Series: “Becoming a Complete Christian” Message # 7
TEXT - 2 Peter 1: 3-8
Becoming Complete Disciples, developing conduct and character that reflect those of our Master, Jesus Christ. Complete disciples, the Bible teaches us, must first have a spiritual transformation through a faith encounter with Christ. Then, as an athlete develops her skills, the Believer must work to develop
goodness (the commitment to excellence),
knowledge (an ability to discern and choose),
self-control,
perseverance ( a long-view perspective that includes eternity), and
godliness ( God-centeredness living).
Today we take note of the last two qualities of the ultimate disciple of Jesus Christ:
“Add to your faith.... brotherly kindness and love.”
(Get congregation responses)
How have you been shown true brotherly kindness and love by another Christian?
How did it effect you?
(READ TEXT)
It is my opinion that we live in a time of increasing isolation, loss of connection.
It’s a paradox to me that we can have so many ways to stay in touch - cell phones, emails, Facebook, Google+, - and yet be so disconnected from each other.
In so many places we are experiencing a loss of civility, of concern for one another. (Illustrate)
This creeps into the church if we are not intentional about caring. But, it also provides an opportunity for us to shine brightly in the world.
It is amazing how genuine kindness and love touches others! Equally amazing to me is why we fail to express love or receive love until the most desperate kind of circumstances sweep over us.
My question is: Why do we wait until there is blood on the floor before we give each other the gift of caring and love?
Why is that we must be wounded before we are willing to accept and/or extend grace to those in the world around us?
_______________
For those who know the grace of Christ, who are being spiritually made new day by day, extending grace to others should be a reflex action, as automatic as breathing.
Brotherly kindness and love are an integral part of the complete Christian’s experience. It should be no stretch at all for us to show love.
LOVE IS THE MOST POWERFUL MEDICINE - emotionally, spiritually, and even physically - that we know. God met our GREATEST NEED, not with correction, but with LOVE.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16, NIV)
Have you discovered the power of love - both in the giving and receiving?
At this moment I know that some of us are tempted to turn inward and remember the times when others have failed us. “Go ahead, Pastor. Preach your sappy sermon about the milk of human kindness. You don't know how many times I've been hurt, ignored, trampled, and dismissed. You don't know how badly I wish for a friend.”
I am going to be bold and ask you to forget yourself for a few moments. Don't miss the message by becoming a deflector, hoping that someone else is hearing the truth. God can direct it to every hearing ear.
Hear it for yourself first!
“Add to your faith.... brotherly kindness.”
The NT Greek word is a familiar one – philadelphia. ‘Affection of brothers’
In a healthy family, love is natural. There is a sense of connection and even obligation that grows from our familial love. When first my father, then my mother, grew sick and needed to be cared for, no one needed to tell me, “Jerry, you have a responsibility to set aside your personal priorities to be at their side.” I just wanted to do it because I loved them.
When you born, by the Spirit, into the family of the Heavenly Father, one of the things that should have emerged was a real, deep, and intimate connection to other people.
If that did not happen, I would seriously question the authenticity of your faith. (Ouch!, right?) That sounds so judgmental, but I am speaking straight from the Bible when I say it.
This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ... We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
What is the quality of the love we now know?
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (1 Jn 3:11-17, NIV)
We are Christ’s hands, Christ’s mouth, Christ’s wallet ...
The eternal Christ came to live in flesh among us, we call that the Incarnation. After 33 short years, He ascended to Heaven and the Holy Spirit came to live with and in us. And, today Christ makes Himself known by working through us.
So, what does Jesus look like in you?
Is His amazingly love on display in you?
John was clear that this is not about sentiment alone. This brotherly kindness must be extremely practical not merely theoretical. It is shown by – involvement and investment.
The empty rhetoric of caring is worthless. It is undeniable that actions speak much louder than words.
We show it when we feed the hungry with the food pantry, when we come alongside of the lonely to be a true friend, when we forgive from the heart, when we refuse to tolerate the injustice of race or economics that are so much a part of this present world.
Brotherly kindness must be sincere.
We must take care that we don’t learn to ‘switch it on’ and then turn it off. Some Christians show ‘love’ in the same way that a politician or an entertainer does.
People who earn their living from the affection and following of others, soon learn how to look interested in every person and to connect with people in the audience by appearing to be everybody's best friend. Most of the time it isn't a genuine caring concern. Yet, this “love” they project deceives the masses into believing that someone cares. Some people are so starved for real relationships that they will eat up the phony caring of the entertainer by suspending their own good sense and reason.
How wrong it is if our caring concern is only an act designed to get others to like us or to follow us. How hypocritical.
Peter emphasizes the importance of love to the complete Christian’s life by repetition:
Add to your faith, brotherly kindness, I mean really love each other!
Reading the Greek of the original text we find two different words ...
One, as a mentioned a moment ago is ‘philadelphia,’ familial love.
The second is agape, the other-centered love like God’s love for us.
We must recognize the importance of cultivating the highest love of all which God taught us in the way that He loved us. The Bible says-
[1 John 4:19] “We love because he first loved us.” [1 John 4:9-12] This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
What does God teach us about Love?
∙ The love that we must develop is a love that reaches out to another based on their need and not the needs of the lover.
∙ It is a love that pays the price to sustain the relationship when there is little or no reciprocated love.
∙ It is a love will actively forgive the wrongs that others commit against us.
∙ It is a love that overcomes evil and transforms a broken life into a whole one.
About 40 years ago, a Dutch spinster emerged with a story of her family’s work with Jews in Holland during the Second World War. When the Nazi’s occupied Holland, they began to round up Jews to ship them to work camps in Germany, with many going from there to death camps. Corrie TenBoom’s family, devout Christians, could not do nothing. So they built a hiding place in their home to shelter Jews. After a time someone revealed their activities to the Nazi’s. Corrie, her sister, Betsie, and her aged father were arrested and sent to work camps in Germany.
Her father died soon after arrest and her sister died after short time in Ravensbruck. Corrie survived the war and traveled often to speak about her experiences.
Let me pick up the story in her own words from a article originally published in Guideposts, in 1972.
It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavy-set man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. ...
And that's when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!
Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. ... You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. "I was a guard in there." No, he did not remember me.
"I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us."
"But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, ..." his hand came out, ... "will you forgive me?"
And I stood there — I whose sins had every day to be forgiven — and could not. Betsie had died in that place — could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. "If you do not forgive men their trespasses," Jesus says, "neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." ...
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion — I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling."
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
"I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!"
For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then. - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/boom.html
Where does the strength come from to love the world like this?
How can we choose to love those who do not love back, who in some cases actively resist our love?
By living in the center of Christ's love ourselves.
1 John 4:16, 19
...”we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. ..... We love because he first loved us.“
Complete Christians will transform the world one life at a time through the power of love.
As I close this morning, let me direct your attention back to the text in 2 Peter.
The passage ends with great promise to those who cultivate the character of Christ. It is a magnificent statement of promise and purpose
[ read vv. 8, 10-11]
1. Mature character makes us a productive disciple that honors our Lord.
2. Mature character establishes us so that we do not fall away from the grace of God.
3. Mature character builds for us a rich eternal reward that God Himself will present to us
when we come into His presence.
Amen.
