Feed His Sheep
In the 1960s, the Beetles released a song about how all the world really needed was love. That statement is true! God is love, and all the world needs is God, with himself as the perfect standard. He created the world, he sustains the world, and he has offered the world perfect guidance. The problem is that the Beetles, like most people with this nebulous concept of love, actually are opposed to love!
1 John 5 starts with a section of text discussing how love for others and love for God are all wrapped up in one another.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
1 John 5:1
The love of God means loving his family. Everyone who believes in Christ has a new life in him as children of God. Therefore, anyone who loves God loves those who have placed their faith in him as family. We may have disagreements. We may even find the other person’s personality abrasive. Siblings often do! However, we are to put the preferences of them before our own and love them as we love God.
The old “I love God, but I hate the church” statement is completely destroyed by this verse. You can hate certain false doctrines that have crept into the church. You can hate the organizational methods of a parachurch organization. However, you in no way can hate the church itself and still claim to love God. Those who are in Christ are family, and loving God means loving his children.
As many of the epistles make clear, we have a job to do in this life, and it is to build one another up into the fullness of Christ as a body of believers. To love God’s church means to seek the maturity of your fellow believers. Help them to become more like Christ.
Instructions for Love
While the first verse has already upset some people’s notion of love, the second will pretty much take care of the rest.
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.
1 John 5:2
When John talks about loving the church, he isn’t leaving us to wonder what that would look like. Love isn’t just having warm affections for someone else. It’s not being apathetic to their sin (as many today contend).
We’re properly loving one another when we’re loving God and obeying how he has commanded us to live. God’s commands aren’t capricious. He commanded us to live in a specific way because living that way will guide his people toward him and build them up into the image of Christ. A person who professes to love others but rejects God’s instructions as found in scripture may believe what they say. However, they are mistaken.
Not in the Way
It is common today to hear that all this “religion” of God’s commands gets in the way of loving people. Some even contend it prevents people from “properly” loving others. God corrects the record by stating the exact opposite, through John.
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
1 John 5:3-4
The world and it’s ways are the burden on our lives. We can throw off that burden by the love of God and commitment to his commandments. Sin weighs us down, and we find our freedom in dropping it by the roadside and following God, who has made our path straight.
Added Burdens
The good news is that if you’re loving God and his family, you’re already doing everything that needs doing. Just keep doing it, and do it more and more! Many will try to add additional burdens. They will say you’re not really loving others unless you financially support specific organizations or programs. You’re not loving enough unless you oppose the punishment of wrongdoing that God specifically commands. You’re hateful if you deny fellowship to those with whom God has commanded separation.
Don’t let them trap you again under a pile of man made commands, as the self-righteous of every age have done to people! It is enough to love God and keep his commands, because doing so is how we love our neighbor. This means being charitable with our resources, but not necessarily in any specific way. It means confronting wickedness and supporting punishment for wrongdoing, but also being forgiving and accepting anyone, no matter their past, when they repent. After all:
Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
1 John 5:5
