LOVE ONE ANOTHER

The past, I believe, 12 weeks, we have seen God's last words to his faithful remnant within Israel, given to us in the very last book of the Old Testament in Malachi, preceded by, as we pointed out, roughly 400 years of silence before God would speak through another one of his prophets, John the Baptist.

A silence wherein his faithful few awaited with hopeful expectation. They waited while receiving peace that surpassed understanding in their circumstances, and a joy in spite of those circumstances, and being reminded of God's first words through Malachi, I have loved you.

And now we, after these 12 weeks, come full circle back to that declaration of I have loved you, celebrating the fact that God proved those words. They were not empty platitudes. They were not a partial feel-good statement from God to make his people feel better in the moment, but were, in fact, far truer than even those Israelites could have ever comprehended, because he proved his great love for them by making good on his promise.

And that promise was to sacrifice his own son to redeem them. They awaited the proof of that love, and boy, did love arrive. And now we, roughly 2 ,000 years later, the recipients of that great love, we await the return, as Pastor Jeremiah pointed to earlier, the one who is love, the one who first loved us, the one who laid down his life for us.

And as Jesus said in John 15, greater love has no one than this, that someone would lay down their life for their friends. And if you are in Christ this morning, you are his friends. We are his people.

We are his very body left here on this earth, buried with him in death and raised with him to new life. And now we, his body here on earth, are left here to carry out his mission that he has given us, that mission of proclaiming this wonderfully good news.

That's what gospel means, right? The good news. That there is hope for the hopeless, that there is peace for the tormented, that there is joy for the downtrodden, and there is love for the unlovable. And all of this is found only in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So what does that look like for us? What does that look like in mine and yours life, the life of the church, particularly here at 12 .5 this morning, how are we to be his hands and feet within this present hopeless, contentious, sorrowful, loveless present darkness?

Well, by sharing that good news, both from our lips and from our lives, sharing it through our speech and through our actions. So yes, we do proclaim the gospel didactically, verbally. We must. How are they to believe in him whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching, someone proclaiming the gospel, the good news to them? Yet, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels that have not love, I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.

We often think that our theology, our passion for Jesus, our fervent, accurate summary of the gospel is living out the Christian life all while hating our neighbor, or even worse, not loving our brother.

A .W. Pink once said, speaking of the Christian life, he said, love is the badge of Christian discipleship. He said, it is not knowledge, nor orthodoxy, nor fleshly activities, but supremely love, which identifies a follower of the Lord Jesus.

We conveniently forget that part. When we love our knowledge, we love our theology, and by the way, you can't love without the knowledge and without the theology, but don't get the cart before the horse.

You have a Christian that says, I'm not all into theology, I'm not all into all the knowledge because it squashes the love, I'm just all about love. Well, their version of love is vague and indirect. They don't know what to love.

They don't know how to love. They must learn it through the information about how God has presented himself, the theology, but you can't let that be the leader. That's not how, and that is not what marks a Christian.

What marks a Christian is someone that knows of God, that knows his word, loves theology, knows the truth, and then is informed, and he responds in the love that is appropriate accordingly. Our Savior pointed to this truth of love being the badge of the Christian life himself in our passage for today.

As a matter of fact, open up your copy of God's word if you have one with you. Turn with me to John 13, 34. John 13, 34. Christ had been revealing little bits of his fate to the disciples, explaining to them that the sun must be lifted up.

He goes on at the feast of Passover and washes the disciples' feet. You remember that very memorable, very popular section of Scripture, further exemplifying how he himself came to serve and to love. He tells them that he will not be with them much longer, and he says, where I am going, you cannot come, telling them that they cannot come to the cross with him.

He, and he alone, is the one to bear what is coming, but also that they will be left here once he is gone to carry out the work that he will accomplish. As we said, we are his body. We are his hands and feet here.

This is what he's calling them to. And here in verse 34, he gives them a critical directive. Look at verse 34 with me, and 35. He says, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

Well, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. This is the reading of God's word.

Please bow with me. Let's pray for illumination from the Holy Spirit of his truth. Lord, we come before you humbly once again, and we ask in our frailty, and in our constant inability to understand truth, and in our self-veiling and foolishness, misreading your words, guard us.

