Nothing makes me madder or sadder than the abuse of children. I suppose most of you have the same disgust when you read the papers or see the news and realize that children of God, precious gifts to the world each one, created in the image of God and for God’s glory, should be treated as objects of someone’s perversion. This week we read about a Boy Scout leader who used his position to gain the trust of young boys and then molested them more than 200 times in a three-year period. He even married the mother of two of the boys, further ingratiating himself into the sacred trust of family and violating it again and again. The damage done was profound, as it always is. The brothers said they were too ashamed to come forward and feared the outcry would break up the family. I felt weird. I felt dirty. I didn’t know what was happening, said the younger brother. In a moment of some small grace, the molester finally halted the trial and confessed, realizing from the boys’ testimony just how awful his actions had been.

The sickness and sinfulness of this are magnified when pedophiles use language of love about those they abuse. Listen to me carefully: if any of you is enduring such abuse, there is nothing good or loving about it. You do no one any good by keeping quiet. Find someone you can trust and tell the secret. You will not begin to heal as long as you allow it to happen to you.

Now then, after that moment of gross unpleasantness, this question: How do we test love to see whether it is from God? First John gives us a pretty straightforward answer that comes from the example of Jesus: We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He does not think of his own well-being first, but of theirs. The metaphor of Jesus the Good Shepherd makes us swoon with verdant images of sunlit pastoral scenes and sweet lambs that wander through life, bleating with great devotion close to the shepherd. But that is hardly the way it was. Shepherds were ridiculed for leaving their families behind and spending so much time with their sheep. They would sometimes be gone for weeks on end in search of green pastures or still waters, because they knew that those sheep were the only way they had to provide for the families they had left behind. They could not conceive of leaving the sheep vulnerable to wolves and thieves that might threaten their lives. Their livelihood was tied to the well-being of the sheep.

But the sheep did not always cooperate. They were dirty. They were not easily satisfied, always looking for more grass or water. And they had no innate ingenuity to care for themselves the way, say, Emperor penguins do. If you’ve seen the movie March of the Penguins, you know the remarkable instincts those creatures have to protect each other. Sheep don’t have that. They are completely dependent upon the shepherd for their life and welfare. Which makes them good models for us of God’s grace, since we are completely without the built-in capacity to save ourselves outside of our God-given ability to put our trust in the Good Shepherd.

Jesus lays down his life for us on the cross, giving himself up for our salvation. In the same way shepherds would lay themselves down across the pen of the sheep at night. If a wolf or thief would try to get to them, they could do so only over the shepherd’s dead body. And this is the kind of love First John says God has for you and me. Jesus sacrifices himself for us. He holds nothing back. The God of the universe gives his last best gift to us in giving us himself.

But this is something hired hands would never do. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep, Jesus says. It’s a job to them. And they will sacrifice the sheep to save their own skin instead of saving the skin of the sheep by sacrificing themselves.

So when First John says we should lay down our lives for one another, he is posing the question to us who claim that we love God and one another: Do you really love like you ought or only when it is convenient for you or in your best interest? Are you like the good shepherd or the hired hand?

It’s easy to see how a child molester is a hired hand who would sacrifice children for his own sake. He indulges only himself and cannot possibly love those he abuses. It gets trickier with parents who love their children so much they will do anything for them. ABC’s Nightline is doing an ongoing series called “Child’s Play.” This week it profiled parents in New York City who would do just about anything to get their children into the right preschool. One school costs $26,000 per year and is harder to get your two- or three-year-old into than Harvard. Yes, there are many public-school pre-K programs that cost only what they pay in taxes, but these parents love their kids so much that they would do just about anything to get their kids the real or perceived advantages of these elite schools. One school has only a first-come, first-served basis, so the parents camped outside on the sidewalk overnight for days in 18-degree temperatures to gain entry. Of those in line, one of them was the child’s nanny, a hired hand. Tragically, in some cases the nannies love the children in ways that seem deeper than parents who don’t mind employing someone else to do the dirty work for them. In some cases the admirable desire of these parents to have the best preschool for their kids is more about social prestige than human development. New York is an incredibly competitive culture, unlike Dallas, don’t you know?! So, in the end, though it is often framed in the language of loving the children and sacrificing for them, it’s sometimes really about the parents after all.

