My Brother’s Keeper – 7/13/25

It’s really good to be with you. This is the first opportunity that I’ve had to be here at North Hills on a Sunday morning. I really appreciate the invitation, the graciousness of Peter and the rest of the staff. You might know this, but there’s an 8:30 a.m. service that happens here every Sunday. It’s been a long time since I willingly got up for an 8:30 a.m. service. I just want you to know, 10:30 a.m. service, y’all are my people. I’m locked in now.

This Wisdomfest, we’re talking about what it means for us as a people to relate, to do the hard work of communication, and continuing to come towards each other. The goal of the series, as Peter said, is to try to be really practical in how some of those things work out.

This morning, I want us to take a look—as we’ve heard read from 1 John—we’re going to look at a passage that talks about the heartbeat, the engine underneath all of these skills of relating. It’s the call that God gives us that pushes us into relating. It’s a call to love. It’s one that, if you’ve read the book of 1 John before (or were listening when chapter three was read a minute ago), you hear again and again in John the call to love, to love, to love. John never tires of saying that and pounding that into us.

Maybe some of you are thinking, “Some people are called to love, others of us, it’s kind of personality type.” Those of us who are introverts — I count myself as one. I was hiding over in the corner over there. We’re like, “Okay, people are nice. Maybe we can keep our distance.” Others of you, the people who sit in the middle, you must be the extroverts. You want to be around people. An introvert says, “Yeah, I admit we need other people.” Extroverts get horrified at the thought of not being around other people. The song in the back of their mind always is, “I can’t live if living is without you.” But this call to love is not about personality type. It’s about loving our brothers.

In John’s words, when he speaks about loving our brother, he’s talking about people within the family of God. Now, John certainly has a category for our call to love the world, but every time in this passage in John when you hear him talk about “brothers,” he’s narrowing his gaze and talking about our call as believers to love the other people in God’s family. That is such an important reality that we’ve been called into. When we are adopted into God’s family, it is us and everyone else in the family. Maybe that’s obvious, but sometimes we operate like we’re little orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks has adopted us into the family, and we get to be this blessed only child. But that’s not who God calls us to be. He’s called us into a family.

We’re going to look with John at three angles this morning on love. First is the choice, second the power, and then thirdly, the practical.

So first, the choice. If you happen to have a Bible with you, look first at verses 11 through 15 and then 23 through 24.

If you got your little handout there with the blanks — Susan, one of the staff members, wrote me earlier in the week and said, “Can you send me some blanks for the bulletin?” So I sent it to her, and then she wrote back and she was like, “You didn’t give me the answers. Can you tell me the answers?” It was the next day. I was like, “I can’t remember the answers.” But I think I’ve got them down.

That first one is “love one another.” It’s both an invitation and a command. Those two things are not contradictory. It’s a command. Let me read through these first few verses again.

“For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 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. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:11-15).

Again and again, he says “love.” Then in verse 23, he seals the deal. He says,

“And this is the commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us” (1 John 3:23).

“Just as he’s commanded us.” He’s reminding his congregation of what they already know about what Jesus has done. In particular, he’s referring to the time that Jesus spent with his disciples the night before he was crucified. The book of John is the one that tells of the washing of the feet. Jesus says,

“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” (John 13:34).

Two more times in that discourse, Jesus repeats that command. He tells us to love another. In other words, love is Jesus’s agenda for the life of his followers. It’s a command, but it’s also an invitation. You hear John’s call to this.

The truth is, a command is always an invitation because you can choose to reject it. If you’re honest, you know what this feels like. The command and call to love in the times we do not listen, and we stop our ears, and we choose to reject it. Our passage this morning gives a primary example of one who rejects it, and that’s in the life of Cain.

I don’t know if North Hills does vacation Bible school or not, but there are always Bible stories that are a part of that. Sometimes it’s pitched as “the heroes of the Bible.” I don’t think there are any VBS curricula that are based on the life of Cain. John is tapping back into the story of Cain and his brother Abel from Genesis 4, so I’m going to read a few of those verses from Genesis 4.

“Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.’ Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth’” (Genesis 4:2b-12).

