[Maximum Joy Series] Perfect LoveSample

The Source–Mandate to Love

All throughout these devotional days, John has been calling us to perfect love. We are called to be like Jesus—the only One, as far as we know and believe, who lived a perfect life. So how can we deal with this? How can we put together the demands of Scripture with the realities of life? 

One solution to this tension between holy expectation and unholy performance is to change the standard. We make the demands relative. “No one can be perfect, you know, so there must be some sort of sliding scale here.” The result of this kind of thinking is comparison. We compare our righteousness with the righteousness of those around us, either in the church or out in the world. This makes us feel pretty good about ourselves. This kind of comparison in the church leads to judgment and legalism. This leads to a loss of joy. The pressure of performance, even if the standard has been changed to relative righteousness, it plucks the fruit of the Spirit right off the tree of victorious Christian living. 

There is another solution to the tension between the standard of perfection and our imperfect performance. The solution is not to change the standard. God spelled out the standard in Scripture very clearly. Be perfect. Be like Jesus. There is nothing wrong with that standard. The problem isn’t the standard. The problem is the source. 

Someone will surely say, “I can love God without loving my brother.” It’s an old objection. John will say, “No, we are not changing the standard.” In this way, he reaffirms the mandate to love (4:20–5:1) and the measure of love (5:2-3). But when he explains the means to love (5:4-5), John points to a new source to enable us to meet God’s perfect standard. He doesn’t change the standard; he changes the source. 

“If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him” (4:20–5:1). 

Most Christians will shrink back at the prospect of loving our brothers/sisters with perfect love. But how can you love someone you have never seen if you can’t love someone you have seen? (Easy, we might say. Our problem is that we have seen other Christians up close, and we don’t like what we see. We don’t see faults in God, so it’s easy to love Him compared to our Christian brother.) 

Here we must remind ourselves of the kind of love John talks about. The emphasis here is not on feelings or emotions, but rather actions and deeds (3:16-18). The issue is action. Do you remember John’s example of love in 1 John 3:17? If we see our brother in need and don’t do something about it, how does the love of God abide in us? If I can see a physical being and am not willing to meet his physical needs, how can I possibly love a spiritual being whose needs I cannot see? That’s his reasoning. 

Our love for people who confess Christ is not based on their performance. If everything about you was known by others, would you deserve to be loved? No, our love for the child of God is based on our love for the Father of that child. If we love the “Begetter,” we should love the “begotten.” If we love the Father, we should love His children. God is the source, God is love, and as we grow in our fellowship with Him, our love for others will grow too.