What's Love Got to Do with It? | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're talking about the Christian life, and in particular, we're going to ask the question, what's love got to do with it?

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Love seemed to be a big deal to Jesus and to the apostles, but oftentimes, if we were to ask people to make a list of the most important things in the

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Christian life, what they need to be focusing on and doing, love would be conspicuously missing or certainly wouldn't be very close to the top of the list for many.

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We discuss that in the regular podcast, and then when we make our way over into the members episode, we consider the fact that Twitter, Christian Twitter in particular, is often mean and lacks grace, and how that's sadly true in the church oftentimes as well.

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We think about how a lack of an appropriate emphasis on loving others leads to that problem.

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We hope this conversation is helpful to you. Stay tuned. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself,

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Our brother Jimmy Buehler is unable to be with us today, so you're stuck with the two of us.

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John, it's good to be on here with you, man. Since there's only two of us, I suppose you're going to be doing some heavy lifting today, not just in terms of introducing the topic, but also in giving us some kind of update that the people will find entertaining and engaging.

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Actually, it's a big day for Theocast. We're actually recording on a Wednesday. And what's today's date?

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Today is January 22nd. So, today, January 22nd, we have launched our 200th episode of Theocast, of our regular podcast.

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It's over 300 and something with the members' podcast, but 200 episodes. We've been doing this.

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I'm going into my fifth season doing this. I've done this for four years. Can I count this as my second season or not?

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Yeah, basically. You're going into your second season. Not a full year. I mean, I've been doing it four full years.

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I know. You're better than me. It's okay. I don't know about better. But yeah, I've been on every episode.

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I've learned and grown more than I think most of our listeners have. It's been fantastic, and I've enjoyed it.

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And a little side note as well, I think I told you this earlier, of total downloads over the last four years.

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People will download all the different episodes. We've had over 800 ,000 downloads of the episodes from all over the world.

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That's a lot. Yeah. It's like 150 countries, something like that. It's pretty crazy.

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It's been pretty fantastic. Yeah, it's been pretty fantastic. Anyways, it's just a fun day for us.

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I never imagined I would be sitting on the phone with a guy in North Carolina and another guy in Minnesota, recording a podcast that was started four years ago, and having a church get started in Minnesota, and praying about some other ones possibly this year.

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Lord's been good. Just to remind everybody who's ever participated or purchased or donated to our ministry, you guys have all made it possible for that to happen.

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We're excited. That's really the only update. The other update I have is

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I'm in the process of finishing off my basement. We're actually live, not live stream, but we video our conversations now.

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If you want to watch a video of Justin and I talking, me in my basement and Justin in his office, and then

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Jimmy's actually in the classroom when he's with us. If you want to watch us interact, it's kind of fun because we do have to communicate through the video at times.

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That's fun. I'm finishing my basement. All the walls are up and the drywall is on.

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We're going to start mudding this week. That's a big deal. Do some electrical work. Then hopefully this spring, maybe summer,

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I'll be finishing off my office. I'm sitting and looking at plumbing and air conditioning and bare walls.

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Maybe one day it'll all be done and I'll have a normal office. Justin Perdue I'm in the middle of a big -time, heavy -lifting facility search for our church.

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My wife and I, personally, are under contract on a piece of property here. We're hoping to start construction on a house soon.

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I feel like my entire life right now is consumed with real estate stuff, both residential and commercial.

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It's like, dude, I'm trying to be a pastor here. I've got to be doing all this stuff.

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It's like, hey, maybe my business background will help me in ministry in this particular situation.

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Who knows? John, what are we talking about today, man? Why don't you tee it up for everybody and give them a taste, and then we'll take off running with this thing.

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Justin and I both come from different backgrounds, but I would say similar theology, where a lot is emphasized.

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If you were to just take the history of what is emphasized in Christians, there has been all kinds of theology that's been emphasized.

