“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” 1 John 5:1-5

As I think about it from my point of view, here is God’s challenge: God wants us to live a really good life, focused on God and people and full of meaning. God also has standards and wants His people to know those standards – so we can be in the family but the standards are also for our own good. Humans tend to be defiant, lot of us; we don’t want to be told what to do. So how does God tell us what He expects? God has to communicate something – does God make suggestions? If God makes commandments, a huge fraction of the people will defy it just because they don’t want to be ordered around. If God does present a commandment, does that make God a tyrant? Tricky, huh?

Well, God did make commandments and certain people have obeyed them, lots have not, and a bunch of us struggle with some of them. Today I’m submitting to you that God’s Spirit works right in us right at the heart of that struggle. In other words, we learn a commandment and, at that moment, an internal fight ensues. Part of us wants to do God’s will and part of us wants to do what feels good to us right now. If it is not presented to us as a commandment, there is no struggle. If Jesus says, for example, to turn the other cheek when someone has whacked us only if we feel like it, there is no struggle. We want to strike back. But Jesus commands it and now we have an internal conflict working. I want to pound the guy but Jesus says not to. At that point, the Holy Spirit is at work in me and I am growing as a person, whether I want to or not. This is God’s paradox, God orders us to do what is best for us and for everybody but we want to do what feels good right then or we might defy doing it just because we don’t want anybody telling us what to do. Sound familiar?

In this letter, John says that believers are those who know that Jesus is the Christ and they love one another. And that is shown by loving God and carrying out His commands. By this time, late in his life, John knew that living by God’s commands was not difficult, rather it is liberating, it allows us to live better and less conflicted lives, lives that are not in alignment with the ways of this world but that are in alignment with God. Nevertheless, each of us has to work out our own struggle. We cannot seem to learn by other peoples’ example very effectively. We have to learn God’s standards, including Jesus’ commands, and push back until they become our own. It’s a lot like an adolescent kid who defies his parents’ rules, not because she or he is a bad kid, they just have to check it out. And sooner or later, if it goes well, the kid grows to learn that the rules are for his or her own good – life goes better when we follow the rules. The kid matures and makes the rules his or her own, now the rule is etched on their hearts. The kid who stays defiant, cocky and full of rebellion, thinking she or he is smarter than the parents or the authorities, will eventually crash – ending up broken or in jail or dead.

Jesus gave us commandments and frankly, they’re challenging but not that harsh. One of them is to love one another. This one’s only tough because we have to give up some of our ego and meet other people where they are. Here are a few more:

• Do not resist an evil person.

• If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also.

• And if someone wants to sue you and take your coat, let him have your shirt as well.

• If someone asks you to go one mile, go two miles with him.

• Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
• Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

As you can see, this is a challenging list – it pushes us way past our natural feelings and forces us to struggle. Each one of these will bring up a bunch of rationalizations why we can’t do that. But when we stick with Jesus’ commands, we are overcoming the world, to use John’s language. Very challenging – just when you thought you were all grown up and there’s nothing else to learn!

One more thing, here’s where this church sticks to the Bible and departs from the legalistic Christian crowd: if you screw up, that’s not the end of it. That’s when grace cuts in and God gets the next pass at loving us into restoration and redemption – more about that at a later date.