1John 4:7-21

Boundary Markers

In sociology there a theory has been developed about the way we go about

forming an identity. We tend to concoct a personal image and then hang out with people

who will support or enhance that image. The saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock

together” and we don’t really mean to speak of birds when we say that.

Within these groups we work out ways which one we belong to. The theory goes

that each group has some sort of sign – whether it be some picture or color, maybe a

combination of the two – that we belong. To belong, a person must show these signs of

belonging.

We do this all the time, don't we? When we walk into a room, we begin scanning,

looking for those who are like us – who wear our “colors,” as it were. The technical term

for these signs of identification is boundary markers.

One of the things that has troubled the church since its very beginnings is trying

to figure out who is in and who isn’t. In other words, figuring out what our boundary

markers are. Historically, some have tried to make it a matter of right observance --

singing the right songs, using the right instruments, saying the right prayers.

Some made it a matter of right behavior. The Christian does not smoke, drink,

swear, wear shorts, or play cards, except for Rook, of course. Some go to further

extremes; women do not braid their hair or wear make up. But what we must remember

is that these are only outward symbols that we often give more weight than they deserve.

We have split churches over these minor details.

So who is in and who is out? How do we know? What, biblically, is our

boundary marker? We find our answer in our passage this morning, 1John 4:7-21.

1
 As I considered what John declares to be our boundary marker, they thing that

first puzzled me was why John had to talk about boundary markers at all. Not that he

called them boundary markers – but John was certainly interested in educating his readers

about how they can know who is Christian and who isn’t.

According to our text this morning, the Apostle John believed that our boundary

marker is love.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

With the rise of the Christian church also came the rise of error or heresy – teachers who

shaded the Gospel according to their own perverse thinking. So early on John faced the

question of who belonged to the real Christian church.

There were two principle heresies John was responding to in this letter. The first

believed in a dualistic reality; in other words there were two equal, but opposing forces

that defined the reality. Light and dark, good and evil – the group that John was dealing

with divided reality into material stuff and spirit. Things made of material stuff – things

that you could touch, taste, smell, hear or see were considered evil. Things of the spirit –

the internal, contemplative life, the growth of knowledge were good. The goal of such a

belief was to show to hold in contempt anything physical – the body was a prison that the

spirit needed to escape from. In such a faith Christ could not have been the incarnate Son

of God because that would mean that he dwelt in actual flesh. In order to commune with

God, ones spirit must abandon the body, either through death or spiritual exercise. And

since Jesus was in constant communion with the Father, he could not have had a real

physical body. He must have just appeared to have a body they said because Jesus was

God, and God is spirit, which is opposed to the flesh.

2
 The second heresy John fought against were the Judaizers -- those who believed

that faith alone was not enough. Salvation may have been bought with Christ’s blood,

but you only stayed saved if you were circumcised and obeyed the Law of Moses. The

uncircumcised Greek who confessed Christ must either become circumcised or his faith

was in vain because Christ was an anointed teacher – possibly even on par with Moses,

but he was not deity.

In both cases, each group claimed to have a better gospel than that preached by

the apostles. The apostolic gospel was incomplete, it needed something else and they had

discovered it. John answers them both with a simple line of logic -- simple, but

overwhelming. Your gospels, he says to them, leave no room for love.

Beloved, let us love one another! This is the command, the imperative that John

gives us in the face of these other gospels. Unlike Paul, he does not give us an extended

defense of his ministry as an apostle, nor does he address the specific theological

shortfalls of the heresies the church faces. Rather, he concentrates on the strength of the

true gospel and urges us to evaluate ourselves accordingly. Love, he says, is the

boundary marker of the Christian.

After that we will look at the boundary marker itself and how Christians are defined.

Although the answer won't surprise us, I hope it will challenge us. Finally, we will

explore what it means to "wear our colors" so that others can see to what group we

belong.

3
 So how does love define us? What is it about love that makes it our boundary

marker? John answers us in v. 8

Whoever does not love does not love God, because God is love.

There is an eloquence to this statement that gets hidden in its simplicity. It is so easy to

read it as equating God with love and love with God. But there is so much more to it

than just a one for one equation. To simply lift this text out of chapter 4 and say "God is

love" as if that were the sum of God quite frankly misses the point and belittles God.

What the apostle wants us to understand when he writes, "God is love" is that God

is the wellspring of love. He is more than love; he is the source of love, the originator,

the Grand Master of Love. Love finds its genesis in the heart of God. Just as goodness,

holiness, justice and even life find their origination in God. God is love because without

him, love would not -- could not -- exist.

How do we know this? Look at vv. 9-10

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only
Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not
that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning
sacrifice for our sins.

Now why do you think John didn't just stop with "God is love?" Why is it important that

he say to us, "Oh, by the way; that whole cross thing -- that's God's love in living color!"?

Well, let me answer by asking you a question. What does it mean to love someone?

Define love for me. You see, the problem you run into when you begin to talk about love

is that it doesn't fit neatly into our categories of thinking. Love is both a noun and a verb

-- a thing and an action. It is like a mountain stream that runs just beneath the surface of

the earth. We never know its there until it finds a tiny crack in the lime rock it can

squeeze through and come above ground. Until we see it bubbling up to the surface, we

4
have trouble identifying it. The same is true of love. So God reveals himself as the

source of true love by an act so selfless, so liberally filled with amazing love – the cross.

In other words, he defines love by an act of self-giving.

What John is doing here is he is saying, "God is love. You don't believe me?