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Today, we're only going to talk about what's really common to the modern -day Christian. As a

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Christian, you are told to be really, if we were to just try to simplify it so I don't have to give this long explanation, the majority of Christians are told that their personal development in their relationship with God is their primary mission.

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It's their primary focus of the Christian life. The church and all the spiritual disciplines are really all designed to make sure that you're growing in your discipline, affection, fighting of sin, that you're becoming more spiritual and wise.

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Then, of course, those can lead into ministry, so you become more effective for evangelism, for discipleship, and then potentially maybe ministry and missions.

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Everything seems to be centered around your personal advancement in spiritual matters.

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I want to encourage you, if you're new to Theocast, think about the last five books that you read that were spiritual books.

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What was the primary purpose of the book or conclusion? If you're not from a

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Reformed background or if you've not been around Reformed theology, most likely those books are focused on how to improve in some way, mentally, physically, or spiritually.

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We're going to turn it a little bit upside down, kind of what Jesus does all the time in the New Testament. We're going to encourage you to think through this with us and ask this one particular question.

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Is self -improvement, when we think about that, not necessarily on a self -help mountain but on a spiritual level, is that the primary focus of sermons, of your personal

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Bible reading, of prayer, or whatever else you want to put in the Christian life? Is that the primary purpose? The end goal is the end result.

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Does God look at your life and say, Justin, well done, thou good and faithful servant, because you have faithfully advanced or sanctified or became more holy?

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Your response to that would be no. We did an episode last week,

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Discipleship is Not About You, and today is a good follow -up episode to that in one sense because it fits well and dovetails well.

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I want to explain my no answer because the Christian life, biblically speaking, and we're going to unpack this for a little while, is completely and fundamentally outwardly oriented.

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By that we mean we are oriented outward in terms of love to God and love to our brothers and sisters, love to neighbor.

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And the fact that we have so individualized and turned everything in on ourselves is an epidemic in the church.

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I know I was preaching this past Sunday, just a brief anecdote here. I was preaching in Mark's gospel and was talking about how

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Jesus, like you just said, John, is constantly setting himself over and against the religious leaders of his day.

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He is regularly offending them to the point that they hate him so much that they are willing to do anything that they need to do in order to have him killed.

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It's just undiluted hatred in terms of the religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, the council.

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They're trying to pull together false testimony. It doesn't matter that nothing is lining up. Whatever we got to do, we've got to get rid of Jesus.

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Well, why was that the case? Why did they hate him so much? Well, it's because of this reality that he constantly was blowing up their religion.

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He was obviously blowing up their notions of their own righteousness or how they could be righteous and pointing them to him, breaking them down with the law and making it clear that they needed something outside of themselves.

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But he also is just completely reorienting the system. I said the gospel of Jesus Christ is offensive to us in so many ways.

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In part, the gospel is offensive to us because it's not about us at all. It's completely about Christ and what he's done for us.

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You probably think the gospel is about you. You probably think this text is about you. Literally, it could be that sermon title every

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Sunday because it really isn't. It's about God and what he's done for us in Christ. Then we, as regenerate, redeemed, born -again people, are then encouraged, exhorted, propelled forward in Christian life to love

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God and love one another. That's what it's about. It's not about personal improvement for our own sake so much, which is how we often think about it.

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That's what you were driving at, John. Is the Christian life about personal improvement for our own sake? No, absolutely not.

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That was why I answered no. When Christ looks at us dressed in his righteousness alone, brought home to be with him forever by the power of the

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Spirit because of Christ's work in our place, and tells us, well done, that's a mind blow in and of itself.

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But it certainly is not going to be because of the progress I made for my own sake. That's what we're going to be talking about for the next 30 minutes or so.

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We've been dancing around it a little bit. JP, I think it's time for us to go ahead and bring it in so you don't have to leave it out there anymore.

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The primary mission. Right now, almost everything

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I think about, almost all my illustrations and every passage I run to, is

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John right now, specifically John 15 through 17, which I'm finishing up John 17 right now.

