Bible Study Notes - Love Within the Community 1 John 2:7-17 Part II

Love Within the Community – 1 John 2:7-17 Part II

The Necessity of Wholeheartedly Loving God

John reminds his fellow believers this command is not new.  Often, he reiterates this teaching in his gospel and elsewhere.  Perhaps, he repeatedly tells them about the foot washing episode during “The Last Supper” to demonstrate Christ’s love as a servant to His disciples and humankind. 

Throughout his writings, John maintains a duality between light and darkness, love and hate and life and death.  Often, we think we live in the first halves of these couplets if we are financially prosperous, physically well, morally correct and ethically righteous.  We reason we live in the second halves when we experience moral lapses and the consequences of personal sin.  However, the great apostle of love exhorts us to consider we live in darkness, hatred and death when we fail to love our brothers and sisters.  Fundamentally, obedience to the law of love is a requirement to living in the light. 

“God is love.”  That verse is one of the clearest statements of the character and nature of Almighty God.  Love is the primary means by which God draws humankind to Him.  Therefore, it is inconceivable a person can affirmatively claim to know God and possess the love of God if he hates anyone.  Additionally, he shows he no longer dwells in the darkness of self-centered fear and self-seeking motives by forsaking his personal desires and interests by selflessly loving others.  Living in the light emerges as one proactively demonstrates love.  It is not a matter of resisting emotions of anger, resentment, bitterness and hatred.  The love of which John speaks is not a feeling.  Rather, it is a commitment to a way of life.  Living in the light in this passage equates with “abiding” in the “True Vine,” the Lord Himself.  In the gospel, John records Jesus’ exhortation to His disciples about the necessity of dwelling with Him in heart, mind, soul and strength as they adhere faithfully and lovingly to His commands.  This is not burdensome for anyone who commits wholeheartedly.

John concludes today’s passage with a warning to resist any temptation to love the world and anything it offers.  The wizards of Madison Avenue, the lobbyists of Avenue K, the moguls of Hollywood, and the tycoons of multimedia, all, lure believers back into the world with their colorful depictions and artistic imagination.  Slick and glossy advertisements tempt you to believe happiness is found in clothing, perfume, shoes and other material possessions.  Political lobbyists in Washington DC manufacture impressions of power as the only means of security.  Daily, shiny images of movie and entertainment celebrities through whom many people live vicariously bombard us.  Beneath the surface of these glitzy façades is the hopelessness in which many of these people live.  They actually desire the stability of average loving and spiritually committed people.  Still, countless disciples split their hearts by continuing to pursue these temporal things to the detriment of loving their brothers and sisters as they share the Lord’s blessings with them.

Forcefully, John extends his use of duality to affirm the spiritual principle that love of God cannot dwell simultaneously in the heart of someone who loves the world.  He additionally submits unequivocally love of the world does not come from the Father.  It contradicts the love of God which seeks healing and wholeness of each child of God.  Remarkably, John considers the love of the world and its pursuit of selfish and material aims as hatred of one’s brother.  He undercuts the prevailing notion that one loves everyone if one has a warm fuzzy feeling in one’s heart.

The Necessity of Wholeheartedly Loving Your Brother

The evangelist parallels love and hatred with light and darkness.  As God is love, we walk in the light of His love as we demonstrate it freely and unconditionally to our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Conversely, should we choose to hate people, we stumble in darkness of anger, bitterness and vengeance.  John draws this contrast to eliminate the false notion of “Lone Ranger” Christians who strengthen their personal relationships with the Lord while ignoring and despising other people.  He alludes to the physical fact that light and darkness can occupy the same space simultaneously.  Likewise, a human heart filled with hatred for other children of God cannot channel the pure love of God.  Christ’s agape cannot co-exist with human hatred.

It is necessary to distinguish between loving and liking someone.  Whereas the Lord commands us to love everybody, it does not stand to reason that we will like everyone.  Particularly, in the Church, people say and do things that are not the least bit likeable.  As a consequence, we tend to avoid such people.  Assuredly, we do not socialize with them.  However, we ask the Holy Spirit to assist us in preventing our dislike from materializing into hatred.  This transition occurs more frequently than we may imagine.  A daily reminder of the biblical command to love everyone serves as an effective antidote to this disease. 

How do love people who do really unlovable and unlikable things?  Even in the Church, there are people who cannot tell the truth if it were seared indelibly upon their tongues.  Incredulously, many lifelong church goers lack integrity and courage to stand for righteousness in the midst of unjust, unfair, unprincipled and unsubstantiated accusations.  What about an abundance of “two-faced” people in the Church who grovel to be liked to the point of relinquishing all personal confidence and self-respect?  Though I could continue with countless examples, it suffices to simply ask how one sincerely obeys God by loving these difficult people.

