True Christian living, as described in 1 John 2:6, means walking as Jesus walked, which involves reflecting God's character of love. This unselfish, self-sacrificing love, exemplified by Christ's sacrifice, contrasts sharply with the world's hateful nature. The sermon emphasizes that this divine love is not a human achievement but a gift poured into believers by the Holy Spirit, enabling them to love fellow Christians not based on personal liking but on seeing Christ in them. It concludes by urging believers to actively demonstrate this love through practical acts of kindness and service towards all, especially those in the household of faith.
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He's been taking up, coming to the Lord and so on. My text is found in First John chapter two and verse six. He that saith, he abideth in him, Christ, ought himself so to walk even as he walks. Now he doesn't say we ought so to be. because we cannot be what he was. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. In him was no sin.
And we are not what the Lord Jesus was. I'm speaking now of our state. But we ought to walk as he walks. You and I ought to act like the Lord Jesus. The word walk, as it's used in Scripture, means a great deal more than just act. It means the whole life, the whole course of our being. We move in a certain direction, and that direction ought to be the same direction in which our Lord Jesus moves. To glorify the Father, to seek the good of others, We ought to walk as He walks.
Ephesians chapter five and verse two says, And walk in love. Now there are two ways in the epistle of John in which the Lord Jesus manifests the Father to us. God is light. God is love. Yesterday morning we talked a little bit together about how the Lord Jesus showed the like character of God in his life here below and how we should do the same. This morning I'd like to talk about the character of God that's described as love.
And you know that the word for love is a word that means an unselfish love, a love that's not like human love, certainly not the arrow love, and not even the affection, which was all that Peter could claim, but the self-sacrificing love of God, love that's expressed in the gift of His Son. the love of Christ that is expressed in the gift of himself, love that is described in First Corinthians thirteen, unselfish, love that thinks no evil, love that gives and gives and gives.
Well, that's the character of love, to serve and to give. Somebody asked me to repeat that little definition of of love that I quoted from some writer, and I'm sure I don't remember who it was, of a hundred years ago, self seeks to be served and thinks itself great. Love serves and is great. Do you know who said that, Mr. Tatum? Does anybody know the the author of that little saying, we'd like to give him credit, even if he is dead.
Tell the Lord to give him credit. It's helped me a lot. I've enjoyed thinking about this. Self seeks to be served and thinks itself great. Love serves and is great. And so we have the love of God presented here in First John. This is the character of God, according to first John four and verse eight. God is love. Now this is in contrast to the way of the world. What is the way of the world? Well, Titus three, three says, hateful and hating one another.
We brought a little girl into our home many years ago. She was only thirteen years of age and she'd been going to public dances alone for a year. You imagine how happy she felt about coming into our home. She thought when we told her to go to bed at nine-thirty that she was really in jail. She stuck it out till she's fifteen years of age and then she engineered her grandmother getting her out of the home, taking her to her home in Philadelphia. And she came up to me and stuck her arms akimbo, and she looked at me right in the eye, and she said, I just want to tell you before I leave here that I hate you.
Well, I said, Anna May, I don't know if I blame you too much. You didn't ask to come here. And there isn't any reason why you should love me. But I just want you to know that we still love you, and we're still going to pray for you. And I never saw her again until I was back in Philadelphia a few years ago, and I had an old address, and I got to wondering if she was still there, never had a letter from her. I knocked on that door, and she let out a hoop and ran and threw her arms around my neck and began to cry. And I looked over her shoulder and I saw a young naval officer coming toward me and he was bigger than I was.
And I said, take your arms from around my neck and introduce me to that fellow before he shoots me. And she said, oh, this is my husband. He said, I knew who you were. You must be Daddy John. And he said, he said, anime has felt so terrible because she lost your address and she didn't know where to write to you. Well, I took her with me to all the meetings at the conference and introduced her to the Christians there and arranged for her to be baptized and received into fellowship because this is what she had told me. She said, when my first baby was born, I was in a coma for two weeks, and I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, and yet I heard everything that was going on around me.
I heard them say that I wasn't going to get well. And she said, I began to think about the things you taught me at the home. And she said, I trusted the Lord Jesus for my Savior, and I'm praying now for my husband to be saved. And then she looked at me with, I'll never forget that look. And she said, I love you for all you did for me. What made the difference? The way of the world is hateful and hating one another. That's all there is in the world. Oh, but you say, I've seen lots of unsaved people who were loving and kind. Yeah, but you cross them. You cross them and see what happens.
