Around the Words
“If anyone says, “I love God” and hates his brother, he is a liar.” 1 John 4:20
(Greek Quotes) – There is a hidden Greek word in this translation. Hoti comes between “anyone says” and “I love God”. It’s not translated because its purpose is to indicate that the statement following is direct discourse. Hoti acts like quotation marks. It tells us that what follows is an exact replication of what was said.
You might say, “So what? I see the quotation marks in English, so I know that it means someone said this.” You would be technically right, of course. But maybe John put hoti in this verse in order to make an important point. John is not talking about inner feelings, motivations or beliefs. He is talking about people who make a outward, verbal declaration of their commitment to God. They actually say, “I love God”. Why does John want us to focus on this verbalized claim? Because he wants us to see that a public claim to love God is totally incompatible with outward behavior that mistreats another person. John is drawing our attention to the continuity between word and deed. In God’s book, there better be a straight-line connection. In fact, John says that I can measure the truth of a claim to love God by the way that a person acts toward others.
We ought to include this among the “hard sayings” of the Bible. I don’t mean that it is difficult to understand. I mean that it is difficult to accept. What is says is that I am perfectly correct to assess a man’s love for God on the basis of his actions toward others. This is about as politically incorrect as you can get. This doesn’t allow any slack. It eliminates all the excuses about intention or feelings. I can’t claim that I meant to help but just didn’t. I can’t say that I didn’t act because they didn’t ask. I can’t excuse myself because I didn’t feel a warm spot in my heart. No, John is really tough. He says, “If you say you love God but you don’t treat your brother like you would treat yourself, you lie!”
Of course, if John’s thermometer is correct, then you have the right to look at my actions and decide if I am behaving in a loving way toward you. Most Christians today are sacred to death of this implication. We have been told not to “judge” others. We have been seduced by tolerance thinking. What hogwash! Why do you think John is so stern? Not so you can parade your own righteousness but so that you can turn the mirror on yourself. Wherever my behavior does not reflect the character of the God I claim to love, I am lying to myself. The thermometer is first put under my tongue. And if you are like me, once you see your own temperature, you will have more than enough to fix before you measure the temperature of someone else.
Who did you ignore because they didn’t ask? Who did you slight because you didn’t feel good about them? Who did you harm by not helping? Who didn’t receive God’s love through your hands? Straight-line Christians are the only kind of Christians God endorses.
