1 John Part 18

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 1 John 5:1

I've always thought that this verse was commanding us to love Jesus, since he is God's Son, hence his child. But in this context I'm pretty sure that John is telling us to love fellow Christians, the adopted children of God. Verse two talks about loving the children of God by obeying his commands.

It's hard to love the children of God. We are programmed in our sinful nature to look out for our own interests and to not offer grace to one another. I guess that's why we have to be commanded to be different.

When we talk about loving each other, we need to look to love the Christians at our own church, those with whom we interact regularly. But I think we in the American church need to take it a step further. We will support missions and go to the ends of the earth to reach different people groups, but we rarely interact with fellow Christians in this country who are a different color, culture, or denomination. We come up with some reason to stay separate. There is deep distrust between the races that the white evangelical church is largely unaware of - because we've been separated for so long. Are we willing to change any of our preaching or music to be inclusive of other cultures? This can be done without compromising the message. Or do we come up with silly defenses like, "The style doesn't matter, only the subject of our song or sermon," and then stubbornly not change the style that supposedly doesn't matter. If it didn't matter, then changing it wouldn't matter either. Are we willing to give up our rights for the good of others, by supporting diversity efforts at white Christian colleges, or are we going to whine about how we're so harmed by anything that looks like affirmative action?

What's our motivation? Why are we to love the children of God? Because it's a way of showing love for God. If you're a parent, aren't you thrilled when someone shows positive attention to your child? Conversely, how do you react when someone talks bad about your kid or hurts them? Yeah, I thought so. You want to pound them. How about if you have more than one child and one hurts the other? Very hurtful and frustrating. But it makes your day when one sibling helps or looks out for another, or even forgives a wrong.

God gives us these relationships as examples of how he relates to us. Think about your kids the next time you want to talk bad about a brother or sister in Christ. Think about how God sees this.

Don't just think about it in terms of not doing mean things. Think about how your Father is pleased when we show love to our fellow Christian. If pleasing God is motivation for you, and my goodness it should be, then we ought to look for opportunities to love our fellow Christian. Start thinking of ways right now!