is our father, then God's children become our brothers and sisters.

It's actually beautifully simple and profound.

If God is our father, then the children of God around us become our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our new birth creates a new family, and a new family should produce a new kind of love.

So, like a spiral staircase, John keeps returning to certain themes.

I don't know, maybe some commentators maybe say it's because he was old and he kind of kept circling around, but I don't think so.

I think it's because he was wise and he knew that we needed to hear the same things from a different angle.

And so every time he circles around to things like obedience and truth and love, he takes us slightly deeper.

And so we've heard about love before.

Back in chapter two, when he circled around to love, he said, Love is a matter of light and darkness.

But now in chapter three, he takes us even deeper and he says, Now love is a matter of life and death.

Life and death.

And so if you study this passage, you'll see John puts before us this stark contrast, this deep contrast of two very different responses that we can have to a brother.

Christ or Cain?

Christ or Cain.

Cain takes the life of his brother, Christ lays down his life for his brothers.

Cain is a picture of hatred.

Christ is the very definition and essence of love.

Cain or Christ?

Hatred or love?

Death or life.

And so John doesn't want to just ask us which one of these two do you prefer?

He wants to really pursue our hearts this morning.

He wants to expose in our hearts what lovelessness actually looks like and what the gospel is able to produce instead.

So we're going to see four increasingly revealing ways that our hearts can relate to a brother or sister.

We might call these four increasing levels of relationship.

And here they are murder, hatred, indifference, or love.

And I want you to notice the movement here.

Murder says, I will kill you.

Hatred says, I wish you weren't here.

Indifference says, I don't care that you're here.

And love says, I will give myself for you.

And John's going to begin at the darkest end of that spectrum, not with Christ, but he's going to start with Cain.

So let's look at number one, murder, I will kill you.

So we saw back in verse 10 that there are ultimately two families.

Either you belong to the children of God or you're a child of the devil.

And in verse 12, now we're going to see a real life flesh and blood example of what the second family, the children of Satan, look like.

Here it is in verse 12.

We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother.

So John takes us all the way back to Genesis chapter 4, to these two brothers, Cain and Abel.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

They both worshiped, they both brought offerings.

It's not as if Cain was an atheist.

He was religious.

Cain would have been the kind of person that would have been sitting in church this morning saying, Yes, I'm also bringing my offering of worship before God.

So it's not about religious activity that reveals which family we belong to.

John is saying how Cain treated his brother is the revealing of which family he belonged to.

Can you see how hectically deep that is?

It revealed that his spiritual father was the evil one who we know has been a murderer and a liar from the beginning.

So why did Cain murder Abel?

Look at verse 12.

John tells us.

And why did he murder him?

Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers righteous.

Cain didn't murder Abel because Abel had wronged him in some particular way.

Why did he murder him?

Simply because Abel's righteousness had exposed Cain's unrighteousness.

It had exposed his own evil heart.

Or to put it in the worst dad joke that I've ever concocted, Abel's righteousness caned his brother.

So Cain had no choice but to disable him.

I think that deserves some applause, don't you think?

You shouldn't have applauded me, because now you are encouraging me.

And my girls tell me I already have enough bad dad jokes.

So that's on you if I tell any more in this church.

But sometimes the person who irritates us the most is not the person who's wronged us, it's the person whose faithfulness has exposed our unfaithfulness.

Imagine an office where everyone quietly inflates the expense claims.

But there's one guy who never does that.

He just speaks the truth and does his work honestly.

He doesn't preach, he doesn't point fingers.

What happens over time?

Everybody in the office gets irritated with him.

Why?

Because his honesty is exposing their dishonesty.

Or maybe as we go into spring now, you want to get ready for spring, so you've decided you want to get fit.

And Monday morning, you want to get up at 5.30 and repeat that consistently and get some exercise.

And you've got a friend who says, Yeah, I'm also going to get up at 5.30 and exercise.

And what happens on Monday morning?

You can't get up.

You're still in bed, you're still asleep.

But your friend consistently, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and when it's coming to the next week, what are you secretly thinking?

Man, I hope my friend just skips a day.

I need them to skip a day because it's making me look bad.

Why?

Because their faithfulness and discipline is exposing your own excuses.

The human heart has an amazing ability to attack the mirror instead of confronting the reflection.

Just think about that.

Your own heart, if you're honest with yourself this morning, you would rather shoot the messenger than receive the message, rather attack the mirror than deal with the reflection that's coming back at you.

That's Cain.

That is Cain.

