3 Simple Rules – Do No Harm
Sycamore Creek Church
1 John 2:9-17
September 12, 2010
Tom Arthur
Peace, Friends!
What rules do you live by? We tend to think of rules as a negative, but rules can also be life giving. For example: while driving, it’s a good idea to stay on your side of the road if you want to live. Or in sports rules actually make the game fun and safe. When you’re in the kitchen, there are some basic rules if you want to remain healthy: wash the cutting board between meats and veggies. Rules don’t just put restrictions on your freedom. In many ways good rules give abundant life.
In this series we’re exploring three simple rules:
1. Do no harm.
2. Do good.
3. Stay in love with God.
That’s it. You can’t get much more simple than that. We can understand them even if we’re in elementary school, but there’s a difference between understanding and living. They may be simple to understand, but they’re not always so simple to live. Today we begin to explore the first of those rules: do no harm. We’re exploring this rule by studying John’s letters.
John’s third letter is written to his friend Gaius. We find that some traveling teachers that are working with John have come to Gaius’ church and some in the church have accepted them and some have rejected them. John is writing to say, “What’s up with that? Who are these people who reject our teachers? We were the ones who saw and touched and heard truth in Jesus Christ, God’s son!” So John tells Gaius, “Dear friend, don’t let this bad example influence you. Follow only what is good. Remember that those who do good prove that they are God’s children, and those who do evil prove that they do not know God” (3 John 11, NLT).
Don’t let this bad example influence you. In other words, don’t do this kind of harm. For John harm is rather simple. It’s the breakdown of community so that it no longer walks in the way of truth. He says, “I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children live in the truth” (3 John 4, NLT). John is interested here in two things: truth and others, especially community (notice that “children” is in the plural).
So what are the kinds of things that do this kind of harm, that keep the community from walking in the way of truth? If we jump back to John’s first letter we read about this kind of harm. John says:
9 If anyone says, “I am living in the light,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is still living in darkness. 10 Anyone who loves other Christians is living in the light and does not cause anyone to stumble. 11 Anyone who hates a Christian brother or sister is living and walking in darkness. Such a person is lost, having been blinded by the darkness.
12 I am writing to you, my dear children, because your sins have been forgiven because of Jesus.
13 I am writing to you who are mature because you know Christ, the one who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you who are young because you have won your battle with Satan.
14 I have written to you, children, because you have known the Father.
I have written to you who are mature because you know Christ, the one who is from the beginning.
I have written to you who are young because you are strong with God’s word living in your hearts, and you have won your battle with Satan.
15 Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you, for when you love the world, you show that you do not have the love of the Father in you. 16 For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world. 17 And this world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever.
This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!
Let’s focus in on verse sixteen where John mentions three things that cause us to walk outside of the truth:
16 For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world (1 John 2:16, NLT).
Here we see John saying that three ways we do harm is lusting for physical pleasure, lusting for everything we see, and taking pride in our possessions. Let’s take a look at each one of these three, see some examples of each one, explore the harm that each one brings, and see the truth that each one misses.
The Lust for Physical Pleasure
We do harm when we neglect to walk in the truth by lusting for physical pleasure. What does John mean when he says “lust for physical pleasure”? I think he means seeking to gratify all the bodily senses and desires and passions. There are many ways that we lust for physical pleasure:
- Sexual lust: when we cultivate sexual thoughts about someone we are not married to. Continual entertainment: when we often seek to have our bodies gratified by having them continually entertained by TV, media, and the like.
- Laziness and sloth: avoiding any kind of exercise or physical labor.
- Overeating: eating more food than we need.
- Overindulgence in eating: eating too much junk food or on the opposite side of things eating too much fancy and expensive food.
- Oversleeping: getting more sleep than we need.
- Retirement in leisure: spending your retirement on providing leisure for yourself rather than on serving others.
- Comfort and security: seeking for your life to be comfortable and safe rather than seeking God’s will for your life.
These are just some examples of ways that we lust for physical pleasure.
But where is the harm in these? The harm is that we think that freedom is giving your body what it wants, but true freedom is the freedom to not always give your body what it wants. When we lust for physical pleasure, we become enslaved to our physical desires. It’s not that our physical desires are inherently bad, but rather lusting after them is a kind of disproportionate love of them. Our physical pleasures are actually good at their base. They are a gift of God, but the lust after them is taking that good gift and distorting it. Evil is always a distortion of the good. Evil is never something in its own self. Evil is like darkness. Darkness is nothing. It is only the absence of light. Evil is the absence of or the distortion of the good. In this case we end up loving the wrong things, our physical pleasures, too much and the right things, God and others, too little. In order to notice how much we are controlled by our physical pleasures, it is necessary to dial back our desires from time to time. It’s only when we withhold the satisfaction of our pleasures that we notice how much they control us.
