1 John and the Love for God That Man Should Have

Review of Maximum Joy

Introduction

Anderson’s (2016) Maximum Joy is an application of 1 John to one’s life—a navigational map of sorts to help one engage with the fact and gift of salvation offered by Christ through the cross. Where Luther and Calvin ran into the stumbling block of how or whether a sinner could still be saved, Anderson attempts to use 1 John to explain what it means to have a relationship and, most importantly, a fellowship with God. This review provides a summary and critique of Anderson’s book and shows that Anderson touches upon something quite important in religious studies: God wants His children to enjoy their relationship with Him.

Summary

John is often described as the Apostle who loved Jesus most. That love comes through in the first epistle of John, as Anderson (2016) points out (16). The epistle is from one child of God to another: it is a heart to heart, and that is where Anderson starts his reflection. 1 John is about love, Anderson notes; it is about intimacy and how intimate we are with God. The major stumbling block to intimacy is selfishness. Anderson gives the example of a husband and wife: the husband wants to feel admired; the wife wants to feel secure. Each is wanting something from the other and feels unfulfilled if he/she does not receive it. But does either focus more on giving? On being selfless instead of selfish? On living to make the other happy? That question gets to the heart of the matter: God gave Himself so that we would have the opportunity to be happy with Him in Heaven. To take that opportunity requires us to be selfless the way He was on the cross.

While selflessness might not seem an enjoyable task, Anderson explains that it can be and it will be, the closer we move towards God. Anderson (2016) describes Peter being unwilling to have his feet washed by Christ at the Last Supper and Christ admonishing Peter saying that unless he allow himself to be cleansed (of sin) he can have no part (no intimacy) in God (20). Anderson goes on to make the point that this moment is not about establishing a relationship with His followers. He already has a relationship with them. It is about establishing a fellowship—it is about establishing intimacy. He is not content just to have followers. He wants them to love Him. He wants them to love others. He wants love to be the force that binds them together. Peter resisting Christ’s act of humility was an act of selfishness—a resistance to love. Resisting love is akin to resisting Christ.

Anderson shows that Christ uses our senses to draw us to Him. We hear first; then we see; then we look (more deeply); and then we touch God finally. The closer we come to God, the more irresistible the force of love becomes. In response, we are motivated to declare His glory and His power not just to ourselves but also outwardly to the world. It is the kind of love that motivated St. Francis Xavier to go into the world as a missionary for Christ. St. Francis Xavier did not love God simply because of the promise of Heaven but because God loved him first from the cross. St. Francis Xavier recognized that love and adored Christ as his loving King in return.

Anderson pursues this line of thought throughout each of the book’s 22 chapters, concluding each chapter with a list of questions for the reader to ask himself so as to facilitate reflection. In this way, the book is not just an epistle to Anderson’s readers but also a manual for deeper meditation and examination of one’s own relationship and fellowship with God.

Anderson tackles various issues that prevent one from developing one’s fellowship with God. He discusses the feeling of living in darkness, the cancer of sin and how it keeps one in a state of selfishness. He discusses pride and vanity and self-love, all of which act as barriers between oneself and God. He does not dwell only on the obstacles, however. He also gives his readers a sense of how to overcome them—namely by way of prayer, which is quite simply conversation with God (Anderson 2016, 101). He observes that without prayer, no one comes to God.

Each chapter is based on a specific passage of John’s first epistle, and thus each chapter deals with a select issue that is dealt with by John. For instance, Anderson (2016) extrapolates from 1 John 3:7-10 the roots of sin (Satanic pride) and also the nectar of life (love of God and love of one’s fellow man). 1 John 3:7-8 states: “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” In these two verses Anderson identifies who is causing the mischief in our lives that prevents us from loving God—the devil. He also identifies the reason Christ came to us in the first place—to destroy the work of the devil and to offer Himself as our way to Him, which is the greatest gift any man could ever have or ask for. 1 John 3:9-10 continues: “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.” In these two verses, Anderson (2016) identifies what it means to have fellowship with God: it is communion, a life of grace, a desire to avoid sin; a desire to flee from evil because it is displeasing to God and prevents one from being with God. One has to want to be with God to resist evil, and to want to be with God one has to realize the greatness of the gift that is Christ. Unless one realizes that greatness, one will not turn from evil. One will not become God’s child. One will, instead, remain a child of darkness.