And sometimes we subtly dismiss people.

We dismiss the person who's generous because their generosity is exposing something in us.

And so we look and we say, well, they being irresponsible with their finances, that they would be generous.

The person who's sharing their faith, maybe that exposes us in some way, and we say, Well, they just she's doing it to show off, or maybe she's too bulshy, or maybe uh she's just doing this to earn brownie points.

What about the person who refuses to compromise on a particular issue?

Our way of dismissing them is to say, Well, maybe they're just legalistic.

Sometimes those criticisms may be true, but sometimes that's Cain speaking.

Murder didn't begin with Cain's hands, it began with Cain's heart being exposed.

And God had warned Cain, Cain, sin is crouching at the door.

It is like this monster, it is like this wild beast that wants to devour you, Cain.

You need to deal with it.

And instead of dealing with himself and his own wicked heart, he dealt with his brother who had exposed it.

Now, the difference between Cain and us isn't simply that he murdered and we haven't.

John wants us to look beneath the act to see what's going on in the heart that produced it.

Cain's heart was ruled by hatred and eventually it came out through his hands.

And so John says, Don't be surprised when you face that kind of hostility if you're seeking to walk for God and you're seeking to live a righteous life, whether you intend it or not, your life will expose.

So look at verse 13.

John says, Do not be surprised, brother, that the world hates you.

Don't be surprised.

Why?

Because Cain's story is not an isolated incident.

That pattern still continues right till today.

And so John says, Don't be surprised.

The scriptures in so many places say don't be surprised at suffering, don't be surprised at persecution.

Why?

Because we add to our stress, we add to our suffering when on top of all of that we're still surprised about it.

And God wants to warn us, don't be surprised.

Don't be surprised.

We naively think that, hey, if I'm honest, I'm sure people will appreciate it.

If I live a life of integrity, I'm sure people will respect me.

And sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't.

And John says, don't be surprised.

Why are we still surprised when good is met with hostility?

Because ultimately this kind of hatred reached its explosive fulfillment in the rejection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Do you remember what Jesus said in the Gospel of John?

And I think as we've been going through one John, we see the echoes because John wrote both books of his gospel and his letter.

This is what Jesus said back in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

And this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed.

The religious leaders didn't kill Jesus because he was sinful.

They killed him because his righteousness exposed their hypocrisy.

It exposed their unrighteousness, those religious leaders.

And like Cain, they looked at Jesus and they said, How can we get rid of him?

We want him gone.

And now John wants to turn the mirror around and say, actually, the most important question we could ask ourselves today is what happens when that kind of hatred takes root in my own heart?

Let's leave the world out of it for now.

Let's turn the mirror inwards.

And that brings us to number two hatred.

Hatred which says, I wish you weren't here.

So perhaps you're thinking, but Justin, I haven't murdered anyone.

That's exactly where John wants to take us next.

I told you he's going to turn the screws on us and he's going to take us deeper.

Because the only difference between murder and hatred is the outward act of taking someone's life.

But the inward roots can be exactly the same.

Murder is where hatred can end up.

And Jesus makes the same point in the Sermon on the Mount when he equates hatred with murder.

Jesus isn't saying, hey, hatred does the same amount of damage as murder.

Obviously, your neighbor would rather have you hate him than kill him.

I mean, obviously.

But Jesus, like John, is showing us that murder begins long before the hands act.

It begins in a heart that has learned to wish another person away.

You see how subtle it is?

I haven't done murder, but have I ever wished someone away?

God sees beneath the outward act to the heart that produces it.

Christianity is not just about the externals, it's about the heart.

And that's John's point in verse 15.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.

And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

John is asking, not what your hands have done, he's asking, what does your heart want?

Warren Wisby in his commentary tells the story of a visitor to a particular zoo who made his way to the lion enclosure and he saw the lions fast asleep, and he just felt this warmth in his heart, and he said, Oh, that reminds me of Kitty at home, my little cat, when he sleeps, those lions just look so beautiful.

And he remarked to the zookeeper, You know, those lions sleeping look just like my cat at home.

And the zookeeper just laughed and said, They may look like your cat at home, but there is murder in their hearts.

Murder in their hearts.

And you better be glad that the bars are there.

You better be glad that the bars are there.

Sometimes the only thing separating our hatred from an outward act is the bars that are there.

The fear of consequences, the fear of shame, the fear of punishment, maybe social restraint.

So the real question is not what did you do, but what did you want to do?

What would your heart do if your heart could do whatever it wanted to do and there were no consequences to your actions?

