Westtown Church
Westtown Church
The Necessity of Love
If you have ever been to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado or other beautiful areas, there are sometimes places along the side of the road marked "Scenic Overlook." Like a delicious dessert, such places are meant to be taken in more slowly and savored. Such places, by the beauty of the breathtaking view, demand we slow down and enjoy the view. There are places like that in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13 is one of them. Beginning this Sunday, we will slow down for many weeks at the scenic overlook often called "The Love Chapter."
Good morning, westtown Church. Wonderful to be with you. My wife Dawn and I used to live in Colorado and from time to time we liked to go up into the Rocky Mountains and check out their beauty and majesty. And when we would drive around up there sometimes we'd come along in the road. It would say scenic overlook. So that was an invite for us to pull over and check out the beauty and the majesty of that special spot, and we did many times.
Speaker 1:But there's places like that in the Bible. All the Bible is of value. All the Bible is given to us with God's purpose. All truth is important. But some places in the scripture just have a special something to them that's even above and beyond the normal beauty that we see in the scripture Psalm 23, for example, right. And there's other places that we could talk about Isaiah 53 and so forth. Well, 1 Corinthians 13 is one of those places.
Speaker 1:We sang a couple of classic hymns this morning which I love, and you can think of some of the great hymns of the faith A Mighty Fortress. You can think about Amazing Grace, how Great Thou, art, and others. But the hymn that we're going to look at this morning, or we're going to look at this morning, or we're going to begin to look at for several weeks, actually is in 1 Corinthians 13. It's called the hymn of love or the love hymn, and it's a wonderful passage. Many of you have probably heard it read at weddings, I think. Because of the nature of the love spoken of in this chapter, it's particularly appropriate at Christian weddings and it's certainly this is the kind of love that should characterize a Christian marriage. But what we're going to see as we go through this chapter in the weeks to come, beginning today, is that the apostle Paul has in mind that this kind of love is the kind of love that should characterize the local church, that should characterize the local church. It should characterize the local church. This is the kind of love that we should have and that God expects from us to have for those who are sitting in front of us and beside us and behind us, for the saints.
Speaker 1:And the particular context of this chapter Paul is getting at the fact that we're to exercise our spiritual gifts in love. You may remember we've been in 1 Corinthians a long time prior to the summer break and if you go back to a chapter before, to 1 Corinthians 12, the subject there is spiritual gifts, and so now he's going to talk about that. We're to exercise those in love which the Corinthian believers were not doing. So that's the context of what we're going to be looking at, and with that brief introduction, I'd like to invite you, if you can, if you're able, to stand and hear God's word read. This is the infallible word of God, meaning it's totally and absolutely trustworthy, it's inerrant, it's without error because it comes from God and it's holy because it comes from heaven itself. So God writes this to you in love, and so receive it by faith in your hearts and minds. I'm going to begin just a few verses at the end of chapter 12, because I think that helps set up chapter 13 just a little bit better for us. So I'm going to begin in verse 27 of chapter 12 and read through verse 3 of chapter 13.
Speaker 1:Hear the word of God. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it, and God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all possess gifts of healing, do all speak with tongues, do all interpret, but earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord endures forever. God's people said amen, you may be seated. Thank you, heavenly Father. We know your word is a lamp unto our feet and we confess our feet easily stumble. And we know your word is a light unto our path. And, father, our path is filled with much darkness in this fallen world, and so we come to you asking God that you would shine the light of Christ's truth and love into our hearts and minds, into our lives and into this church this morning, indeed by the grace of the Holy Spirit, would you fill this fellowship to overflowing with the love of Jesus? Amen.
Speaker 1:We're going to look at this in four parts. I'll tell you up front I'm going to spend most of my time on the first two parts, so when I get to part three you don't panic. All right, so I've learned through the years. It's kind of good to tell people that. But the first thing I want you to notice is that Paul identifies here the problem. The problem is identified and it's simply put it's a lack of love. It's a lack of love in the church. I call this sermon the necessity of love, because Paul is trying to pound home the absolute necessity for God's people to love one another, to love one another. And you can see why For all the spiritual and religious activity that was going on in the church at Corinth, for all of our exercising of spiritual gifts, that they were doing, and they were doing it without love. They were doing it without a concern for the person next to them and behind them and next to them.
Speaker 1:You'll notice how Paul puts it in verse 1. To do these things without love. He says I'm a gong, a noisy gong, or a clanging cymbal, and I need just a little more light up here. My eyes aren't that good anymore. Can you turn the light up for me just a little bit. Verse one I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Verse two I am nothing. Verse three if I'm without love, I gain nothing. And so that's pretty strong words.