What is going on in Cain? Cain and Abel both bring offerings to God. God accepts Abel’s (which is a sacrifice of an animal) and Cain’s (an offering of grain) he does not accept. If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you know that in the later rules about offerings, there is a category for an offering that is about grain. It’s not that that was unheard of, but for whatever reason (and the author doesn’t explain it), that is not what God was looking for here. And Cain gets upset.

It’s important to know, this was not the potential end of the road for Cain. God meets him in mercy and says,

“If you do right, won’t you be accepted?”

God is at work, but Cain decides that he is going to refuse to love. How did that play out? Well, Cain gets this remarkable gift from God. He is in the wrong, and God speaks to him. It’s a warning, but again, an invitation. A warning that sin would destroy him, but a message of reassurance and hope that Cain can turn and be accepted. Here’s the thing: Cain heard God’s words, but he didn’t listen to God’s Word.

Here’s your next set of blanks: Cain got stuck in his own head, lost in the swirl of the thoughts and the emotions. Do you know what that’s like? When you’re in the middle of a hard place, when you’re in the middle of a difficult relationship, when things seem to be going downhill, and you don’t know what to do, but what you do is you spiral and spin on the inside. Here’s what Cain does not do: he does not speak to God, even though God has spoken to him.

What could Cain have said? He could have said this: “God, I’m stuck. I’m so angry and so ashamed. I don’t know how to fight against the sin crouching at my door. Help.” But Cain doesn’t do that. He doesn’t speak to God. He doesn’t speak to his brother, at least until the end when he rises to kill him. He doesn’t confess his anger to Abel. He doesn’t move towards him. He doesn’t choose to be his brother’s keeper. He didn’t love. Instead, he curves inward.

Martin Luther (the reformer) had a Latin phrase for this. He says that our sin leaves us “incurvatus in se.” It leaves us “curved in on ourselves.” What happens when you’re curved in on yourself? Imagine yourself curled up in the fetal position. What can’t you do? Well, you can’t lift your eyes and see other people. You can’t move towards others. You can’t be of service to others. That’s what happens to Cain. He becomes deformed.

Cain then receives, after the murder, punishment. But what an ironic punishment, because Cain ends up receiving exactly what he asked for: a life that is cut off from deep intersection with the lives of others. He becomes an exile. God sends him out. He gets what he wants. No brothers to keep and no brothers to keep him. And he’s lost. John sums all this up in verse 14,

“We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death” (1 John 3:14).

When we love our brothers, when we do the hard work, we show that we have passed from death into life. So what’s John implying? If we do not love, it means we’re abiding in death. What a vivid and frightening image. Abiding in, living in death, all because of a refusal to love.

John’s showing us that we can abide in death/we can fail to love in two ways: through both sins of omission and sins of commission. What does that mean? Sins of commission are the things we do that are wrong. Sins of omission are the ways in which we withhold ourselves from doing what we should do. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer puts it this way in one of the prayers of confession:

“Most merciful God, we confess we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone.”

Cain sinned by commission (he murdered), but John goes further and says whoever does not love, but whoever withholds love, abides in death. Sins of omission.

When was the last time that you were in conflict with someone and you saw them somewhere? Maybe it was at work, maybe it was right here at church. And you saw then, but you kept your distance. You turned a cold shoulder, you refused to interact. Afterwards, you thought, you held onto this last thin string of self-justification, “Well, at least I didn’t say something rude to them.” You refrained from sins of commission, but you didn’t move forward in love. The sins of omission. John really hammers on this point that love is what you do. Love is what you and I do towards one another because love in the Bible is not primarily about what we feel.

Now, I want to be careful here because it’s not that emotions are bad. In fact, we were created to be integrated people where our hearts, our emotions, our will, and our strength is all in line. But that’s not the way we always experience it, not on this side of the fall. But the good news from John is, when we move forward in love (even if we do not begin with the emotions that help), there’s a way to move forward in obedience.

When I counsel, I counsel a lot of couples. Sometimes I’ll have couples that come in, the marriage is on fumes, and they feel very little that is good towards one another. There is still room to act, still a call to live out the love for each other that God calls them to, and feelings can come. But you don’t have to wait for them.