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But in this section, Jesus beautifully and gently is taking his disciples who are about to go through a very complicated situation, and he is trying to make sure they feel safe.

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In other words, the Father is the one who's protecting them. It's God's love for them. It's keeping them safe.

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It's Christ's replacement, their sins on him, his righteousness on them. He is showering them with assurance, every reason to not have any worry about their faith.

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Then the response to this. Once they finally find themselves where Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and I'll give you rest.

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Once they find themselves in that position of rest, I am resting in my safe arms of the

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Father who has me and keeps me, not based upon my performance but based upon what Jesus has done.

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Then Jesus says this to them. The response to this is,

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I need you to love each other and I need you to love the world. I need you to take the love that you've received and I need you to reflect back that love to one another.

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The commission and the primary mission that's given to the disciples, and I would say very obviously to the church, because if you go and you read the

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New Testament epistles, they are the outflow of the two commands that Christ gives us.

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He says, I've given you a new command, love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

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If you look at all of the instructions that are given to the New Testament church, they are to clarify and to protect or correct when we are going wrong in those two areas.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, so Jesus, what you're referencing there is when he summarizes essentially the law and the prophets, and he gives us the great commandment in the second that is like unto it.

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I'm mindful of when he does say very explicitly in John's gospel, a new command, a new commandment

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I give to you in John 13, 34. He tells the disciples that you are to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are to love one another, and then he says in the very next verse that the world will know that you are mine.

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He doesn't say by how you love the world. He doesn't say that they'll be known by their discipline or anything like that.

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He says the world will know that you are mine by the way that you love each other, and so that's a critical thing.

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We're going to tie this in a few weeks' time or a couple months' time. We'll do an episode on evangelism, and we'll tie this topic to that because Jesus is making it quite plain that the way that the church will impact the world, obviously we're going to share the gospel, and we're going to preach the word and all these things, but we are going to love one another in such a way that the church becomes the greatest tool of evangelism that there is.

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This is so much at the heart of the mission of the church. There's a reason why

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Jesus will say this is a new commandment, and then John picks up on that in his first epistle where he spills a lot of ink on the new commandment that's like the old one, but it's new, and he tells his readers to love each other.

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If you claim that you're in Christ and you don't love your brother, then that's illegitimate.

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His point is that the redeemed love each other. This is the thing that characterizes the saints in the community called the church.

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I find it very interesting that when people make lists of things, whether that's on a piece of paper literally or just a figurative list in terms of a priority in the

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Christian life, and what do I need to concern myself with doing? What are my marching orders?

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Give me handles, and let's go, baby. It's interesting, given the thrust of the

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New Testament, that loving my brothers and sisters is not at the top of the list.

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A lot of times— I can tell you what it is. Normally, they alternate. It's either prayer or Bible reading, but those are down the list.

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They alternate. Sure, and those are wonderful things, but it's interesting. Something's off when we don't have this thing that is called the new commandment, like definite article.

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This is the new commandment that we need to concern ourselves with. This is the heart of the matter. We need to love one another in the church.

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It's just very conspicuously missing from many people's priority lists.

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Part of what we're trying to highlight today in giving people help and to encourage the saints is that Christianity, like we talked about a few weeks ago, is not complicated.

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It's very deep. It's impossible when you're in strength. All that's true, but it's not complicated. Love God, love each other, and there's going to be a number of things that fold underneath those things.

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But love for the brothers and sisters is essential in the church and ought to be a front -burner concern for us all the time.

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I would say it's almost two goggles that you wear every time that you read through the

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New Testament. It's love God, priority, love those around me, specifically my brothers and sisters.

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If you read what Paul does or what Peter does or any of the

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New Testament writers, they're giving you every reason to love God in the gospel. Read Ephesians.

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How glorious is God in the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, the beauty.

