How do We Love?
Text: 1 John 2: 23-29
Proposition: To abide as Jesus described it is has the same dependence and essential connection that Jesus has with the Father, producing the same love.
Introduction: Israel isa land of dramatic and differing landscapes that are referred to in the various metaphors Jesus used to teach the people. He compared people to being like sheep who needed a shepherd. He compared people to being like grape vines that were either fruitful or needing to be pruned. Sheep…grapes, both require great patience, both are fragile and both need someone to tend them. The word that describes how both sheep and grapes thrive is ‘abide’. In the passage we’ll look at today that’s the term that shows up again and again. So let’s do a brief recap.
Last week we asked the question, ‘Who do you love?’ It was really a question of whether we loved the person of Christ for Who He is and what He has done or whether we love anything else in a way that replaces Christ. The view that replaces Jesus with anything or anyone is what is called an antichrist worldview. Those are the only two choices, the love of Jesus directed by the presence of the Holy Spirit or the love of the world directed by an antichrist value and belief which leads one day to the revealing of The Antichrist, Satan’s ultimate counterfeit Christ. So we ended that sermon with the next question. If you love Jesus, how can that love be cultivated, tended, what will enable it to be as fruitful as it was designed to be? It prompts the question, ‘How do we love?’ Have a look at 1 John 2:23-29.
I. It’s a Basic Principle, If You Want to Live, Abide.
So many times Jesus used the obvious, that which is basic to both common sense and common practice. If you loose a coin you’ll look for it, not all soils are good for growing, if a branch is severed from a plant it will dry up and die. They were basic obvious truths that Jesus then used to teach about the truth of spiritual reality. In John 15 Jesus used the illustration of grape vines in a vineyard and the vine dresser who prunes them…“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” We were in Kelowna just a couple of weeks ago visiting my brother and as we drove around the hillsides there was vineyard after vineyard. On steep slopes where nothing had been grown before were now exotic rows of budding vines. It takes from 3 to 4 years to plant and bring a vineyard to production? The soil has be right, a trellis designed for it to climb on, it needs good drainage, the right exposure to sun and most importantly a vinedresser. So much of what the vinedresser does is counter intuitive. In other words it doesn’t seem right to the casual observer. Just as the main shoots are growing up in the first year the vinedresser cuts back all but the best and the best he then cuts off. It will be the stub branch that the desired shoots will come out of. There are no rambling grape plants in a vineyard. Each has been held, lifted from the dirt, sucker vines clipped off, the whole passion of the vinedresser is in his building their ability to bear fruit. So this term abide is first used as a basic principle but it also describes the cause of life in all the vines that will source from the stub vine. When Jesus spoke about Himself being the vine, the main vine, it was His being cut off that enabled the many branches to begin to find their source in Him. So what does this term ‘abide’ entail, what does it call for because whatever the answer to that question is, that’s the answer to ‘How do we love?’ That really was the intent in John 15, “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” If you will love, then you will live. But it is not the love of the world that makes you live, it is having the love of the Father in us. Abide, it’s a basic principle but it is also the key to how you love and it’s the key to how you are to live.
II. Abide, It’s a Reciprocal Action.
Let’s go back to 1st John 2, pick it up in verse 24, “Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.” Do you see the reciprocal action, something is meant to abide in you and in return you will abide in the Son and the Father. There is your part and then there is God’s part. Your part is to let that abide in you which you have heard from the beginning. It’s a reference to the inspired words of Scripture, particularly the writings of the Apostles in the New Testament. We know that because of the first word, ‘therefore’. It points to the previous verse, “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” Jesus is the image of the invisible God, everything He said was directed to Him by the Father. If you have seen Him you have seen the Father. He and the Father were together before the creation of the world, the glory of the Father is the glory of Son. You cannot say there are many paths to God, that we all believe in the same God but with different names. The acid test will always be ‘Does your God acknowledge the reality of Jesus as being equal to and one with the Father?’ If you acknowledge the Son then you have to acknowledge what the Son taught, “…No one comes to the Father except by Me.” The word ‘therefore’ points to this truth of Who Jesus is. If you let the Word abide in you, not just knowing the content but believing it as truth, then you will be in Jesus and through Him in the Father. This is more than just liked or loved by the Father, it’s more than being favored or approved or accepted. It’s being as inseparably linked to the Father as Jesus is inseparably linked to the Father. It’s reciprocal, as you let the Word abide in you, you in turn are made to abide in the Father and the Son. The basic principle was seen in the branch that sprouted out of the vine. The very essence of what the vine was is now flowing in and through the branch. All that it is and has is from the vine. The life of the vine is now the life of the branch. That’s the reciprocal action of what abide means.
III. Abide, It’s a Command.
The command part of abide is seen in 1 John 2:27, “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.”The anointing we already know is the indwelling presence of the person of the Holy Spirit. He abides in us, teaching and revealing the thoughts of the Son and the Father to us. John has already told us that he wrote these things so we would know that the promise of eternal life is the fruit of abiding in Christ. He wrote so that we would not be weak and susceptible to the attacks of deception against that truth. What the Spirit does is teach us the truth and that truth has the command to abide locked into it’s DNA. Just as the branch needs to depend on the vine to live so we too need to depend on Christ. Just as the branches need to continue in the vine, to persevere in it, so too does the Spirit teach, even command, the perseverance of the Saints. The Spirit enables that perseverance but it is also a willful action on our part… persevere, depend, abide. It’s a Proverbs 3:5,6 lifestyle. Check out verse 28, 29 “And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.” The inference is that it is possible to be a Christian and to be ashamed before Christ at His coming principally because I would not abide in Him. The reason I would not abide in Him is because I fell in love with other things. I antichristed! I took an instead of Jesus approach to life. Abide, it’s the only means to experiential righteousness meaning I stand righteous in the blood of Christ establishing forgiveness of my sin but in terms of my sanctification I’m ashamed of my disobedience.
To be born of Jesus is to practice righteousness, we don’t often think of practicing righteousness, it either is or isn’t. In terms of salvation that’s absolutely true but in terms of sanctification it is a practice. That practice rests on your willingness to abide. Let the Word abide in you, let the Holy Spirit who abides in you teach you, know that you abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in the Father meaning you too now abide in the Father. Know that as the branches do not struggle to produce grapes, they do it as the natural action of the life of the vine in them so we too do bear fruit naturally. Know that the vinedresser will cull off that which ruins your life from being fruitful. Know that it has been years for Him to bring you to fruitfulness, teaching you to abide. The soil is of His choosing, the light as He desired it, the trellis or church as He designed it, the Vine is the One He loved and cut off for you and I. How do we love? Learn the command to abide, practice it, rest in it, depend on it, persevere in it, see the principle of it, know the truth of it. Then the love of the Vine flows through the branches and their love glorifies the Vinedresser.