Last weekend was the 4th of July. My guess is that many of you may well have been at some sort of lake setting. I’m a little jealous. I wish I could have been there with you. So if you’ve been out on the lake, and if you’ve ever been water skiing — let’s say your goal is to get from one side of the lake to the other. If you have a boat to pull you on the water skis, it is both fun and fast. When you are called to do something and your emotions are in line, sometimes it feels effortless.

What about the last time — maybe it might have been years ago for some of us — but you went on a date, and you were super excited about the person you were going out with. Maybe you’re just getting to know them, and love has blinded so many things. What if somebody said to you, “Hey, listen, you have to go on a date tonight and you’re gonna have to buy her dinner.” What’s your response? “Sign me up, that’s exactly what I want to do.” The boat is pulling me across the lake. My emotions are right there, impelling me on.

But what about the days in which love is hard, and there is no motorboat, and you are not water skiing? You are taking a long, hard swim across the lake. That’s what love can be like. Our emotions may well graciously come on the other side, but there is a call to love our brother. Move towards them, move out of distance and isolation towards other people. John calls us to it.

The second thing we see here, the second point is “the power.” Where is the power for this? I want to highlight verses 19 through 22. I’m going to read them again for us. I realized as I was studying this passage that I had only partially understood those verses, and really misunderstood them in a pretty common way until I did some reading that helped me understand what’s going on. But here’s verse 19 and following:

“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him—” (1 John 3:19-22a).

And he goes on from there. The way I always heard those verses, and I think I’ve heard others talk about them as well, it sort of sounds like this: when I feel guilty for not measuring up, God is greater than my heart. He knows my failing, he knows my shortcomings, and Jesus died for me. He has me. Now that is 100% true and so vitally important, and it’s not what John is saying right here. Here’s what’s happening:

When we read the verses that way, we read “heart,” “whenever our hearts condemn us” as if that were our consciences. In the Bible, “heart” and “conscience” are two different words. It’s not the same thing. Our heart is the wellspring from which we live. It is the command center of our lives. It’s the essence of who we are. Okay, so here’s what it means:

When our hearts condemn us, that means we’re looking around at the call to love and we’re saying, “No, thanks.” Our hearts are condemning us because we want something more than we want to honor and obey God, more than we want to love someone else. Our hearts condemn us because we’re not on board with Jesus.

What do we do? Verse 19 says,

“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart.”

Here’s the other problem with that old interpretation: this word in Greek comes up a number of times in the New Testament. This is the only place the ESV translates it as “reassure.” Everywhere else, when he’s using it as a verb, what does he mean? It means “to persuade,” so what he’s saying is “when your heart convicts you, you have to persuade it.” You have to tell it, remind it what is true. Let me give you an example:

You wake up in the middle of the night. Your spouse, lying next to you, has a cold. You can hear that they’re having trouble sleeping, tossing and turning, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, not resting. Then you remember that downstairs—well, in my house, downstairs—in the kitchen is the cabinet where you keep the medicine. In that cabinet, you have a bottle of the “nighttime sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest” medicine. In other words, you know where to find exactly what your spouse needs. You could go get it for them. That would be love. But you are so tired. And who knows, maybe you’re getting a little stuffy yourself. If your spouse is miserable, surely they will think about the medicine and go get it for themselves. And if I just roll over and pretend I’m asleep, they’ll forgive me in the morning, right?

What’s happening? Your heart is condemning you, it’s exposing your deepest love: the love of self over love of neighbor. So what do you do? You don’t reassure yourself, “It’s okay, she’ll forgive you in the morning.” What do you do? You do what John says, you persuade yourself. “Is this the spouse I want to be? Is this what I meant when I promised to love in sickness and in health? Is this love what looks like? No.” So what does your persuaded heart do next? It gets your tired body out of bed, and you go to the medicine cabinet, and you care for your spouse. What do we do when our hearts condemn us? What do we do? We turn to the call and embrace it.