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It's just packed. I don't want to misquote this, so I'm going to go ahead and just read

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Ephesians 4 because I think it's so powerful in what Paul says here. He says, I therefore a prisoner for the

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Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Now, if I were to push pause there,

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JP, and I were to say, normally when we say worthy, what do we do with that?

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What's the application? If we don't continue reading what Paul says, hey, listen, you all need to walk worthy.

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What's the application there? The application is always aimed at the individual and what kind of life are you living?

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Are you in a way that's worthy of Jesus? Are you doing things in your own personal spiritual life that are worthy of Christ?

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I could list a number of those things. Some of those are disciplines and things that we need to be doing in the positive. Some of those are disciplines in terms of abstinence from certain behaviors and the like.

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It's not that those things are completely divorced from what Paul is saying, but I want to let you continue because I'm in complete agreement with you that what we do is aim that magnifying glass in on the

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Christian and the interior of his life and all that when Paul takes it in a very different direction. Right.

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So, Ephesians 3, he just finished. How awesome is Jesus? How glorious?

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How unbelievable his kindness and grace and love. Then Paul says, now listen, you've received this by grace through faith alone.

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It's a gift. This gift is yours. What is the correct response to such a gift?

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It's not required because then it wouldn't be a gift, but what's the correct response to receiving such an amazing gift?

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In other words, if you bring me a cup of coffee, I'm like, hey, bud, thanks, but then you save my life.

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Hey, bud, thanks doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right.

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So, God saves your life, and Paul says, how do you respond to that?

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He says here in verse 2, with humility and gentleness and with patience, bearing with one another, and he has to say that because we are so selfish, bearing with one another in love.

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This is how I want you to respond. Maintain the unity of the spirit of the bond of peace because there's one body, there's one body, and there's one spirit, and that one spirit draws us all together.

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So, the response of the believer to the glorious salvation they have received, this unmerited favor, this grace and mercy, he says, patiently and gently with lots of it, love one another.

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The only way you're going to ever be motivated to do what Paul has said, the only way is if you first look at the gospel because we are unlovable people.

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We are so unlovable. Justin Perdue Yeah. Now, I just want to jump on here too because I know we both were like, man, we got to get to Ephesians 4 because it's so critical.

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It's such a helpful passage because Paul, like you said, has just been extolling the grace of God and Jesus Christ for chapters, and then at the very end of chapter 3, he is even praying for the

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Ephesian Christians saying, may you be strengthened in your inner man that you might be able to comprehend with all the saints the length and depth and height and breadth of the love of Christ and be filled with that and that knowledge and that understanding.

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Then he immediately turns it to the corporate reality, and when he does pivot and says, walk in a manner worthy, like walk in a way that's consummate with the gospel and the grace of God and Jesus Christ, he immediately goes to what you've just outlined, humility and gentleness and patience and bearing with one another in love and unity and striving to maintain those things.

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So, in terms of life in the church, what should characterize us? Those things.

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Love is the banner that flies over the church, and humility and patience, bear with one another, unity.

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These things are absolutely critical in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and, like you said, are the appropriate response to the gospel, which

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I want to bring this up. I know we talked about this before. I'm going to take us into a new segment of the conversation here.

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I'm happy to say this on the air. One of the things that we get charged with sometimes is having too much of an emphasis on grace, or some people will even say that, because of that emphasis on grace, that we must be antinomian.

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We've dealt with that so many times. What does that mean, Justin? There might be someone who doesn't even know what the word antinomian means.

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What are they charging you with? Justin Perdue So, anti - meaning against nomian namas law, so against the law, meaning that we think that Christians can, because of grace, just live licentious lives, and it matters not what we do or how we live.

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That is not at all what we believe here. We're talking today about how we live together, because the

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Bible is quite clear, but we are charged sometimes with making too much of grace and all that kind of stuff.

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What we want to point to today in this conversation is how an emphasis on the gospel.

