Edification - Part II: How to Be

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: 2 Corinthians 13:11-14

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Well this morning we continue on in our little detour, two -week detour, into the end of 2nd
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Corinthians. So we sort of parachuted into the conclusion of the of the whole letter and that was to trace out this theme of edification.
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And so we're preparing, Lord willing, beginning next week to head back into the next narrative cycle within Genesis, beginning in Genesis 24.
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We'll consider Isaac and then following him, Jacob. But for this morning we want to tie loose ends on what we began to consider last week, which again is edification.
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And I wanted us to have time in 2nd Corinthians 13 because I think it's a blueprint for how a church can pursue the things that lead to edification.
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And that's been our banner verse drawn from Romans 14 19, let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another, edify, build up.
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In nearly every letter that Paul writes to the scattered churches of his ministry, he includes this same vital exhortation that believers be about the business of building up.
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So let's read 2nd Corinthians 13 beginning in verse 11. Finally, brethren, farewell.
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Become complete. Be of good comfort. Be of one mind. Live in peace.
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And the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.
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The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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Amen. So this is the closing greeting. This is the farewell of the letter.
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And we have that word in verse 11, right? Finally, brethren, farewell. Some translations, interestingly, would say finally, brethren, rejoice!
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With an exclamation point. And of course, this word can often be translated rejoice.
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The time that we spent in the Philippians, we saw this imperative, this exhortation to rejoice, same word, same form throughout the letter.
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When you find it in a context where perhaps it's in the body of the letter or it's surrounding further instruction, it would make sense to translate it as rejoice.
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But here we are at the last paragraph of 2nd Corinthians, and this is a standard way to say farewell.
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It's also the standard way to open a letter as well. So it's greetings, or if it's at the end, farewell.
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In fact, you can go to the Worcester Art Museum, which is a hidden gem, by the way. If you haven't been there, it's worth a trip.
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And if you go to the ancient Roman room to the left of the entrance in the lobby, you'll find a little grave slab there.
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In the epitaph, the first word is this word in Greek, kairata, which is not the man who's dead saying rejoice, you know,
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I've died, rejoice. It's saying, you know, I salute you, or greetings, you know, and then you read about his life.
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And so even on gravestones, if not letters, this is just a common way to say farewell. And so I don't think the translation rejoice works as well here.
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And so good on the new King James. Christians, of course, are in view.
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Paul is saying, brethren, farewell. And we are brothers and sisters.
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This is something, again, that we take for granted. We cut our teeth on the Christianese language of being brothers and sisters.
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In fact, so much of my life is surrounded by fellow Christians, whether at church or in school, that I often stumble and call someone who's truly not a brother, a brother.
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I catch myself all the time calling my neighbor brother, hey brother, and I'm like, you know, and maybe that would work in Florida, but not so much in Massachusetts, you know.
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Are you off -roading, brother? So Paul is speaking to the brethren, and this is significant theologically.
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We cannot take this for granted. This was not a label that was lightly thrown around. In fact, it would have taken some getting used to for a pagan who was unrelated to another person to be called a brother, this term of family relationship.
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And of course, the significance theologically is that Christians have been conceived by the love of the
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Father through Christ by the Spirit. And you can see why Paul would continue throughout all of his letters to use this language, to always be reminding himself and his hearers that when you're in Christ, you're a brother or sister in the
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Lord. You belong to the household of God. And so as brethren, and we have this actual relationship with fellow
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Christians, that we belong to one another. And just like real brothers and sisters made of flesh and blood, you don't necessarily choose whom you're called to love.
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There's a divine relationship of supernatural birth, and these are the people you love. Sometimes, you know, you're losing hair and losing sleep over them, but they're your family.
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They're your brothers and your sisters, and so you love them. This relationship, in other words, is a fact whether we like it or not.
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Paul has a lot of issues with this church at Corinth, and they've caused him all sorts of grief and heartache and distraction from ministry that he sought to do in Macedonia.
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But they're still brothers and sisters, and so he still has this brotherly concern for them, a love for them, and he never loses sight of this fact.
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Even with all of the personal discouragement and disappointment from this crisis, he acknowledges their fellowship here.
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He acknowledges their brothers and sisters. So I hope we use that language of brother or sister with full weight and full sincerity.
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And again, it's just an example of how throughout this whole passage, Paul has been edifying, building up a troubled church in troubling times, and we have a blueprint of how we can pursue the same thing.
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So we considered four points last week, and to close the message this week, we want to consider five.
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Five things. How must you be in order to edify?
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So last week, what must you do in order to edify? This week, how must you be?
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Five points. First, to edify, you must become complete.
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Verse 11, finally, brethren, farewell, become complete. That's a command, that's an exhortation.
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Become complete. We saw last week one of the things that we're to do in order to edify is pray that God would make us complete, and so with only the distance of a few verses,
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Paul goes from saying, I'm praying that God would make you complete, to giving the command, be made complete.
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Become complete. And so he's exhorting them to walk and live out the reality that he's been praying for.
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In other words, it's not enough just to say, I'm praying that you're made complete, and everyone's sitting back passively going, that's great, we're making no effort to do that whatsoever.
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He says, I'm praying this for you, now do this, start to put things in motion, make choices, and live in a way that will lead to this.
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I'm praying for the reality which you must now walk in. He longs to see them in harmony, not just with himself, but with each other.
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Remember, just from the beginning of the first letter to the church at Corinth, how it opens with all of the divisions and factions, and Paul just knows this same selfish pandering after the great speakers and the false teachers now in 2nd
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Corinthians, it's just a recipe for a church that's constantly dividing, splitting into factions, backbiting, and slandering.
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And so he wants them to have this harmony, he wants them to put to right what's been disjointed.
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And as was said, this word complete here, it's not the normal word that we would find scattered throughout
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Paul's letters, for instance, or other letters, like James or even Peter, where the word perfect or complete, teleos, that's normally how we speak of completion, but here it's an entirely different word.
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Last week we said it's something that another writer might use in the day to talk about a bone being made complete.
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So you put a cast over a broken limb so that it can be made right, it can be fulfilled, it can be restored.
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So in other words, it becomes a complete body or a perfect body. It supplies what is missing to bring about fullness.
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It's a very, very wise choice of word here when Paul says be made complete. He's speaking collectively to the church, he's not saying you go off on your own to be made complete in some vague sense of self -discovery, he's saying you as a church, you live and pray in light of the fact that you are one in Christ, you live in a way that will bring that reality to bear.
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Put what's disjointed rightly. Another use of the word would be mending a broken fishing net, and that's actually from the
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Gospels when Jesus calls the the fishing brothers, they're making complete their nets, they're mending their nets.
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So basically you're patching up something that's been broken, that's become worn down or frayed, and so the
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RSV, it translates, mend your ways. Finally brethren, mend your ways. It's a good translation.
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Take what is fraying, take what has become loose, what has become fragile, strengthen it, restore it.
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Don't keep going in this way that you're becoming isolated and distanced and your affections are cooling, no, mend, come together, put to right, that's what
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Paul is saying. Here are these holes in Christian fellowship, sort them out,
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Paul is saying. Here are these tangles, undo them, pray for it, and then bring it about, make the decisions that will lead to it.
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In order to edify, you must be made complete. Second, to edify, you must be of good comfort.
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Verse 11 still, finally brethren, farewell, become complete, be of good comfort.
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Now this word would be very familiar to us, it's where we get the word paraclete for the
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Holy Spirit, the Comforter, capital C. If you were at the
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Bolton conference when we actually had it, it's now been two years since we've held it,
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Jeff Thomas was preaching and he spoke about the Holy Spirit being the paraclete, and he talked about how this would be, for instance, maybe a unit commander of a
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Roman legion and he's giving a stirring speech, to use the verb paracleo, he's stirring the men, you're gonna crush the enemy, rely on your training, no one can withstand you, you're the seventh legion, remember who you, you know, it's just cheering them on, girding them with strength, galvanizing them for the road ahead, so comfort's not some, you know, you know, soft, gentle, nursery blanket kind of word, it can also be like being strengthened for battle, being exhorted, being encouraged, that can also be a sense of comfort here, and that would make sense that we have to somewhat broaden our understanding of what it means for us to be of good comfort, that being of good comfort is not necessarily always being that soft handshake, how you doing brother, things are looking up, sometimes it's kind of that, you know, gird yourself, that's being of good comfort as a
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Christian, and I hope you have experienced both in your walks, if you've been a Christian for any length of time,
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I hope you've experienced that true comfort when you're in a season of trial, or perhaps you've been discouraged by certain events in your life, or just spiritually, you've become depressed, which is a very real experience for Christians if you've read the
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Psalms, and I hope that a brother or sister has been God's means of giving you comfort in this sense of warmth, and encouragement, and kind of a tender sympathy, it helps you understand you have someone that is really in your corner praying for you, and they care for you, and they become as it were a token of God's love to you, but I also hope in your lives that you've experienced something of this boot strapping comfort, something of this straighten up, straighten out, you know, press forward, press on to the things of the
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Lord, this exhortation and admonition, and so some translations and some argue it should, you know, it should be translated be admonished, or even heed my appeal, you know, follow these things out, and it certainly may have that connotation, and we're reminded that Paul is concluding the letter with this instruction, be of good comfort, and he actually opened this letter with the same instruction, and perhaps this is the best way to understand what he means here by being of good comfort.
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So 2nd Corinthians 1, as soon as he gets past the greeting, this is the first thing he lays out to this church at Corinth.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is verse 3, the Father of mercies and the
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God of all comfort who comforts us in our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
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That's a lot of comfort between verses 3 and 4. So what kind of comfort is he talking about?
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Comfort from God in the midst of tribulation, comfort to those who are being troubled.
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That helps us understand here what it means to be of good comfort, and notice how at the beginning of the letter he ties this in to God, the
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Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, and where is he going to go between verse 11?
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By the time we get to the end of verse 11, he's going to tie it to God, the God of love, the God of peace. These things have a supernatural origin, as we'll see in the very last verse.
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These are not things that we muster up from ourselves. You must realize that your ability without the
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Spirit of God to be of comfort to a brother or sister in a time of trial or tribulation is pretty much nil.
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The things that truly reach someone in such a spiritual state are supernatural, and so Paul recognizes.
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It's not so much the cause and effect. You be of good comfort, and then the God of comfort will... No, it's the other way around.
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It's the God of comfort who is drawn near so that you may comfort, and what are you comforting with? The comfort that you have received yourself from God.
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This is how we're to be of good comfort to one another, and if we're going to find spiritual encouragement, if we're going to be exhorted, have motivation for the
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Christian life, if we're going to have help in times of need to press forward, though the going is tough, we need to have this attitude of seeking ways to consistently, intentionally comfort our brothers and sisters in the things of the
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Lord, and 2 Corinthians 1 is so insightful for that. You know, when the
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Lord draws people together in a body, so often we experience trials, if not identical, similar to those trials that other people will come to experience in time, and what you have from the
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Lord is that which He used to comfort you, and you become a source of comfort to them in that same trial or time of need, and so part of this is the lived experience of a fellowship in Christ that we're constantly seeking to comfort and build up each other with the things the
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Lord has used to comfort us. Has that been a certain devotional? Has that been a certain routine?
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Has it been some experience or insight? Has it been something that someone shared with you and the Lord impressed it upon your heart?
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These are the things that God has given for you to comfort others with, and so if you want to edify, be of good comfort.
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Third, be of one mind. Still verse 11, finally brethren, farewell, become complete, be of good comfort, be of one mind.
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The first time Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, he called for this same unity of mind.
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I plead with you, 1st Corinthians 110, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be joined together in the same mind, in the same judgment.
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This is not a peripheral concern for Paul. If the church can't be built up in a way that they're seeing things and speaking things and coming to a unity of mind, they won't come to that unity of fellowship.
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So Paul says, I want you to have a deep unity. That deep unity needs to be cultivating the same outlook.
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You need to have the mindset of Christ. You need to have the same love for one another, that you're loving each other in light of the gospel.
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I want you to have the same approach to life, the same goals and purpose in life.
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Come together in a unity of mind. It says this elsewhere, same emphasis,
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Romans 15 verse 5. Now may the God, notice again the supernatural source, may the God of patience and comfort, again, grant you to be like -minded toward one another.
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For Paul, there's an immediate connection to go from comforting one another to being of the same mind.
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There's something instructive here between Romans 15 and 2 Corinthians 13, that one of the steps on the road to being of the same mind is that we're actively, intentionally seeking to comfort each other in the things of the
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Lord. May the God of patience and comfort, you're gonna need patience and comfort if you're striving to be of the same mind, and may the
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God of patience and comfort grant you to be like -minded toward one another according to Christ, that you may with one mind in one mouth glorify the
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How do we bring this about? We could have a whole sermon on how we bring this about, but let me highlight two things.
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The first, and perhaps the most obvious, and the reason we need patience if we're seeking to comfort one another, we need to think of ourselves soberly and properly, in a fitting way.
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In other words, we need to think of ourselves in an accurate way and not more highly than we ought.
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Another exhortation Paul gives to the Romans and other churches as well. If you fail to do this, the church will become divided because an attitude where you're constantly puffing yourself up or esteeming yourself in a way that you ought not, that's a personality that is divisive, and a divisive personality leads to division.
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It'll be that way in the home, and it will certainly be that way in the household of God. When it comes to the household of God, Paul is aware of this.
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He's constantly exhorting Christians to have humility toward each other, and that humility begins with this sort of self -disregard.
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I claim nothing for myself. I see myself as a servant to my brethren and a servant to God's will for them.
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Certainly that's how Paul framed his labors, as we saw last week in 2nd Corinthians 13.
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Everything we do is for your edification. And in Screwtape Letters, C .S.
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Lewis captured so well, you remember Screwtape Letters is a really interesting way to look at the ethics and the moral qualities of the
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Christian life, because you have Wormwood and Screwtape exchanging these letters about how to trip up the enemy, which of course is
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Jesus and his people. So you have this older demon, Screwtape, and his young protege,
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Wormwood, and this is the advice he gives. I warned you before, he has a patient, meaning a believer, someone who's earnest in the faith, and he wants to pull him away from the things of God and from the fellowship of the church.
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He wants him to become destructive. I warned you before, Screwtape says, if your patient can't be kept out of the church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it.
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And I don't mean on really doctrinal issues. About those, the more lukewarm he is, the better, right?
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No, not on doctrine. Keep him away from doctrine. Lukewarmness there is what we want.
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The real fun is working up hatred on purely indifferent things. We have quite removed from men's mind what that pestilent fellow
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Paul used to teach about food and other non -essentials, namely the one without scruples, the one without conscience, should always give in to the one with scruples.
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So he's talking about Romans 14 here. And so it would have been, but for our ceaseless labor, without that the
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Christian church might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility. Wouldn't that be the worst thing a demon could imagine?
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Notice where it begins. This divisive personality begins with this kind of self that, you know, these are the things that matter and I know better.
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And how could they not see this? And all of a sudden you've begun to isolate and demarcate who's with it and who's not.
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Who's not able to see the glories that you behold because you're so lofty and high -minded. And so Paul is calling for this radical humility, self -disregard.
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I'm always at the service of my brethren and I sacrifice those things by which
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I may build them up in the things of the Lord. And so he writes to the church at Rome, be of the same mind toward one another.
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Do not set your mind on high things. Associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.
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It's a hard thing to balance in the Christian life where we want to have men and women that are zealous for the doctrines of truth.
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They're standing on the Word of God and that gives them a clarity and an energy and an immovability and that is something desirable and commendable.
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And when the flesh or the enemy sees that, he'll immediately, if I can't get them there, if they're so watertight on the things of the
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Word and that's giving them all sort of energy, then here's the best play. I'm gonna puff them up to oblivion.
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I'm gonna make them so high and mighty in their opinion they're gonna become repulsive and destructive to any fellowship they're a part of.
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And that's how he works. And so Paul says, what do you do to counteract that? Associate with the humble.
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Serve them. Fellowship with them. Be among them. Seek their good. Don't be wise in your own opinion.
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Don't be setting your mind on things that are high above if it's producing this effect in your life. One said, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
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And I say, okay, that's good, but sometimes humility is actually thinking of yourself less and thinking less of yourself too.
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We all perhaps give ourselves a little too much of a boost, a little too much of a pass.
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You recognize this when, you know, you only find patterns and routines and maybe sins odious in other people's lives, even though you practice the same things.
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I was reflecting on this yesterday. I was online getting coffee and, like, every now and then if I'm away and I know
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I'm meeting someone, I'll kind of say, hey, can I bring, you know, coffee or something like that? So I might go through a drive -through and get a tray and get several things on it.
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And so I'm that guy in that drive -through that takes 12 minutes. And the guys that are just, you know, looking to go through it are kind of like, you know, it's taking, this is crazy.
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Well, that was me yesterday. I'm, like, waiting in line and I'm watching this tray get past the car. I'm like, this is crazy, you know, you're ordering, like, eight drinks, you know, this is just, that's me.
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I didn't find that when I'm doing it, it's fine. Hey, you know, first come, first serve. When someone else is doing it, it's like, this is really ridiculous, you know.
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You should just park and go in if you're gonna order that. And we do that in spiritual ways all the time.
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It shows that we're not thinking of ourselves accurately. There's a, there's a certain sense of entitlement we have when it comes to spiritual things.
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We give ourselves a pass and it causes us to not, to not associate well with the humble. To not truly desire for them to grow from wherever they at in, you know, the most humble of ways to help them to grow in the things of the
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Lord, to be of good comfort to them. And so we're called to think of ourselves soberly, properly, not more highly than we ought.
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So that's the first point. We do it from a place of humility. If you don't have that, there's just no hope that you're gonna get to the place where you're of one mind in a church body.
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You're not gonna be of one mind if you, you don't have brothers and sisters that are actively working to disregard themselves and be humble and associate with the lowly.
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You're just not gonna have it. But even having that, it's not enough. What must you do when you've followed out and begun to practice this this call to radical humility?
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From this state of humility, what's needed second is a submissive spirit to Scripture.
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We must submit to Scripture. You won't get to that place in a, you know, fellowship if you don't have humility.
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But if you have humility, it's not enough. If Scripture is not the sole authority of your life in our homes, in our church, do we present
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Scripture for what it is? The sole authority of God for all matters pertaining to life and faith?
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Do we see it as a book of indispensable, incontrovertible wisdom for all of life's experiences?
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And we submit even our thinking to it, even our thought patterns, in doing this, brothers and sisters, from a place of humility, collectively exhorting and encouraging one another to submit to Scripture, which often means being
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Bereans and saying, you know, this is my authority and so I've heard these things now. I have to go weigh them out and pray and understand and as we continue to do that, from a place of humility and seeking to associate with those who are humble to us high and lofty ones, we end up drinking of the same fountain.
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We end up celebrating the same truths. We put into practice the same exhortations and instructions.
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We keep circling back to the infallible voice of God speaking through His Word and our minds are becoming more and more saturated by the things of God and therefore more and more conformed to the things of God.
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So convictions are built into a fellowship by virtue of Scripture and even the first generation of churches in the
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New Testament had very different personalities or ethos, we could say.
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Paul can commend some churches and castigate others. Jesus in Revelation can sort of compare seven different churches in seven different places, perhaps symbolic of more, but he's really dealing with specific churches and he's saying,
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I commend you in this and this I hold against you. So every church has an ethos. It has the ability to grow in this place of humility and submission to Scripture and it's going to color and affect the way that that church operates and advances the will of God in the world.
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Antioch was a church that was fueled toward missions in a way that other churches weren't.
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The churches of Macedonia were fueled toward giving and raising support for the relief of Christians and in places like Jerusalem and Paul commends them.
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I wish all the churches could be like this. What is it about the personality of a fellowship, of a congregation?
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Where does that come from? How is an ethos developed? It comes from how and whether we'll submit to Scripture in humility toward God.
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That's how we move toward being of one mind. And so to edify, you must be of one mind.
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Now all three of these exhortations lead to, I think, living in peace as Paul would have it.
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These are all part of how Christians also live in peace with God, with each other, with neighbors.
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So here's a vision for the church as Paul says in verse 11, live in peace.
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Every Christian brother is treated as a Christian brother and every
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Christian sister is treated as a Christian sister. There's this inestimable weight of glory to your brothers and sisters.
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They've been chosen as the dearly elect of God, sealed in the blood of His Son, prepared for an eternity of glory, angels who are peerless and without blemish, long to look into the things that they are heirs of.
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How ought you to regard your brothers and sisters? It's the greatest honor and title in the world to be a
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Christian brother or sister, and we ought to have that regard for one another and for the
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Christians at large that we meet. When we live in peace, everybody is mending the things that so easily fray, in season and out of season, when it's easy and when it's hard, in things that are clear and in things that are unclear, and they're bending, not just mending, but bending, being self disregarding, self -sacrificing to bring about edification of others, and they're making active choices and ways of living that bring this about in their home and to their church fellowship.
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Everybody is actively working to build up those around them in the things of God, being humility as humble as they do so, but also submitting all of their thoughts and ways to Scripture.
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Everybody is completely deliberate in seeking to be of good comfort to each other. All of this leads to living in peace, and Paul says, live in peace, verse 11, and the
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God of love and peace will be with you. There's a couple ways to understand this.
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First, if we put it in these words, to love the brethren means that we're striving to be complete, bringing comfort to our fellowship, living in peace, and all of these things lead to the
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God of love and peace being present in our midst, so we bring this to the Lord and and then he meets us as a result of it, and to maybe flip it the other side, to not love the brethren, to fail to strive at being complete, to not be of good comfort in our fellowship, to fail living in peace leads to the
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God who is of love and peace removing himself. I won't be present in this place, but I think it's important to say as we've already touched on, these qualities don't lead to the result of God's presence, so much as God's presence leads to the result of these realities.
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When the God who is love is present in the midst of his people, by his
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Spirit, this God of love and peace produces love and peace within his church, and so we don't try to find these things elsewhere.
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When we're detecting these things in our lives, in our homes, in our church, we beseech
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God, come break our hearts and repentance, move us toward the things that will lead to love and peace, that we might be edified, that we might glorify you.
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Fourth, to edify you must be affectionate.
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Verse 12, greet one another with a holy kiss. This is the verse that makes
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English preachers squirm, the holy kiss. American preachers, too.
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I don't think I've ever been holy kissed. If I went to some parts of the world today, I would experience that.
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It wouldn't be uncommon if you were meeting with perhaps Turkish Christians or Greek Christians to walk hand -in -hand, walk down the street together holding hands, or to be hugged and kissed on the neck as Paul was in Acts 20.
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Here we have a cultural practice, there's many cultural practices in Scripture, and it takes time to sort out in what ways does this cultural application carry over to our culture in our time?
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What is transferable? What is applicable here? And the holy kiss is one that it seems
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Western culture in general has decided does not directly transfer. And so I put mildly, let us be affectionate.
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If we want to build up, we must be affectionate. Greet one another with a holy kiss. This isn't just one place that this exhortation has given to us.
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Paul says it in 1st Thessalonians 5, 1st Corinthians 16, Romans 16, Peter says it in 1st
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Peter 5, everywhere in the New Testament. There's this call for Christians to show affection toward each other.
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It was a friendly sign of greeting, it was a token of friendship, maybe it was given on the cheek or sometimes on the hand or even on the forehead.
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And the clear takeaway of this is Christians are to have such a regard for each other that they show these symbols, these tokens of affection.
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It almost goes without saying if you're following verse 11, what's the naturals up going to be? If you have brothers and sisters that are being humble in the way they think of themselves, charitable toward you, constantly seeking to comfort you in the things of the
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Lord, build you up, striving to be unified and of one mind, what kind of ethos is there going to be but one of affection?
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Our motivation begins with affection from the affection of God toward us, from the love of God toward us, and that turns toward affection for his people and even beyond his people, a desire to see our brothers and sisters in Christ flourish.
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And we've talked about this in the past, you've experienced this when you come across someone who you've never met in your life, maybe you're in a restaurant or in a lobby or an airport or so on, and somehow they say something that makes you wonder, like, huh, and you start to do this little dance, are you a
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Christian? That's kind of a dance, right? So maybe they say, oh yeah, you know, you're gonna love it, I highly recommend that, you know, that dessert, you'll be blessed if you try it, and then you're like, oh, blessed, is this guy a
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Christian, you know? So then you're like, yeah, that sounds good, you know, you know, one of God's gifts, right, dessert, and you're kind of looking at each other, and now there's like this little kind of match going on, like, all right, you know, let's show your cards, and even if you get to the place when you say, oh yeah,
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I'm a Christian, doesn't really mean much, you're like, okay, good, now let's ask more questions to find out if you really are a
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Christian. But when you get to that place when, yeah, they're a Bible -believing, gospel - exalting, church -attending
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Christian, even though they're a complete stranger to you, you have some affection toward them, you have some desire to bless them, and to encourage them, and you feel encouraged by them, and it's kind of like, you know, here we are, you know, here we are at Friendly's, two
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Christians, and you know that you have this regard for each other because you have a regard for the
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Lord. And so all we're doing is trying to bring that into a church fellowship where we're not strangers, we know each other, and therefore amplify it times a thousand.
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The sad thing is, it's always easier to love strangers. It's hard to love the people you see week to week with the upticks and the letdowns and the irritations and the, can you believe what he said?
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But if we have this regard for each other, and we're saying, if I can love the brother
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I just met who I don't know, how much more should I love the brother that I know and that I see and that I fellowship and worship with and labor alongside, and so it's taking this affection and it's amplifying it.
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Christians are to show holy affection toward one another, and that's sourced and rooted in God's affection toward us.
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If I can find nothing redeemable about a brother or sister, I can find everything
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I need to love them infinitely. They are loved of God. Whatever else is imploding in their life, if they're loved of the
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Father and chosen in the Son and sealed in the Spirit, I ought to be able to love them infinitely.
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And even if they're my enemy, Paul has enemies in this church, I can be compelled by the love of Christ who loved me when
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I was yet an enemy. Affection being amplified toward brothers and sisters in a fellowship will cause our witness to glow in untold ways.
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Jesus himself said, this is how we are known as his disciples. A new commandment
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I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you love one another, because by this all men know you are my disciples.
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No one loves like my disciples, Jesus is saying. No one has such regard, such respect, such humility and charity, such sacrificial service, such affection like my disciples,
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Jesus says. There's no hobby, no social club, no secular organization that can come even close to replicating this.
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And so what does Peter say in 1 Peter 4? Have fervent love for one another. Love covers a multitude of sins.
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Have radical affection, fervent love, holy kiss love.
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That's what Peter's after. And then we have to ask ourselves, in what concrete ways are we reflecting
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Christ's love in the way we love one another? When I'm reflecting on how
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Christ's love is toward me, I can't help but see it as a sin, you know, covering a multitude of sins, yeah, that's
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Christ's love for me. Having a patient, persevering affection to bless me and help me to persevere, yeah, that's
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Christ's love to me. Not a distant, disinterested, disengaged kind of love, but a jealous love, a yearning love, a protective love, a compulsive love.
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That's the kind of love we're to have for the brothers and sisters in this body. Love is how we're known as Jesus' disciples, and Paul says to the church at Colossae, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, you'd notice how he's just framing all the imperatives that follow begin with this indicative, and that's classic for Paul.
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In other words, he states the case, the theological reality of something, and then he goes into specific instruction.
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So we call that the, going from the indicative, what is true, to the imperative, what must be done in light of that.
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So here's the indicative. As the elect of God, as the elect, holy, beloved of God, as that, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long -suffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another.
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If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.
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All of that is framed with the reality of who we are. How could I be withholding forgiveness from a brother who is holy and beloved and elect of God?
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If God has seen it fit to forgive him, who in the world am I not to? That's part of the equation, but of course it's not easy, and Paul doesn't pretend it's easy, that's why you have to put on tender mercies.
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Kindness, humility, meekness, notice that? Long -suffering, you're gonna have to suffer, you're gonna have to be patient,
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Paul says you're gonna have to bear with each other in order to love each other and be affectionate in this way.
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It's not gonna be easy. It's easy when you first come to GRBC.
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It's like, this is the greatest fellow, you know, if we didn't know churches like this existed, and we're all kind of like, oh boy, you know, stick around for a little bit, and then you'll see why
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Colossians 3 is in the Bible, because there's no church where it's automatically easy for a decade to be affectionate, and so we have to do the things that Paul says we have to do.
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We have to work at godly affection. It doesn't come naturally to us, it doesn't come naturally to a body, others can't do it for us.
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We ourselves, in whatever capacity we are, we have to work at godly affection. We have to ask
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God to remove our selfish, fleshly way of looking at each other and looking at our lives, and to help us have
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Christ's vision for each other, Christ's sight for each other. It must have broken our
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Lord's heart to see his disciples infighting and positioning, you know, may we be at your glory, can we be at your right and left, and it must have just broken his heart.
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Is this how I've loved you? This is how I've come to you? Christians have to work at it, it's the product of effort, the product of choices, concrete choices, it's the product of repentance.
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God has given us these commands for a reason. How can you, this is
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Scripture's reasoning, how can you possibly love God whom you haven't seen when you can't love the brother you see?
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How can you love a God you haven't seen if you can't love the holy and beloved elect of God that you do see?
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And so affection, I think, here for, you know, talking about edification and looking at the church here at Corinth, affection is to be shown specifically in those things which are divisive.
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It's not hard to show affection in the things that unify us, but we're actually called to show affection in the things that are divisive.
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Those differences, those fault lines that may cause us to be at different places in our understanding, in our walk, that's where we show affection.
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I love what Sinclair Ferguson says, this is just so true, churches find it easier to deal with false teaching than differences of opinion.
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Isn't that so true? It's easier to be in a fellowship and say we're not
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Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, we're not Mormons, we're not Arminian, we're, you know, we can start carving these things out and it's just easier to deal with things that we consider false teaching than it is to say, oh no, we all are unified and we all say here's the gospel and these things are indifferent adiaphora, but it tends to be those things that are the most difficult to deal with.
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And here's a place that Paul is saying, these factions have to come together and give a holy kiss to each other, show affection, start to sow seeds of affection.
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Ferguson, again, personal differences can be deadly, dividing fellowship, sowing seed of bitterness, diverting attention from what is central to peripheral, sucking energy that should be employed in building up believers and in reaching out to the lost.
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How we handle these differences may say more about the biblical character of our church than how we handle heresy.
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I think he's dead on judging by the ratio of Paul's concerns for his churches. He is far more concerned about the ethics and the behavior and the relationships within the church than he is with the errors and the teachings outside of the church.
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If we had a pie chart, we would probably be shocked about how much of Paul's teaching and instruction has to do with issues related to the fellowship and witness of the church itself rather than specific errors outside of it.
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It's easy to be unified in the things that we automatically see as false. It is hard and it's determinative of who we are as a church whether or not we will deal with these differences in a way that we show humility and affection for each other.
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And so the whole purpose of this greeting, of this holy kiss, is to foster an affection that will build the church up in love.
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As we saw last week in Ephesians 4, the church is built up in love, right?
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By every joint which supplies, by every member doing its part, the body builds itself up in love.
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And so you will not have an edified church when you have a church that has no affection. You just won't.
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Do we have a fellowship that is warm, that's uplifting, that the people that come have a sense of belonging?
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Have we all experienced others putting on tender mercies toward us?
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I certainly have. I hope you have. I certainly have. I certainly have experienced kindness and humility in regard and tender mercy and sympathy and comfort, and that has built me up.
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And these are the things that build a body up in love. So to edify, fourth point, you must be affectionate.
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And now, lastly, fifth point, I think the most beautiful point of all, fifth, to edify you must belong to the triune
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God. You must belong to the triune God. Paul is not just proof texting the
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Trinity here, which is how often sermons are preached from 2nd Corinthians 13. They get to the end and they just want to go into a, you know, seminar on the
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Trinity. But Paul brings this up specifically in light of everything he's exhorted up to this point.
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So first, notice verse 13, all the saints greet you. Christian fellowship goes beyond the local church here, so he's giving them a panoptic understanding of who they are.
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It's not just you and all this division and bubbling in Corinth. All of the churches, your brothers and sisters, they greet you.
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They have this regard and affection towards you. Paul, according to 2nd Corinthians 9, is writing from Macedonia and he reports of this mutual affection and warmth of Christian love.
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They have this regard for you. You've never met each other, most likely. No doubt this church in Macedonia that Paul is staying with when he's writing this letter, no doubt they're aware of this situation.
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No doubt these brothers and sisters are praying for the church in Corinth. No doubt they're fasting and beseeching
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God, bring healing, bring restoration, cast out what is false among the brethren there in Corinth.
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And so Paul can report, these churches greet you. The churches greet you.
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They pray for you. They have regard for you. They love you. And from that,
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Paul now moves into this Trinitarian blessing, this Trinitarian benediction. The grace of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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Paul begins with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, a common phrase for Paul, the grace of the
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Lord Jesus. And Paul is saying, first, this is what I want for every one of you. This is what
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I want for your church, Corinth. I want every one of you to experience and receive the grace of the
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Lord who is Jesus Christ. How does this come about? Well, what began really, chapter 13, it begins with self -examination.
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Have I received the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? Has that been manifest in my life?
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Please notice that Paul speaks of the grace of Jesus before he speaks of God the
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Father. It's not the typical Trinitarian cascade that we're familiar with,
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Father, Son, Spirit. He emphasizes, he front loads the grace of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because that's the beginning of the Christian life. That's the first thing we recognize as our lived experience in the
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Lord. We may not know the things that belong to the secret counsel of God. We may not know that eternal election that rested upon us.
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We may not have discerned the regeneration that the Spirit was bringing into our lives, taking us out of darkness into his light, but what we come to experience when we cry out for Jesus is the grace of the
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Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus. And Paul's saying, examine yourselves, see whether you'd be in the faith.
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Have you received this grace? Is this grace manifest in your life?
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He recognizes that we come to God through the grace of Jesus. If we do not come to God through Christ, we do not come to God.
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There's one mediator between God and man. And so Paul prays, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.
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Examine yourself to see whether you have it. Examine yourselves to see whether the fruit that I've been describing, the fruit that ought to exist in your fellowship, in your life, if that's being budded, however small, is it present?
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And if you're having a hard time finding it, are you at least cut to the heart and crying out in repentance to receive it?
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Is there some manifestation of grace? And then he speaks of God the
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Father and specifically His love. Now already you can see why he's saying this. How is this church going to be edified?
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How is this church going to be made right, restored, made useful again? The grace of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of His gospel at work in their fellowship, emulating and being fueled by the love of the
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Father. To say the love of God is very rare for Paul.
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He almost never says that. It's a very rare phrase. The love of God. What is he saying?
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But he has a desire for them to dwell upon this, meditate upon it. If you meditate upon the love of God, will you not begin to emulate it in your own life?
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How is my life to be if God is love? What are the concrete ways that God has shown
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His love toward me? And as you dwell on that, as you seek after it, you begin to bear it in your own life.
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And then he says, lastly, another telling word, the communion.
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This is the word of fellowship. The communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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So this is not just simply a rubber -stamped greeting, a rubber -stamped benediction.
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Let me throw something about the Trinity here, since we're Trinitarian. This is all very carefully inspired to relate the relationship within the
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Godhead to the relationships of the church, and specifically we have that salvific grace of the
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Lord Jesus, the God who is love, and therefore there is the grace of Jesus, therefore there is something of salvation, and then that which binds it all together, that which applies redemption accomplished to the believer, the communion, the fellowship of the
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Holy Spirit. Now it's interesting when we we often do this in English, we come across this key word of, right?
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We don't slow down to think about what it's saying. In Greek, you have, well all languages have genitives, but in Greek you have genitive constructions and they can convey different things, and it's not, there's not some formula by which you discern what it is.
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It's kind of understanding the context and thinking through in light of what else he's written or how he typically writes, what can we say about this?
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So we have this genitive construction, communion of the Holy Spirit. That's just something we read right by, communion of the
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Holy Spirit, but what does that mean? You have options. Is Paul describing the believer's communion with the
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Spirit? You know, the communion of the Spirit, the communion you have with the Spirit, may that be with you.
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Well, that's an option. That would be called an objective genitive. Or is he describing this communion which the
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Spirit brings about, the communion of the Holy Spirit? In other words, the communion which the Spirit has created and fostered among you.
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That would be called a subjective genitive. So translators are wise.
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They don't, well some translations, R .E .B. for instance, they just say, oh this is objective. They just make a decision, but we have here simply the phrase, the communion of the
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Holy Spirit. But what does Paul mean by that? Does he mean the communion we have with the
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Spirit? Does he mean the communion that is created by the Spirit? And I think very strongly it's this latter, it's the communion created by the
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Holy Spirit. In light of the whole letter, in light of everything Paul has emphasized, in light of a fractured church that is being called to be edified, that is being called to be put to right and made complete, to love one another and be affectionate, to be of one mind, it's the activity of the
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Holy Spirit. Not necessarily our participation with the Spirit in an abstract way, but it's the activity of God's Spirit among His people that creates a communion, that creates a fellowship.
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And so Paul is grounding the love and the unity of this congregation in the love and the unity of the
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Father and the Son and the Spirit. We reflect the Godhead, but that Godhead specifically, the
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Father's electing love, the Son's accomplishment, it's applied to us by the Spirit. And one of the things the
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Spirit bestows is a communion of the saints, a body of Christ, a temple being built up in the
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Lord. And so Paul is saying, may this communion, may this Spirit -wrought,
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Spirit -grounded communion be with you. That's his prayer. To be edified, you must belong to the triune
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God. We are not floating individuals finding something that forces us to have a relationship with each other.
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When we're made in the image of God, we're made in the image of a triune God. We're not made in the image of the
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Father, we're made in the image of God. God is triune,
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God is communion, and therefore part of what it means for us to be an image is that we're communal beings.
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We're meant to have relationships, not just vertical relationships, but horizontal relationships.
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And this is part of the mystery of Ephesians 5 and how marriage leads us to become one flesh, right?
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A church body that is following and walking the things that Paul lays out here in 2nd
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Corinthians 13 is reflecting the image of God, the image of the triune
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God. And so a parallel passage might be Ephesians 4 3, and we considered
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Ephesians 4 at length last week. Well, this is what Paul is urging at the beginning, maintain the unity of the
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Spirit in the bond of peace. Trinitarian theologians of old, one of the great models of the
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Trinity, it really comes to its highest point of development with Augustine, is understanding the
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Spirit as the communion of the Father and Son, what he would call the bond of love. Some have argued that risks depersonalizing the
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Spirit, he becomes the force of love or the affection of love between the persons of the
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Father and Son, it's a risk, but if you actually take the time to understand the argument, he's nowhere close to that.
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As much as you could say saying God is love risks depersonalizing God. In the
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Godhead, the Spirit has the same role that he brings out in the life of the body of Christ.
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He is the communion of the persons of the Godhead, and the Spirit of God is the communion of the persons of the body of Christ.
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This is why we're brothers and sisters, this is why we're called to these things. The Spirit has made us a communion, and the
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Spirit draws this horizontal relationship into that vertical triune eternal relationship, and so we must maintain the unity of the
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Spirit in the bond of peace, the Spirit so graciously and patiently uniting us and building us up together,
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Christ as our head. This bond of fellowship that were to preserve and never take lightly, we will not be able to edify unless we belong to the triune
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God, unless we reflect the relationship of the triune God who brings this reality about in Christ.
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And so brothers and sisters, we see from this benediction it's through Christ's grace first. In other words, the gift of Christ himself,
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Christ given for us that we experience in the most concrete terms, the love of God. And it's this that has led the
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Spirit to create this communion, and he still actively is cultivating this communion, and it's from this place that we seek to edify one another.
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Do you want to be edified? Do you want this church to be edified? Do no evil, do what is honorable, do nothing against the truth, pray that God would make you complete, use actively, use what
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God has given you for the edification of the brethren, and become complete.
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Be of good comfort, be of one mind, and be affectionate, and belong to the triune
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God. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, we thank you
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Lord, that we have this awesome privilege, that we would be the recipients of this divine love, that we would be drawn into this divine fellowship, that we would be the objects and recipients of your
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Holy Spirit's work, that we would be drawn into a communion that is being sanctified and being made complete unto that great day when the body of Christ collectively and wholly beholds the face of her
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King. Help us, Lord, to take to heart these various calls that we might be edified, and that we might be an edifying presence to our brothers and sisters here.
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I pray that this church would be fueled with an affection from you, for you, and for your people, that this affection would be wrought by humility and charity, that we would have self -disregard, and as we submit to Scripture, Lord, that you would give us one mind as we work these things out in our lives, that our affection would be proven not in the things that so easily unify us, but even in those areas that are prone to divide us and differentiate us.
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Help us, Lord, to have the love of Christ for our brothers and sisters, to have your love for each other, and to seek to bless and to comfort and to build up using all that you've given us,