I've Never Known Love Like This | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about love.

John and I bounced around a bunch of potential titles for this episode that were really cute, catchy and clever, and we didn't use any of them.

We decided to say that we've never known love like this. I've never known love like this is the title of the episode.

We're going to talk about the world's definitions and understandings of love that as sons and daughters of Adam, we all just kind of naturally operate with.

We think of love as transactional, and ultimately it's about our gratification. It's just going to fall apart for us at some point.

We've all been hurt by it. We're going to talk about that. Then we're going to talk about the Bible's definition of love as we consider the love of God for us that is sacrificial, unconditional and steadfast.

That has all kinds of implications for how we love one another. We hope this is encouraging and clarifying and liberating for you.

Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

Christian life from a confessional, Reformed, and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today coming to you again together from Knoxville, Tennessee.

I think we can say that. Sure. The backdrop gives it away. Dead giveaway. John Moffitt, who's pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

As I've already said, John and I are together. This is our second day here in the beautiful city of Knoxville.

We've enjoyed our time here thus far. We've been working on a number of things related to Theocast and the Grace Reformed Network.

More information on some of that will be coming into your ears soon, we trust.

We're still running on fumes a little bit. Running on the Holy Spirit, extroversion, and fumes.

Here we are, and we are going to record one more podcast together before we hit the road later on today.

Glad to be sitting here with you, man. Yeah, it's good. Sometimes people may not understand, but Justin and I are always thinking about the future of whatever podcasts we're doing and also writing.

But one other ministry we're a part of, which is related to our churches, is Grace Reformed Network. A lot of this trip was also around getting that up and running.

That's a ministry that we're working to start. A network of churches that John and I are working with some other pastors to try to get started.

If you want to know more information about a Reformed Baptist network that we're putting together, go to gracereformednetwork .org.

A confessional Baptist network, dare we say. Yes. You can, gracereformednetwork .org, or reach out if you know me or you know

John or you follow us on social media. Particularly if you're a pastor, hit us up. Send us a message.

We'd love to talk with you. John, speaking of talking, that's what we've sat here today to do.

So why don't you tell the folks, the dear listener out there, tell them what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the love of God.

I had the opportunity to preach at our youth camp this year. I was thinking through scenarios that youth often face, and then

I realized it's not even youth, it's everyone faces this. As a pastor and as a father of teenagers, one of the things that I was evaluating is when

I say certain words, what do they hear? Because I know what it is in my head, but maybe

I need to stop and think, how did they develop that concept in their head? One of those ones was, and I was thinking about when as teenagers, when

I would say the word, I love you, or I love something, or even today when I say I love something, what was sad for me in the realizing of that word was that we aren't naturally defining it according to scripture.

We're defining it according to our experience in the world. Like Justin, you know, we had this conversation beforehand.

I said, can you think of a physical relationship that you have on this earth that isn't transactional?

Right. In other words, even you and I, like if we first met each other and either of us kind of threw up a wall or whatever, didn't respond, you know, it's hard to build a relationship if there isn't reciprocal, right?

We both give. And by transactional, what we mean is I give something and I get something in return.

So I give to get an almost equal value, if not more, for me to be able to remain in the relationship and feel good about the relationship and see it as a positive thing in my life,

I need to be giving and then getting in return something that I think is satisfactory. Right. And there are, you know, by nature, you're going to have transactional relationships.

That's just kind of how it works. But unfortunately, that's not how the Bible defines it. You know, when we think about how the world defines love, love, just listen to music, read books and movies.

And if you make a conclusion of when they say they love something, they always connect it to a value.

And that value typically is you make me feel good. You make me look good. You satisfy me.

And what's interesting is we'll use that language of, well, I fell in love. Right. What you're what you're saying is you actually found without looking for it or maybe you were, but you found something that was bringing satisfaction to you.

Right. Because then people say, well, then I fell out of love. Like, I'm like, well, I'm not sure what you fell into the first time.

