Love like Christ
Keep Christ in Christmas
12/21-22/2013
Introduction
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Love.
Love is a word that is quite overused.
We love a lot of things.
We love our football, our cars, our houses, our kids.
We love our freedom, we love our guns.
We love our dogs, and even our cats.
We love chocolate and steaks and pizza.
We really do “love” a lot of things.
There have been over 75 movies that have love in the title.
There have been countless songs that have love as their subject.
In fact, we love so much that there are over 100 songs that were #1 hits that have the word love in the title.
Back in 1956, Elvis wanted people to “Love me Tender,” (1956) and then a few years later, he sang that that he “Can’t help falling in Love” (1962). Even though he couldn’t help falling in love, some obviously could because there were some who had “lost that lovin’ feelin’” according to the Righteous Brothers.
The Supremes wanted people to “Stop in the Name of Love” while the Beatles told us that “All You Need is Love.” A few years later, while The Partridge Family sang, “I think I love you,” Olivia Newton John could say, “I honestly Love you.”
In 1975, the Eagles were willing to give the “Best of my Love” and Captain and Tenille told us that “Love will keep us together.”
By 1976, Paul McCartney was decrying all the “Silly Love Songs,” but REO Speedwagon vowed in 1981 to “Keep on Lovin’ You.” In fact, It was the only thing they wanted to do.
Lionel Richie and Diana Ross knew that they would keep on loving because they sang about their “Endless love” in 1981 while Tina Turner wanted to know “What’s Love Got to do with it” in 1984.
In 1985, Whitney Houston was “Saving all my love for you” even as Foreigner said “I want to know what Love is.”
Love. When it is so overused, it tends to get watered down so that we don’t really know what it is.
Maybe you have never consciously wondered that, but as we talk about it, it does strike a chord with you. What is love? I want to know.
Well, as we continue in our series, talking about How to Keep Christ in Christmas, it is imperative that we know what love is as defined by God and it is absolutely imperative that we learn to love like Christ.
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To love like Christ it is essential that we are worshiping Christ like we spoke of a few weeks ago and that we are spending time in the presence of people, because real love requires that we are loving real people.
So, how does Christ love and how are we to love?
Turn with me to 1 John 3:16
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Not John 3:16, but first John 3:16.
It is interesting however that both John 3:16 and 1 John 3:16 both talk about God’s love for us.
Here, however, the apostle John has a response to Foreigner who said “I want to know what love is”
Let’s read.
1 John 3:16-18 - 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? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
Pray
This Scripture that we just read starts out by telling us what love is by showing us God’s love for us.
We see that
God’s love for Us is Sacrificial
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1 John 3:16
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
God sacrificed his life for us.
The purpose of Christmas was for Jesus to come into this world so He could become a man and lay down his life for us.
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Hebrews 2:14, 17
14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil—. …. 17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.
God’s love for us caused Him to sacrifice His glory in heaven to be born as a baby into this dark and cold world, so that he could sacrifice his life for ours.
Consider His Sacrifice
I don’t know if you have ever really contemplated the greatness of God’s sacrifice for us.
Maybe at Christmas time you just want to think about a cuddly little baby who is cute and adorable. When we do that, we miss out on realizing the fullness of the Sacrifice that was made for us because being a baby in the suburbs in America is not too bad.
Being a baby in most other parts of the world, especially at that time, was not an easy life. And it would be a lot harder if you had already experienced complete perfection of living.
Illus. Sacrifice of the insignificant
I want you to think about the small insignificant things in your own life that make your life better and when you have to do without even these little things it seems a sacrifice.
You could live perfectly fine without a cell phone. In fact if you are over 40 years old, you did live without a cell phone fine for a lot of years.
Now imagine not having it.
It would be difficult.
What if by doing without our cell phone meant life for someone else? I am sure many, if not all of us, would do it to save the life of another.
But I bet we would view it as a sacrifice.
We often view inconveniences as Sacrifices.
