People Are Strange When You’re a Stranger
Text: 1 John 4:19- 5:9
Proposition: The strange quality of love is that it hinges on the capability to love the unseen God before it can really love people as we were created to.
Introduction: It was 1967, a blues rock singer by the name of Jim Morrison was suffering from acute depression and in an effort to help him friends suggested they go for a walk to watch the sunset over a scenic canyon. It was there that Morrison said the words for a song just suddenly came to him, they expressed what he had been living. “People are strange, when you're a stranger, faces look ugly when you're alone…”. Morrison was 23 when he wrote that, four years later he was dead from a drug overdose, buried near Paris in France. Though Morrison struggled with depression what really isolated him from others was what impairs many people. The thing is we haven’t changed as human beings, the same issues that people struggled with 2000 years ago are the same core issues we have to deal with today. So let’s look at a statement made by the Apostle John just 40 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It begins in 1 John 4:19 and continues on into the next chapter but it sounds like this. “We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” The argument is a little obscure but essentially John is saying something similar to Morrison. People are strange when you’re a stranger, faces look ugly when you’re alone… alone from Who? I would suggest that being alone from God is what makes all people strangers. Faces look ugly when you’re alone or separated from God. John says that it’s impossible to say that you love God and at the same time to say that you hate your brother. But as the relationship between you and God is established and built up through truth and belief and practice then the aloneness of being a stranger begins to lift like a fog. Perhaps you’re asking yourself, “If that’s really true how can I know this God, how can I love beyond the way that I do now, how can I stop being alone?” It’s a good series of questions, let’s see if we can the find the answers.
I. How Can I Know This God Who Loves Me Before I Ever Loved Him? My friend Anar in India often emails me and a number of times he has told me about their latest visit to a leper colony near them. The thing about leprosy is that the people who have it experience a loss of feeling in the nerves of their hands, feet and face. Things that should would have caused pain no longer do and the person sustains increasing degrees of injury because they can’t feel pain. The reason that I mention this is because a similar thing happens in our world today. Many people are desensitized to their spiritual state. They don’t feel anything when they violate the truth of spiritual reality. They curse God, they deceive others without any sense of right or wrong. In a very real sense people have become desensitized to evil because they are desensitized to God. That’s the reality of what surrounds us and it is what makes us ‘strangers’ to one another.
So consider the truth of what John writes in verse 5:1, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him.” It isn’t just a matter of believing in the existence of Jesus as the Christ, the demons believe that Jesus is the Christ and it does them no good whatsoever. There is more to believing in Jesus than just believing in His existence. Belief in Jesus as the Christ means belief in Him as MY Christ. Is He your Christ? The word Christ is actually a title, like King or Prime Minister. The Christ is the Messiah, the Savior. That’s the title but it’s when I believe he’s my Savior that an amazing transition occurs. I move from being unaware of my need for a Savior to suddenly becoming very aware of my sin and thus my need of rescue. When I believe that Jesus is willing and perfect to be my Savior and I implore Him to forgive my sin and bring life to my spirit. I suddenly am like a restored leper. Though I have damage in my being now I feel life where before was only numbness. It’s in that moment of belief that I am born of God, literally His being now made present and resident in me. Here’s the catch, “everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him.” A person who has come to this belief in Jesus as their Christ is now called to love, “him who is begotten of Him.”, that’s a reference to the people next to you. What’s quickly evident is that God considers the church to be like a body, each part connected to the other, in need of the other and loving that very unity because Christ is evident in it. How can I know this God? It begins by agreeing with Him about your need of Him, it calls you to see this Christ Jesus as your way, truth and life even by loving him who is begotten of Him.
II. How Can I Love Beyond the Way That I Do Now?
If someone were to ask you, ‘On a scale of 1 to 10 how well do you love others’, where would you place yourself? Are you a six or an eight or a three… one thing for sure is that sin impedes love, right? And all have sinned, right? So there are no perfect 10’s, no 9’s, very, very few 8’s. Wherever you scored your level of how well you love it begs the question, ‘How can I love beyond the way that I do now?’ If you are a Christian then you need realize that you do not have the right to be a porcupine or a badger when it comes to how you relate to people, especially those who are the begotten of God kind. Why? Jesus said, “by this love that all men will know you are My disciples.” He was referring to the way you love each other. So how can I love better? Have a look at verse 2, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.” To use a poor metaphor, it’s like a golfers swing. The key is to resist the temptation to see that ball fly off in a magnificent arc, to keep your eye down on the ball, to let the club follow through and not try to stop its motion because the balls already been hit. When I keep my eye on God and on His Word, when I resist the temptation to see reward for my efforts, when I keep on following through trusting that God’s presence in me is at work then amazingly we find ourselves loving the children of God. I think we love beyond the way that we do now when we let go of the question, ‘What’s in it for me?’ I can’t think of a time when Jesus asked that question and when His Spirit is in us it’s the same. It’s having a ‘want to’ that sees joy where before there was only task. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” The smallest change of your attitude from self to Christ like accomplishes a love that goes further than you could imagine.
III. How Can I Stop Being Alone?
“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” What do you suppose it means to ‘overcome the world’? Certainly the world is a reference to the collective values of the people where you live, values that to a great degree are skewed by sin and unbelief. It’s a view that sees life as only being that which you possess, that which belongs just to you.
It was on the eve of the great triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, a week before the crucifixion. Everybody wanted to be near Jesus because they thought it was He who would throw the Romans out. The truth be told it was a time when Jesus felt the most alone for even His disciples didn’t get what was about to happen. In John 12:24 Jesus makes this enigmatic statement, a truism that speaks about overcoming the world. “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Let me suggest that to overcome the world through faith in Christ is the way to stop being alone. It’s about dying to self, overcoming the world, which produces much more life. Jesus spoke these words about Himself because of what was soon to take place at the cross but the principle was meant to be the way that we can stop being alone. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me…