Speaker 1:Paul's being prophetic here. He's coming at the pride of these Corinthians. What Paul's doing is he's dealing with spiritual reality. And he's not dealing with spiritual reality to be mean about it. He's dealing with it because he wants the church in Corinth to be a shining light in that city, a shining light in the darkness. And so he's dealing with specific sins of the Corinthian church in this local church.
Speaker 1:I think it's important for us to remember that this chapter, this hymn of love, this poem, so to speak, is not just written for, you know, to be wonderful words and for us to hear something beautiful per se, although it does do that. It's written to address the sins in the local church. He wrote it with a pastoral heart. He wrote it with a pastoral concern for the body of Christ in a particular body of Christ, a church in Corinth. If you don't know much about the ancient city of Corinth, well, I can summarize it very quickly for you. Just think Las Vegas. That was Corinth, no joke. They had one temple that had a thousand prostitutes in it and it was a port city. It was a trade city. So yeah, and so Corinth was a very worldly city and the moment these Corinthians were converted, all the worldliness did not get expunged out of them. God grows us by his grace. But it's important for us to understand this love him in the context of 1 Corinthians 13. And that's what we're going to do. So what was the problem that was identified? Well, paul wrote this.
Speaker 1:Paul planted the church in Corinth in the second missionary journey. It was probably around 50 AD, maybe 51 or two, whatever it is right in there. Now he's in his third missionary journey. He's in Ephesus and he's writing back to the Corinthians from Ephesus, and he spent a long time in Corinth. He was there 18 months. He knows these people very well and no doubt he was getting reports back to him from his helpers about how things were going in Corinth. And so you're in the mid-50s AD here. It's a little over 20 years after Jesus had died.
Speaker 1:So what's going on in this new church? This is not a mature group of believers. They had not been converted. In fairness to them, they'd not been converted very long and the church as a whole was not very old. So what was going on that needed to be addressed? Number one intellectual pride. You see that back in chapter eight, the first verse, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up or love edifies. What was happening was knowledge was being severed from love, it was being severed from service to other people in love, and so Paul's addressing that pride. They were learning for the wrong reasons. Two there was a man-centeredness in Corinth. You see that in chapter four, paul has to say to them listen, what do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? So what was happening? There were blessings that God was pouring out upon them, including their spiritual gifts. They were being disconnected from love to God and from one another. They were acting as if they themselves created these things, but they in fact had received them from God and were not grateful for that.
Speaker 1:Three they were suing one another in civil courts. In the sixth chapter, here's what Paul says when one of you has a grievance against another, does he there go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? So you had Christians within the church have a grievance with one another and they weren't able to work it out. So they had to go into the law courts. And, I hate to say it, I have a brother that's a lawyer. So, like I said, I get it. But when lawyers get involved, you can almost always be certain there's a lack of love going on that forced that hand. And that's what was happening. Paul's saying you know, as Christians you should have been able to work this out amongst yourself. You shouldn't have been able to work this out amongst yourself, you shouldn't have to go into the law courts to do that. Fourthly, they neglected the conscience of the weaker brother. You see that in chapter 8.
Speaker 1:The Corinthians understood well their freedoms in Christ. They knew that they had freedoms in Christ. But there were some weaker brothers in the Corinthian church that did not understand that they had freedom to go ahead and eat the meat that had been offered to idols and they just thought, well, this meat had been offered to idols and I, just in my conscience, I can't eat that meat. The fact is, and Paul makes clear, they actually had the freedom to eat it because those idols, those false gods, are not real. And so people would eat that meat there at the temples or they'd take that meat back out into the communities, whatever the case. And some Christians just couldn't bring themselves to eat it, and in fact they thought it was sin to eat it. And if they thought it was sin to eat it and they'd gone ahead and eaten it, it would have been sin even though they actually had the freedom to do it. And so Paul is telling the stronger brothers who understood that they in fact did have freedom to do it, to eat it. Listen, it's not enough just to say I have freedom to eat this meat. If you're with other people who think that's a violation of their conscience, it's not loving for you to eat it in front of them. And so he was rebuking them for that. It's not enough just to say I have freedom. I have to exercise even my freedoms in Christ in light of whether it's loving to other people around me.
