On Sunday mornings we are focusing on the fundamentals of life-renovation. We’re exploring God’s vision for four areas of life: our character, our relationship with God, our relationships with others, and our approach towards money. In each area, we are considering what it would mean to renovate—to remove the old and replace it with the new.
One of my goals in this series is to give you a reference point to guide you in each area. Where should you be headed with your character, your spirituality, your community, and your money? Too often, we have no specific vision for these parts of our lives. We have no fixed reference point that we are intentionally walking toward. And as a result, we sometimes just move aimlessly in each area.
The following video illustrates how easy it is to go in circles when we have no fixed reference point to guide our movement. The video is based on studies which show what happens when you ask a person to move in a straight line but you also blindfold them so they cannot see where they are headed.
This video reveals that without some point to guide us we wander aimlessly in circles. The same is true when it comes to the four areas we are exploring on Sunday mornings. Without the right fixed point to guide us, our character, our faith, our relationships, and our stewardship get turned around and we end up in places we never imagined we would be. What we need is a fixed point to keep us on course.
God’s vision for character, faith, relationships, and money provide a fixed point that keeps us walking straight. So far, we’ve viewed God’s reference point for character as it’s revealed in 5 passages that paint a portrait of character contrasts. We’ve also viewed God’s reference point for our relationship with him as it’s revealed in John 3:16.
This morning, we consider our relationships with others. If there is one area in which we tend to get off track, it is in our relationships. That’s why I’m so glad we’re launching Ed Gray’s Marriage Mentoring for this year. Our marriages need help staying on the straight and narrow. Dr. Gray’s ministry can help them do just that. I hope many of you will sign up today as a mentor couple or a mentee couple.
But marriage isn’t the only tricky relationship is it? I can’t remember a time in my life when all of my major relationships were all on course. If things between me and Kendra are straight, inevitably I’ll say the wrong thing to my daughter Jordan or my son Jacob and that relationship starts twisting in circles. Or if I’ve got a straight record as a husband and parent at home, inevitably I’ll forget a friend’s birthday and twist that relationship up. It’s difficult to not be going in circles in at least one of our many relationships.
This morning I want to focus on our relationship in general. Sometimes we get so caught up in details that we lose sight of the big picture. There are detailed principles that would help us in our marriages. There are other detailed principles that would help us in our friendships. There are other detailed principles that would benefit our work relationships. But there are some principles that apply to all relationships. That’s what I want to focus on this morning.
James Bryan Smith, in his book The Good and Beautiful Community, suggests that many of us come into contact with about 100 people a day.[1] From the members of our family we see in the morning when we wake up, to people at the gym we interact with as we exercise, to class members we speak to in the hallway, to coworkers we deal with on a project, to the people who call, text, or email during the day, to the cashier at the grocery store where we pick up a gallon of milk, to the person who takes our order as we pick up food for dinner, to the friends whose Facebook statuses we check late at night, many of us connect in some way with about 100 people every day. Some of these interactions are short and superficial. Some are much longer and deeper. But the question I want to raise is this: Does God have a vision for our interactions with the 100 people we connect with each day? Does God have a fixed reference point that can keep us moving straight no matter what relationship we are considering?
One of the best sources for an answer to that question is a man named John. John was one of three who had the closest relationship with Jesus. There are several occasions when Jesus invited Peter, James, and John to join him, to the exclusion of the other disciples. Of those three, John appears to have spent the most time with Jesus. John was known as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Jesus entrusted his own mother to John’s care.
In addition, John was a prolific author about Jesus. He wrote a Gospel, three brief letters, and the stunning book of Revelation. John “got” Jesus and life in Jesus like few people did.