Give us wisdom. Give us the illumination in our hearts and in our minds to understand your truth clearly. Guard my words, guard my lips from error, and may we be a people that are doers of the word, Father.

I pray that as we see Jesus's words clearly here, that they would penetrate right to the heart, that we would not just intellectually acknowledge them, but that we would acknowledge them mentally in a way that percolates down into our very core and changes us.

Through your sanctifying work, we ask all of this in the name of Christ, amen. Well, Jesus starts this directive by telling them that he has a new commandment for them, right? That's how he starts off this phrase.

There are differing opinions as to what Jesus means by new commandment. To me, the most compelling interpretation acknowledges that this Greek word translated new here that we see, it implies freshness rather than recent or different, okay?

It implies freshness rather than recent or something new and different. It's not new in that it begins now. That's not what Jesus is getting at. He is simply summarizing. Jesus isn't adding an 11th commandment here, right?

He's not saying, hey, you know the 10 commandments, here's a new one. He's simply summarizing the heart of the commandments that are already given. Remember when Jesus was asked, they tried to trick him.

They said, so he said, Jesus, what's the greatest commandment? They wanted to trick him here. And what does he say? He says, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And they're nodding their heads, yes.

Basically summarizing the first 14 commandments in one phrase. And then he says though, but there's a second one like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Essentially summarizing the next six of the 10 commandments.

As if Jesus comes in, they say, what's the greatest of all the commandments? And Jesus goes, all 10, right? All the commandments are the greatest. So why would he use this word new here? This command to love one's neighbor was not a new commandment in and of itself.

The newness was found in loving one another as Jesus had loved them. You see, when Jesus came, Jesus didn't come to abolish the law altogether and get rid of it and say, there's no more law. Jesus didn't come to redefine the law.

Jesus came as a representative to show what the law really was. Jesus came in order for us to see what it really means not to covet. Jesus came to show us what it really means to keep the Sabbath day holy.

Jesus came in a way that showed us the beauty of what God demands. They knew that they were to love their neighbor, yet no one had any true context as to how to truly do that. They were trying, but they were failing.

They had no idea until Christ came and he exemplified that love, that sacrificial, perfect life for us. That's why Paul said in Romans 13, 10, he says, "'Love does no wrong to a neighbor. "'Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.'".

Jesus isn't making a new commandment here in that this is a whole new thing. He's defining what those commandments really are. 2 John 1, 5 says, "'Not as though I were writing you a new commandment, "'but the one we have had from the beginning, "'that we love one another.'".

You see, this isn't new. This isn't new. So what Jesus is saying with this new commandment is that once I am absent from you physically, because that's where he was going. Remember, he's prepping them for this.

"'Let your mutual love that I have shown you "'not be in vain. "'Let this be a pattern of your life. "'May this be your utmost pursuit.'". And what is that pursuit? Why is Jesus telling them this? Why does he specify love one another as I have loved you?

Well, there's going to be three parts here to this pursuit that I want us to see today. And the first one is the exhortation of love. Look there at the first part of verse 34. He says, "'A new commandment I give to you, "'that you love one another.'".

This exhortation of love. This is, of course, speaking of brotherly love. After all, we have a bond of peace in the spirit. We are together. And Jesus is speaking directly to his disciples, those that are his, those that are following him.

Yet we cannot forget that the goodness of God extends to the whole of creation. And so we are to love all, including our enemies. As Jesus said in Matthew 5, he says, "'But I say to you, love your enemies "'and pray for those who persecute you, "'so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, "'for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, "'and sends rain on the just and the unjust.'".

This is, of course, a biblical principle. However, Jesus is speaking directly to the saints here in our context, to love one another. Keep there in John and flip over to Colossians 3 with me. I want you to see this.

In Colossians 3, we're gonna be looking at verses 13 and 14. In Colossians 3, 13. And I want us to see this principle of love and particularly brotherly love and what is actually happening in the midst of loving one another as far as loving those in the household of faith, those that we have union with in Christ.

There in Colossians 3, starting in verse 13, Paul says, "'Bearing with one another, "'and if one has a complaint against another, "'forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you.'". There's our example again, right?

