Holy Wit – Reflections # 8 — Love in Deed and Truth Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John Scripture Reference: 1 John 3:11–24 There was a man in the church whom everyone knew was struggling. He had not announced it from the front. There had been no formal appeal, no notice pinned to a board, and no carefully arranged collection. People simply knew. His work had become irregular. His wife had been unwell for several months. There were children in the home, school expenses had not stopped, and the cupboards were beginning to show the strain. On Sunday mornings, people greeted him warmly. “Brother, we are praying for you.” “God will provide.” “Keep trusting the Lord.” All of these things were true. God does provide. Prayer matters. Trust in the Lord is never misplaced. Still, when the service ended, most people went home. One man did not. He had noticed that the struggling brother’s shoes were coming apart. He had noticed the children no longer brought anything to the church meal. He had noticed the way the man’s wife declined invitations, not because she did not want fellowship, but because travelling cost money they did not have. So he went home, spoke with his own family, and returned later that afternoon. He brought rice, cooking oil, vegetables, soap, medicine, and enough money to cover several urgent expenses. He did not make a speech. He did not take a photograph. He did not describe his generosity to others. He simply placed the bags inside the house and said, “The Lord has given us enough to share.” The struggling man began to cry. It was not only the food. It was the fact that somebody had seen him. There is a kind of love that speaks well and does nothing. It knows the correct words. It offers blessings, promises prayer, and expresses concern. It may even feel sincere sympathy. Yet it never moves beyond the lips. John refuses to call that sufficient. “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” John does not despise words. Words can encourage, comfort, instruct, and strengthen. The gospel itself must be proclaimed in words. A silent church is not necessarily a loving church. But words that never become action are easily exposed as empty. John places Cain and Christ before us as two completely different pictures of the heart. Cain saw his righteous brother and killed him. Christ saw guilty sinners and gave Himself for them. Cain removed another person because that person’s righteousness troubled him. Christ laid down His own life for those who had rebelled against Him. Cain took life. Christ gave His life. That contrast gives us John’s definition of love. Love is not merely liking someone. It is not affection detached from duty. It is not politeness, friendliness, or warm feeling by itself. Love gives. Love bears cost. Love moves towards need rather than away from it. The cross is the supreme revelation of this kind of love. Christ did not love His people by offering encouraging words from heaven. He came into our condition. He bore our sin. He endured judgment. He laid down His life. We cannot repeat His saving work. His sacrifice was once for all. Yet those who have received that love are commanded to reflect its shape. That is why John immediately turns from Christ laying down His life to the ordinary matter of a brother in need. The move is deliberate. We may speak grandly about being willing to die for another believer while refusing to be inconvenienced by him. We may imagine great acts of courage while ignoring small acts of mercy. We may say, “I would lay down my life for the brethren,” while protecting every hour, every possession, every comfort, and every personal preference. John brings us back to the cupboard, the wallet, the spare room, the telephone call, the hospital visit, the meal, the journey, the forgiveness, the patient conversation. That is where love is usually tested. Not in imagined moments of heroism, but in ordinary opportunities to give ourselves away. This does not mean that every need must be met by one person. No believer has unlimited resources. Wisdom is necessary. Some requests are unwise. Some forms of assistance may encourage irresponsibility rather than relieve genuine need. Love must be “in deed and in truth”. Truth matters. Biblical love does not help someone continue in sin. It does not confuse compassion with approval. It does not call what is harmful good. Sometimes love gives. Sometimes love warns. Sometimes love provides money. Sometimes love provides counsel instead. Sometimes love comforts the suffering. Sometimes love confronts the wandering. But love never settles for indifference. John’s question is not whether we possess enough to solve every problem. His question is what happens in our hearts when we see a real need and have some ability to respond. Do we open our hearts, or close them? That question can trouble a sincere Christian. We remember occasions when we did nothing. We see the limits of our love. We recognize selfishness, impatience, resentment, and failure. Then the heart begins to condemn us. John understands this. He does not tell us to pretend we have loved perfectly. He directs us to God, who is greater than our heart and knows all things. God knows our sins more fully than we do. Yet He also knows the difference between a hypocrite who is content without love and a believer who grieves over lovelessness and desires to change. Our assurance does not rest on having performed enough acts of kindness to earn God’s acceptance. It rests first upon Christ. The same Christ who commands love is the Christ who laid down His life for sinners. Still, the presence of practical love gives evidence that His grace is at work within us. Not perfect love, but real love. Not constant victory, but a new direction. John then joins faith, obedience, love, and prayer together. We believe in the name of Jesus Christ. We love one another. We keep His commandments. We abide in Him, and He in us by the Holy Spirit. These are not separate compartments of the Christian life. They belong together. A heart being shaped by Christ begins to desire what pleases Christ. A believer walking in obedience approaches God with greater confidence, not because obedience has purchased an answer, but because the believer’s desires are being brought into agreement with God’s will. And so the question remains close to home. Who has God placed before us? Whose need have we noticed? What do we possess that could be shared? Perhaps the first act of love will not look impressive. It may be a bag of rice. A paid bill. A ride to a clinic. A meal carried across the road. An hour spent listening. A quiet gift no one else ever hears about. But heaven does not measure love by how impressive it appears. Love is measured by the pattern of Christ. He did not merely tell us that He loved us. He showed us. And now He calls His people to do the same. #HolyWitReflections #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John3

