Playing by New Rules
Introduction – How do you tell a Christian?
Before I went into full-time ministry, I was an electronics technician at a major corporation for several years. One of the guys I worked with was one of the kindest people I had ever met. In a place where people were usually concerned only for themselves, Mike’s gentle humor and willingness to do for others was appreciated by all of us. One day, Mike and I struck up a conversation, and I was not surprised to discover that he was a devout Christian who was active in his church. I was impressed that his love for others was so obvious that it was the first thing I had noticed about him.
There was another guy there who was a strong Christian. John was also a nice guy, although that may not have been the first thing you noticed about him. He wasn’t obnoxious, but everyone knew he was a Christian. He usually spent his lunch breaks reading his Bible. He never drank or smoked or swore. He was very careful not to do anything that might give an appearance of evil. One day I gave him a ride home from work and he wouldn’t let me drop him close to his house because he was afraid that a neighbor might see him getting out of a car driven by a woman who was not his wife.
One day I was talking to John and said something about learning that Mike was also a Christian. John seemed to be thinking for a moment and then said, “Well, he told me that too, but he does smoke, so I’m not so sure.”
I was shocked! I know that smoking is a dangerous habit, but it’s not the unpardonable sin! Somehow John had gotten the idea that if someone smoked, they probably couldn’t be saved. It doesn’t say anything like that in the Bible! But in his mind, that had become one of a number of “litmus tests” to determine who was a true Christian.
Over the years, there have been all kinds of “tests” that Christians have come up with to try to determine who is and is not a “true believer.” It varies from culture to culture and even from church to church. When I visited Romania, another woman in our group discovered – the hard way – that in Romanian churches, “earrings were a sign of the unrepentant.”
In our passage this morning, Jesus tells us that
The Mark of a true Christian is love
A few weeks ago, we heard Jesus teach that the Greatest Commandment, is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul & strength.
I said then, that if we truly love God, we can do as we please because if we truly love him we will desire to do his will
But Jesus didn’t stop at the greatest commandment,
He went on, saying, “the second [greatest commandment] is [a lot] like [the first]: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Then he made the amazing statement, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
That is, EVERYTHING else that God wants us to do flows out of these two commandments: To love God and to love our neighbor
I wonder if I’m the only one who wishes Jesus had just stopped with the first commandment.
God is a lot easier to love than some of my “neighbors”
That’s why when Jesus says this in Luke’s Gospel, a hand goes up and says, “Well, who exactly is my neighbor anyway?”
You know what he’s thinking, don’t you?
Please don’t tell me I have to love MY good-for-nothing neighbor Goldstein, do I??
C. S. Lewis once said: "it is easier to be enthusiastic about humanity with a capital "H" than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, … exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive. Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular."
Regardless of how lovable your neighbors are, Jesus insists that these two commandments – love God, love our neighbor – are inseparable.
In fact, the fulfilling the Second Great Commandment – to love our neighbor – is the only proof we are fulfilling the first – to love God.
In 1 John, ch 4, we read this:
If someone says, "I love God," but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen?
If we say, “Oh I love the Lord!” And we love to sing the hymns and we love to go to church and we love to read the Bible, but we say, “Oh, I can’t stand her!”
Or “He’s such a jerk!”
We’re kidding ourselves if we say, “I love God – but there’s somebody sitting in this church right now that I can’t stand.”
Be careful – God’s probably going to make you roommates in heaven.
Jesus said that the whole world will know we are His disciples because of how we love one another.
JESUS’ PEOPLE ARE IDENTIFIED BY JESUS’ LOVE
We’ve been talking for several weeks about God’s love for us. We haven’t talked about the verse in 1 John that says, “God is love,” but we’re all familiar with it.
More than any other attribute of God, the one which most clearly characterizes Him is His love
So it makes sense that His people should be characterized by love more than anything else
When we become God’s children, there should be a family resemblance
As we grow and become more like Christ, we should be increasingly filled with love for others.
We may not be “look alikes” for Jesus, but we can be “love-alikes”
The sign that we have truly received God’s love into our own lives, is that it flows out of us into others.
JESUS’ PEOPLE ARE IDENTIFIED BY JESUS’ LOVE
OK, so nothing I’ve said here is a surprise!
But did you notice that Jesus says He is giving a new commandment. What’s so new about it? Jesus said the second greatest commandment was to love our neighbors as we loved ourselves. And he was quoting from Deuteronomy, written thousands of years before Christ. So why did He say it was new?
Listen again to these two commandments:
The second great commandment, which is taken from the Old Testament is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus’ new commandment is:
As I have loved you, so you must love one another
Jesus has raised the standard of loving
In the OT, the standard was, “Love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself.”
But Jesus says, “love one another as I have loved you.”
Don’t love like you love yourself, love like Jesus has loved you.
The command to love is old; the standard of love is new
Another difference between the two commands is that, while the OT command focuses on our neighbor (in the Hebrew, it literally meant, “the ones who are in close proximity to us), Jesus’ new command focuses on our fellow believers.
That is not to say that we don’t have to love non-Christians!
But it means that especially in the church, love should abound among us.
Think for a minute of the 12 disciples
For the three years they had followed Jesus, they had constantly been arguing about who was the greatest, who was most important
James & John even got their mother into it!
And now Jesus was leaving them to take His place
If they kept going the way they were going, there wouldn’t ever have been a church!
They just would have sat around the upper room squabbling about who should be in charge!
It was imperative that if the gospel was to be spread, if a healthy church was to develop and grow, these guys had to love each other like Jesus had loved them.