Hey, how do we forgive? I can't just come up with my interpretation of forgive. I forgive as the Lord forgave me. So you also must forgive. In verse 14, he says, "'And above all these, put on love.'".

Why? Why are we to put on love? What does Paul say? He says, "'Which binds everything together "'in perfect harmony.'". You see, the love that Jesus and Paul, particularly in this text, are speaking of is one of action, one that leads to things like forgiveness, one that leads to things like living in unity together.

When he says he's binding everything together in perfect harmony, remember how when we walked through Ephesians and we talked about the unity that we had, right? The unity that we have is perfect. We have no disunity.

If you're in Christ and I'm in Christ and I have the Spirit and you have the Spirit, we have the same Spirit, we are in perfect union together. That is unbreakable and eternal and lasting, and it is perfect and excellent.

We then don't walk in it when we're not being filled with the Spirit, when we're not walking as we ought to, and we cause dysfunction. And so since we're to be the hands and the feet here on Earth, what are we called to do?

We are to represent the union that Christ has brought us into and when we love one another in a way that forgives one another, one that looks past harm, one that looks past the offenses, when we can walk in the unity that's already ours, what are we doing?

We're binding everything together in perfect harmony. We're reflecting the unity that is already within us, and that's what they're calling for. One that leads to things like forgiveness. It's hard to forgive, isn't it?

I'm sorry, some of you have offended me. Some of you have hurt me in the past, and I've hurt you. I'm sorry for doing so because I'm a sinner. I am a broken person that is being sanctified and molded more and more into the image of my Savior, hopefully, and so are you.

But we walk in that unity so that it must be fulfilled in the eyes of those that are watching that we're declaring this hope, peace, joy, and love of the good news to. You see, this word, love, in the Greek, agapeo.

Y 'all know the word agape, right? It's that love that God has for his people. And this is just simply that word in verb form. That's it. It means welcoming, entertaining, to be fond of, to love dearly.

So it's not just an action word. It's an action word that encompasses that encompasses emotion also, affection for one another. But it's also not just some affection. It's not just some feeling that I may have towards you or you may have towards me or you have for your spouse or you have for your children.

It's an emotion that leads to action. And this is what Jesus is getting at here. This is what Paul is talking about. It's referring to a disposition, a feeling lived out with commitment. And this committed, affectionate, welcoming, fond love binds everything together in perfect harmony.

It is the gospel personified. It's the gospel lived out. It's not just the gospel declared from your lips, which it ought to be. It's the gospel declared from your lips and then backed up with your life.

That love that God has for us. That is why Jesus exhorts his disciples and us, the readers today, this is for us to love one another. Jesus didn't just give us this command and leave us to figure out how to follow it.

Yes, he gave us this exhortation of love, but he also gave us the example of love. The example of love. Look at verse 34, the next part. He says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you.

And then he goes on, he says, you also are to love one another. He doubles down, doesn't he? He making it painstakingly clear that he's saying, my example, you are to follow it. If me saying love one another isn't clear enough, I'll say it again.

You are to love one another. When Jesus keeps saying a phrase, I'm gonna pay attention. He's serious about this. With himself, his life lived perfectly as our example. What is that example? Well, for starters, he had just humbled himself and washed each of their feet before he made this phrase.

Right?

That's what preceded this statement. Their master, the creator of the universe bent down and washed their dirty feet, the very feet that he himself created. Think about that for a second. I know we love that story.

And even the world loves that story. They love that version of Jesus. They're like, oh, that's the foot washing Jesus. And I say, yes, absolutely. You're just, you're only seeing part of the picture. That's just the beginning of his love.

That's just a small little sliver of what we get to see in his love represented for us. But make no mistake, really rest and lean into that example of what he has just shown his disciples. And then he leads into just as I have loved you, they haven't seen him die yet.

They haven't watched him. He's pointing back to examples like that of the example that he is showing them that he humbled himself, even though he had the right to tell them your feet are filthy, get it together, or I'm gonna smite you.

He had all the authority and the right to do it. And then call down a legion of angels, pull him back up into heaven and go, I'm not representing you filthy, dirty people. He had all the right to do it, didn't he?

If anyone ever had the right to do it, it would be the creator of all, the one that had been sinned against. But yet he bends down and washes their feet. And then you and I offend each other and then we can't even live for each other.

