Momentary or Lasting Hate

1 John 3:15

          Hate is a serious thing. It leads to all sorts of awful outcomes if it is allowed to fester and if it is given power to act. When hatred is fanned into flame it can destroy nations. Hatred can be fanned for generations and become part of a culture. The “One Percent” hatred that was fanned into flame prior to the last election is just as harmful as any hatred for gays, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, the homeless, Veterans, men, women, the projects, the suburbs, the rich, Jews, Muslims, Christians, drug addict, convict or any other way we might slice up society and place blame. Hatred is hatred. There is no such thing as a good hatred when the object of that hatred is another human being.

          It is impossible to hate someone and bring the Gospel to them. You can’t wrap the Gospel in hate. They are incompatible with each other.

          But John goes one step further. It is one thing to hate someone outside of the family of faith, but something very different when it is inside the family. Neither is acceptable. We all understand the difference between hating a neighbor who shot your family dog out of anger and your brother or sister who did the same thing. Hating family would bring many encouragements to work through it and forgive. It is family, after all. Anger toward the neighbor might even be encouraged.

          John tells us that hatred and murder are on the same trajectory. Anger is also on that same line. We can’t hold onto anger or hatred for long. If it stays with you, it can drive you to murder. We must use the energy of anger and hatred in a constructive manner. We can’t let it fester and foment.

          If we keep hating someone who is a fellow Jesus-follower, we are in trouble. Eternal life is incompatible with hatred. Jesus told us that there is a connection between anger and murder, and if we are angry with each other we are guilty of murder. John reinforces that connection because the enemies of the Cross are propagating hatred among fellow believers. The outsiders might hate us, but we can’t remain in hate toward each other.

          So what do we do with anger toward a fellow believer? How do we take care of it so that it doesn’t remain and fester? First we need to confront the situation. Deal with the source of the anger. Bring in a third party to help keep the discussion headed in a healing direction. Most of these hurts can be healed through an honest discussion and forgiveness. It may take several meetings to bring healing, but it can come.

          Secondly, prayer, worship and Scripture can prepare your hearts for the resolution. Even if the injury was done on purpose, healing can still happen. This isn’t letting go of things. This is finding and giving forgiveness. It is godly sorrow that leads to repentance. This is restoration of fellowship with each other and with the LORD.

Christian Haters

1 John 3:13

          One of the advantages of being a Jesus-follower is that people will hate us for no other reason other than our trust in Jesus. Now you might not see this as an advantage, but it is. It helps us identify those who need the Gospel message lived out before them. They are the ones who need love.

          It is easy to love someone who loves you, or someone who is at least not unkind. But when we strive to love someone who hates us, our reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit has to increase. Loving someone who hates us is beyond our capacity, so we must draw in close to the LORD and draw on His strength. If love were easy, more people would be doing it. But love goes against our natural sinful tendency. We naturally are selfish.

          Cain, of Cain and Abel fame, murdered his brother. He did it because he yielded to the same sin-tendency that exists in all of us. Apart from the grace of God working in our lives, we would all be murderers. Or we have at least felt like killing someone.

          So why do non-Jesus-followers hate Jesus-followers? It is simple. The love we show pierces their hearts with conviction. We stand firm in our convictions. We are not willing to compromise. We won’t bend to their will. We won’t follow them in doing evil. This is why in the places where persecution of Christians happens, the church grows. It often grows underground, but it grows. And when it grows, believers are empowered to share their love.

          We see the animosity toward Jesus-followers in our culture today. You can believe any foolish thing you want, as long as it isn’t historic Christianity. You are welcome to believe a modern twist, a shell of the Gospel, devoid of its power, but don’t hold onto the reality of sin and the resurrection. If you do that, and proclaim that through love, you end up in the cultural crosshairs.

          But if you become Gumby, flexible to a fault, unwilling to stand up for anything, then you won’t become the object of this hatred. But the minute we stand for something and are unwilling to compromise (which is code for giving up our conviction and believing what they believe), then the hatred flies our direction. We get labeled. Laws get passed against our beliefs. We get fined and jailed.

          Have you noticed what happens to Jesus-followers in Muslim countries? They get three choices: convert, pay a tax, or die. And the tax is designed to ensure that the Christians are second-class citizens. They lose their jobs. Families kick them out. And this is what happens under ‘tolerant’ Islam.

