“If we have got the true love of God shed abroad in our hearts, we will show it in our lives. We will not have to go up and down the earth proclaiming it. We will show it in everything we say or do.”
– DL. Moody
Prayer
What Love is Not
1 John 3:10-12
10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.
The movie Marriage Story, stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver as a divorcing couple engaged in a raging custody battle. It won universal acclaim from critics and numerous awards, including six Oscar nominations and one win, for Laura Dern’s barnstorming attorney.
But perhaps the most interesting achievement has just been revealed by the Wall Street Journal, which reports that audio of the central couple screaming at one another has been judged so upsetting it is now being used to deter wolves from attacking livestock.
And since we’re talking today about what love is and what love is not. I thought that was a good example. That’s not love. It’s only a movie, but it’s exactly like real life. I’ve been in a house with that kind of screaming, I was a little kid, but I knew it wasn’t right, and I certainly know it’s not love. Let’s read the full text to get where we are trying to go today.
1 John 3:10-24
[10] By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
Love One Another
[11] For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. [12] We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. [13] Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. [14] We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. [15] Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
[16] By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. [17] But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? [18] Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
[19] By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; [20] for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. [21] Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; [22] and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. [23] And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. [24] Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
John helps us understand with another way of putting it here. He is helping us understand by repetition of this theme Believing, Loving, Obeying. That pattern is the one of a Christian, that’s how it works. So let’s look through this passage for these 3 points
- What love is not
- What love is
- What love does for the believer
4 loves in NT Greek:
Eros (erotic)
Storge (family, parents)
Philio (brotherly affection, friendship)
Agape (self giving, doesn’t expect something in return)
- What love is not (love does not)
1 John 3:10-15
[10] By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. [11] For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. [12] We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. [13] Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. [14] We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. [15] Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Love is not:
Righteousness, in fact it hates it
Hatred of a brother
Jealousy
Murder
What the world does to you or for you (it doesn’t care for you, it will only use you) – abides in death
- What love is (love does)
1 John 3:16-18
[16] By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. [17] But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? [18] Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Love is:
Jesus example to us of laying down his life
sacrificial giving, not just crumbs, loving as we do ourselves
Helping a brother in need
Doing it vs just saying it
*John 13:34-35
[34] A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. [35] By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
That’s how the world sees that we’re different. Holy.
- What love does for believers
John has been building up to this through this passage.
1 John 3:19-23
[19] By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; [20] for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. [21] Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; [22] and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. [23] And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.
What Love does for believers:
Assures us before Him
Allows God to heal our heart
We are quick to condemn ourselves
God provides confidence
“We can overcome feelings of false guilt by remembering that God knows our real motives. He does not judge on the basis of appearance, as we often judge ourselves.”
We then pray rightly, because we are obeying Him and pleasing Him
“There is nothing mechanical or magical about prayer. For it to be effective, the will of the intercessor needs to be in line with the will of God; and such a conformity of wills is brought about only as the believer lives in Christ.”
How does this flesh out in the real world? From an article I read this week and this overlaps with our focus on our children and youth and praying for them, and what they face. I think it overlaps society as a whole and the need for us to live out this passage.
“I suspect most middle-aged Americans had never heard of Character.AI until The New York Times ran the tragic story of how 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III committed suicide after an obsessive and toxic relationship with a character from the AI chatbot service.
Setzer would spend several hours a day in his room chatting with an avatar based on Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. Their relationship was romantic and more at times. Setzer withdrew from his friends, hobbies, and school and focused solely on his digital relationship with the chatbot. Virtual reality overtook reality. Horrifyingly, over time he was able to convince the chatbot they’d be better off dead together. And so he took his life.
Before we write off this story as an outlier, it’s important to note that millions of young people use Character.AI and are probably addicted to the platform. Three-quarters of its users are 18-34 years old and spend two hours a day chatting with characters. Character.AI offers users realistic conversations with sympathetic chatbots with whom they can form an emotional attachment, as Setzer did. Some characters offer intimacy with and access to our culture’s idols and icons—famous people, characters from stories, and so on.
To some extent, this isn’t new. Fan culture, especially for the young, is built on the fantasy of a close relationship with your idol, and often that takes the form of a romantic relationship. This is why fanfiction so often entails stories of romantic involvement with attractive characters. But chatbots offer an immersive experience categorically different from normal fan culture. If fanfiction is reading a story of emotional attachment to someone you idolize, a chatbot is acting out a story of emotional attachment with someone you idolize.
Whether people obsessively chat with their favorite characters from a book or characters of their own invention, the potential to create deep emotional bonds with chatbots reveals something about our social maladies and our need for deep, embodied relationships. Even more, it says something about the crisis of meaning in our time—our desire for something true and good that can bring order and significance to our lives. The developer behind Friend.com, a competitor of Character.AI, described the mission of his chat AI program in just these existential terms: “What I’m trying to do is create a new relationship in your life; radical transparency without concern of judgment. I think this is a relationship people used to have with God but is lacking in the modern world.”
Loneliness Epidemic and the Meaning Crisis
In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory that our nation is in an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” The advisory notes that “the rate of loneliness among young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019.” This shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. Young people (and older people, for that matter) are more disconnected from embodied play and fellowship than ever. Everything is filtered through a screen, and that screen often displays abuse, bullying, and shaming. Jonathan Haidt has thoroughly described the dangers of social media and young people in his book The Anxious Generation. But we might add that this is also a lonelygeneration. One way young people have sought to respond to these feelings of loneliness, shame, anxiety, and isolation is through chatbots like those provided by Character.AI.
Added to the epidemic of loneliness and isolation is the crisis of meaning. Although this crisis hasn’t received an official surgeon general advisory, it’s no less real than the epidemic of loneliness and is in fact related to it. With the crisis of meaning, modern people feel a loss of significance, order, and purpose. The telos of contemporary life (actualization of the self) is Sisyphean and hollow, and young people feel that hollowness.
The “rat race” isn’t just the race to the top of the corporate ladder; it’s the race to discover and express our identity. And that race never ends. As a result, we have an aching feeling that there must be something more—some story that gives significance, order, and purpose to life. And one way to accomplish that is through relationships and the stories we create in them, even if those stories are only with chatbots.” – Matt Lietzen TGC/Keller Center
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So I read you a sad or scary article on the state of many people (maybe we are some of these people)..what do we do about it?
- Love
- Care
- Pray
- Do something
“Melvin V. Wade Sr. “run”
– There is an answer for your agony.
– There is a balm for your bruises.
– There is a cure for your calamities.
– There is deliverance from your distress.
– There is an eraser for your errors.
– There is forgiveness for your faults.
– There is grace for your gloom.
– There is joy for your journey.
– There is mercy for your misery.
We have the answer, His name is Jesus
