Love or...

Passage: 1 John 3:11-24

At a certain point in the novel The Kite Runner, the narrator, Amir, recounts a speech his father used to give about theft. “Every offense you commit against another man,” he says, “is some kind of theft. If you take from a man, you’ve stolen his property. If you cuckold a man, you have stolen his wife. If you murder a man, you have stolen his life.”

In his first letter, the Apostle John talks a lot about love. John mirrors the rhetoric of Amir’s father when he speaks of acts not committed in love. But he takes his argument to a different extreme. John says, “Any time you commit an offense against another, you murder him.” In John’s mind there are only two ways to respond to God and neighbor: love or hate. There’s nothing in between. And, says John, if your actions are guided by anything but love, they’re tantamount to murder.

Here’s how it works. If you steal from someone, you’ve taken a bit of their livelihood. On a fractional level, you’ve taken their life. If you slander someone, you’ve chipped a piece off their reputation. You’ve killed them, just a little. If on any level you are motivated to knock someone down a peg or hurt them in any way, you are responding, if at a reduced amplitude, to the desire to kill them.

Choose your actions and words carefully, says John. Anyone who wants anything to do with Jesus must choose love. If your conduct toward anyone else is motivated by something other than love, you have no place with Jesus, the perfect expression of the love of God.