What you fell out of is that what you're telling me is this person no longer satisfies you or gratifies you is what you're telling me is no longer making you feel the way you want to feel or the way that you think you need to feel the way you think you deserve to feel whatever.

I'll go and say this now. I mean, few things. The title of the episode, we went round and round and about,

I don't know, eleven different song titles popped into our head. I mean, we thought about calling this, you know, what is love?

You know, baby, don't hurt me. We thought about I want to know what love is. I mean, all these things. It was pretty funny.

And then we're like, all right, let me see. But what are we trying to communicate? We're trying to communicate that we have misunderstood love.

We really struggle to comprehend God's love for us. But we also struggle to comprehend and understand what the

Lord means in his word, too, when we're told to then love each other. Right. And we're told to love our neighbor as ourselves. So we're hoping to redefine love in one sense today on the podcast and hope it's helpful.

So where we're beginning here is talking about the world's understanding of love. And by the world's understanding, we mean the fallen world as a result of the curse, as a result of sin.

We're talking about, in one sense, too, John, when we say the world, to use biblical language, we're talking about the common kingdom.

Yes. But we're also talking about the kingdom in which Satan is the prince of the power of the air.

I mean, and yeah, the kingdom of darkness. And so the world is influenced by him and is influenced by evil and is characterized by sin.

And so that world's definition of love is what we all naturally operate with as sons and daughters of Adam.

And it is very transactional in terms of how we view it. But I think another thing that we would say about it, this has sort of been implied.

We'll go ahead and maybe deep dive on this for a second. Love for us, as the world would define it, is almost completely about self gratification.

It is. Self -satisfaction, self -realization, all of these things. It's self -protection.

But self -gratification, let's talk about that for a minute. It's all about me. So I will say this often in premarital contexts or in counseling, not formally counseling, but just talking with younger people in the church or talking with couples in our church.

We make fun of things like the classic Jerry McGuire line, you complete me.

It's like, yeah, that's not helpful. Think about yourself. And when you start dating somebody or when you get engaged or when you proceed toward marriage, all of these things are good things that we would get married.

But realistically, what's going on for you? You have met someone in whom you see traits, desirable things that will help you realize and achieve the dreams and the desires that you have for yourself.

Deep down, we don't want to admit it. We don't want to talk like this, but it's kind of like I see in this person an individual who will deliver me all the things that I want.

It's about me. I want marriage. I want a family. I want this.

I want a spouse like this. I want a person who does this, who talks like this, who thinks like this, who looks like this, who makes me feel this way.

And I see all those things in this person, and I love him or her. So you basically want someone to be your emotional savior.

In one sense. And so I think what we need to acknowledge out of the gate is that for us, even as believers, it is a lot more about us when we talk about loving another person.

We say, I love you, but in reality, we're kind of saying, I love what you give me. I love what you do to me.

Yeah. I love how you make me feel. I love the things that I think you are going to be able to deliver to me.

That's right. And when you're no longer able to do that, right, it's a very selfish view of love.

It really is. And you're setting yourself up for disaster because no human being can live up to this. No human being can provide these things.

Well, and I mean, I'll jump ahead and then we'll come back, but I'll jump ahead. This is why James says, why do you fight? Because there will come a time where what

I love and what you love are at war. Your cravings and your passions. That's right. They're at war. But this is just to transition this to why it is so dangerous.

When we hear the love of God, God loves you. I know sometimes it doesn't move people or it scares them.

And this is why they suffer from a low affection or even I would say assurance because they're thinking to themselves,

I'm not transacting with God in a good way. Therefore, how is it that he can love me? Right. Or I don't really appreciate what

God has done up to this point in our relationship because I was expecting this from him and I did not get it. And so my affections for him are low.

But when we turn love into this transactional nature where we're expecting on either side, when someone says,

God loves you. And even when they say, well, God loves you unconditionally, our brains don't have a spot for that because we don't ever function that way.