Speaker 1:And then, fifthly, there was jealousy and tribalism in the fellowship of the church, and you see this in the first chapter, you see it in the third chapter. They'd broken off into camps. Some were boasting that they were followers of the apostle Paul, others were boasting that they were followers of the apostle Paul, others were boasting that they were followers of Apollos, who was a very bright Alexandrian Jew that had become a Christian. There were some who said no, I follow the apostle Peter. He's called Cephas in this letter. But when a church is not Christ-centered, when we forget that we're all united in Christ and to be centered in Christ and united that way, and we begin to rally instead around different men in the church or different camps, you know that love is not there. It's not there as it should be.
Speaker 1:And then, sixthly, paul rebukes them because they were becoming worldly or they had been worldly in their thinking and they'd been worldly in their behavior. They were acting like the world, not as those who'd been bought by the blood of Christ. And so you see this in chapter one and chapter four. In the Greco-Roman world of the first century, they were obsessed, just like many in our own culture. What were they obsessed about? Worldly, status, position, power, image. They wanted something that they could impress the world with and boast about, rather than living their life at the foot of the cross and boasting in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his cross alone. Living their life at the foot of the cross and boasting in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his cross alone, and Paul rebukes them for that. And so you put it all together and what kind of stew did they have going on in their fellowship? It was a stew with pride and man-centeredness and suing one another, not caring for the spiritually weak brothers and sisters, jealousy and strife, worldliness and boasting. So that's what the hymn of love is addressing in 1 Corinthians 13, these very real world problems that, frankly, we still have to battle in God's church today in one degree or another.
Speaker 1:I couldn't help but think of that wonderful old saying. I couldn't help but think of that wonderful old saying to live above with saints we love, oh, that will be glory. But to live below with saints we know well. Now that's a different story. Some of you know that one. It's worth repeating. Why do I say it? Because it does. It is a little humorous. It does make us laugh. You know, you got to laugh at yourself a little bit, right, and yeah, we need to laugh at ourselves. But it is these saints below, the ones all around us right here, that God has called us to love.
Speaker 1:I just heard somebody describe some politicians as they love the world. They love mankind at large, but they don't have any love for particular people, and we don't want to be that way. We don't want to like the idea of love but then fail to love the people that are right in front of us. And so thank God for Jesus, think about his love for us, think about all of our sins and failures and imperfections and weaknesses, and how it is that Christ loves us. And even though the holiest of saints every single day sin and word, thought and deed, god loves his people just as much today as the day he brought us into the kingdom, in fact as much as he did in eternity past. Isn't that a wonderful relief. That's the love of God, that's the love of Christ.
Speaker 1:And so Paul's identifying the problem in Corinth it's a lack of love. That's what it all boils down to. And so then he shifts and he addresses the problem by becoming somewhat prophetic, and he does it by giving us five if statements. Five if statements. Look at them in verses one through three. Look at the first if If. Number one is in verse one. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
Speaker 1:We know from the next chapter, 1 Corinthians 14, that what began to happen was in worship, that's back when you had the miraculous gift of tongues going on. Most Reformed theologians believe that the miraculous gift of tongues has ceased, but nevertheless they certainly were at work there in Corinth and people would be speaking in tongues during worship, but several would be speaking at the same time, or many people would be speaking at the same time, and on top of that there was no interpreter. Nobody even knew what they were saying, and although these people that were speaking in tongues were having a wonderful personal spiritual experience, it was not edifying to all of those around them. And so Paul says stop it. Edifying to all of those around them. And so Paul says stop it. Don't do that. That's not edifying. You may have a gift, but if we're not exercising that gift in a way that edifies those around us, that's not loving, that's not what we're supposed to do. In fact, if that's what you're doing, you're basically just babbling. You're babbling and so to be edified in Christian worship. The Bible is very clear. We'll see this in 1 Corinthians 14 too. God edifies us through the understanding. Truth goes through the understanding, through the mind and into the heart. That's how God builds up his church, and that's what they were not doing. And so all this disorderly babbling without interpretation?
Speaker 1:Paul says it's akin to these gongs and cymbals that they had in the pagan idol worship in the ancient days, probably right there in Corinth. What they would do Roger Ellsworth points this out is they would take these gongs and cymbals. Some of you remember the gong show Right, that was a one note, charlie. There wasn't it that big gong. You remember that? You younger people can look it up on YouTube, it's there. But anyway, in these pagan idol worships they would take these gongs and cymbals and they would arouse the gods. If you have to arouse your God with a big gong, what kind of God is that? That's how ridiculous that is. And then they would drive away false gods, they thought, by gonging the symbols and gongs. And then they also did it to excite the worshipers.