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This is another thing, too. I'm just going to say this. It's frustrating to me at points, but I have been charged personally, and I know we have been charged corporately here at Deocast, talking so much about Christ and His work and His sufficiency and our justification and safety and rest and everything else.

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It's like, well, you guys talk about that too much. How do we talk about Jesus too much in the church that bears

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His name? One. Two, how can you overemphasize grace biblically? There's no way to do that.

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Grace is astonishing and amazing. Now, we might misunderstand what grace is, but you can't overemphasize grace.

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So then, bringing this all back to a head, the gospel and the focus on Christ and His sufficiency and everything else in the place of the

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Christian and a message that is just dripping with grace does not produce licentious living.

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It produces love in the church. That is our conviction biblically. Jump in,

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John, and I'll jump back on. I can't help it. I've got to go to John 15 here because it proves the fact that focusing in and on the gospel, specifically

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God's love for us, which is unconditional, unmerited, you can't outrun God's love.

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There is no place to hide from Him. Not only that, you can't out send His mercy.

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I am not sending you out to sin. I'm just letting you know. It's very obvious this is what Jesus is teaching.

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Let me turn to John 15 and let's look real quick at verse 9. We're going to start there. It says, As the

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Father has loved me, so have I loved you. If you could just meditate on that for a moment, the love that God gives

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Jesus is the love that Jesus gives us as wretched, putrefied sinners.

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And then Jesus says, Abide. Another way to say abide is to rest or to live within or live in the reality.

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He says, Abide in my love. Please listen carefully.

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Jesus is telling His disciples to live in the reality.

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You're telling me I'm overemphasizing God's grace and love, and Jesus is telling me live there.

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Then He's not done. As a matter of fact, He says, If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my

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Father's commandments and abided in His love. Well, okay, we'll see, John. You need to be obeyed. Well, Jesus isn't done.

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He's not even close to being done. Clarifying here, read the next verse. These things

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I have spoken to you, that my joy, not just joy, not general joy.

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We don't even know what that means. When someone says joy, what does that even mean? Think about it. There's no being that's ever had flesh that's had more joy than Jesus.

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He has perfect joy, ultimate joy. He says, This is my commandment, that if you love one another, as I have loved you.

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Let's put the two things together. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full.

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The first thing He said was, abide in my love. Then the second thing He says is, love one another.

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Greater love is no one than this, since someone laid down his life for his friend.

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That's the conclusion that comes. Justin Perdue Yeah. He tells us, abide in me, rest in me.

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In the context of John 15, He's saying, apart from me, you can do nothing. Then He says, you'll keep my commandments.

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Then when He goes to boil that down again, like we've been talking about, what does He say? He says, love each other.

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I've laid down my life for you. In keeping with that, and in the ways that I have loved you, love each other.

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Sacrifice for each other. Consider one another as greater than yourself. That's the exhortation.

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If we're beating any kind of drum in the church—obviously, we're first heralding

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Christ and extolling the mercies of God in Christ and pointing people to Him and His sufficiency. Then, in terms of how we live life, if we're beating any drum, we should be beating this one.

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Love each other. Mutually submit to one another, to use Paul's language in Ephesians.

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Build one another up in love, to use language from all over the New Testament. This is the goal of life in the body.

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It's staggering to me, brother, how rarely I hear people talk about this in comparison to many other things that people need to be doing in the

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Christian life. I will tell you this. There's a promise that's given to people that if you live wholly clean, and you discipline yourself, and you grow, then you'll be happy.

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You'll have joy. People even say, my marriage is better, or all of this stuff about,

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I gave up drugs, I gave up drinking because of the gospel. They equate those things, which is great, but unbelievers can have better marriages and can stop drinking.

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They can actually be happy. You're opening up a can of worms now, John. But I'm going to tell you this right now.

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I'll speak for Justin and I.

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We are going to take Jesus at His word, and we're going to absolutely put this to the test, that the way to have joy is to obey

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Christ by abiding in His love and then loving other people. I'm going to tell you this right now.

