Last Sunday at Parkway Church Pastor Mike Hurt reminded us from the words found in (1 John) that “God’s love for us shapes all of our relationships:” (https://parkwaychurch.tv/sermon/relational-change) the section we dialed down on (1 John 4) concludes with these words in (v.20): “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”
Those words, as powerful and convicting as they are can lead the proud among us to ask the same question posed to Jesus by a lawyer in (Luke 10:29): “And who is my neighbor?” As if trying to find some way out of the prime directive of love found in both the Old and New Testaments (Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18 Luke 10:27): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself; ” we ask , “who is my brother and who is my neighbor – do I really have to love him or her like that?”
In so asking aren’t we really asking “is there anyone I don’t have to love?”
It’s an honest question and a believer might ask it but asking it may also indicate a far greater area of concern in the life of the person asking. Jeremiah wrote in (Jer. 17:9):
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”
Before we met Jesus, our hearts were incurably sick; our hearts were full of the wrong things. Jesus said that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” (Matthew 15:19, NKJV) In short, we didn’t and couldn’t love others or God because we loved ourselves too much. Think about it – why do we lie; for our sakes or for others? Why do we steal – to benefit others or ourselves?
The heart is tricky. It so cloaks its true intentions and condition that the one in whom it beats may not even know how wicked it really is – but God knows. He searches the hearts of men (Jeremiah 17:10; Romans 8:27) and while others are making distinctions based on appearances, God looks deeper (1 Samuel 16:7) – “He looks at the heart.”
Does what He perceives in our hearts repulse and repel God from us? No, Paul told us in (Romans 5:8) “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This was the mission of the Savior who said in (John 3:16):
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Far from shrinking back from, hating or condemning us, God, in His love made a way for all of us, since all of us suffer from this incurable heart condition, to be made well. The writer of (2 Samuel 14:14) made it clear that God, in His mercy, “…devises means, so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him.”
When a person believes in Jesus, he is born again (John 3:3) in this sense – God gives him or her “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezekiel 36:26). Because of that new life, he who once upon a time only loved himself can now love God and others because of the NEW condition of his heart.
When we consider the lengths that God went to in order to express His love toward us and what He had to both overlook and endure in terms of our sin to draw near enough to us so as to forgive us the penalty due for our sin by dying in our place and rising again victorious AND that nothing will EVER separate us from His love (see Romans 8:38-39); when we remember that He did THAT for US and believe it, we will then be able to also see and hopefully treat our fellow man with a similar kind of love.
Is there anyone you don’t have to love? The question might be better put like this – is there anyone you just can’t love? Mankind spit in Jesus’ face – He loved them anyway. Mankind beat Jesus to a pulp – He loved them anyway. Mankind hung Jesus on a cross and mocked Him there – He died for their sins anyway. If anyone had a reason to hate it was Jesus. If anyone had a reason to withhold grace and mercy it was Jesus. What stood between you and the Lord that in love He forgave you of even after you first believed? What now stands between you and those who are like you were “without Christ…having no hope and without God in the world?” (Ephesians 2:12)
May the Lord’s enduring love for you inspire you to love those around you for their sake and to His glory…without exception.
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