Having the goods to help your child is not the only way to help. They always need you yourself most of all. Indulging or spoiling children means spending your goods on them but not for good. But if you have the goods to do good by your child and don’t do it, can that be called love? Even if you say you love your child, if love does not issue forth in truth and action, as the elder John says, can you really be abiding in the love of the God who held nothing back in the interest of your salvation and welfare? What is the test of love?

I need to get personal at this point, so some of you will need to take a deep breath and know that I love you when I say this to you. Do you really desire that your children know the love of God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Is there anything more important in time and eternity than that? Consider how much of your heart’s affection and your mind’s attention goes into seeing that desire fulfilled at the right time for your children? Do you pray with your children and for them about their knowledge of God and their growing grasp of the gospel? Do you sacrifice your activities and comfort to see to it that they are in Sunday school and worship week by week, learning the Scriptures, listening for the voice of God that calls each of them in God’s own way and time for each one? If we graded church attendance the way schools grade attendance, we would have a major truancy problem.

Of course, the point of attendance in school is never attendance itself but rather learning; and the same is true for church. Will our children have faith? If we love them, we will sacrifice to see to it that they do. If we have the goods of faith ourselves and do not share them with our children, who need it, how can we say we abide in God’s love?

And what about other children and adults who are in need of such faith too? Love God and love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus says. Repeatedly in the Bible, when the issue of loving neighbor is raised, the people go on to ask who their neighbor is, as if to find some limit. If you have the goods of faith in Jesus Christ that saves and sustains you in this life, and if you pass on that faith to your own children, can you stop there? Can you ignore any neighbor’s need of the gospel? Today is a good day to consider that cup of coffee with a friend you say you care about. It’s a good day to take cookies to a new neighbor and invite her to church. It’s a good day to ask a lost or lonely person you see around you whether he knows of the God who loves him enough to lay down his life for him.

But that isn’t exactly what First John is saying, is it, even if it is true and I wanted to remind you of it? John the Elder tells us that if we see a brother or sister in some need and have the world’s goods to help but do not, we cannot claim to abide in God’s love. He is talking about the use of our material goods being a measure of our spiritual state. We don’t like to hear that, but tell me what else he could mean.

When you are baptized into the life of God by faith in Jesus Christ, that is not a private matter. You are baptized into the Christ whose body is the church. You become brother or sister to many others, all of whom become your concern—as much as your own children. I know that sounds amazing to us, since we think blood is thicker than water, but remember that flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. Yet we will spend almost anything on our children, on our family of blood, and almost nothing on our family of spirit that is our family eternally. If you have the goods, if you have any means at your disposal, how are you using them? If your church is to care for the needs of those within our fellowship who are in need, have you contributed to that at all? Do you get the connection between your goods and the good of brothers and sisters in need? If you abide in God’s love, you do, and if you are not abiding in God’s love, you can tell that, too, John says, by looking at your giving. No fair loving in word and speech, he says—truth and action are what counts.

The New Yorker magazine has a cartoon in this edition with two prosperous-looking women, thin and well dressed, with martinis in hand, standing on an apartment balcony overlooking a posh cityscape. One says to the other: I’d like to get back to doing less for charity. Some of you have mastered that sentiment! If you look at the giving records, it’s not a matter of less but any.

The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. When we have the world’s goods, John is telling us, we are not just sheep whom Christ laid down his life for; we are also shepherds who must take care of other sheep. But who are those sheep?

Some of us might want to admit that John is calling us to help our own brothers and sisters in Christ the way we would our own family members, but when it comes to helping anyone else, we have no such mandate. But when Jesus says, I lay down my life for the sheep, he immediately follows that by saying, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.

Who are they? Who else should be the object of our love? Where are we to draw the line? Our family? Our family of faith? Our community? Our country? Are you willing to draw those lines for the God who so loved the WORLD that he gave his only begotten Son? Think about that next time you go to pay your tithe or taxes. Do you really have the goods to follow Jesus?