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There is nothing in this world that can take away that joy because there's nothing that can ever prevent me from abiding in God's love.

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Nothing can stop me from that. I put my trust in Christ and therefore abide in His love, and there's nothing that can stop me from loving other people.

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You can kill me, and that's not a threat. As Paul says, don't threaten me with death because I'll take it on.

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Stay here. Go be with Jesus. That's not a threat. But my point is that if you try and pursue joy through self -improvement, through money, through relationships, through fame, any of those things, if that's where you're going to find joy, those are all at risk because you can't control that.

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You can control two things—what you put your love in and who you love. You can control that, and therefore you can always have joy.

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All right, I'm done. We are excited to announce that we have a new free e -book available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. We, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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You can get this at theocast .org slash Primer. If you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by joining our Total Access membership. That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

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You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

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Jon, immediately what comes to mind for me are a couple of thoughts, and I'm going to try to communicate these as clearly as I can.

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I absolutely agree with you that the greatest joy possible comes in abiding in the love of Christ and then loving others, no doubt.

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That greatest joy imaginable is the joy of Jesus himself. He says that in John's Gospel.

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It's also the greatest freedom in the world too. Those who are in the

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Son, whom the Son sets free, are free indeed. What we always herald here at Theocast is we're free to pursue joy, and we're free to love.

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We're resting in Jesus, and we're set free, not unto licentiousness. Oh, I'm set free, so I'm going to go send the daylights out of the thing, said no redeemed person ever.

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The redeemed hear this, and this message of love and freedom in Christ, and the outflow of that is, yes,

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I'm free to love, and I'm free unto righteousness even. It's just absolutely critical that we understand that piece, and that's our biggest response to people that will say, well, guys, what about how we're supposed to live?

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It's like, well, we agree, and here's what that looks like. The other thing I was going to say is you were talking a minute ago about how unbelievers can have better marriages than Christians sometimes.

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Unbelievers can be set free from drugs and alcohol and the like, and that's absolutely true. I've gotten in trouble before in my own context, and I think you guys have at Theocast even before I came on, for saying things like Jesus did not come to give you a better marriage.

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Jesus did not come and live His life and die in your place and take

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His life up again so that you could have better relationships or that you would have a better career or you would feel more purposeful in your life.

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That's not the point of why He came. I love Mike Horton's book, Christless Christianity.

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He talks about these things and how so many of the things we discuss in the church these days, you don't need

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Jesus for any of it. It's a ringing indictment on us, and I think this whole conversation is just so good because we're pointing people to Christ and the love of God in Christ, and then the outworking of that is joy and love toward other people.

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It's a remarkable, free, joy -filled existence, and you're doing it with your eyes and your gaze not on yourself but on God in Christ and then on your brothers and sisters, and it's wonderful.

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It's probably hard for people to stomach. I've had to counsel people, and I try to do it with as much patience and grace as I can, but sometimes

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I inform people, you being cancer -free or you having this fantastic marriage or you being the most epic parent and all your kids turning out great, that's not been the promise of Scripture.

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As a matter of fact, we've been warned that we're going to suffer for the sake of the gospel.

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James tells us that we are going to enter into some trials, and those trials are there to help remind us how weak we are.

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I never made the connection for a long time when he says that trials are what kind of test your faith.

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What do you mean by that? I think what it means is that trials make you feel weak and out of control and desperate, and you become dependent, and what it rips from you is the hope of comfort and of living this life as if this life has no sin.

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If you think about cancer -free and problem -free, then that's heaven.

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Problem -free lives are heaven. We don't live here. We blind ourselves to it through entertainment, and we medicate ourselves through all kinds of different things to try and deal with the problems of life, and yet James says, the problems of life is what turns you to Christ.

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The reality is that there's nothing in this life that's going to fix the problems of life until Christ returns.

