Love Is Not a Subjective Feeling

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  1 John 2:9–11 (ESV) Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.  CONSIDER THIS I will never forget the time I got lost hunting. I was about sixteen and headed to the woods after school, as was my practice, to hunt deer. At dusk a young buck walked along a nearby ridge. I aimed and fired. The deer fled. How could I have missed? I thought. I walked through the woods in search of this animal. I was about to give up when I spotted the deer in the distance. I had been successful with my shot only to realize I had a bigger problem now. It was dark and I was lost. I frantically walked in one direction, to no avail. Then I walked in another direction, again to no avail. Then I lost track of the deer and began in desperation to try to refind him. Even though I eventually found the deer, I was literally walking around in darkness and had no idea where I was going. The darkness had blinded me. Being lost is not a subjective experience. It is an objective reality. I am not lost because I “feel” lost. I am lost because I am walking around in darkness and have no idea where I am going or how to get there. The thing about being lost is you don’t realize you are lost until it’s too late. That night in the woods I was lost long before I realized it. John once again shoots straight. He’s not asking people whether they are walking in darkness. He looks at our relationships and says, in effect, our relationship with God is about as good as our worst relationship with other people. That’s hard to swallow. I so want to assess my walk with God according to how near I feel to God. Am I spending time in God’s Word? Am I spending time in prayer? Am I sharing in fellowship with other believers? Am I taking care of those in need? These are the ways I want to measure the state of my relationship with God. John will not have it. He says we can read and pray and fast and study and do good and be in small groups until the cows come home and it won’t matter one whit if we aren’t loving our brothers and sisters around us. Remember: for John, love is not a feeling or an affection. Biblical love means putting the needs of others above my self-interest. Neither is hatred a feeling. According to John, hatred is not so much raging animosity toward others as it is our indifference to or neglect of their need. There is no middle ground here. You either love others by putting their interests above your own, or you don’t—which means, in John’s inspired vision, that you hate them. I’m going to put this into the most unvarnished language I can come up with. To the extent that I am not actively putting my self-interest aside and serving and helping and looking out for the best interests of the people around me, I am walking around in the darkness, lost as I can be. It doesn’t matter if I feel lost or not. It doesn’t matter if I can talk a good game or preach a good sermon or lead a good Bible study or do a good mission project or anything else. If I am not actively caring for the people around me, I am lost. I hate to say it that way, but I do think this is what John is telling us. The smartest thing I did that dark night when I was lost in the woods was to admit that I was lost, at which point I stopped walking around. I sat down and I prayed for the mercy of God in the form of someone coming to find me. I will always remember what happened next: I saw the flickering flashlight winding its way through the thick forest in the hands of my father, who had come to find me. You, like me, may need to stop right where you are and go through your relational Rolodex—even if it is only the people you meet on a daily or weekly basis. Let me be clear in closing. Loving other people is not the condition for salvation. It’s the confirming sign of it. (I don’t have a relationship with God because I say I do or because I feel as though I do or because I’ve prayed the right prayer.) Do I make relationships about others, or is it all about me? There’s your sign. THE PRAYER  Lord Jesus, I will open myself and just ask you: Am I lost? Am I walking around in darkness without even knowing it? I open myself to the possibility that this could be true. Come, Holy Spirit, turn on the lights, and search me out. Even more, give me a glimpse of your power and possibility to really change and grow. I ask it in your name, Jesus. Amen.