Speaker 1:Now Ellsworth points out what's interesting about this pagan idol worship gongs and symbols is they were monotone. I don't know how that would excite anybody to worship, but they were monotone. They had no melody and they had no harmony, just the same dong dong. And so he said it was more of an annoyance, like a barking dog in your neighborhood right. And so what's Paul's point when we use our spiritual gifts without love? In this case it was speaking in tongues without interpretation and talking over one another. They were just like barking dogs. They were just like this old monotone gong in the pagan worship.
Speaker 1:And Paul's saying that should not be so. That's the first if. Notice his second and third ifs. He says in verse two and if I have prophetic powers? And third ifs, he says in verse two and if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. That's strong language, isn't it? Notice? Paul doesn't say without love, the spiritual gifts are nothing. He says without love, even if I'm exercising my spiritual gifts, I am nothing. Paul's speaking here very strongly.
Speaker 1:The Corinthians valued in a wrong way knowledge, and so they were gathering this knowledge, like many people today. But they weren't gathering it so they could better serve and love their neighbor. They weren't gathering the knowledge of God and Christ so they could serve better those in the church. They were gathering it to build up their pride, so that they could have a one-upmanship, so they could look down their nose on other people. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So Paul's trying to get them to repent of this so that they could receive the strengthening grace of God. And so the answer to knowledge with pride is not to say then, well, let's just be ignorant, let's pool our ignorance. Have you ever noticed that ignorant people can be proud too?
Speaker 1:The answer to knowledge with pride is not ignorance. The answer is knowledge with humility, at the foot of the cross. It's receiving knowledge with gratitude from God, saying God, as you teach me, I want to learn this, not so that I can somehow boast over other people, but so that I can humbly serve other people better, more competently, that I can build up other people, my Christian brothers and sisters, and encourage others with that knowledge that you grant me so graciously. And what does that mean? It means that as we learn knowledge, we're to die to ourselves, even as Christ did on the cross. See, the Corinthians were losing sight of the cross and all that it meant, not only for their own salvation but for the Christian life in the local church. And so we're called to loving service to one another, to descend into service as Christ in love, and so even to the one who has so great a faith, paul says, so as to remove mountains, somebody who has faith that can overcome the greatest impossibilities. Even if you have that kind of faith, without love, paul says, I am nothing.
Speaker 1:Paul includes himself in that. The faith described here. This is Paul's not speaking about here, the faith that believers have when they're reconciled to God. Right, he's not talking about the faith that we have. We're reconciled to God, right. He's not talking about the faith that we have reconciled to God and justification. This is the faith of those who have already been saved, but they're not living out a fullness of the cross within the church.
Speaker 1:These are people who knew God largely, although I'm sure there were some mixed in there who did not. They weren't living as the children of God or, as Paul says elsewhere, they were not living worthy of the gospel of God. They weren't reflecting the love of Christ that he showed them on the cross when he died for them. They weren't showing that same love to their brothers and sisters. And so Paul says if I'm exercising, if I'm even removing mountains with great faith, without brotherly love, I'm a spiritual zero in that moment.
Speaker 1:And then in verses four and five, or verse three, we see ifs four and five. Look, if I give away all that I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned and have not love, I gain nothing, even if I'm a martyr for the faith, if I don't have love, of course, for God and for others, I gain nothing. There's no spiritual reward. James Renahan, I love what he says. Not only is it possible, as Jesus said, to gain the whole world and lose one's soul, it's also possible to give the whole world and lose one's soul. It's also possible to give the whole world and lose one's soul. Why is this so? Well, you do remember Jesus with the Pharisees in Matthew, chapter 6.
Speaker 1:The Pharisees were legalistic and they would do things out of spiritual pride. That was their motive. And so when they gave to the poor and the needy, they wouldn't just give to the poor and needy, because they had a love for the poor and needy. They gave to the poor and needy actually to build up their own spiritual reputation as those who give to the poor and needy. They weren't given in love and that's why they would often do it to be seen by others. And although Jesus makes clear, it's okay if we're seen by others and we do good works.