If verses 19 through 21, then, are not actually the power to do this, but yet another reminder that we’re called to, where does the power come from? The power always comes from the goodness and truth and reality of the gospel. We see it explicitly in verse 16, where John says, “By this we know love, that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). Where does the strength to love come from? It comes from Jesus, who loves us first.

John has in mind the gospel of John 10:11, where Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Jesus is the opposite of Cain. Cain took the life of his brother. Jesus gave his life for his brothers. Jesus looked at you and me and said, “Yes, I will be my brother’s keeper.” Before Jesus is ever a model for us to emulate (and he is, he calls us to love like him), first, he’s a savior who does the work of rescuing us. People who are unlovely and unloving.

Before we can really love others the way God calls us to and do that for the long haul, we have to know the reality of God’s love for ourselves. Paul says this dramatically and personally in Galatians 2:20. Here’s what he says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,” and here it is, “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

You hear what Paul is doing. Who did Christ love and give himself for? The world. God so loved the world that he came, and he sent his only son, Jesus Christ. But what does Paul say? “Yes, but I realize that that means it is intensely personal, it is for me.” That was the transforming reality for Paul and for everyone who follows Jesus. The heart of the power to go and do what John calls us to do (to love) begins with knowing that we have been loved and freed by Jesus.

Because of Jesus’s death and resurrection for us, this call to obey, to love our neighbors, is not bad news. It’s freeing. The call to obey, to grow, means that change actually is possible because we now belong to God, and Jesus is at work in us by his Holy Spirit. So when we hear this call to love, that is not bad news (even though we’re not good at it). It is good news because Christ has loved us and he is calling us as his people to show his character to each other in the world. He is doing that work, and he will do it.

My wife and I have lived in a number of cities over the years. Greenville, more than any other city I’ve lived in, has a cultural strain of Christian legalism to it that is so profound. It says this: “If I obey, then I’m okay.” I can feel good about myself. I can trust that God is happy with me. My ultimate rest is not in Jesus and his forgiveness of sins, but it’s in my level of obedience. What a trap. Here’s what legalism has right: our obedience matters. Here’s what it has wrong: it makes our obedience the condition of God’s love for us rather than the fruit of God’s love at work in our lives. Our obedience and our love spring from the fact that we have already been embraced by our Savior.

Last thing, the practical. John really hits it in verses 17 through 18. Let me read that. I’ll start with 16 again.

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 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? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:16-18).

What does John say when the rubber meets the road as far as loving? He says it’s deeds, not words, and what he points to is practical help: the sharing of worldly goods, meeting the physical needs of one another. That’s not the only way it plays out. That is how John applied it to his congregation and to us.

It’s interesting, what he says is “in deeds, not words.” What he means is actually doing things for people, not empty words. The empty words of “Oh, I hope it gets better.” We don’t say it that way. We say, “I’ll pray for you,” which means, “I’m going to forget this conversation right after we have it.” John says, “No, you come alongside and you step in, not with empty words.”

In Wisdomfest, we’re talking about those kinds of relationships, and there may well certainly be times we are called to do the practical work that John points to here. But he also calls us to speak and relate, not with any empty words, but words that are full of relationship and grace and movement towards one another.

How do we live this out? We move towards each other in life. In other words, we are called to be the opposite of Cain. Cain heard from God, but he didn’t listen to God. Cain chose to stay trapped in the isolation of self. He didn’t speak to God, he didn’t call out to God. Until the murder, he didn’t speak to Abel. He didn’t try to heal the rift between them. John says, “Don’t be like Cain.” So what do we do? We listen to God, to his call, his kindness. We speak to God. Confession and supplication. Confession might look like, “I’m sorry, I failed love, and I don’t know how to do it. Please help.” We speak to God.

As I mentioned, in our counseling practice, I do a good bit of marriage counseling. People come in. All kinds of stages of marriage: premarital, we’ve been married a few years, we’ve been married 30 years. There are different struggles that come with those different years that are under the belt. But usually, and I tell people this, nobody comes into my office and says, “Listen, my life is going so well that I just had to pay someone to come tell them about that.” They come and rightly talk about the struggles, the hard things. If you’re married, you know that right at the heart of this relationship that’s supposed to be the closest and most intimate, there can be such incredible divide and distance and hardness.