Some things never change: it is still imperative if the gospel is to be spread, and healthy churches are to develop and grow, we Christians have to love each other like Jesus has loved us.
How has Jesus loved us? If we’re going to love others like Jesus loves us, we need to know how he loves us.
Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of Jesus’ love for us is His willingness to Sacrifice for us
Last week, as we shared the Lord’s Supper, we remembered Jesus’ sacrifice, which is the ultimate demonstration of His love.
Jesus gave the disciples this new commandment at the Last Supper, the night before he was tortured and put to death for their sake and for ours.
I recently read a true story of a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. The doctor explained that she had the same disease the boy had recovered from two years earlier. Her only chance for recovery was a transfusion from someone who had previously conquered the disease. Since the two children had the same rare blood type, the boy was the ideal donor.
The doctor asked him, "Would you give your blood to Mary?"
Johnny hesitated. His lower lip started to tremble. Then he smiled and said, "Sure, for my sister."
Soon the two children were wheeled into the hospital room. Neither spoke, but when they met, Johnny grinned. As the nurse put the needle in his arm, Johnny’s smile faded. He watched the blood flow through the tube.
When it was almost over, Johnny, his voice shaking, asked the Doctor, “When do I die?" All of a sudden the doctor realized that when the doctor had asked Johnny to donate his blood, he thought it meant he would have to die. No wonder he’d been so afraid!
But this little boy was willing to lay down his life so his sister could live.
Jesus’ love is sacrificial
It doesn’t look out first for #1
It looks out for brothers and sisters.
If we are Jesus’ people, we will demonstrate that same sacrificial love.
Another characteristic of Jesus’ love is that it served others.
There is a story about a rabbi who lived in a small Jewish town in Russia. Every Friday morning, the rabbi disappeared for several hours. His devoted followers boasted that during those hours their rabbi went up to heaven and talked to God.
A stranger moved into town, and he’s skeptical about all this, so he decides to find out the truth. So he hides outside the rabbi’s house and watches. On Friday morning, the rabbi gets up, says his prayers, and then dresses in grubby old clothes. He grabs an axe, goes off into the woods, and cuts some firewood, which he then hauls to a tiny shack just outside the village. There an old woman lives with her handicapped son. He leaves the wood, enough for a week, sneaks back home and changes back into his regular clothes.
This newcomer is the only one in the village who knows the rabbi’s secret. And now, whenever he hears one of the villagers say, "On Friday morning our rabbi ascends all the way to heaven," he nods and says, "If not higher."
Jesus said,: Even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.
You say you love your husband, your wife, your kids? How have you served them lately?
You say you love God? How have you served His people?
Love is shown through humble service –
not doing something for applause or to get something back,but like this rabbi, just serving those in need quietly, even anonymously.
There are many aspects of Jesus’ love we could talk about. I’m going to mention just one more aspect of His love
That is, His love was Personal – Jesus wasn’t afraid to get too close to people.
In his book, "The Yoke of Christ," Elton Trueblood quotes a letter from a schoolgirl who writes, "I’ve been thinking much this year about the importance of caring. I’ve often realized that it takes courage to care. Caring is dangerous. It leaves you open to hurt and to looking like a fool. And perhaps it’s because they have been hurt so often that people are afraid to care. … I have found many places in my own life where I keep a secret store of indifference as a sort of self-protection."
It takes courage to care. Caring… leaves you open to hurt and to looking like a fool.
It’s true. Jesus knew that.
He was rejected, scorned, mocked, insulted, abandoned by his friends when he needed them most, and ultimately killed because he loved us so much.
And not only that, He knew it was coming, and did it anyway.
He didn’t just stumble into it by mistake, He walked into it on purpose.
Because he knew the only way to love us was to embrace suffering for us.
C. S. Lewis said: "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."
If we’re going to love as Jesus did, our love must be willing to sacrifice, to serve and to suffer. I challenge you to open up, to build deep relationships, to really get to know others so that you can minister to their needs and they can minister to yours.
How many of us, like the young woman I quoted earlier, “keep a secret store of indifference as a sort of self-protection”
We smile, we say “Good morning!”
But we never enter into the hurts of others, because it might rub off on us.
That’s not Jesus’ love.
And if we are truly Jesus’ people, we should be marked by Jesus’ love.
People should be able to recognize that love in us, for JESUS’ PEOPLE WILL BE RECOGNIZED BY JESUS’ LOVE
Conclusion
Jesus command to love others as he loved us is overwhelming! "How can we ever love everyone like we should?"
A man named Roger Johnson says he gives the same answer to that question as he gives to people who ask how they can start jogging: “Start slow, and then get slower! For the first week, the goal is ‘just to keep moving.’”
Too many people buy new shoes and a fancy running suit and sprint out the door, chugging as hard as they can for about three blocks. Then their muscles cramp, they get a stitch in their side and their lungs burn. They wind up hitchhiking home exhausted, and gasp, "I will never do that again."
That’s called anaerobic (without oxygen) running. It’s caused by a body using up more oxygen than it takes in. Many people try to run that way, and many people try to love that way. They love with great fervor and self-sacrifice, giving 100 percent but without the resources to continue for a lifetime. Down the road they find themselves in pain, gasping and cramped, saying, "I will never do that again."
Love, like running, must be aerobic. Our output must be matched by our intake. Running requires oxygen. An enduring love requires God’s word, his consolation, his presence. As we love aerobically, we’ll build up our capacity to do more and more. And pretty soon we won’t be huffing and puffing for half a mile; we’ll be running marathons.
JESUS’ PEOPLE ARE IDENTIFIED BY JESUS’ LOVE