In darkness is maximum sadness; in God’s light is maximum joy, and that is the point of 1 John as well as of Anderson’s book. Joy comes not simply from having a relationship with God but more importantly from having fellowship with God (Anderson 2016, 287). Anderson concludes his book by noting that John’s Gospel is a book with the main them of relationship and a subtheme of fellowship, while John’s first epistle is a letter with the main theme of fellowship and a subtheme of relationship.

Critique

Anderson does an excellent job of relating the principles of 1 John to everyday life and provides many examples from the real world to show how it applies. He often references moments from his own life to show how the lessons apply. For instance, in the chapter on the cancer of sin, he refers to a skiing accident in his own life to make a point about how sin sneaks up on a person and begins to take over one’s life without even one realizing it. One little step towards sin is a giant step away from God. One more step towards sin, and one suddenly has forgotten all about God. It is in this sort of way that one loses all fellowship with God.

These personal anecdotes help to give the book a very human quality that other books rarely possess. The work comes across as informal, even though it is dealing with a very important subject. In other theological works, the subject matter can seem heavy and dead, but Anderson makes the topic something that anyone can relate to because he draws support from life and uses real details that help a person to see how the lessons of 1 John apply to the real world. In that way, Anderson succeeds quite well in supporting his thesis that 1 John is about fellowship and that fellowship is what God wants with man. Without the anecdotes, the book would come across much differently and would not be as enjoyable to read.

Because it is easy to read, the book does not feel laborious at all. Some are turned away from religious topics because they come across abrasively. People find it hard to connect with abstract spiritual principles, even one as commonplace as the idea of love. Anderson shows what genuine love really is, and he frames the construct of fellowship in simple terms so that the reader can feel it, sense it, see it and understand it. The point of the book is reinforced as Anderson takes the reader through each passage of 1 John, finding support for his thesis both in Scripture and in real world experience.

These are the strengths of the work. But there are others as well. The discussion questions that conclude each chapter are very helpful in getting the reader to think more deeply about what has been discussed in the chapters. This gives the book a kind of academic appeal. The reader does not feel that he is casually perusing a work on spirituality when he arrives at the question section. Instead, he feels that now he is actually a pupil of the author, being asked to consider what the author has said. It creates a foster’s a kind of engagement with the reader that might be missed were the questions not included.

For instance, Anderson concludes chapter 2 with what he calls Lesson 2. The first question begins by quoting an explanation of love from the chapter and it concludes by asking the reader how the statement about love is true in a human context and how it is true for the believer. That there are two different ways to think about this helps to drive home the point that God does not just want love for Himself; He also wants us to show love to others—thus, the human context and the spiritual God-directed context. That first question alone helps the reader to remember that love is not just for God but for one’s neighbors as well. Love has to go in both directions.

In the same Lesson, Anderson tells the reader to go outside 1 John and read Romans 5:5-10. Then Anderson asks how Romans 5:8 relates to the conversation on love that has been begun in the preceding question. In this way, Anderson relates 1 John to the wider New Testament as a whole, bringing St. Paul’s epistle into the discussion, and showing that love is not a theme or topic unique to John but rather to be found across the New Testament. This again is an important point that gets the reader to reflect on the primacy of love in the New Covenant.

The Lesson then becomes more personal, which is what makes the book seem intimate in its own way. Anderson (2016) asks: “In what sense were you ever God’s enemy? Before or after ‘reconciliation’?” (40). By asking this question, Anderson is now asking the reader to look within and to reflect on his own life. He is also touching upon one of the themes that served as a roadblock for Luther and Calvin: how one can sin and yet still have the opportunity of salvation. In this way, Anderson gets the reader thinking about the larger and more complex issues of what it means to love God, to be loved by God, to sin, and to be saved. He moves the reader along through various concepts touched upon in the chapter through the series of questions that follow, each one focusing on an important point that deepens or should deepen the reader’s understanding of love.

Main Weaknesses

The weakness of the work is that might spend a little too much time focusing on real world stories. Is it possible that the book’s greatest strength is also its main weakness? Yes. It is possible that there can be too much of a good thing. The book could be supported by more in-depth analysis of Scripture. As it stands, it mainly uses the passage from 1 John as a starting point and then goes off into this or that real world example, whether it be about someone’s encounter with Communism or a personal anecdote about posing in front of mirror hoping to get the wife’s attention. These stories are important and are helpful for the reader; however, there is also something nourishing that can only be found in Scripture and the lack of Scriptural reference makes the book feel almost as though it were secular.