Jacobs Thoughts and Doings

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:7, 8.

John says it as simple as can be, “God is love.”  He uses one of the four Greek words that mean love at this point, agape.  Other ones describe family ties, friendship or ethnic ties or erotic relationships.  These are the loves that hold people together.  John does not discount those loves but emphasizes the greatest of loves, the love that wishes the welfare of another and that results in self-giving for the other or others.  It is called agape and is at the heart of our relationship with God.

As I think about it, I love my wife.  That I know. I also love my children, a more comprehensive love.  Then I love my culture, my people, so to speak.  That is an even more expanded love.  All of these loves are enjoyed by all people everywhere.  They are part of being human.  That love is the glue that holds human beings together, for their individual good and the common good.

John is not writing about those kinds of love.  He speaks about a love that loves beyond what is expected, it is called agape.  It is unique because, he notes, it comes from God.  It is not a normal human trait.  It is God-like and God-given.  It acts like God does.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Agape is different from normal human love that is common to mankind.  It comes from God and is a virtue that God imparts in us when we are “born of God.”  That requires a new birth, a new beginning, a new heart.  John asserts that people who exhibit agape love are showing by their lives the love of God, a love that surprises, that reaches out, that counts others as very important.

John reminds us that agape love comes from God.  It expresses the love of God.  It cannot be imitated or simply copied.  It is the result of God being powerful in us.  Agape comes from God!  This is such a profound reality that I, along with all grateful saints, accept it by faith, the understanding often comes later.  It less important to understand it, however, than to actually experience it!

Our milkweed attracts a nice variety of residents, including this family of milkweed beetles. And the monarch eggs are now “hatching” nicely.  We enjoy watching what happens at our 20 or so milkweed plants.

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

1 John 4:1 – 3

Theories were floating about, even among believers, to some extent, that the body of Jesus was an ephemeral body, not a real physical one like ours.  So Jesus was not like us because his body was not like ours.  His body could not sin according to this view.

As I see it, when John uses the term, “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,” he is referring not to physical organs and all that, but what it takes to make a full human being – flesh and spirit, with a mother and a father, a Jew, male and all that we know about a human being.   So the atoning work of Jesus had to do with redeeming all things, even the body.  God loves the body. The Holy Spirit affirms the body as approved of God and as the recipient of Salvation won by Jesus Christ.

To say that Jesus’ body was not like ours is to not only belittle our bodies but to remove the body completely from the atoning work of Jesus.  In this case, the passions of the body have nothing to do with salvation.  In other words, the atoning work of Jesus is for the spirit only, not the body, so they claim.  Therefore, it is good to satisfy the body, no matter what that body demands.

John insists that this view is evil.  “Every spirit,” he wrote, “that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” 

Salvation covers body and spirit, flesh and soul.  There is no dichotomy at all.  The same Blood of the Lamb saves and purifies our entire beings, including our flesh and blood, our bodies and our spirits, our hearts.  All belong to God and all are sanctified by God.

This heresy is alive and well today.  It claims that it matters little what happens in our bodies as long as the spirit is free.  The body, they assume, is outside the realm of redemption. So, in this view, go ahead, fulfill the lusts of the flesh, feed its selfish desires.  It matters not what the body, the ego, demands, feed it what it wants for the spirit is not involved in that area of life at all.  In a sense, bodies cannot be saved, spirits can be.

It is true, if we think about it at all, this view is “the spirit of the antichrist.”  To embrace it is to deny Christ.  John, again, simplifies the complicated!  May we join him.

And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 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.

1 John 3:23, 24

John reminds us that those who are born again of the Spirit of the Lord, seek to obey God’s commands.  They do not always succeed but the fact that they always try is proof that the Spirit of the Lord is operating in their lives.  They know the secret of repentance when they fall short.  They do not stand over themselves in constant condemnation.  By the miracle of true heart-felt repentance they stay free.

They never outgrow their determination to live in God as God is in them.  The heart of the matter is this personal relationship God has with us and our personal relationship with him, a relationship based on the believe that we are led by the Holy Spirit of God.

That belief will show itself in our obedience to the word of God.

It seems that under the Old Covenant we hear one command after another.  It appears as though following God is a matter of keeping a long list of commands. That is good and should work – but it simply doesn’t.  Religion becomes an exercise in insisting on obedience to God’s commands.

