Murder, Love, and the Church

We are going to start and end today’s message in 1 John
The book of 1st John begins by proclaiming that Christ is the Word of God, in Him we have fellowship with God and eternal life. It talks about how God is light, and as Christians we must walk in the Light. When we walk in the light, we have fellowship with God, but we also have fellowship with each other. First John talks about how we are all sinners, and we must confess our sins and truly repent of them by not practicing or continuing in them. The first chapter explains how Christians are supposed to live. It teaches that our behavior changes when we are born again. If our behavior does NOT change, it means something is wrong. We might think we are walking in God’s light, but we may never have truly repented of our sins like we thought we did.
We are not saved by our righteousness, but our salvation – and the process of sanctification that begins with our salvation –  change our behaviors. When we come to know God, we follow his commands. Whoever claims to live in God must live as Jesus did. Jesus must be our model. He must guide us, and so we need to base our conduct on that. People wear WWJD bracelets to remind them of the question: What Would Jesus Do? It’s impossible for sinners to be exactly like Christ, because he was perfect. But he can be a model. We can’t do everything that Jesus did. But we can ask ourselves. How does this thing I am going to do glorify God? If you can’t answer that, then it’s probably better not to do what you were considering. So we must live as Jesus did. That’s what it means to walk in the Light. It means to love Him and follow His commands. Then 1st John talks about one command in particular. A command that’s as old as time, but is also a new command. We need to love each other as Jesus loved us. This is where 1 John 2:9-11 begins:

9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. 10 Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

The command that’s both old and new at the same time is this. We must love each other. Jesus said we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The wording here in 1 john is a adelphos, or a brotherly love (just like the name of the city Philadelphia – Phil (brotherly) and adelphos (or the family love). The text in the NIV translation has footnotes clarifying this word after every mention of “brother and sister.” So the understanding in 1 John 2:9-11 is we are talking about a fellow believer. A brother or sister in Christ. Another adopted son or daughter of God the Father. So the command is this. We need to love each other. Now we also need to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but what we read in 1st John doesn’t have to do with that right now. It’s talking about the people in the church. The people with whom we pray together, and worship together. We cannot hate each other. If we hate, then we are still in the darkness, and the “salvation” that we THINK we have isn’t true. A true salvation will always remove hate and foster love.
Now I know some of you might be thinking. I don’t hate anyone in my church. Hate is such a strong word, and it DOES mean something serious. I wouldn’t expect anybody here to actually feel a hatred for anyone else here. If you do, this verse is telling you that your salvation might not be genuine, and you are still in darkness. But for most of us, we don’t have feelings like hate for each other. However we should test ourselves to make sure we don’t have anything negative at all against each other. Our minds have a way of overlooking or minimizing our own sins. As sinful humans, we are really good at trying to justify ourselves. But ANY negative feelings we have for each other can become toxic and can destroy the fellowship that God has for us in our church. Hate is strong, but it’s not far away from contempt or even anger. Jesus spoke of this same thing in his sermon on the mount – Matthew 5:21-22

21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister* will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell

Jesus showed them the Law of Moses, the 6th commandment saying you shall not murder. But he expanded the understanding of the law to include a whole bunch of things besides the act of murder. Any anger we have. Anyone who speaks of someone else with hate or contempt. Any time we call each other fool. These are all severe sins, and can be subject to judgement. Even though I’ve never murdered anyone, I am guilty of murder from the hate I’ve felt and the contempt and anger I have held towards others.
So what Jesus does is he expands the law of Moses to include not just our deeds, but also our thoughts and words. This is important to understand. Sin is not just deeds, but also thoughts and words. Our words can cause pain and hurt. Name calling, insults, gossip. These things are very dangerous. Recently there have been stories in the news about bullying, and with our modern technology, these words can travel fast. Sometimes the victims of bullying go as far as to take their own lives, because they believe they can no longer take the pain. My heart goes out to teenagers in particular because it tends to happen to them frequently. But it’s not just teens. Adults can be victimized just as badly too. There was a video that circulated on the internet recently of an older woman who was a bus monitor and she was getting taunted by a bunch of the kids on the bus. I remember watching the first 30 seconds and couldn’t bear to see any more of it. But it was a LONG video it kept going minutes. When interviewed about it later, the lady who was getting teased actually defended the kids. She said they were mostly good kids individually, but sometimes when they are together in a group, they behaved worse. She was emotionally a very strong woman and had such forgiveness in her heart. But teasing people causes serious pain.
Spreading Gossip can be just as bad as insulting and teasing. There’s an old rabbinical story about a man who was gossiping about his rabbi. He went to the rabbi to confess the sin and ask for forgiveness. The rabbi says to the man he would be forgiven. All he had to do for the forgiveness was two things. First the man was to take a feather pillow to the top of a windy hill and release all the feathers. The man happily did the first step and returned to the rabbi to see what the next thing was that he had to do. The rabbi said the second thing was to go and retrieve every one of the feathers from the pillow. The rabbi explained that each feather represents somebody who heard the gossip and formed an opinion of the gossip victim. The point of that story is our words travel fast and far, and we can never truly take them back. We don’t know where they will end up. These days, with the internet, these words can travel at light speed and can be seen by hundreds of friends and thousands of friends’ friends instantaneously.
That’s the power of words. But Jesus also talks about the feelings we have inside that never leave our bodies. Even if we have anger towards our brothers and sisters, this is also in the same category as murder. Jesus lumps these things together with murder, and condemns them. By doing this, God tells us he condemns the act of murder, but also condemns the heart’s causes of murder, which include envy, hatred, anger, and vindictiveness. When we have these things, it obviously gets in the way of our fellowship with each other. However it also gets in the way of our fellowship with God. And this is what Jesus says in the next verse Matthew 5:23-24