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It keeps you from living in an earthbound way. Trials keep us from living earthbound lives, and they give us

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God's perspective on what's really going on. I'm sure you've experienced this at Grace Reform Church.

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I've definitely experienced it at CBC here with our people. I honestly can say that there are so many moments when we're gathered as a church or when

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I'm spending time with people from church, and the love and the kindness and the gentleness and the safety and all of those things that characterize our relationships together, it really is a foretaste of the new heavens and the new earth and how we will live together forever with God.

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It's a remarkable thing. It's a sadness that for many people, they might be listening to this and they're thinking, brother,

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I don't know that I've ever experienced something like that. I sadly feel the most unsafe when

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I'm at church, or I don't feel loved. I don't feel like there's patience and gentleness.

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I feel like there's an exacting tone to everything, and I'm being scrutinized constantly, and nothing's ever good enough.

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That is a sadness. I think one other observation that I would make right now, I'm thinking about 1

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John again, where he's quite clear that we obviously were called to love

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God. He states and connects that to our love for one another by saying quite plainly that you demonstrate and show your love for God in the way that you love each other.

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It's easy to say that I love God, but it's actually a whole different matter altogether to love your brother or sister and to bear with him or her in patience and gentleness.

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You, many times, are going to show and demonstrate that love for God through your love for your fellow brothers and sisters in the church.

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I don't know that we think about it in those terms often. Jon Moffitt No, Ben, I couldn't agree with you more.

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We can justify ourselves to speak evil and mean towards people who have hurt us, even people in the culture.

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I'm not here to judge. I'm not sitting on a platform.

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I'm just saying we all fall into the category where we forget the grace and mercy we have received, and then because we forget that, we're so quick to then be consumed with self -loathing.

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I will tell you this. The design of the church should be that you walk in and the moment that you walk in, the reality of this world is removed, and you walk into a world where the only thing that's important is what's outside of you and what's to come.

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The hope of Christ and Christ's return is where my hope is placed.

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Here's the sad part. You walk into church and immediately you're confronted with your marriage failing, your job failing, and you're failing as a parent.

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Let me give you ways to improve that and to fix that. You walk out with this new diet plan, this new

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Christian plan, and it doesn't work, or it works for a while, or it blows up on you and it makes things worse.

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We keep going back because we're told that's where answers are found. Church is where answers are found, and you're not given answers about hope and joy that actually provide hope and joy.

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Jesus says, listen, if you do this, you will have hope and joy, but He doesn't promise to fix everything else.

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That's to come. I walk away every week beyond excited because I am reminded of the reality that God is actually doing what

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He said He was going to do. Jesus is actually accomplishing His mission of finding the lost sheep and bringing them hope and giving them rest and saying, blessed are those who anticipate my return, because when

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I come, I'll make all things new. This life is like, I don't really need you to fix everything here.

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Justin Perdue One of the reasons why the church is so different than the world is because,

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I think it's a fair way to say it. I'm tempted to say the reason. It all boils down to the gospel and what

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Christ has done, obviously. You were talking about this a minute ago, John, as you observe things going on and the kinds of vitriol and hatred and all that that's just prevalent.

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It's all over the place. Two other things that I think are absolutely all over the culture and all in the world because of how we are in Adam are mercilessness and self -righteousness.

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Those things are everywhere. When people walk in the church and there is the message heralded and extolled every week of the mercy of God against the backdrop of your real sin and wickedness, because on the basis only of what

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Jesus has accomplished, and there is real forgiveness of sins, absolution is proclaimed and held out.

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You are really guilty. You are a wretch. You are vile. You are sin sick, and yet in Christ, you have been reconciled to God and you have peace with Him and you are righteous in Jesus.

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That's an astonishing message in a merciless world. Then alongside that, this self -righteousness piece, every human being is out there justifying him or herself all the time and comparing him or herself to everybody else and looking down on others.

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The church collectively is not looking down on one another. We're looking upward to Christ together.

