What is love? (1 John 3:16)

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church further exploring Sunday's teachings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey Hillcrest, uh Tim here, and we are diving deep into living scent. So um a question uh for you. How would you define the word love? Uh love is a you know it's a uh word that gets used all the time in our world today. And um interestingly, it's I think uh it's it's a central value of modern Western society. If you want to do a deep dive on why that is, uh Tom Holland book's uh Dominion uh traces the kind of historical lineage of why love is so central um in modern the modern West world and he traces it back ultimately um uh to the the advent of Christianity in the world, replacing other things like um honor and shame. Yeah, so but what is you know what is love? Uh one of the things I think that characterizes uh our society today is confusion about what love is. Um people talk about um kind of our culture as being one of individual expressivism. Uh, and basically that terminology just means that every person, the individual, kind of the meaning of life is found in expressing uh what's inside of them. Uh and that's kind of where like being true to yourself, like authenticity, kind of look within, discover who you really are by looking within, and then express whatever you find there. Um, and this is I think you know, essentially Disney has made billions of dollars on this, making all kinds of movies about this very theme. Uh and uh individual expressive, and there's all kinds, and we and you go into the the there's all kinds of um implicit ideas around that that don't get said out loud. I mean, um we really, you know, in kind of the wider culture, there's only certain things we want people to actually express. Like we don't want them to express, you know, their violent rage at their neighbor. Um, but that's a whole nother uh their whole other story. So it kind of what is love? An individual expressive, and if I love something, I feel this love inside of me, um, I should just express it, right? That's good and that's true. And um it's interesting the passage, uh one of the passages James took us to on Sunday says something very different uh than that. And it's uh from 1 John 3.16. Yeah, those John 3.16, those are good to those are good texts to know. This is 1 John 3.16. Um and we read, this is how we know what love is. This is how we know. If you we want to know what love is, this is how we know what it is. Um Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. Uh and um and so for uh John in this letter, 1 John, love is not first and foremost and inner kind of desire or impulse. Love is the sacrificial choice of God for the good of us, even while we had our backs turned to God. That is what love is. Love was the choice of God uh to suffer um even while we were God's enemies, that we could be forgiven and led back into the life of God. Um and so love uh in uh uh expressed in Jesus is very um it's not just a feeling, it's an action. It's not just an expression of of uh you know an impulse, but it's a it's a choice. It's not for Jesus' own advantage, but it's for the good of the other. Even you know, even us while we were still enemies with God. Um, this is what uh love is that Jesus Christ would lay down his life for us. Um if we want to know what a definition of love is, look at the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a picture of love. And then um John goes on and builds from there, uh, he says, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Uh and what John is it's you know, it's a very simple idea that um that after experiencing the love of God demonstrated in Jesus, and not just experiencing it one time, because the you know scripture talks about that to to to experience the love of God demonstrated in Jesus is not like a one-moment thing, it is meant to be an ongoing lived reality. And not that we, you know, not that we constantly live in this kind of state of emotional overwhelm. Um, I I hope there there are mountaintop moments for us. There may also be very dry seasons. Uh, but like an ongoing to to to to live in an ongoing knowledge and experience uh by the spirit of God's love for us as um lived out through uh Jesus. And that by living in that, then then we would then live that towards others. That's what he says, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. And then he goes on talking about material possessions and just he's like, hey, if your brother or sister, and not just um biological, but in the you know, in the Christian community, if your brother or sister, they don't have enough to eat, they don't have clothes, they don't have a place to stay, like uh you and you don't do anything about it, like you that's not love because that's not what Jesus demonstrated for us when he saw us in need, he moved towards us. And now there's all kinds of more, like we um there's more that can be said. Uh there's there's healthy, there's healthy um uh boundaries, and you know, uh and uh because the needs of the world are endless, um, and I've known people who drowned themselves in the needs of the world, and that's not where we're meant to go, and that's another uh that's another aspect of of Christian spirituality as well. Jesus said no, um, you know, when when uh Peter comes and says, Everyone's looking for you. Jesus says, Well, that's not what I'm supposed to do today. I'm supposed to go to these other villages. And so there has to be a knowledge of what we're called to in any given uh point in time. And yet the point remains, um, love, we know what love is uh not by just looking within, but by looking into the face of Jesus. Let me say that again. We know what love is, not by simply looking within, but by looking at the life and death of Jesus. That is how we know what love is. And I would say true life and freedom is found not in um kind of an ongoing introspective, what are all my impulses that I need to express in the world? Um, but rather uh walking uh in the love of God. Now, the when we walk in the love of God, I actually think he will bring out the beautiful uh colorings of how he's uh made you. Um, but what he'll also do is help free you from the sinful impulses that might, well, not might do uh lurk in the the corners of all our hearts. Um and so this is where we look to love. So uh may we know not just the definition of love, um, but may we know who love is. May we know the name of love, uh, may we know him personally, and may we walk with him all the days of our life. Grace and peace.