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Yellow-faced honeyeater
First Epistle of John 3: 16-24 (NIV)
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 if our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit he gave us.
John addressed the antipathty of the world towards the children of God in chapter 2. In 3: 13 he cautioned, “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.” Christian love, he then emphasised, is in sharp contrast against the self-serving ways of the world.
The love that Jesus Christ modelled is other-serving. To be so, it must be self-denying. “Christ laid down his life for us” (verse 16). Jesus’ refusal to allow equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, his willingness to make himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant (Philippians 2: 6, 7) is a constant reminder to us of what he requires of us as well.
John had previously described this in his gospel account of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. When Jesus had finished washing their feet, he asked them (13: 12), “Do you understand what I have done for you?” He explained it this way (verse 15), “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
In this letter, John was explicit (verse 18): “let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
This is difficult to sustain. John must have realised how difficult it is for he expanded on what it means to be in God’s presence with quietened hearts. If our hearts do not condemn us, well and good. We may then come before him with confidence, knowing that his Spirit is living in us. But what if our hearts do condemn us?
Could it be that our hearts are over-sensitive? Could it be that our hearts (or our consciences) are being subjected to a spiritual attack? Could it be that the Spirit whom God has given us is speaking into our lives through our hearts? Whatever the cause, the certainty is that God knows far more than we do. He knows us intimately. He knows whether we love him, whether we strive to cling to his truth and whether we long to be at rest in his presence. Those of us who “belong to the truth” (verse 19) are to be reassured that “he lives in us; we know it by the Spirit he gave us” (verse 24).