Look at the cross! It is the single greatest expression of self-giving ever to exist. Out of

love for you and for me Christ suffered horribly and died -- for what? So that we might

know the love of God; so that we could see God's love in action." We know that God is

the wellspring of love because the single greatest act of love is the cross – God giving

himself over to death that we might live. So great is God’s act of love on the cross that it

becomes the very definition of love. “No greater love has any man than he who lays his

life down for his friends.”

Okay, so God is love. He is the source or genesis of love. So what? Why should

love be our boundary marker? Again, John points to the cross and says,

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us
and his love is made complete in us.

Love is our boundary marker because it is the way that God has chosen to identify

himself. The cross is God’s calling card. You see, that’s the message of the Scriptures.

To know God, you must know the cross. You cannot remove the cross from the story and

still come away with genuine faith in God. All roads to God intersect at the cross on the

hilltop of Calvary. To know the cross is to know love.

That’s what John is trying to tell us. His opponents were trying to say that God

was found either in this weird, trance-like mystical experience of the Gnostics or that he

was found in the performance of all the right rituals – something we do. John says, no.

5
You want to see God, look at the cross. That's where he revealed himself. You want to

know if God is present in your life – then look at your love life. We show that we belong

to God by the love we show to others. In other words, our sign of belonging to God – our

boundary marker – is how we well we love one another. If you want to see God, look for

love.

Now before I go any further, I want to clarify what I believe the Scriptures mean

by this term love. Now I could get into the Greek language for you and talk about the

three main words used for love and what each means in its context, but I want us to come

away from this with only one concept of love – one that applies across the board. Turn

with me quickly over to 1 Corinthians 13 – the love chapter.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it
keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres. 8 Love never fails.1

Do you know what I notice about Paul’s elegant explication of love? Love is never

concerned about itself. Every attribute of love that Paul details is “others” oriented. It is

completely and utterly selfless. Love is the act of self-giving. Its substance is sacrifice.

If you take one thought away from this mornings message, one idea, take this one: love

means to sacrifice yourself for another.

That’s what is supposed to be our boundary marker. That’s what the world around

us is supposed to see that will draw them to Christ. Self-sacrifice. That’s how the world

will know its love and know that we belong to God. They will see us laying down our

lives for each other.

1The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.
6
 So we have discovered that John wrote this epistle to show the church what the

real gospel is all about. We also know that the real gospel is about love and that love

should be our boundary marker – that outward evidence that we belong to God. Now we

need to talk about what it means to “wear our colors.”

When I was in the Navy, my ship got assigned to a task force being sent to a

foreign port as a diplomatic gesture. The port was New York City – if you’ve ever spent

any time in New York, you know why I call it a foreign port. They do things a little

differently there. Anyway, our assignment was to show the best side of the military to

New York so that the Navy could begin home-porting some warships out of Staten Island.

When you do ambassador cruises you have to wear your uniform even out on the town.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, military uniforms are not made for comfort. So

you can imagine how happy all of us squids were having to run around New York in dress

uniform. Not to mention that wearing your uniform is like painting a bullseye on your

back for all the would-be pickpockets. You might as well wear a neon sign saying, “Roll

me! I’m a tourist and I am carrying cash!”

One night, some of my buds and I decided to dine at a well-known Italian place in

Brooklyn. It was our last night in New York, so we decided to go all out. We ordered

mounds of food. Appetizers, desserts, pasta, salads, you name it. As we were finishing

up our meal, the waitress came to our table and said, “Gentlemen, your tab has been paid

for by the gentleman a couple tables over. He just wanted to thank you for defending the

country.”

Folks, that was one of the memorable meals I have ever enjoyed, in large part

because of the extraordinary generosity of this one man who wanted to say thanks. But

7
you know what? If I had not been wearing my uniform – not sporting my colors – I

would have ended up paying for that meal myself and probably by now would have

forgotten it. Because I showed the evidence of belonging to the Navy, an opportunity for

a great memory arose.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I think it is pretty clear to us what it means to “wear

our colors.” We must show love – self-giving – to our neighbors. But what may not be

obvious is that we are to keep our boundary marker visible at all times. You see, we

don’t know when someone is going to notice we belong to Christ. I can tell you this: it

most likely won’t be on a Sunday. You know that means? It means that we have to wear

our colors all the time. Think of your life as a gospel story. It is not your Sunday gospel

that the person in need of Christ is likely to see. It’s your Tuesday gospel, your Friday

gospel. Think of yourself as on a diplomatic cruise for Christ. You never know when

wearing your uniform is going to pay off. Put on love like a garment; wear it

everywhere.

Now, let me make this practical. If you want to start practicing self-giving try

writing encouraging notes to someone going through a rough time. Sit with them for

awhile, be a sounding board for them. If you are a professional – a doctor, lawyer,

electrician, etc. – offer your services pro bono to someone you needs them but can't

afford them. Find an opportunity serve and remember that are simply fulfilling Christ's

command to love your neighbor as yourself.

If you want to start in the church, invite each other into your homes or out to

dinner. Show genuine concern for one another, make time for each other. If you know of

need in the church, make arrangements to meet it. Because the better we get at doing this

8
for each other, the better we will get at doing it for those outside these walls – the ones

who still need to know Christ.

Christian artists Phillips, Craig and Dean sing a song about God's favorite song --

the Song of the Redeemed. This evening I introduce you to another song on God's hit

parade. What is the boundary marker of the church? "They'll Know We Are Christians

By Our Love.” By our love. Let’s check our boundary markers. Would someone know

you are a Christian by your love?