The only way I would say that you can experience this for a small amount of time in your life is that if you have a child and when that child is young and they can't do anything for you other than take your food and make a mess.

And we understand that sacrificial love because we love this child, even though all they do is take from us.

Yeah. And then like real talk for just a minute, how many times as a parent of young children, you have to battle your frame and your heart because you're resenting that reality.

That's right. Because it's like I'm giving and giving and giving and giving, and I'm getting nothing in return from this child because this child is not capable of giving me anything.

And so all they do, I'm giving and I'm sacrificing and I'm sacrificing sleep. I'm working hard to meet your needs.

And all you do is complain about the service and we get upset, right? So God of course is not like us because he, we're going to get to his love for us later, but he isn't like us.

He doesn't get frustrated with us because we're not able to give him what he, you know, quote unquote needs.

And of course he needs nothing. Right. And we don't bring things to him that he needs. That's right. What's so crazy and brilliant about the world and the world system,

AKA the father of all lies is that he takes this because selfishness, no one would say, walk up to you and say with pride,

I'm a very selfish person. The world knows that's not great. So we have to romanticize it. We romanticize our selfishness because we don't want to admit what we're doing is romanticize it.

We've euphemize it. Yeah. And all of a sudden it's like, we love these movies and we love these songs, but if you really watch them, you're thinking to yourself, this is more about the discovery of two people.

Oh, you make me happy through gratification. I make you happy. Hey, let's make this a team event. And then we romanticize it.

And it's, you know, all happy and songs and words and I love soulmates and meant to be. Or during, you know, the

Christmas season on the Hallmark channel where it's always these new developments of relationships because there's nothing there that requires sacrifice yet because it's all discovery mode.

It's all new, you know? But when 20 years in, you're like, yeah, I know everything about you and it requires me to deal with you in a certain way that is not gratifying to my flesh.

Sure. And this is why many people live and we're going to get beyond. We've talked a lot about romantic relationships, marriage, dating.

We're going to apply this broadly to all of us in the church later, but this is an easy way to illustrate the problem in the world because people are hung up on romantic love.

They're, they're hung up on, you know, all kinds of things, attraction and chemistry and everybody's searching for it.

Everybody wants it. And like you said, songs, books, movies are written, produced about this topic.

And so often what is depicted is the discovery mode portion where people have met someone in whom they think, yeah,

I'm finally going to get what I've been searching for. And so I love the person that's going to give me those things and deliver upon my dreams for myself.

That's true. But then what often occurs for many people in this life, we see it all the time. People just live on this kind of constant cycle of a meet somebody.

It's exciting. You know, I'm gratified. Getting what I want, what I need for a season.

Then it goes poorly. That relationship ends. There's pain. I do whatever I do to cope and medicate myself.

And then I look for a new one. That's right. And people just have that on loop over and over and over again. And the world country songs.

Here's the brilliance. I mean, the brilliance of Satan on the one hand and the reality of the blindness of man in a fallen world, we are able to look at all that and think that's good.

And we, and we have convinced ourselves in the world that that's what's going to make us acceptable. What's acceptable.

We've convinced ourselves that we're going to be happy if we pursue it this way. And the world tells us this is what happiness is.

Right. And in reality it is a fool's errand. It will never deliver. No. You know, so I, no,

I think we can, the reason why it works, I'll say this one last thing on that note, before we transition, the reason why it works is that there is temporary gratification, right?

There's that moment of satisfaction, but we're always looking for that next one, that next one.

And that's what makes unbiblical worldly love, the world of the love of this world, such a trap because you'll never reach that moment.

In the love of God, we're going to get to in a moment, you can reach utter happiness and joy and satisfaction and peace, but in the world, it won't be found.

And even the love that the saints have for one another in the church, you know, as, as a result of, and as an outflow of God's love toward us.

