1 John 3:12 Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.
Have you ever received a gift you found really hard to take? Now, I don’t mean that Christmas sweater that makes you look ridiculous or that VHS of Gone with the Wind from the white elephant Christmas gift exchange. I mean a gift given in love that makes you mad. Have you ever been offended by a gift? Maybe an offer of help or a financial gift that made you feel helpless or needy. Has a gift ever made you angry?
This chapter is talking about the love of God and the love Christians for one another. Here we are told that the world will hate us. How can showing love be taken so negatively by the world? This gets back to the first verse where we asked what true love is. I think culturally we are told that love is a romantic and physical relationship. This is a limited view of love. The Bible does teach about this aspect of love (and not in a negative way! See Song of Solomon), but love is more than that. Over the past few days, I’ve talked about practicing righteousness and having Christ’s righteousness (to give it the theological titles, sanctification and justification). Now, let’s think about it in terms of love. We have verses in the Bible like John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.’ Now that is the most popular and well known verse from the Bible in culture today, but do we know know what it is saying? In light of what we have looked at in 1 John 3, we see that Jesus came to earth to take away sin and give those who believe in Him, who have their hope fixed on Him, perfect life. This should be seen in our love for one-another. This sounds simple and it is. So why does the world hate those who believe and show this love? I think it is partly because in our belief, we acknowledge the fact that we are sinners. It is really hard to confess and repent. No one likes to say, ‘I was wrong, I’m sorry.’ We also don’t like to say ‘I need help.’ God’s love is seen in His forgiveness but that requires our seeing the need for forgiveness. So, how are you doing at receiving God’s gifts? Do I limit my view of His love to avoid being offended or offending others?
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