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I can't help but think also, brother, I've seen this in my own church, and I know you have too, where the constant preaching of Christ in the way that I just described and the constant honest preaching about us from Scripture and what we really are, it produces in the church a corporate feeling and understanding of desperation for what

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Jesus alone has done for us. Then it knits our hearts together because there's nothing like coming together and acknowledging corporately, we're messed up, we are more wicked than we could ever understand, and we are desperate for Jesus.

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Then we lock arms together and we're like, thank God for Jesus Christ and thank God for the church and the relationships and the love and the safety that we have.

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It just stirs us up to love and good works and to continue this sort of outward focus.

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When you hear this stuff, and I'm even talking about it right now, of course, my response is, I want to go love my brothers.

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I want to go love my sisters underneath the banner of the gospel in Christ. Justin Perdue So, Justin, when we think about love, maybe it's not obvious.

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In Scripture, we tend to read it as the New Testament writers are always trying to correct personal holiness.

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You need to be acting better because if you don't act better, then God's going to thump you on the head because personal improvement is the responsibility of every

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Christian. Then you come into this perspective where you're wearing the goggles and it's like, wow, the application to the gospel, once I've received it and I believe it, then it reflects back out of me unconditional love and grace and mercy to those who are around me.

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But we don't do that. We're still sinners. We are mean and nasty, and we do horrible things to each other.

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All you have to do is read James. People think that James is going after those who want to claim to be

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Jesus but aren't willing to live holy. I believe in Jesus, but I'm not going to live holy.

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That's not what James is going after. He's saying, you are giving favor, showing love to some and not to all.

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You can't do that. As a matter of fact, if you do that, you're claiming to Christianity that you misunderstand it.

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Maybe he is calling them out for unholy living, but what the unholy living is is favoritism and not loving the weak.

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Unholy meaning moral sins or whatever. Then in Corinthians, Paul does call out unholy living, morality issues, big time.

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But what does he respond with? Stop doing this, and then what? What does it say in chapter 13?

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He emphasizes love. That's right. The repentance away from sexual sin or all kinds of stuff they were doing, the response to that is to not stop doing it.

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It's not just stop doing those things. He's saying, you need to turn from that because what that is, is not loving your brother as yourself.

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That is not the loving response. No, that's true. First Corinthians five is the chapter where he talks about the man who's sleeping with his stepmom and encourages the congregation, rebukes the congregation because they're celebrating that as an expression of Christian freedom or something.

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It's like, you should remove this man for his own sake. But then in chapter six, he talks about their identity in Jesus again.

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He points them to their status and their identity. You have been washed. You were these things.

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You're now not. You're washed. Then we think about in chapters eight through ten, you get the language of eating meat, sacrifice to idols, and loving the weaker brother and all that kind of stuff.

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Again, we are told to consider the weak among us and to love each other in those ways.

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Then you're exactly right. We get into the corporate gathering and spiritual gifts and all that stuff. Then he again inserts, but listen, if you're talking in tongues of angels and you're doing all these kinds of things that seem magnificent, which even in the church today, we look at that stuff and we're like, oh, that's the good stuff, man.

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That really powerful, all inspiring stuff. He's like, if you don't have love, it's worthless. Love is the greatest thing in the world.

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It's the greatest thing in the church. You're exactly right. As far as First Corinthians is concerned.

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I want to say more things, but I know we're out of time.

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You're making all kinds of gestures at me and all that stuff. I'm not even offended, but we got more to talk about.

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We, friends, are about to head over to the members podcast and continue this conversation on love, the great commandment, the new commandment that Jesus gives us.

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If you don't even know what I'm members podcast, you could go to theocast .org. That's our website and find out more about our total access membership.

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We do a 14 day free trial. Excuse me. I can't speak at the moment where you can try this and kick the tires for 14 days.

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You can listen to some additional content like the members podcast, as well as the archive podcasts, all 200 of them, as we alluded to today.