There is another way.  It is so simple it can be easily missed.  There is only one command, “To believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another.”  “Believe” is the new comprehensive command.   Believe in what?  In the name of Jesus.  We could try to list what is in his name – Savior, friend, Lord, Creator, blesser, judge, and so forth.   The list goes on and on.  Jesus has many names, so to speak, each important.  He is all in all.

The central belief is that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father.  That is so full of meaning that all the theologians put together can only touch the surface.  The heart of it all is to know that Jesus Christ is, indeed, the Son of the Father. That belief makes all the difference, top to bottom.

The second command is to love one another as Jesus commanded us to do. This is, in my own experience, one of the most demanding!  I find it easier to obey dozens of do’s and don’ts than to love a fellow believer who rubs me the wrong way or is simply not a friend in any way.  That is where I fail. My love has limits!  That is so unlike God’s love.

John’s words seem so simple but they are so profound that they shake the ego to the core.

At the Hershey Butterfly House a brilliant, many-eyed butterfly deposited two eggs on Evan’s blue shirt.  Before leaving they were removed!  A rule.

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

1 John 3:19, 20

Passages such as these should not be read in a hurry, or worse yet, without letting its meaning soak one’s inner being.

For example, I find the phrase, “we belong to the truth” to be quite different than I would have thought.  When it comes to “truth,” I think of my owning the truth, another way of speaking of belief.  John goes way beyond that.  He sees himself and us believers as “belonging” to the truth.   As I see it, he reminds me of the fact that I do not own the truth, the truth owns me!!

The truth is the truth whether I believe it or not. Whether I believe a truth or not does not alter the essence of the truth one iota. The truth does not depend on whether I believe it or not.  If there was not one believer on the earth, that has nothing to do with the truth.  The truth is not truth because people believe it, it is truth because it is truth!!  It sounds obvious when I think about it.  Now – I am invited by the Spirit of God to think about it and conform my thinking to God’s eternal truth.

If the truth owns us, then we are at rest in the presence of the Eternal God.  Unrest is the result of arguing with God.  When those arguments cease we are at peace with God, resting on his love and mercy.

John notes that even believers might be stretched at times to believe what seems quite unbelievable.  We know the truth but our hearts are not yet convinced at times because things happen that defy belief.   So we must speak to our hearts, reminding our hearts that God is greater than our hearts.  What my heart tells me or believes must come under the scrutiny of my Heavenly Father.  God is greater than the seat of my affections!  I should not judge God through the lenses of my experience or my emotions, but I should receive the Word of God for He is far greater than all human thought compounded.

Our hearts know some things, God knows everything.  If we can rest on that we can rest!!

The variety of butterflies at Hershey stretches the mind.  Mother, Evan, Elizabeth and I spent a fascinating hour in the brand new – huge- butterfly house in the Hershey Gardens.  Amazing.

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.  Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

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.  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? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 

1 John 3:14 – 18

Again, John points to the heart of the issue, love.  One of the most extraordinary traits of human beings is the desire, even compulsion, the ability, the need to love and to be loved.  There is no stronger human capability.  This is a virtue that sets us apart from all other created life.  We are truly of the “new species” when we love, not only or own kind, but, at a far deeper lever, those whom we love because they are also in Christ even though they are different from us.  It is like Jesus who paid the price to open the door to all people of whatever culture, generation or people to receive salvation and a marvelous standing among all God’s born-again children.

That love of God that binds us together is nothing less than the love of Jesus who “Laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”  The kind of self-giving love that John speaks of here is nothing less than a gift from heaven!  We do not find it on earth, except in the rarest of occasions.  Human love, a gift indeed, is usually expressed in self-preservation, not in helping others who are different, and certainly not enemies!  John sets a high standard when he says that “We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”  He is referring to not only blood brothers and sisters but brothers and sisters who also love Jesus and who live by the power of Jesus’ resurrected life in the Holy Spirit, no matter their language, tribe or nation.

So this statement comes with great power and surprise to those of us who look after our own, so to speak.  “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

I find myself despising, in a sense, those who do not agree with me – even among those who confess to be in Christ.  I suppose there is a place for disagreement in the body of Christ but it should not give us an excuse to break fellowship.  I need to listen to the Spirit who reminds me, “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.”  Of this kind of love, I am a novice.  I need to grow up in Christ and love across all sorts of barriers.  

Elizabeth created a huge snail or whatever in Grandma’s kitchen.  She has a fantastic imagination that is evident in her dancing – bread-making and about everything else.  Some girl!