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If you’ve been married for any period of time, or have kids or roommates, you know love is more than words.
Love is picking up socks off the floor and putting them in the hamper. Love is doing the dishes when nobody asks you to. Love is buying someone their favorite treat when they’re sad or playing their favorite song in the car.
Love is words, but it’s also a lot more than words. And this is the sentiment the Apostle John wants to share in his letter through one of the most famous Bible verses about love:
“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:18)
Most people agree that love shows up in what you do, but where does that love come from? In other words, what’s the root of love?
The path of least resistance is to define love as merely a response to what you feel. You admire, have affection for, desire, and respect this person, so it naturally overflows into actions of love. But this definition is insufficient and short-sighted, because we all know there are obvious times you have to choose to love someone when you don’t feel like it—like your spouse when they’ve failed you, your kids when they throw tantrums, and your friends when they leave you out.
When we operate out of love that exists only when we feel it, marriages fall apart, families become estranged, and friendships fail. True love can face hard things and actually endure. No relationship exists in a vacuum, so love cannot be isolated to feelings. To love is to surrender the desire to shy away from a relationship, even when we don’t agree, feel unsettled, or risk being humiliated.
This is the kind of love John urges in his letters. It’s the kind of love Jesus commanded over and over again during His time on earth. More significantly, this is the love our salvation is founded on.
If we only loved when we felt like it, nobody would ever love sacrificially. But even more tragically, if Jesus only loved when He felt like it, we would have never been saved.
Just a few verses earlier, John says, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16a).
How do we know what true love is like? Look at Jesus in the garden as He asks the Father if there is any other way to save us besides the cross, yet surrenders in obedience to God's will. Look at Jesus on the cross as He lovingly lays down His life for our sin in the most selfless, unconditional, and sacrificial way. We were unlovely—in fact, we were enemies of God (Romans 5:10)—yet God sent His Son to reconcile us to Him because He loved us.
Love is not a response to what you feel; it’s a response to what God has done for you.
It’s one thing to say you love someone. It’s an entirely different thing to actually show you love someone. Actions speak louder than words, right?
If love is rooted in what God has done for us in Christ, then the natural response is to say we love Him and to show we love Him. And we show we love Him by how we treat others. This is evident in the verses that lead up to 1 John 3:18:
“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?” (1 John 3:16–17)
So, the logic follows: (1) we know what love is because Jesus laid His life down for us, (2) so we ought to lay down our lives for others, (3) but if we have resources and see another in need and don’t meet that need, it is impossible for God’s love to be in us. This is similar to our last blog post about practicing what you preach, but this time, it’s less about pursuing personal holiness and more about the second greatest commandment to love your neighbor.
If you have truly received God’s sacrificial love and understand the depth of His grace, it will overflow into your love, which is most evident in your actions. John is cautioning against falling into hypocrisy as God’s people. And while it’s easy to criticize people outside yourself or an entire entity like the church, it’s much harder when it gets personal.
How often do you say you care about the poor in Austin, but you close your heart to the homeless man who lives down the street? How often do you say you respect women, but relationship after relationship testifies a different story? How often do you say you love people from different cultures, but you struggle to pray that one day they will know Jesus? In other words, if we say we love someone and it’s not reflected in our actions, do we really mean it?
So, how do we take John’s words seriously? How do we take the gospel seriously? Do we dismiss all words of affirmation and rely only on physical acts of serving our neighbor?
John isn’t condemning the use of any “words” of love. He’s urging against empty words. Words that promise everything but cost us nothing. Words like these pose no risk and aren’t accountable. They are hollow because they’re not rooted in the Giver of life and salvation itself; often, they stem from a desire to look good in front of others or flatter someone. Most importantly, they are vain because they’re insincere.
John urges us to love “in deed and in truth,” with each word implying a new dimension to love. To do something “in deed” means doing something tangible. It suggests movement. It is not passive love; it’s active. But we’d be remiss to keep love at just a tangible action. We need to love “in truth,” too, which means sincerity—don’t do it just to do it; do it with your heart. We need both.
So speak words of love, but make sure they are followed by a genuine, tangible commitment based on the love you’ve received in Christ.
Jesus was the perfect model of this kind of love. He didn’t just love in word and talk; He was THE Word of God who proclaimed sinlessness and righteousness on our behalf. He was God’s final word on our identity. And He followed through by loving in deed and truth, giving completely of Himself to die on a cross so we would be reconciled to the Father. His sacrifice wasn’t just an obligation of His character—it was the total aim of His heart of pure and perfect love.
What are you claiming to love in word or talk, but not following in deed and truth? Because of Jesus, we have the freedom to ask ourselves this and the power to live it out.
Want to dive deeper into the sermon series? Check out our sermon series guide on The Letters of John, or watch the most recent sermon from The Letters of John sermon series.
