The Law of Love
Notes
Transcript
REVIEW:
Be watchful to guard against gospel drift
Fight the flesh by walking in the Spirit and bearing spiritual fruit
Persevere under pressure in:
Faith
Hope
Love
Because Jesus is worth it!
Then we looked at Jesus’ prayer for Unity for his followers.
Our ability to reach our community will always be directly tied to the measure of our unity.
We saw in 1 Corinthians 12 how God desires to build his church through the diverse ministry of ALL his people using their various gifts for a common mission.
Last week we learned that the primary ministry of all disciples is to be making and growing more disciples.
INTRO
Today we will be wrapping up this series on Kingdom Building by asking the question, “What does Jesus want our church to be marked by or known for?”
When you are out in public and Fishkill Baptist get’s brought up in conversation and someone says, “Oh, that’s the church that __________”
Has those great ladies bible studies.
Does that VBS that my kids love.
Host’s some really great concerts.
What is it that Jesus want’s to come to the forefront of people’s thoughts when is mentioned in our community?
This is the reputation that Jesus wants for his church...
That we love each other with the love of Jesus.
We’re going to we’re going to think more deeply about this today by looking at 3 points from John 13:31-35.
The STANDARD of Love
The POWER to Love
The DEMONSTRATION of Love
Let’s begin by looking at the text together. Please stand with me if you are able out of respect for God’s Word.
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
PRAY
The STANDARD of Love
The STANDARD of Love
In verse 34, Jesus gives his disciples a NEW command. But this new command sounds a lot like an old command.
When asked what the greatest commandment in the Law was. Jesus said the first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. (from Deut. 6)
And a second is like it — You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (from Lev. 19:18)
So, Jesus’ new command is modifying the 2nd greatest commandment.
The bar is raised. The measure of our love for one another is no longer our love of self but Jesus’ love for us!
So this begs the question, “How has Jesus loved us?”
Verse 31 is the answer — after Judas left the last supper to betray Jesus, Jesus says, “Now the Son of Man is glorified.”
Notice two things here — First, Jesus applies the title of “Son of Man” to himself, a title most notably used in Daniel 7 and associated with GLORY!
But secondly, we know that the glory that Jesus is referring to is his death and shame on a Roman cross!
But how is it that shame is equated with glory? These two ideas are contradictions in the thinking of the world.
Glory is only supposed to accompany power and might.
We think of the glory of a baseball team winning the World Series or a football team winning the Super Bowl.
So, how is the death and suffering of the Son of God equated with glory?
Here’s how — Jesus’ self-sacrificing death on the cross revealed or displayed in an ultimate sense, the self-giving love of God.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Not only is Jesus glorified in displaying the self-giving love of God, but our text also says that God is glorified in him. This is because it is the Father’s love that is on display.
Later in chapter 15 of John’s gospel, Jesus would make this even more clear when he said.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
So, Jesus has raised the bar. Our love of self is no longer the standard by which we must love one another but the self sacrificing love of Jesus is!
But if we're honest with our selves, this kind of love is intimidating. And it’s embarrassing to think of how far short we fall from this.
So, how is it that this is even possible for us? Where do we get the power to love like Jesus?
The Power of Love
The Power of Love
To answer this question I want you to turn with me to John’s first epistle.
This first letter of John has often been described as a commentary on this new commandment that Jesus gave.
So, to help us answer this question, let’s look together at 1 John 4:7-8.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
First, in order to love like God, we must know God by being be born of God.
What does it mean to be born of God? — Jesus told a Pharisee named Nicodemus in John 3 that no one can enter or even see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.
Look at John 1:12-13 to see what this means.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
How is a person born again? —
Being born again first means acknowledging that we have been miserable lovers.
We love ourselves really well, but in doing so we reject God and hurt those around us.
Augustine described this kind of heart with the Latin phrase: Incurvatus In Se — describing a heart that is turned or curved inward on oneself.
And ironically, we think that we are loving our selves but are really hating ourselves because to live this way is ultimately self-destructive.
Living this way will only earn hell for us.
My family and I recently watched that movie The Truman Show. In it a new born baby is adopted by a television production company and placed in fictitious town inside a massive dome where he is unknowingly the star of a TV show where millions of people watch his every move as he grows up into adult hood.
This is the orientation of every human heart in their sin. Their life and their world is all about them. They are the STAR of the movie of their life.
To be born again is to lay down your role as the star of your finite life that is but a breath and whose credits will one day roll as the story of your life fades to black.
And to take up a supporting role in the epic masterpiece of God’s unending saga where Jesus is the star!
to be born again we need a new heart — one that is not curved in on itself but is oriented outward towards God and others.
We are born again when we understand that Jesus is our only hope — the only one who can forgive you and give you a new heart.