And John spent a great deal of time meditating on how life in Jesus impacts our relationships. One of his greatest teachings on this topic comes in 1 John. Let’s walk through five statements made by John. His first reflection is found in 1 John 3:16-18: 16By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:16-18 ESV) John attempts to define love. What does real love look like? John writes that real love looks like Jesus: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.” Jesus is the definition of love. He laid down his life. And John writes that because Jesus loved us in this way, we ought to love others in the same way. We ought to lay down our lives for others. The whole Christian life comes down to that one thing—loving people the way Jesus loved people. John specifically mentions loving “the brothers” or “brother”—meaning other Christians. But this is not intended to limit our love only to Christians. John probably mentions loving Christians because that’s the best place for love to start. The mission to love others doesn’t end with loving the Christian next to us. But it does begin there.
A second reflection comes in 1 John 4:7-8: 7Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8 ESV) In the first statement John was defining what it means to love. Here, John is defining what it means to know God. What does it mean to know God and be born of God? John says it comes down to one simple thing: loving people. “Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” If you aren’t loving people, you really don’t know God. Because at his very core, that’s what God is—he is the supreme lover of people. The beginning of verse 7 is striking: “Beloved, let us love.” We are people who have been loved by God—we are beloved. Therefore we should become people who love like God. That’s the essence of the Christian faith: beloved, let us love. We are people who have been loved by God. Therefore we become people who love like God.
A third reflection comes in 1 Jn. 4:10-12 : 10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (1 Jn. 4:10-12 ESV) Once again, John seeks to define love. What is love? John says it is this: God sending his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Love is God sacrificing his Son for sinners. Love is God loving unlovable people. And because we unlovable people have been loved by God, we ought to spend our lives loving others—even if they are unlovable. John goes on to write two extraordinary things about this love. First, John writes, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us…” The statement “No one has ever seen God” is made by John in his Gospel in John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” In other words, “No one has ever seen God, but he did become visible in Jesus Christ.” In Jesus, the invisible God became visible. John says here that when we love, the invisible God becomes visible once more. God abides or dwells in us and when we love others. The visible manifestation of God’s presence in us is our love for people. Second, John writes “and his love is perfected in us.” In other words, there is something incomplete about God’s love if we just receive it but do not share it. What we receive is meant to be shared. John Stott writes, “God’s love for us is perfected only when it is reproduced in us…”[2] God is love. And his perfect love is only perfected when those of us who receive it go on to reproduce it.
A fourth statement comes in 1 John 4:19-21: 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 Jn. 4:19-21 ESV) Once again, John writes the equation: God loved us, so we love others. Then he illustrates the folly of someone who claims to love God but doesn’t love people. You can see people. You cannot see God. Loving the visible (people) is much easier than loving the invisible (God). So, how can you say you love God, who isn’t visible, when you don’t even love the person in the pew next to you, who is visible? Because we are people who’ve come love an invisible God, we must therefore commit to loving the visible people around us.
One final statement is found in 1 John 5:1: 1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. (1 Jn. 5:1 ESV) John is saying that there is a doctrinal and a social requirement to Christianity. Doctrinally, the Christian faith demands belief in or faith in Jesus. If you claim to be a born-again Christian, you must believe that Jesus is the Christ. But there is also a social requirement to Christianity. Socially, the Christian faith demands love for people. If you love the Father, John writes, you are also compelled to love everyone who also loves the Father—those who have been born of him. In other words, if you love the Father, you’ve got to love everyone else in his family. Once again, John’s not limiting love, as if being a Christian means only loving other Christians. That’s not where love ends, but it is where love begins. And this social requirement is just as important as the doctrinal requirement. If you have the right doctrine—you believe Jesus is the Christ, but you don’t have the right social practice—loving people, you’re not really a born-again Christian.