That is why hatred is so serious, because hatred says, I wish you weren't here.

And John says that kind of hatred belongs to the realm of death.

It smells of death.

But then comes one of the most beautiful verses in this whole section, verse 14.

And if you read it correctly, it's actually a miracle.

Here's verse 14.

We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers.

Because we love our brothers and sisters.

The miracle of the gospel is that people who were once in the realm of darkness have now been brought into this realm of light.

And what is it that the people in this room have in common besides the fact that we live in the same city?

It's that we know Christ, we know the gospel, we know forgiveness of sins.

That's the only way to explain this mixed bag of people.

And for Liesel and I, as we've had the privilege of visiting various gospel communities, our small groups, the love that we have seen in those groups, one for the other, diverse groups, old, young, rich, poor, black, white, everything in between, and people on mission to say, how can we serve and love and support you?

And listening to people's prayers for one another.

It's been joy to our hearts to see the sense of love that there is at BBC.

And why is that?

It's because we've passed out of death into life.

There's been movement.

But John then goes on and says, Whoever does not love abides in death.

So this passing describes movement, but abiding describes residence.

And so abiding is the key word here.

John isn't describing a momentary failure, he's describing the sphere in which somebody takes up home, takes up residence.

By God's grace, the Christian has moved house.

And so, yes, that sometimes means if you've ever moved, you know what it's like.

Sometimes you still find yourself driving to your old address.

Or you instinctively turn down the streets, like, what am I doing here?

We've moved.

And so, yes, it's true that sometimes as Christians, we go back to some of the old patterns, the old streets.

We still struggle with resentment or we struggle with impatience.

John isn't saying a Christian never struggles to love.

He's asking something deeper.

He says, Where do you live?

Where do you abide?

What is the settled atmosphere of your heart towards God's people?

Do you withdraw from them?

Do you never want to be around them?

Do you not trust them?

Or is your instinct to move towards them, to say, there's safety here, there's joy here, this is what I need.

So this love is not what causes us to pass from death to life, but it is the evidence that we have passed from death to life.

New life has to produce new love.

But perhaps you're thinking this morning, well, Justin, I haven't murdered anybody yet.

I haven't, I haven't hated anybody as as far as I can be aware.

But John's still not finished with us.

Are you prepared to go further down the spiral staircase?

As he turns the screws on even more, and he says, I want to show you what lovelessness looks like.

There's another way it can show itself, and that's number three indifference.

Indifference, which is, I don't care that you're here.

So, yes, you don't take someone's life.

Yes, you don't even wish they weren't there.

You simply don't care that they're there.

And John shows us what this kind of indifference looks like in the church.

He says, Your brother has a need, your sister has a need, and you close your heart against them.

Because love isn't simply what we don't do.

It's like saying to your wife and kids, Of course I love you.

I haven't murdered you guys yet, have I?

I don't hate you guys as far as I last checked.

So therefore I love you.

John says, Man, what a low bar of love.

Love is supposed to be something giving, something outward, something positive.

It's not just the absence of harm.

So what is love?

John gives us the answer.

It's our 1 John 3.16.

Here it is again.

By this we know love that He laid down His life for us.

Do you see what John doesn't say?

He doesn't say by this we know how to love.

He says, By this we know love.

In other words, if you want to know what love is, don't start with a dictionary.

Don't start with Hollywood.

Don't start with your feelings.

Start at Calvary.

Start at the cross.

Look at Jesus hanging on the cross.

Because John doesn't give us a definition of love, he gives us a person, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And notice again the contrast with Cain.

Cain takes life from his brothers.

Jesus lays down his life.

Not because we deserved it, but because in his mystery he freely chooses to bestow love on us.

What preacher can explain that?

I can't answer the why question as to why God loves you.

He just does.

And he showered and lavished his love upon you.

Maybe imagine that you're sitting on a pier on the edge of a dock and your legs are hanging over and the ocean is out there, and suddenly a man comes and jumps off the pier right in front of you.

Before you can react, he's gone down in the water and he's drowned.

And then later that day, someone comes to you and said, Do you know when that guy jumped in the water, he was doing that because he loves you?

You'd say, That's that's crazy.

That doesn't make any sense.

How does some guy, random guy jumping into the water mean that he loves me?

But now I imagine you're the one in the water.

You're the one that can't keep your head above water, you're drowning.

You're going under, and now he jumps into the water and in saving you, he loses his own life.

Now, when someone says he did that because he loved you, you get it, you understand, because that's the gospel.