Speaker 1:The key issue is what's our motive? Do we want our Father to be glorified, or are we doing it to be able to boast? And so the Pharisees gave out of a love of glorifying themselves. It was a self-centered giving, and Paul says that's not worth anything in God's eyes. We can all search our souls here, can't we? How many times in our life have we done something? Maybe we sacrificed in the life of the church, maybe in our workplace, I don't know at home, wherever it was, and nobody really said anything or showed appreciation for it. And truthfully, we're a little miffed about it. And I think we need to say Lord, why am I not just content with your smiling face? Am I not content with the smiling face of my Father? He sees what I do, even if secret. He sees what I do, even if I do it in front of others and nobody really appreciates it. God is pleased with it and that's enough. He will reward me. We need to check our motives when we do things and ask God to continue more and more to purify our motives. And Paul says here at the end of verse three, that even if I could give my body to be burned. Yet without love I gain nothing. Again, I want you to hear what Renahan says.
Speaker 1:Now I'm gonna put this in. I'll put this in contemporary Christian. I'll paraphrase it in contemporary Christian language. Listen, though. I homeschool my children and carefully order my family life and serve as an officer, a Sunday school teacher in my church or as a professor in a theological seminary. Though I read only the best of Christian books and pay my taxes and settle my debts and visit the sick and elderly. Though I give generously to my church. Raise my children to be foreign missionaries, but have not love, I'm nothing. My children to be foreign missionaries, but have not love, I'm nothing.
Speaker 1:Paul is really piercing their conscience with his words here. He's trying to shake them, to get them to think about what they're doing. Plug in 1 Corinthians 13 into your own life, calling you might be a plumber, doctor, manager, whatever you are. I'll use teachers as an example. If I could explain everything perfectly to my students but did not love each one of them, I might as well be talking to an empty room. If I could find all the answers to educational problems and did not love, my efforts would be futile If I could buy every kind of educational aid and sacrifice to do so, but did not have love for my students. It would be a complete waste. Very sobering words.
Speaker 1:I think it was a decade or more. I was at a General Assembly of our PCA denomination. I couldn't even tell you which one it was. Here's what I remember. I remember Dr James Baird was there and they have seminars at General Assembly that you can go to, and through the years I've gone to quite a few of those seminars to try to learn different things. You can always learn more in the ministry and Dr James Baird was a spiritual father in the PCA, one of the founding fathers, and he was a senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church. Some of you may know Ligon Duncan who became the chancellor of RTS Seminary. He followed Dr James Baird as pastor there. But anyway, they asked Dr James Baird in this seminar after 40 years of ministry.
Speaker 1:Here was the question if you could go back and do some things different, what would it be? Well, as a pastor, you know what I was doing, pen in hand. Go on, I'm ready. And then I remember what he said I would love people more. I don't think I'll forget that the rest of my life. I don't think I'll forget that the rest of my life. It still gets to me to this day when I think about his statement. Because isn't that what we would all do If you could go back over last week, last year? Wouldn't you love people more If you and I were lying on our deathbed this very hour? Would we not say, oh God, I would love people more if I could do it again? I think we would.
Speaker 1:Paul's trying to get these Corinthians to think. And when we think about our lack of love at times in our life, don't you want to praise God for the shed blood of Jesus Christ and love on that cross for you and for me? That's what he was doing there. That's what Christ was doing on that cross for our lack of love for God and for other people. And the Bible's clear it wasn't the nails that kept Christ on that cross. He's the one that could have commanded 10,000 of 10,000 of angels. It wasn't the Romans that kept him there. It wasn't the mobs of the Jewish mobs there that kept him on that cross. The Bible's very clear it was his love that kept him on that cross as he went down into the dregs of hell and drank the cup of hell in our place for our lack of love. The gospel is a wonderful thing, isn't it? God? And his love is beautiful.
Speaker 1:I remember several years ago I came across a statement by Martin Luther. Most of us, if you know anything about church history, you might've heard of him nailing the 95 theses in Wittenberg, germany, on the castle church door. He did that in October 31st of 1517. But the following spring, in 1518, he went to a place called Heidelberg and there he was doing a debate and he'd written out some what he called theses, heidelberg disputation, and theses number 28. He wrote a statement and I want to share it with you because here's basically what he was saying.
Speaker 1:He wanted to point out the difference between the nature of the love of mankind, the natural love of mankind, and the love of God. He wanted to highlight the difference of those and I think it's one of the most profound things he ever said. Frankly, he says mankind naturally loves that which is already lovely or pleasing or beautiful. We see that it's already lovely, we see it's already beautiful, we're drawn to that, whatever it may be, and that's not all bad. Right, that's not all bad. But Luther says God's love is so much better and greater than that. In this way that the loving God. He does not find that which is pleasing to him, but his love creates that which is pleasing to him in the one that he loves. Let me explain it this way God's love finds us similar to a four-year-old finger painting. Nothing really to brag about there. But in his love, and by his love, he accepts us as a four-year-old finger painting. He secures us in his love and he makes us a Rembrandt. You see, that's different than human love, mere human love. That's holy love. There's nothing like the love of God. We hear this at the end of 1 Corinthians 6.
