It’s the Christmas season.
Which also means that its get-50-calls-per-day-for-financial-assistance season. And if I’m being honest its difficult at times not to get annoyed or close my heart to these very real needs.
In my better times I believe my frustration is not evil. I’m frustrated with the sin of the sluggard. I’m frustrated because the dude that ought to be spilling his blood to help out this pleading woman in my office is out in the car smoking Marlboros and making her do the hard things. I’m angry at injustice, at poverty, at brokenness, at the way that sin has a tendency to ravage families for generations.
And some days I just have a cold heart…
It’s on those cold-hearted days that 1 John 3:17 does work on me:
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? (1 John 3:17 ESV)
The Qualifiers
1 John 3:17 is not saying that every person that has a benevolence request (or even a benevolence need) must be met. There are a two major qualifiers in this text.
First, you must be in a position to see the need. This means that God has sovereignly placed this situation into your life. You are able to see in such a way that you “appreciate and understand the circumstances of the case” (quoted from Stott, 147).
Secondly, you must be in a position to meet the need. If you don’t have it you can’t give it. “If anyone has the world’s goods” means you have resources at your disposal that you could use to meet the need of someone else. So, if you have to take out a second mortgage to help someone out—1 John 3:17 isn’t telling you to do that.
If you do not fit these two things then 1 John 3:17 is not speaking to you.
So what if you do see the need and you have the resources available to help. Does this mean you cut the check, no questions asked?
John’s Greater Concern
The wider concern of John in this passage is to show that believers have been born again from above. The Righteous One has planted His seed in the heart of believers and therefore righteousness will be produced in the life of believers. The way you can tell whether you have rightly trusted in Christ or not is shown by whether you have the fruit of righteousness. For John, one of the greatest indicators of a changed heart is a love for fellow Christians.
And so what John is saying here is that if I have a cold heart towards my fellow Christians then how in the world can we say that God has changed my heart?
To close my heart to the needs of my fellow Christians is to have a murderous heart similar to Cain and not the self-sacrificing heart of Jesus. The word here translated “heart” is one that is often translated “compassion”.
And so what this is saying is that if I close the door on compassion when I see a need and I could meet the need then my heart doesn’t reflect that of a believer.
So, then, does this mean that if I don’t meet a benevolence need that I’m probably not saved?
Not at all.
Sometimes true compassion and true concern doesn’t cut the check.(See here). Sometimes it doesn’t hand a man a fish—it teaches him to fish. The issue in 1 John is an issue of the heart.
If you are responding to poverty and brokenness (or even issues of race relations) with a heart that has shut the door on compassion then this text is rebuking you. But this text is not mandating that you respond to every benevolence request. To do so may in fact be the most unloving thing that you can do. We must respond with a wise compassion.
But may we never use wisdom as an excuse to shut our hearts off from compassion. And, likewise, may we never use the call for compassion as an excuse to throw overboard wisdom. True love bleeds both.
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photo credit: pedrosimoes7 via photopin cc
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