I am not sure that we will ever be able to get our heads around the sacrifice that Christ made for us so we could have the opportunity for life.
Philippians 2:6-8
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself
and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!
To give up everything - the glory of heaven, the perfect union with the Father and Spirit, to take on flesh and voluntarily subject yourself to the limiting nature of flesh even while knowing the glory you experienced with the Father.
Jesus understands sacrifice in a way that we never will.
And He did that because He loves us.
Death Row
For us to make a sacrifice like that would be more along the lines of us being extremely wealthy and forgoing all of our wealth to trade places with someone who was guilty on death row. He goes free and we enter death row where we await our appointed time of death, all for someone who is guilty.
That is what God did for us because He loves us.
And because God loved us sacrificially, John tells us that
Our Love for Others should be Sacrificial
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1 John 3:16b - 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.
Wow. Given the sacrifice that the Lord made for us, this could look pretty radical.
Now, while John doesn’t tell us to trade places with the guilty, John does delineate a couple of ways that our love should be sacrificial.
In light of the sacrifice that has been made for us, you would think any other sacrifice would be easy, but he challenges us to be sacrificial in a couple of areas that can be quite challenging for us.
First, he says
We need to be sacrificial with our currency
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Look at
1 John 3:17 - 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?
Money is one of those things that can truly show where out heart is because money can purchase many of the other things we like.
Ultimately what money represents for us is a level of freedom.
If we have money, we are free to make choices in how we spend it.
If we have money, we are free to go on a vacation.
When we sacrifice our money, we are really sacrificing our freedom.
When we are willing to do that for another person, we are showing them love.
This should be a gut check for us.
If we are truly going to Keep Christ in Christmas, we have got to recognize that we can be taken captive by the same materialistic desires of the world, and we have to take steps to overcome those tendencies.
One of the best ways to overcome the tendency to fall into a materialistic trap and rely on the Lord instead of ourselves is to be sacrificial with our currency, our money.
Christmas Offering
We have an opportunity to help out those who are truly in need through our special Christmas offering that we have been taking up during this series.
As I have mentioned these past 2 weeks, the special offering is going to be used to minister and help those in the Philippines and in Illinois who have been impacted by the Typhoon and Tornadoes that have come through and to help those who are struggling in our own community and to help continue to reach out to those we began ministering to in Ecuador.
Are you willing to love sacrificially with your currency, your money, to help those in need?
If you haven’t given an offering toward our Christmas offering, then love those who are in need through a financial sacrifice.
Well, John not only tells us that we need to be sacrificial with our currency, but he says
We need to be sacrificial in our conduct
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1 John 3:18 - Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
Our actions, the things we do, speak love to others.
As we saw at the beginning of this message, we are good at throwing around the word love. We love a lot of things, but our words need to be backed up with our conduct.
So How does our Conduct Speak Love?
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What are the sacrifices, other than financial, that we can make to love others?
Well, in the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, Paul gives some very practical ways to love sacrificially in our conduct.
Let me read the 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 to you and highlight a couple of things.
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1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails.
I am not going to talk about each thing, but want to highlight a couple and show how He loves us like this so we see why we should love like this.
Love is Patient
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First, Paul tells us that love is patient.
God is patient with us.
2 Peter 3:9 tells us that the Lord hasn’t come back yet because, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
Are you patient with people?
People can be very frustrating sometimes, can’t they?
Love calls us to sometimes sacrifice our timetable and to be patient with people, especially those who may be less mature than yourself.
Love others sacrificially and conduct yourselves with patience.
Love is Kind
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Paul also says that love is kind.
Ok, that is not so hard. I am a pretty kind person.
Are you? Are you kind like the Lord is?
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Because Luke 6:35 – “he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”
Matthew 5:43-48
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you …46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
We need to love through kindness to those who are perhaps ungrateful and whom you disagree with at times by praying for them and being a blessing to them.
Sacrifice your desire to get justice and leave it in the hands of the Lord and instead be kind to those who don’t deserve it as the Lord has been kind to you.