          Our response, and the response of many living under hatred like this, must be love. Jesus loved and we must also love. And this is hard, impossible really. And yet, this is our calling. Love our enemies. No wonder the world hates this kind of love. They expect their actions to bring a similar response. They expect hatred coming back toward them. So when they see love, it infuriates them.

          Let’s make a few people angry today by loving them!

Love and Hate

1 John 2:9-11

          Sometimes we need very practical examples of a concept in action. When we get the practical example, then we can understand the abstract concept more fully. I think this is what makes learning Algebra so difficult. It can be very hard to find practical examples from everyday life that help explain algebraic functions, at least not the life of the average high school student. Engineers  and astrophysicists, yes, but salesman or physician, no. Then when you throw in mom and truck driver, and a thousand other ordinary jobs, algebraic functions might as well be an alien language that fell from the sky. I has no real impact on our lives. To put it another way, when was the last time you did an algebraic function equation to solve something in your life? I thought so. Although, my algebra teacher son might take offense at this.

          John has been talking about the vital necessity of someone who claims to have a relationship with the LORD doing what they believe. Obedience to God’s clear direction is an outward sign that the Holy Spirit lives within. But some might say, “But what does this look like?” This is the kind of question that new believers often need answered. They want to put their newfound faith into action, but they lack practical examples.

          Newly married couples often have problems because the families in which they were raised didn’t work very well. Often conflict and divorce were part of the mix. Drugs and alcohol muddied the waters. Absent parents or unknown parents make future success in marriage much more difficult. So newly married couples need older couples to watch and copy.

          John knows that his readers need some practical examples of what commandment keeping looks like applied in everyday life. And so John provides just such an example. The example centers around relationships between fellow Jesus-followers. In John’s example the love-hate continuum is the measurement instrument. And in typical John fashion, there is no middle ground. Only the ends of the continuum exist. You either love or you hate. There is no part love, part hate possibility.

          How we treat each other as believers says a lot about our relationship with forgiveness. If we don’t forgive, then perhaps we don’t understand the full extent of our own sinfulness and utter lostness apart from God’s grace found in Jesus. Maybe we still cling to some illusion that we really aren’t so bad after all. Maybe we are a little better than that other person. Maybe we deserve something other than Hell.

          This love for others is one of the cornerstones of Christian belief and behavior. Jesus said that people would know His disciples by the love they displayed for one another. Love was the identifying mark. Without the mark, there was no identification with Jesus. And love shows up in our words, our attitudes and our actions. We can’t claim love and then rail against fellow believers, even if we disagree with their politics, economic policies, attitudes toward wealth and poverty, or even their membership in the real 1%, those who have served in the US Military.

          If people watched a movie of us in action, would they see love?

Liver Lover

Proverbs 15:8-9

      I don’t know if you have ever eaten liver or not, but I have. I am not a liver lover! In fact, liver goes on my very short list of things I have eaten that I detest. We are not friends. We are enemies.

      If you detest something, it goes on your ‘enemies of the state’ list, your ‘no fly’ list and any other list you can think of that would prevent it from coming anywhere near you. The word detest is a stronger word than hate. It involves not just stating how much something is hated, but then calling God as a witness to how much you hate the thing. You want the listener to know just how much they are hated by having God stand up and say, “Those are his true feelings.”

      Our proverb states that the LORD detests the very things the wicked would offer in an attempt to earn His favor. The sacrifices that would be brought by the wicked to demonstrate their adherence to the outward forms of religious practice are the very things that the LORD calls Himself to curse. That is some pretty strong hatred.

      But why would the LORD hate these sacrifices with such intensity? Because the LORD sees right through the outward, past all the façade, right to the heart. He knows the condition of the heart when a sacrifice is made. There is no fooling Him.

      By contrast the prayer of the righteous person is accepted. Notice first that prayer is not a sacrifice. It is not something done in order to satisfy a requirement placed on us by the LORD, whereas a sacrifice does fulfill that role. Prayer is communication with God. It can take many forms, but true prayer can’t be a sacrifice in this sense. If it is, it is no longer prayer. It turns into something very different.

      Prayer that is not a sacrifice pleases the LORD. What do we do with someone or something that pleases us? We draw it closer to us. We spend time and energy enhancing the relationship. It moves higher on our ‘To Do’ list. It becomes a top priority in our lives.