Let's Talk About Love, #3

LET’S TALK ABOUT LOVE, # 3

Warsaw Christian Church, Richard M. Bowman, Pastor

Text: Romans 6:11-18

We continue our focus on the meaning of divine love. Let’s quickly review the territory covered thus far:

1. Divine love (agape) is primarily goodwill in action toward friends and foe alike.

2. Love is from God. We become capable of receiving and giving God’s love only through faith in Jesus Christ, who is love incarnate.

3. Love resides primarily in the will as informed by the commandments of God. It is choosing to express goodwill despite thoughts and emotions pulling us in another direction.

4. Love refrains from behavior designed to hurt others.

5. Our entire duty toward God and man is summed up in the word “love.” Paul writes, “The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:9,19).

Our concern today is with a single issue. Divine love (agape) is always opposed to sin. It does not tolerate sin. Sin is anything opposed to God’s will, and since God is love we can define sin as any action contrary to the love of God. If we are truly in a relationship with the living God, we will feel strong opposition to anything and everything contrary to Him and His love.

This is not to say we can practice love unerringly. Only God is pure love. It is to say that Christians do not make excuses for their loveless behavior. Rather, sin (lovelessness) leads to confession and repentance. Paul said, “Make love your aim” (1 Cor, 14:1 RSV). Love is the target we aim at. While we sometimes miss the target, we are always aiming to manifest love, or we are repenting for our failures. Once you settle down and become comfortable with sin you have abandoned love, and those who abandon love abandon God.

We are like a boxer who takes punches from our opponent, sin. Sometimes we stagger and even fall to the canvas, but we are never knocked out. When the final bell rings and the fight of life is over, we are victorious, because love is stronger than sin.

Love's opposition to sin can be broken down into three categories. Love opposes sin in our own lives; love opposes sin in the lives of others; love opposes sin in society. When God’s love gets inside of us, we are very uncomfortable with sin in any manner, shape, or form.

Our battle against sin is not easy. In Hebrews 12:3, it is described as a struggle. The same author described sin as a weight that weighs us down (Heb. 12:1). Sin comes easily and naturally to us. Manifesting divine love at times seems so difficult. The Christian life involves struggle, tears, and much repentance. I recall a conversation years ago with a man who made what I thought was a strange statement. He said, “I sin deliberately every day. It is not a big deal because I know God forgives me.” I hope he misspoke. No Christian sins deliberately every day. Yes, we fall into sin, but we do not casually declare that we disobey God knowingly and openly daily.

Yes, God is forgiving, but remember the words of Paul when he spoke about this matter of willful sin. “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (Romans 6:1). Some who heard Paul’s message that we are justified by faith alone apart from the works of the law concluded that since God wants to forgive, the more we sin the more God’s grace can shine through. Like my friend of many years ago, they assumed their sins were unimportant since they could always ask for forgiveness.

Notice the radical manner in which Paul describes the Christian’s relationship to sin. We are dead to sin. This is a common Greek idiom. To die to a thing or a person is to have nothing to do with it or him. We see this in the parable of the Prodigal Son. When the son left home, the father thought of him as “dead.” He was not physically dead, but their relationship had ended. When Paul said we are dead to sin he was saying that we no longer have a relationship with it. The love of God has so taken hold of us that we abhor that which is contrary to God’s will. John says in 1 John 3:17 that a Christian who has the means to help a needy person but refuses to do so is void of divine love. If a sin of omission means that the love of God is absent from our lives, what shall we say about willful sins of commission, like gossip, adultery, lying, hatred, and the like?