And if you're here this morning and you think of yourself as sitting safely and comfortable on the pier, you know, I'm generally a good person, I have a few flaws.

You know, at the end of the day, I think if Jesus can just correct some of my morality a little bit and just some subtle improvements here and there, I'll be okay.

If that's your view, then the cross is going to seem so excessive.

Why do we need the cross and all that blood and gore?

What's going on here if I'm safe on the pier?

But the gospel says you're not safe on the pier.

You are in the water, you are going down, you are unable to rescue yourself, your sin is pulling you down.

Jesus doesn't stand on the pier and say, I love you.

He doesn't quote the first half of John 3:16, for God so loved the world.

John 3:16

No, for God so loved the world that he gave.

That Jesus gave his life, that he got into the water and died on your behalf.

He gives himself for you.

And John says, if you've understood, if you've really understood that kind of love, there's only one appropriate response, and it's in verse 16.

And we, and we ought to, in the light of that, lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Think about it for a moment.

If a person's life is the most precious possession that they have, then to rob somebody of that life is to commit the greatest sin that you could ever commit against them.

But the flip side is also true.

That means if you were to give your life for somebody else's life, that would be the greatest expression of love that you could ever give.

And I want to say we have a savior who did that.

There is no other God that I'm aware of, there's no other religion that I've ever studied, no other ism that ever says God became a man and gave his life away to demonstrate in real life what love is.

That's our Lord.

But now maybe you're thinking, Justin, I don't think I'm ever going to be asked to literally give my life for another believer.

That's where verse 17 comes now and brings this kind of command that's up here, this extraordinary command.

Verse 17 comes and brings it into rubber hits road, real life.

Verse 16 gives us the definition of love.

He's a person, and verse 17 gives us the test of that love.

Here it comes, verse 17.

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him.

How does God's love abide in him?

So, yes, it's true.

Most of us will probably never be asked to die for another Christian.

But you know what?

Every single day we're asked to die to self.

Every single day we're asked to lay down something, to lay down our time, to lay down our money, to lay down our comfort, to lay down even our inconvenience, to lay down our schedule, to lay down our pride, our preferences.

So the question isn't merely, well, would you die for somebody in some kind of nebulous way out there?

We have to ask, what am I willing to lay down for a brother and sister?

It's easy to say, yes, I'm called to love the brothers and sisters.

Which brother, which sister?

What are you called to lay down for them?

Imagine going home after the service and saying to your spouse, honey, I heard this the sermon this morning, and I just want to say, I would die for you.

In fact, yeah, I've gone and I've found a Hallmark card that says, I'll die for you.

And here it is.

I don't know about your spouse, but I know what my spouse will say.

Oh, that's wonderful, Justin.

Now, can you take the rubbish outside, please?

Can you stop scrolling on your phone and actually listen to me?

Can you love me even when you're tired?

Can you give of yourself to me?

Can you see?

Your life isn't surrendered only once in some grand act of martyrdom.

It's surrendered every single day in everyday daily discipleship.

Because discipleship is following Jesus and that's what he did.

Love sees.

Love sees.

John says, if anyone sees his brother in need, love notices.

It stops long enough to notice.

One of the greatest enemies, I believe, of love isn't hatred, it's destruction.

BBC, we can be so self-absorbed in our stress and the work pressures and the traffic and our northern suburbs life that we forget to see people.

Jesus saw people.

He saw the crowds, he saw the lepers, he saw the widows, he saw Zacchaeus.

We could go on and on and on.

So ask yourself, as I ask myself, who have I stopped seeing?

Not because they're invisible, but because I've got so used to just walking past them that I'm no longer aware of them.

Love sees.

Love has the capacity to help.

John doesn't say they merely see the need.

What does he say?

He says, if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need.

In other words, they've got something with which they could help.

John is not heaping guilt on us and saying you've got to meet every single need of every single brother and sister in the world.

He's asking us, what happens when you have the capacity to help and you close your heart and you choose not to?

What does God put in your hands?

Your time, your home, your experience, your skills, your availability, your influence.

What specific need is God asking you to meet this morning?

Love sees, love has the means to help.

And love refuses to close its heart.

And this is where Chan gets very real in verse 17 and says, yet.

Yet closes his heart against him.

That is the heart of the issue.

So the question is not simply, did I give?

In some ways, it's easy to just throw money at the problem.

He's not asking, did you give?

He's asking, what was going on in your heart when you saw the need that your brother or sister had?

Did your heart move towards him or her, or did it go into a state of indifference?