23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

Jesus tells us if we are offering a gift at the altar, and we have something against a brother or sister, we must be reconciled first. Wait, that’s true, but he actually said something different. He said if a brother or sister has something against us. That’s even harder. Even if we have nothing against someone, but we know they have something against us, we have to make the effort to reconcile. No matter who’s fault it is, or who’s angry. The Christian is the one whose job it is to make amends. Then we return to the altar later to worship or give an offering with a clean heart. It’s very significant the order that Jesus tells us here. We can think that being OK with God is the most important thing. We say “Yeah, I am angry at this person, but let me go to church first and see what happens.” But Jesus says before we approach God, we should make every effort to make things right with each other. We are called to be peacemakers, and the ONLY reason we can be peacemakers is because God made peace with us first. SO, we aren’t called to use activities at church as an excuse not to try and make peace with each other. Our relationships with each other are important to God and they are important to our relationship to God.
Now we’ve discussed how important our relationships are, let’s go back briefly. Why do we have these feelings of anger towards each other in the first place? How is it that we can be murderers, in a place like the church? Especially towards another brother or sister in Christ? 1 John 3:11-16

11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters,* if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. 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.

This passage alludes to a story in Genesis 4. It’s the first murder in history, and sadly, it can be seen as a martyrdom. This murder was motivated by how one person was envious towards another person’s relationship with God. Cain worked in the fields, growing plants and crops. He gave some of the fruits of the soil as an offering. Abel was a shepherd, keeping flocks. Abel’s offering was the choicest fatty portions of meat from the firstborn of the flock. God looked favorably at Abel’s offering, but Cain’s offering was unfavorable to God. Abel loved God and gave him the best pieces of the firstborn of the flock. Cain gave some fruits of the soil. Not the first fruits. Maybe the offerings were different, but the offering itself was just an indicator of the real important thing, which was the place that God had in the heart of both Cain and Abel. God warned Cain, “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you. But you must rule over it.” Cain never heeded God’s warning. 1st John 3:12 says that the resulting murder happened because Abel’s actions were righteous, but Cain’s were not. Verse 13 warns those of us who are close to God, and hunger for righteousness that the world may hate us for that very reason. If we are righteous, there can be a bunch of “Cains” out there who hate us. Why? Just because we are filled with worship and love. Because we are righteous by Christ’s blood. It’s a scary thing to think about. We like to think that in Church we are all like Abels. Walking around with great offerings and a good heart, doing the right thing. But because of sin, we can be more like Cain than we want to admit. And this is especially true if we see someone who has a GREAT relationship with God. It may not result in murder, but it can easily result in hurtful words, or negative emotions. When we see somebody whose heart is on fire for God, sometimes it leads us to feel a envious or angry emotion. We can feel like we’re missing out on something. As an example: Church X just put on a show or a presentation that led to the gospel being preached to 300 people. Now we should say “praise God” but sometimes we say, “yeah, we want to do something like that, but even bigger and we want to reach 1000 people.” It’s our natural ambition. Another example. Maybe some person has a desire in their heart to run a fundraiser and they raise $150. Instead of being happy, we are unimpressed. We respond “meh..” Why do we feel that way? We are JEALOUS that God is working in somebody’s heart. Instead of feeling animosity, or trying to one up that person, we should thank God for their heart. It’s easy to talk down someone else’s accomplishments, especially when they are modest. But we need to remember that ANY accomplishment, ANY offering is literally a miracle. There was a heart that was made of stone. There was an enemy of God. There was a person who was dead. And Now, that heart that was stone is made of flesh. That enemy of God is an adopted son or daughter. That dead person is ALIVE. It’s hard to remember sometimes that we are on the SAME TEAM. Personally, it took me many years to really get this. We are part of the same Family. We are here to build each other up. We are here to Love each other. Anything short of love is not enough. We obviously can’t hate each other; we can’t feel angry or jealous. But we shouldn’t even be neutral or indifferent. We need to LOVE. How do we know what love is? Verse 16. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. That’s love. And we ought to lay down our lives for each other. Instead of competing for the best offering, or the biggest display of affection towards God, like Cain did , we can cooperate with each other and build each other up, and in doing so, we build up the church. We become less like Cain and more like Christ. Jesus tells us that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. To be honest, there’s plenty of work to go around. So why are we competing with other workers, when we can collaborate and cooperate? And the way we cooperate with each other, or how we do this, it is not grudgingly, but SACRIFICIALLY. The way Jesus laid down his life for us, that’s the way we lay down our lives for each other.
I am not pointing fingers, or in any way saying that anybody in particular is like Cain. I don’t want to accuse anybody of hating each other, and I don’t think this is something that we struggle with on the surface. Praise God for that. Sometimes the Word of God changes behaviors but other times it serves as a warning to be on guard against little sinful emotions that can creep inside our hearts. We don’t want to allow for ourselves to be the victims of the flesh or sinful nature especially when the Bible gives us a clear warning. If this is something you do struggle with, we can confess our sins to one another at church and to God, and God is quick to forgive and restore our fellowship with each other. And when the Bible tells us to take something off, like anger or envy, it tells us to put something else on. Even if we don’t struggle with hate, or anger or envy, we can always pray to God to make our love for the church family increase all the more.