1 John 3:10, 23
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.
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.
Christians often over-complicate the faith. This is sad but true. Sometimes we become so wrapped up with strategies, missions, and supposedly deep studies, and somehow, in the process, we fail to remember that God has commanded us to do some very simple things.
Look at the verses above. In a very real sense, the verses above are a summary of the commands of God that we will find in the epistles. Of course, there is more to know. Of course, there is a depth of theology that we want to reach. Of course, there are important thoughts that must go into applying these commands. And, yet, the commands above are the commands of God.
There are three things in the two above verses that I would argue summarize what Christians are called to do: believe in Jesus, love one another, and practice righteousness. How simple is that? I’m not asking how easy it all is to do, rather how easy is this to understand. I would argue that, if we really tried to boil down the commands of the New Testament, they fall into the categories of believing in Jesus, loving our brothers, and living rightly before the Lord.
Of course believing in Jesus is a command of God. There is no salvation for the person who does not have genuine, life-changing, God-granted, saving faith in Jesus. We are sinners. We deserve judgment. God sent Jesus to save us through his life, death, and resurrection. And anyone who will believe in Jesus, placing their hope for their eternity in Jesus alone, will be granted salvation as a gift from God.
Loving one another is also clearly a part of New Testament Christianity. Jesus told us in John 13:35 that the world will believe that we belong to him, not when we strategize evangelism perfectly, but when we love one another. Something about living lives of genuine love for the brothers and sisters we have in Christ takes Christians way beyond what the world expects. We are commanded to love each other, and this is a major part of the faith.
Finally, in this list, is living righteously. Look at most books of the New Testament, and you will find, after a presentation of the gospel and alongside commands to genuinely love each other, commands to live differently than the sinful world around us. We are called to look at our words, our emotions, our sexuality, our marriages, our families, our jobs, and all other moral standards differently than the lost world that does not know God. We are not called to lives of asceticism. We are simply called to love God by obeying his commands. This kind of following God will make us look so different to the world around us that they will wonder at our ability to live with hope in a world that is so different than we are.
Don’t get me wrong. We have many things we need to know and to do. But, how much do we over-complicate the faith when the three things we see above are not the heart of what the church is trying to do? We are to have faith in Jesus. We need to believe in him and respond to him by glorifying his name. We are to love each other in such a way that the world marvels. We are to live differently than the world around us, displaying the glory of God through simple obedience to his commands—commands which are not burdensome.
Christians, may we learn to simplify. May we not over-burden one another with goals that are so far beyond the ones in the Scripture. May we have lives that testify to the glory of God and the truth of the gospel as we do these three things that God commands. May we take God at his word and shape our lives around faith in Christ, love of the family of God, and following the commands of God.
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