Holy Wit – Reflections #7 Children of God (Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John) Scripture References: 1 John 2:28–3:10 At the edge of a busy market stood a repair shop owned by a man named Elias. He repaired clocks, lamps, radios, and nearly anything else that could be persuaded to work again. His son Daniel grew up among drawers of screws and coils of wire, listening to his father say, “Do it properly. Someone is trusting us.” When Daniel became old enough to work beside him, people began bringing smaller jobs directly to the boy. One afternoon an elderly woman collected a repaired lamp and handed him far more money than the work had cost. She left before he noticed. No one else had seen, and the shop needed new tools. The extra money could have disappeared quietly. Daniel ran after her and returned what she had overpaid. The woman smiled. “I thought you would come,” she said. “You are Elias’s son.” That sentence pleased him, but it also carried weight. He had not become Elias’s son by returning the money. He was already his son. Yet because he bore his father’s name, people expected to see something of his father’s character in him. His conduct did not create the relationship, but it revealed the family likeness. A week later Daniel damaged a customer’s radio and tried to hide it. His father discovered the truth. Daniel did not cease to be his son, but his deceit contradicted the name he bore. Elias corrected him, made him confess, and then stood beside him while the damage was repaired. Sonship was a gift; it was not permission to behave as though he belonged to another household. John asks believers to pause before the astonishing words, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” Human beings do not climb into God’s family by moral effort. The Father bestows this love. Sinners are brought into a real relationship with Him through Christ. They are born of God, welcomed by the Father, and given a future that ends in likeness to the Son. This order matters. Righteous living is not the price of becoming a child of God. It is the fruit of having been born of Him. We are accepted through Christ, not through an impressive record of obedience. Yet the Christ who saves also transforms. Grace does not leave a person untouched, as though forgiveness were a covering placed over a life still content to serve sin. Much modern thinking treats identity as something that may be claimed without moral consequence. John refuses that idea. “Everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.” He is not teaching salvation by works, but he is teaching that the new birth produces a new direction. The Father does not make us His children because we resemble Him; He makes us His children and then begins to form His likeness in us. That likeness is not sinless perfection in this life. John has already said that anyone claiming to have no sin deceives himself, and he has directed believers to confess their sins and trust Christ their Advocate. The difference is not between people who have never sinned and people who have. It is between those who excuse sin as their settled way of life and those in whom sin has become an enemy. A child of God may fall, sometimes badly, but he cannot make peace with the fall. God’s seed remains in him. The new birth creates a holy conflict where there was once surrender. Sin brings grief, confession, repentance, and a return to obedience. The believer does not defend lawlessness as freedom or demand that God bless what His Word condemns. John also turns our eyes towards Christ’s appearing. “When He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Redeemed creatures do not become divine. God completes His work of glorification: sin no longer clings to us, and the family resemblance is no longer partial. We shall be fitted for the presence of the pure and righteous Christ. That future hope reaches into the present: “Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” Christian hope is not dreaming about heaven while remaining comfortable with corruption. The certainty of seeing Christ produces a desire to please Him now. We confess what is unclean, turn from what feeds sinful desire, obey what God has spoken, and measure holiness by Christ rather than the lowered standards around us. John finally speaks of two families: the children of God and the children of the devil. The devil is not God’s equal; he is a created rebel whose works the Son came to destroy. Yet those who persist in lawlessness display his likeness, while those born of God increasingly display righteousness and love. The test includes both our conduct before God and our treatment of fellow believers. Claimed love for the Father that produces neither righteousness nor love for His children is not the faith John recognizes. This passage gives assurance, but not false comfort. The question is not, “Have I reached perfection?” No Christian has. The question is, “Whose likeness is being formed in me? When I sin, do I defend it or confess it? Do I desire righteousness? Do I love the brethren? Does the hope of seeing Christ make purity precious to me?” The Father’s love gives His children both a name and a destination. We are His children now, and what we shall be has not yet been fully revealed. Until that day, He keeps correcting, cleansing, and restoring us. Like Daniel in the repair shop, we do not behave well in order to earn a father. We learn to live differently because, by an astonishing manner of love, the Father has made us His own. #HolyWitReflections #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John2_28To3_10