Why can't I do that? Why can't I love you like that? Just because you said something that offended me, just because you did something that I didn't like. And then we drive disunity into the body and then we're not fulfilling the law.

We're not fulfilling what God has called us to be.

Why are we like this?

I'm pointing at myself, guys.

Why can we not be like him,.

Love one another just as I have loved you? What an example of sacrifice. I wanna be like that, don't you? I long to be like my savior. I fall so short. But you see this, this idea of what he has already done by this point as he speaks to these disciples, that's just the beginning.

He goes on, as a matter of fact, John points to it in his first epistle, in 1 John 4, 9. He says, in this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

He says, in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. Paul pointed to this in Ephesians 5. He says, hey, Christian, Christian, walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

He didn't just wash our feet, he washed the whole of us by his own sacrifice and blood. But God showed his love for us and that while we were still sinners, he died for us. He says, now love one another.

Just as I have loved you. In that same way, lay down your life for one another. Jesus knows our propensity to be very unlike him. That's why he had to die, because of that. Do you remember over in Mark 10, James and John, what did they do?

They're walking with Jesus, they asked for position at his right hand in glory,.

Didn't they?

Here's Jesus humbling himself, condescending and humbling himself. And here's a couple of his disciples from their lowly position asking for higher rank. That's us, isn't it? That's me, I can tell you that right now.

That's all of us. And here's James and John, they're asking for this. And Jesus knows that our drive for selfish rivalry for self would disrupt the fellowship that he has left us here in. And subsequently the mission that he has laid before us.

Remember, Saint, remember the savior. Look to his selfless example. When that brother or sister rubs you the wrong way, when they're that type of personality that maybe we just don't, we don't mesh. I love him, I'll give him the shirt off my back, but I ain't gonna hang out with him.

We live so divided, don't we? When they say something that offends you, when they revile you or wrong you, remember how Peter denied his own savior three times. Remember that? Remember how he loved you?

Remember how Christ loved us when we were unlovable and just like him seek to love the unlovable. As Paul had said over in Colossians, forgive a multitude of sins against you. Forgive and forgive. As Jesus, what 70 times seven or whichever translation you want, maybe 70 times 700, whatever it may be, Jesus' point was infinite.

How many times are you gonna forgive?

Infinite.

You know why? Because my forgiveness of you is infinite. How dare you turn around and not forgive over a small offense when you've committed cosmic treason against me? And I forgave so that you may bind everything together in perfect harmony.

That union that I've set you in, you walk in, follow his example of love. And when you do, you will be pointing to our third thing that we wanna see in the text, the evidence of love. We have the exhortation of love.

We have the example of love and we now have the evidence of love. Look at verse 35 with me again there in our passage. It says, by this, all people will know that you are my disciples. If you're really good at systematic theology, if your praise and worship is super exciting, if you do lots of social outreach in the community, if your people are expanding and growing and your church is getting bigger and bigger and you have resources, no, we see lots of churches growing.

They're not following Christ. He says, if you have love for one another. By this, they'll know you're my disciples. If you have love for one another, we forget that. Why do I forget that?

Don't you?

Don't you forget what Jesus said? That's how he left it. If you have love for one another, yet we wanna just win an argument. We wanna be theologically right, self-centered, selfish. We want to be God.

We want to be in control. But yet he says, hey, you want them to know? You want them to know that I've sent you? That you are of me? They'll know by your love for one another. That passage that we read earlier in 1 John 4.

If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Those are hard words, aren't they? You see, the world, they know instinctively that that is true.

They know it.

You see, they see a people that claim to be the recipients of total, complete forgiveness bestowed upon them in love, turn around and slander and divide from a fellow brother or sister. And all they see is the same broken, divided, selfish nature that they themselves are enslaved to.

The enemy uses that hypocrisy to further them in their blindness. You get that, right? That's why Jesus is telling the disciples, hey, as I've loved you, those people out there are gonna hear, they're gonna hear from your lips how much I loved you.

And then when you don't turn around and love one another in the same way, they're gonna cry hypocrite and they're gonna instinctively know it's not one of his disciples. If you truly are a recipient of God's eternal love, how?

