Service Opening:
What is it in Jesus that so draws people, that wins their allegiance away from every other master, makes them ready to leave all for his sake, and to follow him through peril and sacrifice even to death? Is it his wonderful teaching? Those who heard him declared, “no man ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46) Maybe it's his power that is seen in his miracles? Could it be his sinlessness? Even Jesus' most determined opponents could find no fault in him. Is it the perfect beauty of his character?
No, none of these account for the wonderful attraction of Jesus. What drew people to Jesus was his love. His love shattered barriers of hate and prejudice. His love picked up the pieces of broken hearts and put them back together. His love gave aimless lives meaning and purpose. His love found forgiveness where there had only been condemnation. His love brought triumph out of failure. Love is the secret. He came into the world to reveal the love of god.
Men saw it in his face, felt it in his touch, and heard it in his voice. His friendship was unlike any friendship they had ever seen before or even dreamed of. It was this that drew them to him and made them love him so deeply, so tenderly.
We gather to worship to celebrate and enjoy that love. But the same love that Jesus had, is the same love that's been given to us. It's the same love that's been put into our hearts. It's the same love that we've been called to show the world, and to each other. That's what we'll be taking a look at today.
Introduction:
A big part of my philosophy of ministry is that the church should be outwardly focused. The church best fulfills her God-given mission when she is looking outward, loving and serving those outside those outside the church. You will hear me talk a lot about this throughout my ministry.
But being outwardly focused is only half the equation. An outwardly focused church must also be inwardly strong. Without an inner strength and unity, we won't be able to support that outward focus. So as we grow in our outward focus, we also need to grow in our inward strength. They're like two muscles that work together and must be developed together. We can't exercise and strengthen one without also strengthening the other.
So what does it take for us to be inwardly strong? Sprinkled generously throughout the New Testament are fifty-nine one another passages. These are verses that describe how we are to treat each other, who we are to each other. Let me give you some examples. “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love (Rom 12:10).” “Live in harmony with one another (Rom. 12:16).” “Accept one another (Rom 15:7).” “Teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16).” “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love (Eph 4:2).” “Encourage one another and build each other up (1 Thess 5:11).”
We begin a new series this morning covering these one another commands by looking at the granddaddy of them all. It is the one repeated more than any other, and that is we are to love one another. Nine times the call to love one another is repeated. It is echoed by three different authors in four different books. It is the one principle on which all the other one another principles depend. Listen to the role love plays in these one another passages, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers. Serve one another in love. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” You can't be a one another church without love.
Love one another is also the only one another statement that comes directly from the lips of Jesus. John 13:34-35 says,
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
What is it that defines us as Christians? We could be defined by our mission- to seek and save the lost. We could be defined by our worship. We could be defined by our church organization and structure, but the one thing that should define us more than anything else, that can really set us apart is love.
Jesus calls loving God and loving others the greatest of all the commandments. He says that everything that Scripture teaches hangs on those two things. The apostle Paul says there are three eternal virtues that remain faith, hope, and love, but the greatest, he says, is love.
The great Christian theologian of last century, Francis Schaffer, said the world has a right to judge Christianity by the way we treat each other as Christians. He writes, “Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful.” Schaffer believed Love is the ultimate confirmation for Christianity. Love is the proof of our faith. It is the evidence of what we believe. This is why Jesus said, “by this all men will know you are my disciples.”
Now we all agree with the command to love in principle. We sing about it. We read about it. We talk about it. We teach and preach about it. But let’s be honest. We have a hard time loving one another in practice. We love love in the abstract, but we struggle with it in the concrete.
A father had just had his driveway repaved. The concrete was still fresh and wet. So he fenced it off with sticks and tape, and then he found his young boy who was playing outside, and he told him not to run on the new driveway.” You have to stay off the driveway! Do you understand?” He asked. “Yeah, dad.” Well, you know what happened. A few minutes later the boy goes running around the house and “splat, splat, splat” right across the driveway. Well, the dad was furious. He was yelling at the boy and threatening him with all kinds of punishment. Mom came out and in an understanding tone reminded her husband that he loved his son. The dad said, “I love him in the abstract, but I don't love him in the concrete.”
That's kind of like us. We love everyone in the abstract, but we have a hard time loving specific people. A lady came home from choir practice early one evening. Her husband was amazed because they never got done early. “Why are you home so soon?” to which she answered: “We had to call off choir practice early. The organist and the choir director got in a terrible argument about how to sing 'love divine,' so we got to come home.”
There's an old saying that says, “to live with the saints in heaven above, O that will be glory, but to live with the saints on earth below, that's quite another story.” We chuckle because we know it's true. But I ask, “What's going to happen between earth and heaven that will enable us to live with people in eternity in perfect unity and love that we can't stand or get along with down here?
