Surprising Accusations
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James C.. Jones
Lead Minister
Taylorville Christian Church
Again and again, I find passages of Scripture that surprise me, even though I’ve been preaching and teaching from Scripture for more than 30 years. That happened this week when I was preparing a lesson on the first few verses of 1 John 3. One of the reasons that John wrote this letter was to help his readers feel confident that they were in a right relationship with God. John had apparently heard of a group of teachers that seemed to think they had some kind of special knowledge and special hoops to jump through if people wanted to know for sure that they could look forward to an eternity in the presence of God.
So, John outlined several forms of self-examination that his readers needed to go through to test where they were spiritually. In 1 John 3:14-15 we read these words:. “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.” (NIV)
When I read that this week, I was struck by the power behind John’s message. “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer.” I believe John intended his language to knock us off our perches a bit. We sometimes think we’re decent people. We think, “I haven’t done anything really bad. I haven’t committed the bad sins.” But then he told us that our hate makes us murderers.
John placed such a high value on each human being that he told us that even our feelings about other people matter. John knew that feelings lead to actions so he wanted us to guard against sinful actions. But I think John is also telling us that our feelings affect us; they affect the kind of person that we are becoming. Hate makes me into something internally ugly, something that I don’t want to be.
To state this in the positive, each human being is so valued by God that they deserve my love and compassion, and if I refuse to give those, I am devaluing that person. Of course, that’s easy to agree with, but it can be difficult to live out when we are truly wounded. But I feel like John has issued a warning: f I want to be the person that God wants me to be, I need to watch where I allow my feelings about other people to go.