How am I able to not show evidence of that love by loving one another? Why does my flesh pull me away because the enemy wants to divide and conquer? He's seeking to destroy. He's seeking to distort and destroy as much of God's good design and plan as he possibly can, knowing good and well the direction he's going.

He knows his end, but he's gonna wreak as much havoc as he can in the meantime and he wants to keep us divided from one another. He wants us to look like the world in our relationships, but we can, we can respond as Jesus has called us to.

Believe it or not, believe it or not, we can walk in love with one another. Believe it or not, we can seek to live under the example of Christ and to love one another in the direction, not as Christ, but in the direction of where Christ has loved us.

And how, how can we do so by being filled more and more by his grace? You see, when you and I realize, when we just stop for a moment and realize the access that we have to the endless storehouse of grace in our own lives, barns that are bursting out with excess, excess grace just busting out of the doors.

It can't even be restrained. It's just pouring out and continues to pour out coming from a cistern that never ends, that just launches it into the storehouse time and time again. Only then will we realize that that grace can't help but spill over in excess to one another.

It's when we forget, it's when we don't walk in that grace. It's when I am not being filled by the spirit and when I myself am forgetting of all of that grace that's just pouring out and you know what?

I walk around empty, or at least I think I am. And I think that I don't have any excess grace to give you because I'm trying to hang on to this morsel of grace over here. This is the grace I got from God.

I'm gonna hang on to it. I don't have enough for you. Get away from me. I gotta hang on to this because I might need it tomorrow. Instead of going, I'm gonna, it doesn't end. I get to literally go to the storehouse and it's just, I can scoop it up in buckets and walk away and then the buckets keep pouring out and it's all over.

And then when you go and you run into someone and they don't show you the grace that you have been shown or that you want to be shown and they wrong you or they say something that you don't like or whatever it may be.

Here you go, here's a bucket of it. And it just keeps pouring out. I've got plenty.

It's okay.

That's the Christian life. That's where we're supposed to be walking in, walking in the grace that God has bestowed on us. And then we can walk in that example. Then and only then will we walk in peace with each other.

Otherwise, we can't stand each other. I'm hard to live with. I know that. I'm hard to bear. I'm abrasive. I get it. You need Jesus's abounding grace to give me grace. I understand. Thank you for that.

We live together in this, but we have to have, we have to, we already have it. We have to acknowledge and we have to remember that abounding grace. And one of the ways that we experience that grace is when we get to come to the table together and be reminded of the sacrifice of our Savior, expressing our unbreakable union with Christ who brings us into union with one another and brings us into union altogether with the triune God and provides for us through the spirit perfect union.

Today, as we do each Sunday, we will be partaking at the table. Be careful. Be careful coming to the table and partaking of these elements. If you are not in a place where you're willing to forgive or to lay it down, or if you have an offense against a brother, if you're not in union with your brothers, lay that at the foot of the cross before you come and take of these elements.

If you are not in Christ or you have question of that, come speak with us elders and let's talk about that before you partake of these elements. Today, as we've been doing over the past couple of months, we've been interjecting different ways of coming to the table and partaking.

But today, because of the nature of this text we were in today, we want to see each saint make this declaration of unity together. Pastor Keith will be on this side and Pastor Jeremiah will be over here.

And these men are going to serve you at the table. When you come up, they will hand you the bread for you to eat. And then they will hand you the wine for you to drink. We desire for you to partake right there as you stand before them and before the people.

And then you see the Lord and you see these little tables right here with these trays. You can set your glass there on that tray. If there's not an opening, you can set it on the tray and we'll take care of it.

And you can come back to your seat. Once you're seated, I encourage you to prayerfully watch as your brothers and sisters make that same declaration. Because when you come and you take of this bread and you drink of this wine that represents the body and blood of Christ, you're declaring, I have perfect union with them.

With each other. And I'm walking in it. And I believe it. Because of the union that he has brought me in to his body, his very body. First, let us take a moment for reflection and prayer. We're gonna take a minute.

If you need to bow your head, if you wanna pray in groups or individually, and you wanna lay some things before the Lord, if you wanna prepare your heart for this sanctifying ordinance, I encourage you to do so.

And in a moment, I will welcome you to the table. Let us bow for a moment.