Now I know the answer. When Jesus comes back, we will be transformed. The last remnants of our sinful nature will be done away with. But here's the thing. Jesus doesn't want us to wait until heaven before we start. Loving one another begins here and now. Let's take a closer look at what Jesus says in John 13:34-35.
I. A New Kind of Love
Jesus calls loving one another a new command. Now wait a minute! How can love be new? It certainly doesn't sound new in our day. Our world is in love with the idea of love. It's in our songs and movies and books. Throughout our culture we hear how love is the answer, love has the power, and all you need is love.
This was just as true in Jesus’ day. There were plenty of philosophers and popular teachers in the 1st Century who extolled the virtues of love. So how does Jesus call it “new.” The command to love certainly wasn't new. Way back in Leviticus 19:18 God commanded, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So how did Jesus mean “new.”
There are two Greek words Jesus could have used for “new.” The first was neos. Neos meant new in time. Neos was the latest, the most recent. A new car would be a neos car. The other word Jesus could have used was kainos. Kainos meant new in form or quality, different in nature, something fresh and unique. When you buy your favorite product and on the box it says “new and improved” it means kainos.
It is this word that Jesus uses here. His commandment was new as to the quality and nature of love. He was talking about a new kind of love. The love he was commanding had a new measure- It was to be like his love for them. The love he was commanding sprang from a new power - The power of the Holy Spirit. The love he was commanding was compelled by a new motivation - the self-sacrificing death of Christ on the cross. It was love new and improved.
This is seen in the very word Jesus uses for love. Now the ancient Greeks had four different words for love. They didn't have to ruin one good word by making it mean 20 different things like we do. We love pizza. We love the Cardinals. We love springtime. We love our spouses. We love our children. We love our church family. We love it when our wives wear that little negligee and... Well, you get the picture. For us, love can mean almost anything. The Greeks were a little more defined.
1. Their first word for love was storge -- it's used only once in the new testament, in 2 Timothy 3:3, and it means affection. In the ancient Greek, it is almost always used in the family context. It refers to the watchful care and concern of parents for their children and the natural bond between family members. There is nothing especially Christian or unique about this kind of love. It is found in families throughout the world and throughout history.
2. A second word the Greeks had for love is eros. This is sexual love, and it is from this word that we get our word erotic. This would cover everything from romance to sexual desire and passion. Interestingly, this word is never used in the New Testament. We do get an exquisitely beautiful portrait of it in the Old Testament book of the Song of Solomon, but the New Testament doesn’t really talk about it. Yet this is probably how we most use the word love.
3. The Greeks used a third word, which is found in many places in the bible, and that is philia. This is the general word for love. It is the love of friendship, and it encompasses the bonds of shared interests and mutual enjoyment. This is what we usually mean this when we say that we “like” someone, or that we really “hit it off' with someone. It speaks of companionship, cooperation, and sharing. This word is translated as “brotherly love” in the New Testament records.
There is nothing wrong with these kinds of love. Sometimes I hear Bible teachers demean them as lesser loves. No, they each have their place. They are God-given gifts, and we should thankfully accept and enjoy each one. But when Jesus calls us to love one another in the church, these aren't what he's talking about.
Jesus uses a fourth word. It is a word for love that was used rarely if at all by the ancient Greeks, but it is by far the most frequently used word for love in the bible, and the love Jesus is commanding here, is agape. Though agape wasn't a common concept in the 1st Century Roman world, the early Christians really adopted this word and used it to describe the type of love God has for us, and the type of love he calls us to have for others. It is an unconditional love. It is a love based not on how you make me feel, but on how I choose to treat you.
This is how Jesus can command love. You did notice that didn't you? Love is a command. This is a matter of obedience, a matter of spiritual faithfulness. If we don't love one another, we are being disobedient to Jesus. If there is someone in church and you refuse to do the loving thing, you refuse to treat them the way Jesus did, you are deliberately disobeying your Savior. Whoa! “Are you sure about that preacher?” Yes. This is as much of a command as is “You shall not steal.” Or “You shall not lie.”
A lot of people have a problem with the idea that love can be commanded. And the way we think of love, you can't really command it. “You will fall in love with that girl over there, and you will be attracted to her. You will marry her and spend the rest of your life with her.”
Out...but...but I don't even like her.
Ray Stedman writes:
"Loving people is about the most difficult thing that some of us do. We can be patient with people and even just and charitable, but how are we supposed to conjure up in our hearts that warm, effervescent sentiment of good will which the New Testament calls “love”?
Some people are so miserably unlovable...How are we supposed to stir up warm, fuzzy feelings toward such people? Jesus' answer: we don't have to. In most cases, we probably will never be able to. The fact is, feelings are not the issue. The love Jesus commands is not a feeling. In fact, you can't command a feeling."
