The Goal of Instruction
January 17, 2010 Evening Service
Immanuel Baptist Church, Wagoner, OK
Rick Boyne
Message Point: The whole point is love.
Focus Passage: I Timothy 1:1-7
Now the goal of the commandment is love - Eng Majority NT
But the effect of the order - BBE
The whole point of what we're urging - The Message
Now the end of the commandment - KJV
The aim of our charge - ESV
My goal in giving you this order - (GW)
You must teach people - CEV
I. Love from a pure heart
a. The love which is genuine must proceed from a holy heart. The commandment was not designed to secure merely the outward expressions of love, but that which had its seat in the heart.
II. Love from a good conscience (a knowledge of what is right)
a. 1Jn 3:17 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?
b. A conscience free from guilt. Of course there can be no genuine love to God where the dictates of conscience are constantly violated, or where a man knows that he is continually doing wrong. If a man wishes to have the evidence of love to God, he must keep a good conscience. All pretended love, where a man knows that he is living in sin, is mere hypocrisy.
III. Love from a sincere faith
a. 1Jn 3:16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers
b. Undissembled confidence in God. This does seem to be intended specifically of faith in the Lord Jesus, but it means that all true love to God, such as this law would produce, must be based on confidence in him. How can anyone have love to him who has no confidence in him? Can we exercise love to a professed friend in whom we have no confidence? Faith, then, is as necessary under the law as it is under the gospel.
Invitation:
