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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/bruce-rodgers/love-part-2/
Galatians chapter 1. Tonight I would like to look at the relationship of love with faith, as well as with wisdom and knowledge, and there's a number of different aspects of different principles, spiritual principles, that love is very much intertwined with.
So I'm thinking now of love and faith and thinking about the mechanism of spiritual life that we see given to us in the book of Galatians. Galatians chapter 1 and start reading at verse 3. Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.
Amen. Chapter 2 verse 20. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith of or in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Now let's look in chapter 5, Galatians chapter 5 and verse 5. For we, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which works by love.
Now I already made reference last night to verse 13. Brethren, you have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. And of course, we're familiar with the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5, and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace.
So love is very much interwoven with everything of true spiritual life. So I want to take that expression in chapter 5 and verse 6 and really think about it. Faith which works by love. Faith which works by love.
Now thinking about what we have from chapter 1 and chapter 2, we have first of all the blessing of his death for us in chapter 1, and then in chapter 2 we have the beauty of his life in us. It's interesting how many times in the scriptures we have this order given, his death and his life.
And of course, whenever we get it in that order, it's emphasizing the work on the cross for us, but then his resurrection life that is working in us. So we have the work of God in his love moving toward us to rescue us, and then his love at work in us.
And just noticing a few details in chapter 1, you notice that it says, who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us. Most often when we preach the gospel and think about the death of Christ, we're thinking about deliverance from judgment.
A rather important issue, isn't it? I'm sure glad it's settled. That I'm not still waiting to find out, hoping that everything's going to turn out okay and I'm going to be safe from judgment. It's wonderful to know that this is the first thing God settles, the issue of the judgment to come.
But it doesn't end there. He gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us out of this present evil age. I hope we don't fool ourselves and forget that we are surrounded by deceitful evil. Evil that if we're not careful will destroy us, will mar us, cripple our lives.
And his intention in rescuing us is that we might be delivered out of the working of evil in this age. It's interesting that the word deliver is actually in what is called the middle voice, which probably doesn't mean anything to you.
Doesn't mean too much to me either, technically speaking. But what it means is that he did it for his own interests. He delivered us for his own interests. Now let me give you an illustration that might capture the sense of it.
We are grateful for the emergency services. And even though the sound of a siren can be kind of annoying, if that siren was coming to rescue you, you would appreciate it. But often you have people who devote their lives to helping other people in emergency situations, sometimes rescuing them in very difficult, dangerous circumstances.
But the contact, the connection ends right there. And they go on in life and never have any relationship with that person following. Their lives intersect in one brief incident. But if somebody rescued another person, like a fireman rescuing someone out of a fire in a house, and they got to know each other, and a friendship developed, and if it happened to be a young lady that he would be interested in, and a relationship develops, and they eventually get married, think of the thoughts that would go through her mind every time she sees perhaps her husband's hand, his arm, and knows that he risked his life in order to rescue her when he didn't even know her.
And how much more now that they are intimately connected to each other, how much more she's going to deeply appreciate him. That's something of what we have here. He gave himself. Christ not only risked his life, he gave his life.
For our sins, that which was taking us down to destruction and destroying us, he gave himself to intervene between us and our doom. And he rescued us out of that doom. And he intends to rescue us from the damage that sin may cause us in this present world.
But it's for his own sake, because he has an interest in us personally, according to the will of God and our Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Christ rescues us from judgment, from the effects of sin, in order to have us for himself and unto the glory of God.
Now, in chapter 2, we see Paul's personal response to this reality. In verse 20, he says, I am crucified with Christ. Now, that's really past tense. I was crucified with Christ. Now, if you get to the conference this weekend, you'll be wrestling with this kind of language all weekend.
I was crucified with Christ. What does it mean? Well, for one thing, it means that what happened on the cross was really about you and about me. It was me who was being judged there. It is what I am that God was dealing with in his justice.
It was me who was being crucified in my substitute. And as Paul identifies himself with a crucified Christ, he acknowledges, it is really me who God was judging at the cross. Now, if we really grasp that, would we be so quick to defend ourselves, to not let anybody say anything wrong about us?
If we really believe that what we deserve is to be put up on a cross and left to die, and the judgment of God poured out upon us, as well as the contempt of men, that's what belongs to us. Christ took that in his complete identification with us in our guilt and shame.
And so, it says, nevertheless, I live. In coming into salvation, there was an identification with Christ in his death on the cross, but that identification doesn't end there. It continues through his resurrection into a new relationship through him to God.
I live, but how am I going to live? And what kind of life am I going to live? Well, he says here, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. I suppose some of us, probably most of us, at one time or another, have had the experience of helping out somebody who had gotten themselves into a mess.
There's many different ways people can get in trouble, and sometimes they need help. And if you have spent good, hard-earned money to help someone else out of financial problems, the last thing you want is to see them go right back into it again.
Should it be any surprise that God, in reaching into our experience through the work of the cross and rescuing us, does not intend us to just live the same old life all over again? I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.
The only life that God wants to see lived out in me is the life of his Son. The last thing that God wants is to see more of the old me. But we have to come to terms with sin and its effect and disassociate ourselves from it and recognize it as wrong, as foreign to what we now are in Christ.
And to recognize that what God is looking in the power of his Spirit, and really Galatians from this point on through the rest of Galatians, is taking up the ministry of the Spirit of God and how God enables us to live this new life, which is the life of his Son.
But notice now we get the secret of how I am going to accomplish this. The life I now live in the flesh, the flesh here is not the sinful, moral sense of flesh, but simply my physical existence. The life that I now live in my physical existence, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Here we have the mechanism of spiritual life. And linking it with chapter five, I want to suggest this idea that really it is saying that love creates faith. Love inspires confidence. And our whole Christian experience is my faith responding to his love.
It's really pretty simple, isn't it? My confidence, my trust, my obedience, my faith that in one hand rests upon the love that has rescued me from hell, rests in that security of that eternal love. And yet at the same time, my faith is reaching out to him, to know him, to know his power in my life, to have his strength operating, overcoming the influence of sin, and enabling me to live the life that is Christ formed in me.
So in Galatians chapter five, we have this idea emphasized in contrast to living under the law, where we could never, never be sure of being right with God or ending up on the right side of the law. We are already safe from condemnation, but we know we're not perfectly righteous yet.
You know, every Christian lives with this paradox. We're justified, but we're not all right. We're justified, but there is still a battle with sin. And so we are still waiting for that completeness of righteousness, which we know that God wants and intends, but which is not entirely attainable here in this life.
We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. There is a day coming when we will never sin again, when we will never be under the tension of the conflict of good and evil within our beings.
We will be perfectly at liberty. There will be nothing but absolute harmony within our very beings. And so we rest in our faith upon the security of his love, but we are reaching for the goal. We are reaching for the object for which we have been saved, that we would be fully brought into the harmony of the will of God for the ages upon ages to come.
And how does it work? Faith works by love. You and I should have no trouble trusting the Lord. He's already given himself for us. His good will is entirely toward us in care, in interest, in blessing.
And so our life should be a life of confidence, a life of trusting him, of following him. Now, do you know why faith is the right thing? Faith is really the most natural thing in the world. If faith is lost, nothing works.
We've had a dramatic example of this just recently in the financial system. As soon as faith, confidence started to wither, the whole financial system started grinding to a halt, to a collapse. Everything works on confidence.
Sometimes we wonder just what that confidence is in when it comes to the financial world. But you think of a little child coming into this world. It's beautiful to see how a little child trusts mom and dad.
And a little child growing up in the atmosphere of parents who love each other and who love the child, that child grows up with security, with confidence. It's not living in fear and panic. And that simple trust is essential to life.
And so what I'm getting at is simply this. Love is essential to life. Love provides the conditions in which life can flourish, in which blessedness, happiness, peace, and joy can be experienced. So love is the very essence of life and provides the foundation for life with all its meaning.
And why is faith valid after all? Because there is an ultimate reality of the God, the creator of all things. That God is the God of love. The God who is that which blesses and cares and is faithful towards his creation.
And so love and faith is a very, very important foundation and relationship. Now let's go to Ephesians chapter 3. Now here we find love intersecting with wisdom and knowledge. It's very much in line with what I was closing with last night on the relationship of love and glory.
But this is talking about the mystery and the fellowship of the mystery. Verse 9, Paul has just spoken about the unsearchable riches of Christ in verse 8. And then he says in verse 9, and to make all men see what is the fellowship or stewardship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God who created all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by or through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now you could understand that expression, eternal purpose, in verse 11 in two ways. Either as the purpose which he made in eternity past, if we can use that expression, but also his purpose for the ages to come.
The expression is literally the purpose of the ages. God has a plan for the ages to come. And in that plan or purpose for the ages to come, God's glory and God's wisdom are going to be displayed in and through the church.
Now let's see how that comes to be and how we are being prepared for that. Now it says in verse 12 that in Christ in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him, there again you have the principle of faith in him, wherefore I desire that you faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.
And these following expressions, where has that, are in order that, in order that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus. Throughout all ages, world without end.
Amen. Well, it's nice to know you're going to go to heaven, but do you think you're going to be just a tourist there, or are you going to be part of the glory? Do you realize that you are going to be part of the outshining of God's personal glory?
That God is going to be known and understood in his creation through you and me in relationship to Christ. This is really talking about Christ in the church and the fact that in the ages to come, God's greatness, his nobility, his goodness, and I think we can say supremely his love is going to be appreciated and understood as Christ and the church are displayed.
You see, God being invisible has always intended that he would be brought out into display in the visible realm. We know that Christ coming into humanity is God manifest in flesh. So there's an aspect in which the Lord Jesus is that full outshining of all that God is.
But Ephesians presents this amazing reality that Christ is not going to be alone in this outshining and manifestation of God's personal glory. It's going to be Christ and us, Christ and the church. The one who is the fullness of the Godhead, the one who fills and will fill all in all, we are going to be his fullness.
We are going to be his compliment, filling, satisfying, and completing him in this great revelation of God in his glory. And so we are today being prepared for this. And how are we going to be equipped?
Well, it's going to be in the power of the spirit of God at work within us. So it starts out with God's glory in verse 16, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory, according to the wealth of all that he is, that the power of the spirit of God imparted into our very beings would, first of all, exalt Christ within our hearts.
Now, you'd really have to look at the overall context of the book of Ephesians. But in Ephesians chapter 1, we have this idea taught, Christ is going to be head over everything. God has exalted him. God has made him supreme.
God has brought everything and will bring everything under his control. So what do you think God wants to do today? While the world goes on in its alienation, its rebellion against God and his purposes, God is working almost invisibly in the work of the church and he's building a body for Christ.
He is preparing a people who will ultimately correspond to Christ in fullness. So it should be kind of obvious that the first thing he needs to do is to exalt Christ and throw him in our hearts. So this is the ministry of the spirit of God within us.
He wants to make Christ supreme in your life. You know, we could say, well, yes, but it's Christ indwells every Christian, that's told us, and that's a wonderful reality to grasp. But is he enthroned there?
Is he at home in your heart? You notice that it says that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. So this is more than just the bare fact of his indwelling of our beings. This is a relationship that is developing in which I am responding to the Lord Jesus and enjoying his presence and surrendering to his will and his principles.
I am enthroning him in my heart. That's what the Holy Spirit will do within us. But what is the outcome of that? The outflow of that is that you being rooted and grounded in love. Now you can see here you have an equation being made.
Christ enthroned in control of my heart means that I'm going to be developing in love. It is love that is going to be the element of life in which this takes place. Christ is the outshining of God's love to us.
And so his life within us is going to be love. What we see here when we get these expressions, rooted and grounded in love, now they both sound like they're gardening terms, but actually only one is. The second one, grounded, is actually a building term.
So we see first of all that love is the source of life. Love is the essential root out of which life flourishes. Life provides the source of life. Life also provides the stability for life. Again, it brings us back to the same very obvious reality that if we are going to be flourishing in our spiritual lives, in our marriages, in our families, it's going to have to be in the development of this essential characteristic.
Now this leads to enablement that we may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height. Now that could be looked at as the mystery, the inheritance, what we have been brought into.
And I think there is more here than just the idea of understanding intellectually. This term can either be comprehending, as we think of grasping something intellectually, or it can be laying hold of, making yours.
And the essence of it is found in love. That's what we see in the next expression. And to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge in order that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.
To know the love of Christ. How much is he worth to you? How significant is he in your life? Is he the center of your life? Is he first in your life? Well, you know, I've come to realize that the most important thing about my marriage is my relationship with Christ.
You know why? Because if I am cultivating my relationship to the Lord Jesus and that controls me, then I'm going to be a fit husband to care for my wife. Christ must become the source, the strength of our life and our relationships with others so that we can minister out of fullness rather than relate to one another out of emptiness, demandingness.
We are not sufficient in ourselves either to satisfy our own lives nor the lives of those that we are in relationship with, but Christ is. And so to know, to enjoy, to cultivate the experience of his love will actually be a filling and fulfilling thing which actually draws us towards the essence of the life of God.
That is what is being taught here. You know that we will never be deity. All the fullness of God here is not referring to his eternal glory as God, but as referring to the nature of his being, the quality of his life.
Remember that psalm that says, in thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. And if a person truly cultivates this personal connection with Christ and enjoys his love, our lives will begin to reflect the life of God.
They will be contented. They will be satisfied. They will be filled. And so are we living our lives like the rest of the world, running on empty, always needing something to pick us up, to satisfy us, to give us something to enjoy, to stimulate us.
We're looking at the wrong source. We're looking in the wrong direction for life. It is found in this one who is the eternal fountain of life. Now, just to look at the last couple of verses then, this is leading us towards God's eternal purpose.
And that is that ultimately, God is going to be known in his creation. God is going to be experienced in his creation through Christ and the church. That's how people are going to see God. God has revealed himself as the great creator of the physical creation.
He has revealed himself in various ways through nature, through his government, through the nation of Israel, through the law. He is today revealing himself as Savior. But when that day comes when God, the hidden God, the invisible God, is going to be eternally brought out into display in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, tied in there with him in the closest possible relationship, closer than anything else in the creation, will be the bride, the church.
And in that beautiful relationship of Christ and his body, his bride, we will find our ultimate fulfillment. God will be manifested in his perfection. And so, I know that God is going to do many other things, many other aspects of his glorious kingdom, but Christ and the church will be the crown jewel, will be the greatest thing forever and ever.
And you and I are part of that. So we should appreciate and treasure what God has brought us into. Now, chapter four, I should just touch just briefly on this. Chapter four and the first three verses touch on a practical responsibility that we have relating to this.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called. This is what we've just been looking at. With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
And then there's a sevenfold unity of one body, one spirit, called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in you all.
What is this really drawing us to see? Not only are we in this beautiful, eternal relationship to Christ, but we are also in relationship to one another. And just as we are to learn to appreciate the love of God to us individually, personally, we are to recognize and appreciate that same love to each other saint.
And to share that same love, to have that same commitment, that same forbearance and patience, that long-suffering, as we wait for one another to grow up, to become mature, to get rid of these defects and failings, and to grow up into Christ, and to become easier to live with.
We need this element of love's strength to endure through the process as we work with and for each other's blessing. So this is very practical, but you'll never do it unless you are drawing strength from Christ and your own enjoyment of him as well.
So that's the relationship of love and unity. Let me take you back to 1 Corinthians chapter 8, and we're going to pick up on another little aspect where knowledge and love are actually put in a sort of a contrast.
1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 1 says,. Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifies or builds up. And if any man think that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.
But if any man love God, the same is known of him. Whenever I think of this passage, I think of another passage back in Jeremiah chapter 9, verses 23 and 24. And there, through the prophet, the Lord says, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom.
Let not the rich man glory in his riches, nor the mighty man in his power, his strength. But him that glorieth glory in this, that he knows me, that he understands that I am the Lord who exercises love and kindness, justice and judgment in the earth.
For in these things do I delight, saith the Lord. Now, how important is knowledge? It's very important, really. Accurate understanding is very, very important, but it isn't enough to please God. And could I say this kindly and to my own soul as much as to yours?
The Lord is not impressed with what you know. He's not impressed with what I think I know, because the Lord knows everything. And he understands everything fully, and he knows how often pitifully inadequate our understanding is.
It's suggested here, really, that none of us understand spiritual things as we ought to know, as we should know. But what does attract his attention? What does impress God? Put very simply, it says this, If any man love God, the same is known of him.
What is that saying? That's saying if somebody loves God, God recognizes you. God acknowledges you. That's someone that I appreciate. So can we grasp this, that it's not how much you know that accounts his pleasure, it's how much you're living in the element of love, how much you love him, and how much of that love is manifested to others?
That's what clicks with God. That's where his life is at. That's what he's interested in. He's interested in showing loving kindness in justice and judgment in the earth. This is really in the context of our liberties.
And sometimes we're a little bit contemptuous of other people who seem to have what we think of as legalistic consciences and have their hang-ups about what they can do and can't do or should do and shouldn't do as Christians.
We should never take a condescending attitude to the conscience of any other saint. The Lord cares about that person, and he's more concerned about their faithfulness to God than whether they have perfect understanding of all things.
In fact, Romans 14 picks up the same idea and teaches that if you do something that in your conscience is not right with God, even if everybody else is doing it, you're sinning because you are sinning against what you believe to be God's mind.
So conscience is extremely important to live in the light of what we know. What this passage is teaching is that it's not enough to be clear in our own conscience about what is acceptable or unacceptable.