I don't think most of us consciously decide to just stop loving people.

The doors of our heart just close in subtle ways.

We just say, I really don't have the time.

You know, when I look at the choices and life decisions this person has made, they've really brought it upon themselves.

You know, I'm sure somebody else will help.

I think maybe I've done enough in this situation.

Now I want to say, sometimes that is a wise and accurate assessment.

Sometimes what you've said is appropriate, but you know what?

Sometimes it's also the sound of your heart closing.

And we have to be real with ourselves.

Because John asks, how does God's love abide in him?

So he's not asking, did you solve every problem?

He said, What was going on in your heart?

Did your heart remain open to that need?

And those are different questions because an open heart doesn't mean an open wallet.

Sometimes love gives money, sometimes love doesn't.

Sometimes love gives wisdom, sometimes love gives wise counsel, sometimes love gives food, sometimes love even says, I will walk with you, but I will not enable your destructive choices.

So yes, love requires wisdom, of course it does.

But wisdom must never become an excuse for us closing our hearts.

Because verse 17 is ultimately asking, What has the gospel done to your heart?

What has it done in your heart?

So John has taken us another step deeper.

Murder says, I will kill you.

Hatred says, I wish you weren't here.

Indifference says, I don't care that you're here.

But Christian love says, I see you.

I care about you.

You are my brother or sister, and I'm willing to lay something down for your good.

And that's why our final verse brings John's argument to a conclusion.

Number four, love indeed and truth.

A love that says, I will give myself for you.

Here it is, verse 18, our final verse.

Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.

John doesn't want a love that exists only in our words, only in our good intentions.

He wants a love that can be seen.

Shallow love says, I'll pray for you without ever actually praying.

Shallow love says, I care about you without actually doing anything tangible to show it.

Shallow love says, Well, let me know if you need anything.

But if we're honest, we in our minds we're saying, Oh, I'm so busy at the moment, and the kids and I really actually hope they don't ask me for anything.

And what about our typical Joe Burg one?

Shallow love said, you know what?

We must really go for coffee.

We really need to go for coffee.

And then you never put it in the diary, never happens.

And John's saying, that's what verse 18 is about.

It's exposing performative love.

Love that just masquerades as life.

Love indeed does something, and love in truth is genuine.

So, brothers and sisters, the sermon this morning is not about coldly and clinically saying, as I leave here, I need to try harder, I need to try and muster up some extra love.

John is speaking to his little children, as a grandfather to his grandchildren, so to speak, and he's saying, I want to pursue your hearts.

Yes, ultimately I'm concerned about your behavior, but I want to know what's going on in your hearts.

Does what you say about love match what you do?

He's saying, Imagine people couldn't hear your words.

Imagine if you lost your voice and you can never speak again and nobody could hear the words, I love you, ever come out of your mouth again, ever hear the words, I'll pray for you, ever hear the words, I'll care for you.

What would they say about your love based on what it looks like?

Your calendar.

What does your bank statement say about your loves?

What does your hospitality say?

What does your willingness to be inconvenienced say?

Jesus didn't merely tell you he loved you, he saw you, he had the capacity to help, and he didn't close his heart against you.

He laid down his life for you, and the more his love fills your heart, the more your life resembles the family resemblance of a child of God, the more you are able to love with his kind of love.

So to return full circle to where we started, what is love?

John has told us love is a face, love has a name, and his name is Jesus.

And the more we know his love, the more we experience his love, the more his love will be seen in us and through us.

Won't you join me as we pray?

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the power of your word.

Lord, there's so many times in our lives where we're just going on our merry way, and your word comes and shows us things about our heart that we never would have seen otherwise.

Lord, your word is like that two-edged sword.

It's it comes and it pierces us in our heart and it divides things that we didn't think could be divided because Lord, our hearts are sometimes hard.

I thank you for overwhelming us again with a measure of your love that you laid down your life for us.

Lord, I pray that the reality and the sweetness and the joy of that love would so motivate us that, Lord, it wouldn't be something we have to conjure up and muster up, it would be something that we simply pass on because we are conduits of your grace.

Thank you for your love.

Thank you that you are the definition of love, that we have a God, we have a savior.

You didn't just say he loved us, but he demonstrated that in the most powerful way you lay down your life for the sheep, to call us sons and daughters of the living God.

Thank you that you've brought us out of death, out of darkness, into your marvelous light, and enable us, Lord, to be your children who resemble their loving Heavenly Father.

Because we pray this in your name, knowing that you have said, By this will all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.

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