1 John 3:13-17: in context

John writes about the love that marks those who have passed from death to life. Do not be surprised if the world hates you, he says; we know we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers, and the one who does not love remains in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. And John shows us what love is: by this we know love, that Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. Then he makes it concrete: whoever 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?

John will not let love remain an abstraction or a feeling; he drives it down to action, and finally to a very ordinary and searching test. He begins high: love is defined by the cross, by Christ laying down his life for us, and we ought to be willing to lay down our lives for one another. But then, as if knowing that laying down our lives sounds grand and rare, he brings it to earth: whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart, how does God's love abide in him? The dramatic willingness to die for another is proved, or exposed, in the undramatic moment of seeing a brother in need and either opening or closing the heart. It is easy to imagine ourselves capable of some heroic sacrifice while failing the small, daily test of actually helping the person in front of us who lacks what we have. John says the two are connected: the love that would lay down its life shows itself, or fails to, in whether we open our hand to a brother's ordinary need. This is how we know whether God's love truly abides in us, not by our warm feelings or our fine words about love, but by whether, having the means, we meet the need we see. Love that closes its heart against a brother it could help is not the love of God, whatever it calls itself. Let us love, John says, not in word or talk but in deed and truth.

When I see a brother in need and have the means to help, do I open my heart or close it, knowing that this ordinary test, and not my fine words or warm feelings about love, is how I know whether God's love truly abides in me?