We are also accountable for the influence that we have upon a fellow Christian. So God is watching. He wants to see his love in our hearts, in the attitude we take to our own personal lives, our own personal liberties, and how we handle ourselves and what influence that has upon other believers.
Coming over to chapter 13, we have love and spiritual gifts put in perspective. And again, I know we have a tendency to look up to people who have some evident spiritual gift. Sometimes we're jealous of them, envious.
That's a waste of time because all of the gifts that have been given are for your benefit. It doesn't have to be your gift. The gift that has been given to every other brother and sister is for your edifying, your building up, your strengthening.
So gladly appreciate it. But what he's getting at here when he says in the end of chapter 12, verse 31, but covet earnestly the best gifts and yet show I unto you a more excellent way. He's talking about how we think of ourselves in spiritual service.
Chapter 13, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profits me nothing. See, this is looking at it in what we might call a self-centered way because that was the problem in Corinth.
They were actually using spiritual gifts to glorify themselves. So there was a lot of immaturity among the saints at Corinth. In their zeal to display the gifts that God had bestowed. So the apostle is saying, I want you to see things in a different light.
And that is in the motivation of love, then you will be somebody. To put it simply, if you serve God and serve God's people in order to be noticed, you're wasting your time. It's futile. You'll be forgotten soon enough.
You'll be taken for granted. You'll find out what it is to be a servant. Don't look for your glory from other people. It's God who gives glory. You devote yourself to serving the needs of God's people.
That's the motivation of love, to edify, to build up, to strengthen, to help. And if you do what you do out of a motivation of sincere care and interest for others, you will grow. You will develop. You will become something of honor and value in the sight of God and in the sight of fellow saints.
So what is taught here is that the absence of love makes every ability and every act of faith, of service, meaningless, empty, void. Not for those we're doing it for, but for me. So that shows the true futility of living self-centeredly for our own glory.
My time is pretty well gone, but I'll give you one little illustration that happened to me not too long ago. After the St. Thomas Conference last fall, I was staying with a family, and there's quite a number of fellows around, and it was the Thanksgiving weekend, the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.
So while we were waiting for all that good Thanksgiving dinner, some of the fellows decided they wanted to go out golfing. Well, I've only held a golf club in my hands maybe twice in my life, but I thought I would tag along and maybe whack at a few balls and see what I could do.
I could play baseball and hockey not too badly, so I figured it can't be all that different. Well, as soon as I held the golf club in my hands, I knew it was going to be quite different. But anyway, we didn't play by too many rules.
We just basically went around the different holes. I don't remember how many we covered even, but every once in a while I had my shot at it, and every once in a while I hit it, sometimes in the general direction, sometimes at a 45-degree angle, whatever.
But it rarely got anywhere near the goal. Finally, on the very last hole, I gave it my best shot, and it actually went quite well. Nothing like, you know, the pros would do, of course, but it went down, straight down, and it was probably about two-thirds of the way there.
So I was fairly pleased with myself. And then I heard a couple of them chuckling a little bit, and I was aiming at the wrong hole. The one we were supposed to be aiming for was over a little edge of a hill and out of sight.
I was aiming at the flag that I could see. But you know, thinking about life, what are you aiming at? You could give life your best effort. You could give it your best shot. And if at the end you found out that you were really aiming for the wrong thing, that would be a disappointment.
That would be a waste. So can we realize that what we're being taught, the emphasis of the New Testament, is that what we are really to aim for is love? That's the essence of life. That's the foundation of life.
That's the goal of life. That's the nature of God. That's the revelation of God to us. That's his law left to us in charge while he is gone. Love one another as I have loved you. So may God grant us to aim for the right goal, fulfill the divine purpose, and reach the goal that he is seeking to draw us to, shall we pray.
Our gracious Father, we pray that we might grasp how great thy thoughts are, that embrace us in thy divine purposes. Thou hast associated us with thy beloved Son, not only to escape the eternal judgment and not only to be delivered from the wickedness of this age, but to fulfill the divine purpose for the ages upon ages to come.
Our Father, we pray that we may walk in love, that we may experience and enter into the love of Christ, that we might revel in that love day by day, live in close companionship with the Savior, and in this intimacy and closeness with Christ, we might enter into the experience of thy life.
Our Father, we confess that at times our love is very limited, very restricted. We pray that it may widen and it may deepen. It may be guided by true discernment and understanding, that we might be effective in our love, in our desire to care and help one another, and to fulfill thy service.
We commit ourselves to thee tonight and beseech thy gracious blessing for the sake and honor of our Lord Jesus. Amen.