A significant part of loving people, generally, and tough personalities, specifically, is forgiving their incapacities.  No one is perfect.  If we look for perfect people to love, we look in vain.  God loves us as we are with the perfect intention of transforming us with His love into the character of Christ.  As He demonstrates His love by overlooking our limitations, He models for us the way to love complex people whose words and deeds often contradict each other.  In sum, God in the gift of the sacrificial love of Christ shows us how to love wholeheartedly our brothers and sisters as we love Him.

Bible Study Notes - Love Withn the Community - 1 John 2:7-17

Love Within the Community – 1 John 2:7-17

The “Culture of Narcissism”

The late Professor Christopher Lasch, a prominent social critic at the time of his death, wrote a lasting book by the title of this section. In The Culture of Narcissism, Lasch excoriated the American media for glamorizing selfishness and hedonism.  He cautioned the public for turning inward excessively and ignoring the needs of others.  At the time of publication, the book was a response to glorified narcissism on many college and university campuses in which few students aspired to graduate school or professions of service.  Many wanted to pursue legal, business and medical careers with the aspirations of making lots of money and buying many material things.  The prevalence of this thinking erodes volunteerism and community service. Its most unfortunate outcome was the fanciful idea positing the poor are responsible for their poverty.  Their failure to apply themselves and work hard yields their destitute lot in life.  Allowing the truth of that proposition for a percentage of the poor, it nevertheless ignores the predominant systemic causes of impoverishment for many citizens.  Lasch’s polemic warns about an approaching America that celebrates a self-centered approach to life that permits indifference to the pain and suffering of other people.  More disturbing than Lasch’s clarion call for reform is the reality that this thinking infiltrates the Church.  Many believers spiritualize “the American dream” and biblically sanction “rugged individualism.” 

Jesus establishes a new law of love which calls disciples to a standard of caring for the poor and others that surpasses black letter law.  In John 13:32-35, the Lord says the world will know we are His disciples by the love we show to each other.  Love for people to whom we are not related biologically is a distinction for the family of God.  It does not matter what a person’s legacy, pedigree or genealogy are.  We love him because he is a child of God and for no other reason.  We love because the Lord first loved us.  We love in gratitude for the love we receive.  We love without expecting anything in return.  We love without wanting to receive recognition for our deeds, words and sharing.  We love, finally, in obedience to the command of our Lord.  Today’s lesson affords us an opportunity to assess how well we are obeying the Lord’s command to love.  Assuredly, the Lord is not directing us to love with words only.  We demonstrate our love by sharing the resources of our time, talent, tithe and temperament.  In essence, rhetoric and reality must fit like a hand in a tailored glove.

Nonetheless, the question remains whether the Church practically and commendably follows this command of the Lord.  Does the larger society look at the Church, worldwide or local, and marvel at our selfless sharing of our resources to the honor and glory of Christ?  Are we the first ones to respond to natural disasters with food, clothing, shelter, and programs for long term recovery and restoration?  Do we sit idly by and wait for the governments of the world to handle the needs of God’s children?  As a member of your local church, do you feel the unconditional love of Christ from your fellow brothers and sisters?  Can someone reliably characterize your church as a place of love for all persons who enter?

Biblical Background

The gospel and epistles of John emerge within the “Beloved Community.”  This gathering of disciples, as biblical tradition holds, centered on the Apostle John, the youngest of the original eleven apostles and the Beloved Disciple.  Geographically, they were located in the region that included the city of Ephesus.  However, it is not thought that they comprised the church at Ephesus to whom the Apostle Paul writes the New Testament canonical letter.  A vibrant metropolitan area at the time with major commerce, diverse people because of the trade routes and plurality of religion, philosophy and ideology not to mention myriad cultural customs, this region presented a formidable challenge to the believers there.  How would they handle the inherent clashes between Christ and culture?  How would they follow the dictates to love unconditionally and selflessly given the predominant selfishness of the surrounding society?

These are not rhetorical questions.  They were major challenges for members of the Beloved Community some of whom struggled with fidelity to the teachings of Christ.  The Apostle John writes the epistle from which today’s text comes to clarify this issue for young disciples of Christ who benefit from John’s direct experience with the Lord.  Regrettably, he addresses the occurrence of persons who left the Beloved Community because they did not subscribe wholeheartedly to Christ’s commands to love.  He says they leave because in their hearts they did not really belong.  Their first century dilemma mirrors a pressing challenge for the contemporary American church.