Systemctl status always shows full log, even with --lines

The command systemctl status display the status of the service and the corresponding lines from journalctl, the --lines=3 will limit the displayed number of lines from the journal to 3. e,g:

systemctl --user status resilio-sync --lines=0

will display only the status of esilio-sync service without the journalctl log.

-n, --lines=

When used with status, controls the number of journal lines to show, counting from the most recent ones. Takes a positive integer argument, or 0 to disable journal output. Defaults to 10.

To limit the output of the systemctl status command you can use options:

systemctl check resilio-sync
systemctl is-active resilio-sync
systemctl is-enabled resilio-sync

or by groupping the options:

systemctl is-active is-enabled resilio-sync

This is what the head command was designed for.

systemctl --user status resilio-sync | head -n 3