Echoes of love
John really loved to write about love. He even echoed it in his writing.
One of my favourite little Bible details. is the similarities between John 3:16 and 1 John 3:16. It makes me wonder if this was a deliberate move by those who added chapters and verses to the Bible or if it was a divine ordained coinsidence.
Just so we are on the same page, the verses go
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)
and
6 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. (1 John 3:16 NIV)
I love how 1 John extends the theme of the Gospel of John. We've seen the example of Christ — the way of Jesus — now we too should live in the same way.
That's certainly a challenge. Jesus' sacrifice was total and for those who did not deserve it (that's us by the way). As Christians, it's easy to read over the call to love our enemies, or the example of the Good samaritan and forget just how radical and tough these calls are.
We are not only to love, sacrificially, those who we like and get along with, but those who hate us.
Love one another and your enemies
I've been reading through John 14-16 as I prepare to preach on the aspects of love within these chapters. At the same time I've got deeper into "Christian twitter" and ...oh boy could we use some of the "love one another". There's always a new (or a repeat occurance) villian of the day/week and it's usually another Christian. Either there's someone who's a fundamentalist or someone who's a crazy liberal false teacher.
Sometimes the topics debated are really important issues and it's difficult to keep to cool when discussing them. But a lot of the time it's people looking for fights, trying to wind up the other side or just being plain rude whether they realise it or not.
Honestly, I'm trying not to get so caught up in all that drama. I'd rather discuss the fine points of infant/believers baptism without the people who are looking to slam the other side prowling.
And even more importantly, I want to be more active in my faith with the people around me who don't know that Jesus is lord. I'm not anti-twitter, but I am anti-twitter-is-the-place-I-am-on-24-7-and-so-I'm-sorry-if-I-don't-know-the-names-of-my-neighbours.