He did this by living a perfect life of love and dying in our place — the perfect for the imperfect — to forgive our failure to love properly.
And John 1:12 says that if you receive Jesus and you trust his work to forgive you, then you are a child of God — you’re born again!
When you are born again and given a new heart, you are for the first time free to truly love.
This is what John describes in 1 John 4:19.
We love because he first loved us.
It is Jesus’ self-sacrificing act of love on the cross that sets us free to love.
But we are not just free to love, we are empowered to love. Look at 1 John 4:12-13.
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
If you are born again, not only do you have a new heart but God himself abides in you through his Holy Spirit which empowers you to love God and to love others like Jesus.
This is the law of love - similar to the laws of physics which are not laws that are able to be broken, they just state certain realities.
So the reality of the law of love is that if you are born of God and his Spirit abides in you then you WILL love others.
Just like what goes up must come down...
If you are born again, you will love each other as Christ loved you.
Your love for the church, the family of God will demonstrate or show to the world that you are a genuine follower of Jesus.
The DEMONSTRATION of Love
The DEMONSTRATION of Love
When Jesus walked the earth about 2,000 years ago, he was the most perfect display of God’s love to the world.
And people would have known that you were one of his followers because you stayed close to him and followed him wherever he went. You sat under his teaching and sought to be like him. This was the mark of those who followed Jesus.
But now that Jesus is gone, how is it that people will know that we follow him? He’s not here for us to physically follow around and learn from any more.
This is what Jesus was trying to tell his disciples. In verse 33 Jesus tells them that in a little while he’s not going to be around any more. And they cannot follow where he is going.
So, Jesus is saying that no longer will people know that you follow me because I’m physically with you,...
But the new “mark” of my disciples will be that they love each other as I have loved them.
Loving like Jesus identifies us with Jesus.
And this is natural because of God’s character. If God is love and we are his children then we should bear some resemblance to the family of God.
Have you ever known a family where the children showed certain qualities of their parents.
You might see a child acting in a particular way and you say to yourself, that must be a HURLEY, or that must be a LING, or there’s no mistaking it, that kid must be a MURA.
Jesus picks up on this theme in John 15:8.
By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
Do you see that they way we love doesn’t MAKE us who we are. It PROVES whose we are!
Displaying Jesus’ love is not a matter of COPYING Jesus’s fruit, it’s a result of being CONNECTED to the vine.
We are the branches and Jesus is the vine.
We don’t imitate, we participate.
Our love for each other as Christians is not a simulation, it’s a manifestation!
This is how all people will know that we are truly Jesus’ disciples.
Jesus’s love is not sentimental though, it’s self-sacrificing.
It’s moving from loving others AS “self” to loving others MORE than “self”.
It’s love that costs us something. Look at 1 John 3:16-18.
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone 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? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
This is how Paul described the generosity of the Macedonian churches to the church in Corinth… 2 Corinthians 7:2-5
for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.
I love that! These believers gave beyond their means, themselves in extreme poverty to bring relief to other believers they didn’t even know personally who were suffering need due to a famine!
The believers in Acts 2:45-47 are another great example of sacrificial love for one another.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
In Acts 6 there was an issue where they had widows among them who were in need and the apostles instructed them to choose 7 men from among them to ensure that these widows are card for.
Many believe that these were the first deacons - the Greek word for deacon meaning servant.
This is why we have deacons in our church today. They oversee providing care for those among us who are in need.
One of the ways they do this is by overseeing the distribution of the benevolence fund to those in need.
And we encourage giving to this fund once a month on communion Sundays in addition to your regular giving.
Do you see how appropriate this is? That on the Sunday of the month when we remember Jesus’ love for us in laying down his life...
We are challenged to love each other as Jesus loved us by giving sacrificially to this ministry.
I can honestly say that the most generous love I have ever witnessed among people has always been in the church.
There is no other explanation for the sacrifice of time and resources given and shared among the church than that it’s people are truly followers of Jesus!
Conclusion
Fishkill Baptist Church may the LAW OF LOVE be our distinguishing mark and reputation in the Hudson Valley. That...
Our community will see Jesus in us when we love each other as Jesus loved us.
Prayer
Benediction
While Jesus told his followers that where he is going, they cannot come.
He clarifies this in verse 36 by saying that
where he is going they cannot follow him NOW,
but they WILL follow him afterward.
Jesus told the unbelieving Jews that they cannot go where he is going and that they would die in their sins unless they believe.
If you’re here today and you're NOT certain that you WILL be with Jesus after you die. Don’t die in your sin. You must be born again...
Stop living for your self and receive Jesus today — trust him to forgive your sin and to make you part of his forever family.
Now may the GRACE of the Lord Jesus
And the LOVE of God
And the FELLOWSHIP of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
AMEN