We tend to see love as a purely emotional response. Science and medicine have boiled it down to a biochemical reaction. Love is something that happens to us: We fall into love. We fall out of it. We can't determine whom we will love, or why. It just happens.
Jesus' view of love is different. It is not primarily a feeling, but a choice. It's a decision to treat someone in a gracious and generous manner. The love Jesus commands is not how I feel about you, but how I treat you. It's not based on what you can do for me, but on what I can do for you.
II. The Highest Standard
In our passage, Jesus doesn't just give us this new command to love one another, but then he attaches it to the highest standard, the greatest measure imaginable, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” That's the highest standard of love — Not: As you feel like loving them; As they have loved you; or As everyone else loves, but as he loved us.
There is an old Jewish folk-tale. Abraham was sitting outside his tent one evening when he saw an old man, weary from age and journey, coming toward him. Abraham rushed out, greeted him, and then invited him into his tent. There, he washed the old man's feet and gave him food and drink.
The old man immediately began eating without saying any prayer or blessing. So Abraham asked him, “Don't you worship God?' the old traveler replied, “I worship the fire god.”
When he heard this, Abraham became incensed, grabbed the old man by the shoulders, and threw him out of his tent into the cold, damp night. When the old man had left, God called to his friend Abraham and asked where the stranger was. Abraham replied, “I forced him out because he did not worship you.” God answered, “ I have for 80 years suffered to love him although he dishonors me. Could you not endure him one night?”
God's love is the highest standard. Just what kind of love is it?
A. A Selfless love —
First of all, it is a selfless love. It is not based on what we do for God, how faithful we are to him, or how we make him feel. God's love selflessly, generously, and unconditionally offers himself to us. One Bible dictionary defines Agape as a giving love that acts on behalf of another.
B. A Forgiving Love —
It is also a forgiving love. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 it doesn't keep a record of wrongs. It doesn't measure how deserving you are of being loved. What it measures is the need. There is, of course, no greater picture of this kind of forgiving love that measures only the need than Jesus on the cross.
C. A Sacrificial Love —
It's also a sacrificial love. It does more than just think of the other. It does more than just forgive. It lays self aside for the benefit of the other.
C.S. Lewis:
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. wrap it around carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable .... The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is .... Hell."
There is a beautiful story that perfectly illustrates the selfless nature of this love. This is supposedly a true story from the time of Oliver Cromwell in 17th Century England. A young soldier had been tried in military court and sentenced to death. He was to be shot at the “ringing of the curfew bell.” His fiancé climbed up into the bell tower several hours before curfew and tied herself to the bell's huge clapper. At curfew, when only muted sounds came out of the bell tower, Cromwell demanded to know why the bell was not tolling. His soldiers went to investigate and found the young woman cut and bleeding from being knocked back and forth against the great bell. They brought her down - and, the story goes, Cromwell was so impressed with her willingness to suffer in this way on behalf of someone she loved that he dismissed the soldier saying, “Curfew shall not ring tonight.”
Now here's what I want you to do. As we talk about loving one another, I want you to picture other people in the church, not those that are easy to love. Not those who make you feel like loving them. I want you to think about those that are difficult to love, those who try your patience, those who test your Christian character, because Jesus has them just as much in mind when he says, “Love one another.”
Jesus is telling you to love that person. It doesn't matter how that person makes you feel, you are to love that person. It doesn't matter how much you like them, you are to love that person. He wants you to love them just like he loves them, and just like he loves you.
I should also point out here that Jesus worded his grammar in a very specific way. When he says “Love one another,” it means “KEEP On loving one another.” It is to be a continuous, ongoing love. Our love for each other isn't a one-time act, or just an occasional thing. It's not a momentary gesture, but a constant and continuous endeavor.
Until our love in the church rises above our constantly changing feelings, until it rises above our petty differences, until it rises above our superficial likes and dislikes, we will never see the full power of God working in the church, and we will never make a huge impact in the world. It is this new kind of love that shows the power of God. It is this new kind of love that draws people to Him.
Now I thought about giving you all a homework assignment. I was going to say, whoever it was that you thought of earlier. You know, that person that isn't easy to love. I want you to go out and do a loving thing for them this week. But then I thought about it a little bit. Wait, if they do that, then everyone will thing that whoever does something nice for them doesn't really like them. But the thing is this, we're all to treat each other in the same loving way, no matter what. As one brother in Christ told me this week, “You shouldn't be able to tell who I like and don't like, because I love them just the same.” If anything we should go out of our way to be more loving to those for whom we just don't have those loving feelings, because it is so easy for our sinful nature to keep us from loving them. So let me just leave you with the very words that Jesus said, “Love one another.”