Author James Bryan Smith summarizes all of this in this way: Our daily encounters with others are the arenas in which our relationship with God becomes incarnate.[3] Think again about the 100 people with whom you may interact each day: the family members in the morning, the drivers next to you on the road, the coworkers or classmates, the person calling, texting, Facebooking, tweeting, or emailing you during the day, the attendant at the gas station where you fill up on your way home, the cashier at the grocery store where you pick up something for dinner, and the dozens you briefly connect with at the gym where you run at the end of the day. Those encounters are the arenas in which your relationship with God becomes incarnate. Those encounters are where your faith becomes real. For John, the Christian faith is not most lived out in a church building, at a worship service, in a private prayer time, or in a Sunday School classroom. That doesn’t mean these things are unimportant. They are very important. But where the true test of the Christian faith is encountered is among those 100 daily interactions. How we treat people in those 100 interactions is central to our Christian faith.
Randy Harris is a friend, a professor at Abilene Christian University, an author, and a speaker. Randy has a practice which he often recommends. Here it is: In every encounter, speak and do only what love requires. That’s a good summary of the teaching in 1 John. In every encounter, speak and do only what love requires. If we could learn to do this, our lives and our world would be transformed. We’d stop being rude in restaurants. We’d stop cutting drivers off. We’d stop ignoring a hurting classmate or coworker. We’d no longer be oblivious to the needs of people in our neighborhood. Imagine what could happen if, in every one of 100 interactions you have each day, you asked yourself this question: What does love require? What word or deed does love require in this interaction? We’d find that these routine interactions would become occasions for great blessings.
Lyra Samodin helps direct the Ukrainian Education Center in Kiev, Ukraine. She came to faith in Christ largely through the routine interactions she found herself in when she started visiting the UEC as a non-Christian student. UEC staff would talk to her in the library. UEC students would speak with her in the kitchen. Christians interacted with her at fun activities. But these staff members, students, and other Christians didn’t just treat these interactions mindlessly like so many of us do as we move throughout our day. We get busy with our own agendas and hardly pay attention to the people around us. Instead, these staff members, students, and other Christians were intentional and used their brief encounters with Lyra to incarnate the love of God. And as a result, she came to faith in Christ.
Highland member Doug Burris told me of a time he went out to eat with another Christian man. When they ordered their food, the man asked the waitress, “When the food comes, we’re going to give thanks for it. Is there anything we could pray about for you?” Surprisingly, the waitress opened up and shared something significant and they were able to pray with her about it. A routine interaction became a moment in which God’s love was incarnated.
A friend named Eileene told me about a time when she was hated her daughter’s husband. The husband was having an affair and the mother detested him for it. Eventually, the daughter and husband worked things out and the marriage was restored. But Eileene still hated the man. One day while she was at work, she had a brief interaction with an elderly patient. Eileene is an assistant in a doctor’s office. The elderly patient she was helping asked Eileene about her daughter. For some reason, the question moved Eileene. She confessed how much she hated her daughter’s husband. Then this elderly patient took Eileene’s hand in her own. She looked into Eileene’s eyes and said this: ” You aint never gonna like him. He done hurt your baby. But you have to love him in Jesus“. Eileene told me that this woman’s comment became a turning point in her life. From that point on, Eileene said, she started hating her daughter’s husband less and loving him more. Eileene shared the story as a testimony to how God had transformed her character in this area. But what struck me was the way in which God triggered this transformation. That interaction between the patient and Eileene was one of 100 interactions that patient would have that day. This patient could have just ignored Eileene or could have been consumed with her own problems. After all, how often do you just ignore the assistants in a doctor’s office? But instead this elderly patient was intentional. This patient understood that even a cursory interaction like that can be an arena in which God’s love becomes incarnate.
In every interaction we ask “What does love require?” That’s the point of reference that can enable you to stay on the straight and narrow in every one of your 100 daily interactions. We’ve been loved by God. So we now love all people like God. We no longer just cruise through our daily interactions. Instead, we become intentional about incarnating love to each day’s 100.
[1] James Bryan Smith The Good and Beautiful Community (IVP, 2010), 17.
[2] Stott, J. R. W. (1988). Vol. 19: The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (145). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Stott.
[3] Smith, 19.
Hi Chris,
Are you planning to post the January 9 sermon?
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