Speaker 1:Paul says to the Corinthian Christians he says there was a time, corinthian Christian, when some of you were living sexually immoral lives and idolaters. You were worshiping false gods and you were adulterers. You were cheating on your spouses and some of you, men, were practicing homosexuality and some of you were thieves and some greedy and some drunkards. Some were revilers and some of you were swindling people out of all money and all kinds of things and so on. And he says let's be clear, people who practice a way of life in that way will not inherit the kingdom of God, he says. But then he gets to verse 11, listen to what he says and it reveals the nature of the love of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Do you hear that? Do you see what he's saying?
Speaker 1:Did God find the Corinthians? When he found them, did he find them lovely and beautiful? Did he find them pleasant and loving and wonderful? He found them living vile lives and he loved them then and he loved them into the kingdom and he's loving them. He was loving them all through their life and he loved them on home to glory. There's nothing like the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Speaker 1:Some of you say well, why would God love me? If you're looking for the reasons in you, you're looking in the wrong place. The reasons are in God. God is love and his love is so great. It's why the Bible says Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We don't clean ourselves up so that God loves us. That would be an insult to him. First of all, we can't do it, but secondly it would deny how great his love is.
Speaker 1:So Hosea is a book in the Old Testament. Remember Hosea the prophet. He was ordered by God to take his wife Gomer back. She had gone to live as a prostitute. Why would God order such a crazy thing like that? So that Israel would come to understand the nature of the love of God. Hosea, as a prophet, had a special calling to show the world something of the glorious love, of God's holy love, that there was nothing else like it. And see what the Corinthians had lost. They had lost sight of the cross and the demonstration of the holy love of God there.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to just finish with points three and four rather briefly to you. I think it's important that I mentioned them because our problem was identified by Paul, and here God has a solution. And God's solution is what? It's his love that secures us in Christ, in what's called justification. What does that mean? It means that when we put our faith in Christ, god receives us just as filthy as we are. He accepts us in that moment. He doesn't find us lovely then. He doesn't find us acceptable then, but in Christ we're acceptable because Christ is the one who died for our sins. And so when we put our faith in Christ, we're united to Christ, and now God sees us united to his son. And so what does it mean to be justified in God's sight by faith? It means when we put our trust in Christ. It means God wipes away all of our sin debt.
Speaker 1:Who wipes away all of our guilt? That means he wipes away the guilt for our sin nature, and then he wipes away every particular sin we've ever committed, past, present. And thank God, he's got the sins covered for your future. Past, present, and thank God, he's got the sins covered for your future. Christian, aren't you glad? And not only that, he not only gives you forgiveness for all of your sins, he then declares you righteous. Your record is perfect on the record books of heaven when you have faith in Christ, because it's not just that Jesus died for you, he lived the perfect life for you, and so that's why you can live in peace.
Speaker 1:And so that's God's solution to secure us in his love. 2 Corinthians 5 says for our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. There it is. And then also God's solution is not only accomplished in the cross of Christ, but it's also supplied, it's applied. God's love sanctifies us. It sanctifies us in Christ.
Speaker 1:An apple tree will give off apples. If it doesn't give off apples, it's a pretty good indication. It's not an apple tree. A Christian will love and give off fruit. We're not perfect on this side of glory, but there will be evidence that we have the love of God in us and so we grow to be more like Christ in His loving ways. But we do that as we're already secure in the love of God. That's the beauty of the gospel. We do it and we're called to live a life pleasing to God, something worthy of our calling. And God makes it clear that we can do that.
Speaker 1:Listen, christian. Every Christian gets sick of their sins, but don't give up. He who began a good work in you will bring it into completion. At the day of Christ Jesus, the same God who loved you into the kingdom is going to bring you home and he's going to complete his work in you. Rest in that promise.
Speaker 1:And Peter says the power of God is at work in you. God's power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. We can live a loving life because God works, is at work in us through his Holy Spirit in the word, prayers, sacraments and fellowship of the church. And so let me end this way Christian, in light of the cross of Christ, pursue love and live that more excellent way and take the gifts God's given you and serve God's church and love the brothers, because Jesus says in John 13 it's by this, it's by this loving one another, that the world will know that you are my disciples. Love is one of the defining hallmarks of the Christian church, so let's ask God to help us, and I know that he will.