Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, who is with us in truth and love. Amen.

In "Miracle on the River Kwai," Scottish soldiers, forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad, had degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. A shovel was missing. The officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot … It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first checkpoint. The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others!

The incident had a profound effect. The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: "No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness." Sacrificial love has transforming power.

Jesus Christ gave up his life on the cross. He did this so that we might live. He was an innocent man who had been willing to die in order to save others – to save us. Then Jesus powerfully and victoriously took up his life again when he rose from the dead on Easter morning. Jesus’ death and resurrection has a profound effect on us. We don’t want to hate each other. We don’t want grumbling and fighting going on in our church. We don’t want to hold grudges and hurt others with our words. No, Christ has changed all that.

The apostle John does not explicitly mention the Easter event, but the triumph of the Easter victory and its assurance pervades our entire text. John encourages believers by asking: "How are you to live?" He doesn’t want us to live a life of being intimidated or feeling hostility toward one another or feeling like losers. He tells us to live with faith in the victorious Christ. We want be filled with love and joy. We want to forgive. We want to treat each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. All because of Christ’s death and resurrection. How are we to do that? Simply believe in the risen Lord. Believe in the risen Lord so that you may love as God’s children. And so you may overcome the world.

John writes, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well." Believing in Jesus is a direct consequence of having been born of God. At your baptism or conversion you were born of God. You were made his children and given faith that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Savior from sin. Because you are your father’s child, you will love him. Because you are your heavenly father’s child, you will also love him. If you love your earthly father, you will also love his other children as well – your brothers and sisters. If you love your heavenly father, you will also love his other children as well – your brothers and sisters in Christ.

John explains this further: "This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands." God’s children will love God and love their spiritual siblings. John knows exactly what he is saying. You cannot love God without loving your Christian siblings. You cannot love your Christian siblings without having a love for God. They go hand-in-hand. They are not mutually exclusive ideas. Love for God and love for his children are tied together.

However, sometimes we have the tendency to pigeonhole our love for God and love for his children into separate compartments. For example, we will come to church to worship God, take his holy supper and ask for forgiveness. By doing this we feel we are demonstrating love for our God. All the while, though, we are upset with our spouse sitting next to us or we have some feelings of displeasure toward a Christian sibling sitting on the other side of the church. If we do that, we aren’t showing love to our Christian sibling or love to God.

You may feel upset because you are always asked to help get things done in the church. You are always serving on some committee or group. Maybe someone said something to you in jest, but you took it personally. There was a lack of communication and you took it as a personal affront. There was a disagreement about how to run the church or the school. You may feel frustrated with others. You may feel resentment toward your fellow members. You may be irritated by your Christian brother or sister.

I’m sure that we have all felt like this from time to time. It is difficult to always get along. Things are said, personalities clash, there is a lack of communication. It happens in Christian relationships and it especially happens within a church. It is common. But, it is also wrong. It is sinful. It is harmful. It damages our relationships with each other as well as our relationship with God. We cannot demonstrate love for God will feeling hostility toward his children. No matter how much we try to justify our frustrations. No matter what the perceived wrong may be. No matter how much we are hurting. We cannot love God and still be angry with our Christian brothers and sisters. If we do that then we are giving the devil the opportunity to divide and conquer.

How are we to demonstrate love? John instructs us, "This is love for God: to obey his commands." Loving God and his children is demonstrated in living his commandments. By breaking his commands you show him disrespect and a lack of love. But you show your love and respect for God by keeping his commands. Loving God will then flow into demonstrating love to your Christian siblings.

Living this life of love for God and for your Christian siblings has many benefits: We come together for worship; we encourage and admonish one another; we can sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to our God; we can partake of the Lord’s Supper together; we come together to share the gospel with each other and with our community; we pray together because we have a partnership in the gospel; and much more. When Shelley and I took pre-marriage counseling classes our pastor told us how he and his wife always prayed together before going to sleep. He said it was hard to stay mad at someone when you were praying with them. That’s true. When you are praying with someone, sitting together in Bible study, worshipping together, it is hard to be upset with them because you are brothers and sisters in the faith. Demonstrate your faith in the risen Lord by continuing to show love to one another. Act as God’s children.