You take something away from them and see what happens. That's what the devil thought about Job. He said, you just touch him. You see what'll happen. Now that would have been perfectly true if Job hadn't known God. You just touch him and see what happens. The devil didn't understand that anybody could have anything a nature within him that would make him love God, all he knew was hate. But you say that says hateful and hating one another. Yes, that's true, but Romans one and thirty says, Haters of God. And of the Lord Jesus, it is said, they hated me without a cause.
Hate. What a contrast with the love of God and with the love which Christianity has brought. You know that the law commanded love, don't you? Somebody asked the Lord, what's the greatest commandment? And he said, the first and greatest commandment is, I shall love the Lord thy God. Then he said, the second commandment is like this. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. That's the complete embodiment of the law. In fact, we're told love is the fulfilling of the law.
That's what the law required of human beings. But it couldn't produce it. For the book of Romans, eight chapter and verse three, I think it is, said what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh. The law simply couldn't produce love. You can't command people to love and produce it that way. We don't try to force our boys and girls to love it. We try to love them into loving them.
We try to show them that we love them and wait for the time when love begets love. but you can't command love. We should love God, but we don't love God. We should love our neighbors, but we don't love our neighbors. Somebody told us recently in Colorado Springs, if you think you love your neighbor, the next time you hear the fire engine, just analyze your thoughts. You say, I hope that isn't my house, meaning I hope it's yours. It has to be somebody. We don't love our neighbors as we love ourselves, not even we Christians.
That's what I want to talk about a little bit this morning. For our Lord Jesus commanded love. I just got through saying you can't command love and produce it. But the Lord Jesus commanded love and then He gave us the power for it. Now what is His command? Well, here in this epistle, He says a great deal about our loving God. The third chapter in verse twenty-three, that we should love one another. This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandments.
You'll find that commandment in the fifteenth of John in verse seventeen. The Lord Jesus said, A new commandment, I give unto you that you love one another. It seems too bad that the Lord would have to say this, to regenerate people. But you have to say a lot of things to Christians. You have to tell Christians to quit lying. The Williams translation of the New Testament does a wonderful job of handling some of the verbs. If you must have a modern translation, get hold of Williams. You'll find it very helpful.
He says, stop lying. They were already doing it. That's why he had to make the command. Stop lying to one another. Seems too bad you'd have to tell Christians not to steal, but he says, let him who stole stop stealing. There is a danger that Christians may go on in hate. Now, don't misunderstand me. Hate is an indication of absence of eternal life if you're thinking of hate in its absolute sense.
And he that says he, love of God and hate is his brother is a liar. But there may be a lack of love, and the word hate is used in Scripture in that way. For instance, he says, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. And we might soften that, for this is the literal meaning. Jacob have I loved and Esau have I loved less. Certainly we're guilty of this, of loving our brethren less than we should. That's why all the exhortations in Scripture about loving one another.
Now, in the fifth chapter of Galatians and verse twenty-two, we read this. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Now, don't call these nine things fruit. They are all of them, the fruit, the product. They are produced by the Spirit. They are the result of the Spirit of God in dwelling us as believers. If you didn't have the Spirit of God within you, you wouldn't love the Lord's people. And sometimes people are, Christians are bothered, young Christians especially are bothered by the fact that we don't like some people.
They say, well, I'm worried a little about this. There are some of the Christians I don't like. The Lord never told you to like them. He just told you to love them. For we like people for what they are. We like them for their manner and their ways and so on. But the love of God is not the love of complacency, it's the love of compassion. And Romans chapter five tells us the love of God is shed abroad or literally poured into our heart. I wouldn't have any love for you if God hadn't given it to me. I heard a man kneel, as he kneel down one time, pray like this. We were in the home and a widely varied group of people there.
And as we kneel to pray for them, he said, O Lord, here we are together. Had we not known thee, we never would have known each other and would not likely have cared to. I'm sure you wouldn't have picked out my company if you weren't a Christian and I a Christian. I'm sure that I'd never be welcome here among you folks, except that the Lord had saved both of us. What has brought us together?
