The Resurrected Life, Part Three...

Sermon of 1 John 3:16-24 

The Resurrected Life, this series we are on through the Easter season, has brought us from 1 John 1 with our look at communion with God. Fellowship. The life of the Christian being one of connection and growth in this 2 becoming 1 flesh relationship. Becoming lost in the embrace of God’s mercy found in a body broken and blood shed for you. Immersed in his death for the sake of your life.

In the beginning of 1 John 3 from last week, we saw this description of the Christian as one who has been declared a child of God. That is a cliché we throw around without thinking about it, but if God has birthed us, a rebirth in Jesus, we have become his children. Born from above. A common Father. Common children. Made Sons. Sons of God. Meaning that regardless of your gender, God looks at you and sees his Son, i.e. – Jesus. So that our sin becomes his, the sins of others we hold in common laid on Jesus, and his beauty, his goodness, his righteousness becomes ours. The Happy Exchange is what Luther called it. This is part of where it comes from. Our sin, his goodness.

Now, as we continue on in chapter three of 1 John, we get taken on this trip through all the passages that talk about love. We like them, but they are dangerous.

1 John 3:16 – This is how we have come to know love – Jesus

• He laid down his life for us – Think the 3:16 code (If you don’t know John 3:16, look it up!)
• The picture of love – a crucified Lord; voluntarily laying one’s life down, Sounds good right? But no. How American is this.
• Think the selfie generation, marked advertising that comes to us online, how our media is socialized to allow us to continue to be awesome. ME. ME. ME.

 
But then we hear…We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. In other words…DIE. Die to ourselves so that all the things we hold dear become worthless in comparison to our love for our brothers and sisters. Die so that we might be raised again in Christ. Raised in his love to love those bought by his blood. Love no being the emblem of romance or friendship but sacrifice. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “When God calls a man he bids him come and die.” This is the place where the cross and tomb become the life of the disciple. Where Easter comes into focus. Cross and tomb becomes normative.

• I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives within me – Galatians 2:20
• Brothers and sisters – Notice that he is speaking not of those outside the church, but those inside the church. As though it is hard for people in the church to be loving.
• Comforting knowing that the church has had a hard time loving itself since the dawn of the church.

 
1 John 3:17 – If anyone has the world’s life; life-force; goods; things that make up life. Notice:

• Not our goods, but the world’s goods - Things pertaining to our life here; daily bread – Things that a dead person doesn’t need anymore. If we die, all the things the world says we need, that the world says are important become rubbish in comparison to Christ and his Body, the church.
• Minimalism – Joshua Fields Millburn, 27, office executive, 7pm voicemail message telling him his mom has stage 4 lung cancer, but he found being in a meeting to be more important. In the same month his mother died, his marriage ended. Where stuff becomes greater than people. Where loving others becomes less a part of our loves.
• Loving those close to us – hardest because they can hurt the most.

 
Why loving is so hard is that we don’t see our Jesus as crucified and raised. We need to see love as something other than friendship or romance. It’s why Luther tells us that the baptismal call of the Christian is one of daily death and resurrection. Daily drowning and being revived in Jesus. The more we die. The more the Gospel does it’s work, the Word speaking into our lives.

• Chad Bird Article – spheres of love, circles of compassion – The idea that it is hard for me to love Syrian refugees because they are well outside my sphere of influence; church can be harder, full of people outside our circles.

 
1 John 3:18 – love not in word or speech but in action and in truth
1.       Not just say it, or talk about it. Do it.
2.       Action? Christ, kill me. Let me die.
3.       Love tied to the Truth – go back to 1 John 3:16; giving up of one’s life, can we do that?
 
1 John 3:19-20 – God is stronger than our hearts and knows all things

• This is where the Good news begins, because we might miss someone, someone we are supposed to love and don’t.
• But, when we fail, and we will, God still stands; Christ still died for you even when I can’t.
• All our love being tied to the cross. To Jesus. When we fail, he succeeds. When we find it hard, he steps in. When we think, I don’t think I can die again, God’s word comes to us, his table speaks to us, showcasing to us this dying Savior to become our strength of heart. Knowing of what it is God has done for us that we might do the same.

 
1 John 3:21 – Our confidence before God is tied to what He has done. Confidence being trust and certainty. Certainty not of some special doctrine as much as we know that our love is incomplete. That his love is perfect. And so when we fail, we can turn in confidence to him to ask, Lord help me. Grant me a crucified heart. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

• Shield 616 and loving our brother Robert for what he does to lay down his life for us a police officer
• The call of God on the hearts of his people as evidenced by those whom we have discerned as being called to visitation ministry. Those called to love us, loving one another and teaching us to do the same.

 
1 John 3:23-24 – Now, be careful with this word, command. Don’t make it something else than what John turns it into – Trust in the name of Jesus and love one another. Trust that what Christ has done is sufficient for you. That the worlds goods are useless, and that our destiny as Christians is death in Christ only to be raised to newness. Trusting that as we make our way to this place, begging God to open our ears, our eyes, our hearts, God will do his work in us. For the Spirit is in you both to will and to do according to his good pleasure.

• Jeremiah 31:31-34 – Write your law on our hearts Lord. Help us all to know you so that others may too.
• Ezekiel 11:16-20 – Remove our stony hearts and give us hearts of flesh that beat for you and your people.

TW​