Practical Love — 1 John 3:16-24

4th Sunday of Easter, Year B — Practical Love

The lectionary epistle reading assigned for the 4th Sunday of Easter in Year B is 1 John 3:16-24, where John meditates on the practical love Jesus expressed in his ministry. I wrote on this Sunday’s Gospel reading a couple years back and you can read that here.

1 John is a funny sort of epistle, at least compared to Paul’s letters. He doesn’t address a particular community. He doesn’t work through a logical argument.

Instead, John sort of winds around and around on a small set of topics. He drops wise sayings and declarations about his topics. Each topic sort of rubs up against the others in ever-changing combinations.

1 John 3:16-24

So here are a few meditative observations on 1 John 3:16-24. The themes here include Christ’s exemplary love, the practical nature of that love, our own inner reassurance and condemnation, and prayer.

One thing I find striking is the way the presentation of themes here echoes key moments in John’s Gospel. You’ll see what I mean.

The exemplary love of Christ

John starts the section with comments on how we know about love.

We know love by this,
that he laid down his life
for us

1 John 3:16 NRSV

You’d think he would say “We know that JESUS LOVES US by this,” since what he points to is Jesus’ self-giving love for his disciples.

But no. This reference to Jesus’ laying down his life is to help us figure out what love actually is. We know love when we look at Jesus freely giving his life.

Perhaps John thinks we already know something of Jesus’ love. Certainly he affirms that we have inward knowledge of the love of Christ expressed as his abiding presence with us. That’s how he ends the passage:

And by this we know that he abides in us,
by the Spirit that he has given us.

1 John 3:24 NRSV

But 1 John 3:16 echoes the far more famous 3:16 in John’s Gospel:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

John 3:16 NRSV

The numerical similarity is just serendipitous — verse numbers were not added until the 16th century. But the conceptual parallel is important.

We tend to read John 3:16 as if it is a reference to the Cross, but we should think twice about that: It comes at the beginning of John’s Gospel, near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

In context, God giving his Son is more closely related to the first chapter of John, where it is all about the incarnation — the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

In 1 John 3:16, though we are more justified in thinking about the Cross, we should again be thinking about the incarnation of Jesus, and of what Jesus did in the years before the Cross.

This verse should bring to mind the Maundy Thursday discourses in the Upper Room. There Jesus laid aside his garments and took the role of a servant, washing his disciples’ feet. He told him that this was the example to follow, and gave them a command to love one another in the way that he had loved them.

For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

John 13:15 NRSV

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:34-35 NRSV

Most of the time we pay too little attention to the sheer wonder of the incarnation. And we pay the wrong kind of attention to Jesus’ earthly ministry before the Cross.

That is, Jesus “laying down his life” means that God, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, shed his rightful divine glory and power and became human to save us. That laying aside of rights to benefit others is, says John, love defined.

It’s what Paul talked about in Philippians:

…Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.

Philippians 2:5-7 NRSV

And Jesus “laying down his life” means all the practical ways he cared for the people he created. He called them, given them purpose and mission. He healed them. He fed them. He broke down the walls of xenophobia and nationalism to welcome and care for foreigners and outcasts.

The practical nature of love

We should note carefully also the connection between John’s next point about the practical nature of the love he calls us to, and Jesus teaching about self-giving love in the same scene of the Gospel.

Once he gave them the new commandment based on his model, he made their application of that practical love the mark by which they would bear witness to the world. Here it is again:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:34-35 NRSV

Compare with what John says now in the epistle as the obvious implication of what Jesus taught us that love is:

—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods
and sees a brother or sister in need
and yet refuses help?

1 John 3:16-17 NRSV

It seems perfectly obvious to the apostle.

Christian love is a really practical matter. It isn’t just words. It’s actions. Use what you have to help others.

It’s probably more obvious in Greek where love is a verb. It’s something you do, not primarily something you feel.

Love is what Jesus did, laying his glory aside and pouring out practical love for us when we were needy and helpless.

Love is what we need to do, laying aside our riches, pouring out practical love when we see our family members in need.

There quickly arises a question of whom to love: Natural family? Christian family? Human family?

Well. yes.

There quickly arises a question of how much to love: Can we fill every need in all these categories?

Well, no.

But we can do something.

I am challenged by an essay I read from an Orthodox priest to someone just coming to the life of the ordained. The younger cleric was given his first cassock, the long black garment many Orthodox priests wear a good deal of the time.

The older priest suggested that the pockets of one’s cassock always contain some money. Marked as Christ’s by what they are wearing, they should be prepared to live out Christ’s love by being able and willing to give to those in need around them.

We Protestants don’t usually wear cassocks. But heaven help us if we use that as an excuse to not live out the love we see in Christ and hear taught by John.

Reassurance and Condemnation

These loving actions, as we take on the call to live out the love we learn from Christ, teach us something.

And by this we will know
that we are from the truth
and will reassure our hearts before him
whenever our hearts condemn us;

1 John 3:19-20

Odd, yes? What we do teaches us something about the truth of the Gospel.

We don’t just learn by studying the Bible or hearing it taught. When we live it “by this we will know” something.

The message comes full circle into our broken lives.

We don’t pick up the truth of the Gospel very easily. You know this if you’ve ever tried to help someone who feels guilty understand the grace of Christ. It doesn’t often sink in as quickly as you wish it would.

There is some wisdom if we take apart the process John writes about and reassemble it:

Q. How will we reassure our bruised hearts? So often our own hearts condemn us.
A. By loving, in practical ways, those whom we call family — natural family, family of faith, human family.

You see the love happen in and through you, and then your heart is assured. “Jesus must be abiding in me or I wouldn’t be doing this!”

And it happens in real time, in genuine truth, not because we started the process but because God is at work.

Hey,

God is greater than our hearts,
and he knows everything.

1 John 3:20 NRSV

It’s a process with interlocking steps.

• Jesus shows us what love is. (3:16)
• We begin to show others practical love, just as he has shown us. (3:23 and 16-18)
• We begin to believe, to trust Jesus, to have assurance. (3:23 and 19-20)
• And we begin to know that Christ himself is abiding in us. (3:24)
• All of which leads to a life in harmonious partnership with God. (3:22-23)

Prayer

That’s how we need to see the tantalizing little phrase in verse 22:

…and we receive from him whatever we ask…

It’s way to easy too yank it out of context, so much so that it loses touch even with grammar. So often, we want so badly to have a practical way to get our prayers answered that we hold tight to biblical sentence fragments.

In context this really is a promise about prayer. But it is a promise with hefty conditions.

Yes, God gives us everything we ask — if we obey his commandment, loving our neighbor the way he loved when he laid aside heaven to take the form of a servant, believing and abiding in him.

And you know, it just might be that if we had our whole lives set on loving that way, in really practical terms, it might have a significant effect on the kinds of things we ask for.

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