Secondly, John says that because we have faith in the risen Lord we act as the victors. "For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." Believe in the risen Lord so that you may overcome the world. We share Christ’s victory over sin, Satan, and the grave.

In John’s day, believers were invited to give up their Christianity and give in to worshipping the Greek gods, the Roman gods, heathen philosophies of materialism and humanism. Today, we Christians are assaulted with plenty of alternatives to the real God of heaven and earth. We are assaulted by the popular thinking of our world: greed and materialism, sexual sins and instant gratification, false doctrines and lack of morality. We are assaulted head on by persecution to our Christianity. For example, the popular book, "The DaVinci Code," which has been made into a movie, portrays Jesus as a Jesus as a philanderer who had an affair with Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who turned into a devout follower. The "Gospel of Judas" is being hailed as the archeological discovery of the last 60 years. God is taken out of schools and government, but homosexuality and safe sex are introduced. Everywhere we turn, we feel like we are on the losing team. Christianity seems to be losing ground.

That may seem to be the case here in our congregation as well. Our membership has grown the last two years, but worship attendance has remained fairly stagnant. There are children in the congregation who aren’t in Sunday School. We fight Sunday to Sunday to pay bills and salaries. It can seem like we are losing ground. Or we can feel that being a conservative, confessional Lutheran congregation is too restrictive and too difficult to bring new people into the church. It can be frustrating. It can feel like we are on a losing team.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a losing team. I have. My senior year in college, our soccer team went 1-11-1. That is one tie, one victory, and eleven losses. That was frustrating. It was humiliating. Everyone began pointing fingers, tempers were short. Everyone was moody and upset all the time. And we can feel the same way as Christians if we feel that we are on a losing team.

But we aren’t. John says that we have overcome the world because we have been made God’s children. We can overcome the world because we believe in Jesus Christ. He is the risen Lord.

On Good Friday it may have seemed to Jesus’ disciples that they were on the losing team. Jesus was dead and in the grave. His death accomplished nothing more than to arouse the sympathy of a few close friends. But Good Friday was followed by Easter Sunday. Jesus’ resurrection to life early that first Easter Sunday morning was God the Father’s way of affirming the work of his Son. It was the official guarantee that when Jesus said, "It is finished," it was indeed finished. His work of saving the world was done. All sins had been paid for. There was nothing left for anyone else to do. Jesus had died, and now he was alive again to declare his victory to the world. Believe in me, he says to us, and you will live too.

Jesus’ victory was demonstrated in our gospel lesson where Jesus proved he had overcome Satan and hell on the cross. A soldier might bear the scars of a successful battle or a football player might have scrapes and sore muscles after a Super Bowl victory. Jesus won the victory and he showed Thomas the scars of that victory – the nail marks in his hands and feet and his pierced side. And Thomas responded in faith, "My Lord and my God." Thomas’ painful sadness after Christ’s death had been replaced by indescribable joy because of his resurrection. Now he knew with absolute certainty that Jesus was indeed the Lamb of God who had taken away all his sins. We share in that same victory. We believe in our risen Lord and through that faith we may overcome the world.

I think this story illustrates how Christ’s triumph presently benefits our lives: Imagine a city under siege. The enemy that surrounds they city will not let anyone or anything leave. Supplies are running low, and the citizens are fearful. But in the dark of the night, a spy sneaks through the enemy lines. He has rushed to the city to tell the people that in another place the main enemy force has been defeated; the leaders have already surrendered. The people do not need to be afraid. It is only a matter of time until the besieging troops receive the news and lay down their weapons.

Similarly, we may seem now to be surrounded by the forces of evil—disease, injustice, oppression, death. But the enemy has actually been defeated at Calvary. Things are not the way they seem to be. It is only a matter of time until it becomes clear to all that the battle is really over.

John asks us the question "How are we to live." We live with obedience to Christ so that we may love as God’s children. We live in Christ’s victory over death and the grave so we may overcome the world. We live by believing in our crucified and risen Lord. Amen.

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you. Amen.