The Best Way to Show Love

The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, October 3, 2021.  The Bible verses used are 1 John 5:1-12.

            What would you say is the best way you and I can show love to people?

            Well, there might be a lot of things.  We can go visit someone who’s going through a hard time.  We can support the local food pantry, doing what we can to see that people have enough to eat.  We can give someone a ride to the doctor’s office when they’re not feeling well.  On a larger scale, we can give to charities that feed people or provide clothes for people.  In a United Methodist sense, we have UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which helps people in the wake of natural disasters around the world.  We also, of course, can give to our local church, and I hope you feel confident that it will use the money wisely.  

            And of course, this only scratches the surface.  There are all kinds of things we can do to show love to people.  If we really thought about it, we could use the entire time left in worship coming up with ways to show love to people, and we still would not come close to listing them all.

            But, while those are all good things, none of those things is the best way to show love to someone.  The best way to show love to someone is to do whatever we can to help them accept Jesus Christ as the Savior.

            The Apostle John, in our reading for today, wrote this:  “This is how we know we love the children of God:  by loving God and carrying out his commands.”  Let’s think about that for a minute.  The way we know we love the children of God, is by loving God, and carrying out his commands.  So, if we don’t love God and carry out his commands, we don’t really love the children of God.

            And maybe you’re thinking, now wait a minute.  I know people who don’t love God.  I know people who don’t even believe in God.  And yet, those people are good to their families, their good to their friends, they support the community, they even help people in need sometimes.  They may not believe in God, but they do all kinds of good things, things that help people.  How can you say they don’t love the children of God?

            Well, first of all, it’s not me saying it.  It’s the Apostle John saying it.  But again, let’s think about this.  I also know people like those I’ve just described.  I know people who don’t believe in God, and yet do all kinds of good things in the community and help people in all kinds of ways.  And that’s fine.  I’m glad they do those things.

            But those things, while they are good things, only help us in our lives on earth.  They help make our time on earth a little better, a little easier.  But that’s all they do.  

            That’s not nothing, of course.  But you know, our lives on earth are short.  Maybe a hundred years or so, at the most.  For some of you younger people, maybe that sounds like a long time, but it really is not.  In fact, which each passing year, I realize more and more just how short one hundred years really is.  

            And compared to eternity, one hundred years is basically nothing.  The Bible tells us that a thousand years are like a day to God.  What’s a hundred years?  A long lunch?  A hundred years is the blink of an eye compared to eternity.

            If we don’t love God, our entire focus will be on the world.  And again, I’m not saying what happens in this world is unimportant.  When we have the chance to help someone in this world, we should.  That shows love for God, too.  What I am saying--and what I think John is saying--is that our main focus should not be on this world.  Our main focus should be on eternity.

            That’s why John goes on to say this:  “everyone who is born of God overcomes the world.  This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.  Who is it that overcomes the world?  Only the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God.”

            Again, we should help each other in this world whenever we can.  But as Christians, our main focus is not on what happens in this world.  Our focus is to overcome the world.  And our focus is to do whatever we can to help others overcome the world, too.

            Think about the life of Jesus Christ, while he was on the earth.  Jesus healed a lot of people, and that was awesome.  But think about those stories of Jesus’ healing.  Jesus would heal people for a while, but then he would stop.  

There were more people he could’ve healed.  We’re told at various times that people from all over would bring people to Jesus to be healed.  Jesus could’ve spent his entire time here on earth doing nothing but healing people, and he would never have run out of them.  There would still have been more people who needed healing.

And the same goes for feeding people.  We read about times when Jesus fed large numbers of people with just a little bit of bread and a few fish.  And that was awesome, too.  But again, there were lots of hungry people Jesus did not feed.  He could’ve spent his entire time on earth doing nothing but feeding people, too, and he’d never have run out of hungry people.

But Jesus did not do that.  He did not spend his entire time on earth healing people and feeding people.  Why not?  Those would’ve been really good things for him to do.  Think of all the people he’d have helped.  Think of how many people’s lives he would’ve made better.  Why not do it?

The reason, I think, is because if Jesus had done that, the message of salvation and eternal life would’ve been lost.  People would’ve believed in Jesus--but they’d have believed in him as a miracle worker.  They would not have believed in him as the divine Son of God.

Plus, if Jesus had done that, he might not have been killed by the Pharisees.  Maybe he would have--you never know.  But a guy who was just a miracle worker, a guy who could just heal people and feed people, would not necessarily have been a threat to them.  Maybe they’d have just let Jesus go.

And that might sound great.  But--the point of Jesus being killed was to take the punishment we deserve for our sins.  It’s the reason the divine Son of God was sent to earth in the first place.  If Jesus had not been killed, he would not have fulfilled his mission.  Salvation and eternal life would not be available through faith in him.  And you and I would still be subject to taking the punishment for our sins that we deserve.

Jesus cared about the lives of people on earth.  He did things to make people’s lives on earth better.  But that was not his main focus.  His main focus was on salvation and eternal life in heaven.  As Christians, that should be our main focus, too.

John closes this passage with this:  “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Again, it’s not that our lives on earth are unimportant.  It’s that our lives on earth are so short compared to eternity.  When we do something nice for someone, we’ve made their day better, and that’s good.  Again, we should do that when we can.  But our focus should be on helping people receive salvation and eternal life.  And that can only be found through faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.

I want to make clear that those two things are not exclusive of each other.  We’re not talking about an either/or.  We’re talking about a both/and.  James said, “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”  And that’s true.  I am not suggesting that the things we do to help others in this life are not important.  They’re very important.

The point is that we should not stop there.  Because we could say the opposite, too.  If we take care of someone’s physical needs, but do nothing to help them receive salvation and eternal life, what good is that?  It’s important to help people on earth, but it’s even more important to do what we can to help them receive salvation and eternal life.  

The only way we can love the children of God is to love God.  The only way we can love God is to keep His commands.  And the very last command of Jesus Christ while he was on earth was, “Go and make disciples.”  Not heal people.  Not feed people.  Not make people’s lives better on earth.  “Go and make disciples.”  

The best way we can show love to people is to do whatever we can to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  By doing so, we will do what we can to bring them to salvation and eternal life.  There will never be anything we do that will be more important than that.