Love keeps no record of wrongs
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Paul says that love keeps no record of wrongs.
The Lord doesn’t keep a record of our wrongs in regards to our salvation.
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Psalm 103:12 says that “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
This is a real struggle, isn’t it?
If only we could retain important information as easily as we can retain the wrongs that have been done to us, we would never have to study for a final, look up an address, or struggle at remembering someone’s name again
These are areas of sacrifice because, let’s be honest, our nature doesn’t want to be patient. We want what we want now. We are not looking to be kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. In fact we would rather be wicked to the wicked or at least rejoice at their misfortune rather than be kind to them.
And in my nature, I want you to pay for all the ways you have wronged me so, you better believe I am keeping a record.
So the question is
How do we love people in these sacrificial ways if it is against our nature?
To Love sacrificially requires a New Nature
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In John 4:7-8, John tells us that the ability to love in this way comes from God.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
This love that is being spoken of is Agape love, a committed love. It is a love that acts when there is not feeling behind it. It is easy for us to do things when our emotions are leading us in the same direction.
Our heart breaks for those in poor circumstances and we make contributions to help.
But to love in the way that John is talking about, with Agape love, with a love that acts when we don’t’ want to, requires that we know God.
Not just know about Him…we need to know him, we need to be in relationship with Him.
We enter that relationship by receiving Jesus Christ as our Savior. That is when we receive the Spirit of God to indwell us and help us to grow in our capacity to love with God’s kind of love.
That is because we have received a new nature, a nature we did not have before.
Born physically with a corrupted nature
We were born into this world with a corrupted nature. It was corrupted by sin that entered when Adam and Eve disobeyed.
Reborn spiritually with godly nature
We need to be born again, born in a spiritual sense to receive this new nature.
Paul tells us that
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2 Corinthians 5:17 - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
It is through this new nature, this divine nature, that we can live and love in a way that is godly.
Listen to what Peter says about God’s power to help us live in His nature.
2 Peter 1:3-4
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3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
To be able to live a life that loves all, that is expressive of God’s nature, you need to have that nature within you.
Conclusion
Now this new nature is something that grows in us as we walk with the Lord in obedience. We don’t receive Christ as Savior and then the next day are able to completely love like the Lord does.
If we did, then Paul and the other Apostles would never have to write the church to love one another, because it would be happening.
We need to be growing in our ability to love by walking closely with the Lord in obedience to His leading.
In fact, this side of heaven, we will never be able to love like the Lord completely, but we should be loving more all the time as we walk with the Lord.
For the Christian
Maybe you are a Christian and you see that your love for others has been growing a little cold. As we take steps to love as the Lord loves, through sacrifice and our obedience, the Spirit of God works in us to strengthen us and help our hearts to be soft and he draws us into closer union with the Lord.
My suggestion for you is to make some sacrifice. Break the temptation of Satan to worship money instead of God by giving toward our advent conspiracy offering to help those in need in our church and across the globe who need water.
Make some sacrifice in your conduct. Let your actions speak your love to those whom the Lord leads across your path.
Let your love be sacrificial.
For the Seeker
Maybe you are here today and have never received Jesus as your Savior.
My suggestion to you would be do not give to the Advent Conspiracy offering.
Instead you need to receive something. You need to receive the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.
When you receive Him as your Savior, He will enable you to walk in love, grow in love, sacrifice in love to His glory.
And the most unbelievable thing about our sacrifices is that the Lord works in our life through it to bring blessing to us. It may not always be financial or in the way we may think, but it will always provide joy that overflows.
That is ultimately what we all desire.
You can find that in Christ.
Receive the gift of salvation by receiving Jesus Christ as your Savior.
The Bible tells us that if we confess with our mouth “Jesus is Lord” and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. (Romans 10:9).
Pray with me and receive the greatest Christmas gift of all so that you will be enabled to give and love in a way that truly loves all.
Let’s pray.