So if the harm here is being enslaved to our bodies’ pleasures, loving them too much, what is the truth? The truth is that we have been set free by Jesus not be a slave to our body, but to be a slave or servant of Jesus’ body, the church. We read elsewhere in the Bible that “Whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ” (1 Corinthians 7:22, NRSV). Those are strong words, but we no longer serve ourselves. We serve Jesus.
When we lust after physical pleasures we become enslaved to the desires of our body rather than being a “slave” of Christ and serving his body, the church.
The lust for everything we see
The second harm that John mentions is “the lust for everything we see.” What does he mean by that and what are some examples? I think that a “lust for everything we see” is a lust of the eyes, especially a lust for novelty, for the newest and greatest thing. Take porn for example. Porn is always a lust for the next image. One image never satisfies this kind of lust. One image of porn only creates a desire for more images. But the lust for everything we see isn’t just about porn. I think it also takes the form of a lust for the newest and greatest technology. Do you have to have the newest cell phone, TV, computer, iPod? What about the newest car or home? Can you be satisfied with something old? Or must you always have what is new and shiny to the eyes?
One way that our culture seeks novelty is in fashion and style. This shows up especially in women’s fashion. Have you ever noticed that you can tell what decade a film was made in based almost entirely on the actresses’ hairstyles? In the 50s you’ve got the big and bold beehive. In the 60s there was the flip. In the 70s we’ve got the hippie hairdo. In the 80s are big bangs and lots of feathering. In the 90s we’ve got the bedhead and highlights. All these hairstyles and more can be seen here: http://www.greathairstyletips.com/hairstyles-through-the-decades.
Lest you think that men are not susceptible to the same lust for the novelty of fashion, I present to you some pictures of myself growing up:
This is my 9th grade baseball picture. Notice the long hair in back and short on top. Yes, that’s a mullet. Don’t forget to notice the curls in the back. Yes that mullet is permed. And if you look really closely you’ll notice that I have Vanilla Ice stripes in the sides of my hair. What was I thinking?!
By my senior year I had progressed a little bit. Here’s one of my senior pictures:
Ah…The Guess suede leather jacket off the shoulder. The Gap t-shirt. The hair moussed up in a kind of wave. These pictures are kinda scary. If I were you, I think right about now I’d be wondering about the stability of my pastor. This is what happens when we lust after everything we see.
The harm in all this, if it isn’t obvious by now, is essentially materialism. It is the seeking of a kind of ultimate satisfaction in the things that we buy. We try to fill a God-shaped hole in our hearts with things that change, like porn, technology, and fashion. In the process of doing this we consume so much that we are now on the verge of destroying great parts of God’s creation.
The harm of lusting after everything we see is novelty that leads to materialism, but what is the truth? The truth is that only God can satisfy, and God does not change. We read in the book of Hebrews that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, NLT).
When we lust after everything we see we end up with the empty satisfaction of filling a God-shaped hole with changing things rather than finding peace in God who does not change.
Pride in Our Possessions
A third harm that John mentions is “pride in our possessions.” What does he mean by that? I think that what John is talking about is a kind of honor and prestige that comes with how much stuff we have. Our self-identity gets wrapped up in what we own.
When I was a teenager my dad took me shopping for shoes. At the time I had a pair of off-brand shoes that I got made fun of for wearing at school. When my dad took me to the store I wasn’t going to walk out of that store with anything less than Nike shoes. I didn’t care what kind of Nikes they were, but I was tired of being made fun of. My identity had unfortunately become wrapped up in the kind of shoes I wore and how they compared to others.
We tend to compare our stuff to the stuff that other people have. Is our car nicer? How about our home? We even do this with our relationships. We talk about “trophy wives” and “trophy husbands.” I’m even guilty of talking about “trophy girlfriends” when I was still in the dating scene.
So what’s the harm in this kind of pride? Ultimately it drives us into fundamental competition with others. C.S. Lewis talks about this in his book, Mere Christianity, under the chapter titled, “The Greatest Sin.” He says:
Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive – is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride…
The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
Lewis has a way of cutting through everything and getting at the core of the issue. Pride is essentially competitive and when it comes to God, who is beyond anything we can ever be, if we are proud, we will never be able to love God.
So if pride leads us into the harm of being in a fundamental competition with others, even God, then what is the truth that we are called to walk in? The truth is that true love is sacrificial. Instead of using others to love things, we use, even give up, things to love others. John tells us, “We know what real love is because Christ gave up his life for us. And so we also ought to give up our lives for our Christian brothers and sisters.” This is the exact opposite of being in competition with them. Instead of competition, we give sacrificially. God showed us what this looks like most fully in Jesus Christ who gave up all the comforts of heaven by taking on flesh, to the point of even dying to show us this love.
When we take pride in our possessions we end up using others to love things rather than using things self-sacrificially to love others.
Harm is the breakdown in community when it no longer walks in the way of truth. Doing no harm is rejecting the lust for physical pleasure, rejecting the lust of everything we see, and rejecting pride in our possessions. But doing no harm isn’t enough. We must not just “not do.” We must also “do.” Do good. That comes next week.
Prayer
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast in your mercy. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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