The love of God poured into our heart. Now listen, the Lord is not saying you try hard to feel love for your brethren. He doesn't say that at all. He doesn't say, well, go ahead and act like you love them anyway. In fact, he says the very opposite, unfamed love of a brethren. This old grinny stuff, you know, when you don't mean a thing of it, watch that. Listen, if there isn't any love in your heart for your brethren, get down on your knees and confess it to God and ask him to pour your heart full of it. Maybe you don't even need to ask him to do it.
Maybe you only need to make room for it. For the love of God is poured into our heart. If you didn't keep the lid on so tight, he would pour it full. Just get before him and give him a chance to. He'll make you love his people. You see, we don't love him because of what we see in them. We love them because of whom we see in them. We love each other because we see Christ in each other. We love each other because we belong to God. Look what he says at the close of chapter four. And this commandment have we from him that he who loveth God love his brother also. And then he anticipates the question, who is my brother?
You know what the fellow said to the Lord. Who is my neighbor? That's the way we begin to justify ourselves. And so he says in the first verse of chapter five, Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Do you want to know who your brother is? Or you say, I know all the folks in our meeting. Well, if you loved all of those, you'd be doing better than most people. But that isn't enough. Let's ask God to widen our hearts. Let's ask God to give us hearts big enough for all the people of God. Whenever you meet a Christian, the reaction of your soul is, I'm so glad to meet a Christian.
So what do you do? Start talking about all the different subjects you can till you can find one on which to disagree. That isn't the way of the love of God. Mr. J. Alexander Clark told us about after being eighteen months without seeing a white man, and no Christians except the few black men who were carrying his stuff for him and whom he had led to the Lord. And the drums began to tell him, and the Navy said, three sleeps and we're going to see some white men. No, he said there are no white men in this part of Africa.
But sure enough, the drums were right. And when they got there, they found a young couple who had come out into the bush and made a little clearing and had a little home there, and they were preaching the gospel, and he hadn't heard anything about it. And they had heard over the drums that he was on his way there, and as he came into the clearing, this young fellow and his wife came running down the hill toward them. And he said, I never had seen them before in my life, but they had heard over the drums who I was, and they threw their arms around me and hugged me. And he said, I started back up to the house with an arm around each one of them, and they said, now you're going to stay with us tonight, and you're going to sleep in our bed.
He said, I don't know how in the world he ever got it back there. but they actually had a bed spring and a mattress way back there in the bush. And I hadn't slept on one in six years. He said, when I went to bed, I just sat and bounced up and down on the thing because it felt so good. But he said, I spent two days with that young couple, and I knew that they were presbyterian missionaries, and I knew they believed in sprinkling, and I knew that they had some peculiar belief. He said, did I mention any of them? I did not. I was so glad to see a Christian.
I've been glad to see a Christian's dog. I was so glad to see a Christian that I spent the whole two days talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. We love the Lord's people. And if you don't love them, confess it as a sin and ask God to help you to look on them as he looks on them. He loves them. He loves me for Christ's sake. And you ought to, too. The love of God is a practical thing. I'd like to get some handles on this before I stop. About two minutes more. What should we do about this?
Well, look at chapter... Well, this verse is moved again. They're always doing that. Chapter three in verse seventeen. Here it is. But whoso hath this world good, and see if his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? Somebody has said that kindness is a small change of love. No small change about kindness. That's the coin of the realm. How else are you going to show that you love somebody except by showing them a kindness?
Look for opportunities to show kindness to your brethren and sisters. As you have opportunity to do good to all men, especially they of the household of faith, look for ways to show your love. my husband and wife who are in love with each other come think of so many nice little things to do to show their love for each other if you haven't brought your wife a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy or or some little token of your love for a while try it chalk may be a little hard for but have her sit down first and then offer it to her and see if she doesn't respond and if you haven't done some nice little kindness for your husband lately do it.
And then let's do the same thing for all the Lord's people whom we need. Let's show our kindness. It may be that they need something which you have. Love never withholds anything that the loved one needs, for love always gives. And he says by love, serve one another. They may not need anything which you have to give, but you could do some little thing. to show your love for them in a little bit of service. But to say, I don't want to, I'm not their slave, but love always makes a slave of itself.
Take the love of the Hebrew servants back in the book of Exodus. Why, you said, I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children, I'll not go out free. I want to be all I can be for the work I love.