Whatever the specifics of the couple I’m meeting with, or the ups and downs of their particular story, there are a lot of things — for all the couples, myself included — that boil down to this simple question: At the end of the day, am I willing to do the hard work of loving my spouse? Will I listen to John and to Jesus and bend my heart back to loving? Are there relational skills that may need to be learned, communication skills in a given marriage? Sure. Is there work to be done learning how to forgive old wounds and hurts? Probably. But fundamentally, am I willing to act and hear God’s call to love, or am I being like Cain?

“Well, God spoke directly to Cain. If only he’d speak directly to us.” Let me introduce you to 1 John 3. He has. Will I listen? Will I speak back to God? Will I pray honestly and with expectation? “God, I don’t know how I’m gonna have the strength to do this. We can barely be civil to each other. How am I gonna love? How am I gonna move towards him/towards her? Help, please help. Soften my heart. Help me to trust you rather than retreat into my defensiveness. Help me move forward to love. I don’t wanna abide in death any longer.” John reminds us we’re called to move towards each other in the mundane, the daily stuff of life.

When John says in verse 16 that just as “[Jesus] laid down his life for us,” he says now we are called to “lay down our life for our brothers.” This is a huge stereotype; it’s not true for everyone, but let me just say it. Men, when they hear this read, here’s what we hear: “Jesus laid down his life for you, he died for you, you need to be willing/you’re called to lay down your life for your brothers.” If I am ever in a situation and a terrorist breaks in with a gun, I am going to tackle him like some action hero. I may die heroically in the act, but I will save your life. Jesus tells me, if that situation ever happens to me, that I will lay down my life for you. It hasn’t happened yet.

How does John immediately apply this? He says, you’re called to lay down your life for others. What does he say in the next couple of verses? So share your stuff. It means die to yourself today in the very, very mundane ways. If we’re going to respond, then we are called to that as well, the very mundane things of relationship: speak, relate, forgive, repent, open yourself to others. Those kinds of breaks happen in a marriage relationship.

Maybe that’s not your struggle right now. Where is it happening for you? Maybe it’s the ongoing needs of an aging parent, and you feel so tapped out as a caregiver. Do you need rest? Most assuredly. Do you need God’s encouragement that this work matters? Yes. Do you need his strength to continue to step into the call? He has it for you.

Maybe it’s not aging parents, maybe it’s a young child. You’re on day 97 and counting of not sleeping through the night, and you stopped being your best self at day two. “God, what am I going to do? How am I going to get up and treat my child with gentleness and love?”

Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s the next-door neighbor. When you drive home and you see him out in the yard, and you know that he’s going to stop you and talk. And you know that what you want to do is to not walk up the steps to your door. You want to run around the back so that he can’t talk to you. Then you realize, “Wait a minute, I’m called to love. And love right now might mean getting delayed for ten minutes in my driveway to hear my neighbor’s story because they need to talk to someone.” Or it could be the person sitting right next to you this morning. John calls us to love.

Let me just point out, wrapping up, if you were listening, you heard the word “abide.” John uses that five times in our passage. He’s using that word that’s familiar to us from John 15, where Jesus says that we are to abide/to live in the vine and God fuels us. How does he use it here, though? He talks about two types of abiding: abiding in life by loving or, like Cain, abiding in death. He says those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in us.

Do you know that Jesus did this for us and for you? Do you know that, when given the choice, Jesus said, “I actually will be my brother’s keeper.” By his grace and kindness, he calls us to live in response to that by loving one another. He’s here to do that in us. It is good, uncomfortable work, but he’s doing something good and beautiful. Let’s pray.

Father, we do pray and ask that you do this good work in us. I pray this week for us that you would help us to really get a bead on the very specific places where you’re calling us right now and where we are struggling. Would you meet us? Would you remind us and fill us with the beauty and remembrance and daily experience of your love for us. May that overflow in us loving others. We thank you that you can do this work, that you don’t leave us where you found us with our small and shriveled hearts, but you open us up and grow us. We give you thanks in Christ’s name, amen.