So that's where we're headed. So let's talk in better ways, John, about love. How would we ever know what love is, is a great question to ask.

And the scripture is plain. We will know love in as much as we know God, because God is love.

And then we're going to get in a minute to how do we then love others legitimately? Well, we love because he first loved us.

So God is the ground of all of this. Yeah. Well, I even love how Jesus says, and this is love, right?

And what he describes next is not emotional. It's not selfish. It's not gratification.

It's death. It's sacrifice that a man laid down his life for his friend. It's sacrifice.

It is. So, but we, there's no way in our hearts. We're like, that can't be good. That cannot be good.

So when, when we go back to, there's a reason why the new Testament and the old

Testament has to define love because the world has got it wrong. And so you'd have Christ redefining it.

You have Paul redefining it. So this is Romans eight, right? Paul's redefining. If you want to know what the love of God is, this is the love of God.

It's unconditional, which means you will never find yourself in a situation where God goes, okay, you've gone too far.

You walked too long, whatever you might. This is what it means. There is nothing that can separate you from the love of God to summarize that is unconditional.

Now, some people say, well, that that's ridiculous because then God just kind of has to wink his eye at sin. And that means, well, we can just go run off into sin and do whatever we want because he's saying he loves his unconditional.

And he even says in one sense that even sin itself will not separate us from his love. Yeah, absolutely. But this is what makes, that's right.

How can that be? God is not an unjust God. God is not a tyrant. He isn't going to just wink at sin because that would be horrible for him to do.

So this is what makes the second part of the nature of love important is that God's love is sacrificial.

I mean, this going back to what Christ said is in order for me to show you this love, if I was the one who had to love, uh, uh, take on your payment of your sins so that I could unconditionally love you.

So love becomes sacrificial. And that's hard for us. Not only. And then the third one, I'll let you talk to her in a minute.

But when we talk about relationships and I say to another individual, well,

I'm going to love you as God has loved me. That that's hard for our brain to compute because that means there's no condition that you're going to put myself in that is going to cause me to separate myself from you.

And number two, I understand if I say this statement that I love you, it is going to require that I take on sacrifice on my end so that you remain loved.

Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that we would say about God's love biblically is that it is steadfast.

So when you hear that language, the Lord is a God of steadfast love. He shows steadfast love to thousands of generations.

Yeah. Steadfast love is covenant love and this is not unrelated from the two things that you've already described.

The fact that God's love is sacrificial and the fact that God's love is unconditional. Well, that's very much related to the fact that God makes covenants and he relates to people through covenants.

We think about the covenant of redemption that occurred before the world began where God, the father and God, the son covenanted together that they would save a people from the mass of fallen humanity through the work of the sun.

So this whole premise of sacrifice and unconditional love begins there because the plan for the sacrifice of the sun and the obedience of the sun in the place of those whom he would save is already there.

And so then of course in time and space we have the covenant of works and the covenant of grace whereby God effectively accomplishes that covenant of redemption through the covenant he makes with Adam and then the covenant that he makes with his people where the merits and the benefits of Christ are given to us.

So yeah, on the account of Christ's sacrifice, God's love then comes to us unconditionally and it comes to us in the form of this steadfast covenant love that will never stop.

He will never, he will never relent in his love and his pursuit of his people because of all of this.

So this is what love looks like. And of course it cannot be based on anything in us because all we bring to the table is sin.

We fail, we do not love God as we should and at the same time he is happy to continue to faithfully, relentlessly love us.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes when you hear this, you're thinking, well, sacrifice and unconditional seems dangerous and that in the end

I'm not going to be a very happy person. I'm just going to be beat up and brutalized. That's fair. Yeah. And what is interesting is that the exact opposite is promised to us.

I mean, I love John 15. John 15 has transformed my world forever. I mean, the first time I preached through it, so over years ago when

I started to rethink about the love of God, Jesus literally says, I have told you all of these things so that not only your joy, not only will your joy may be full, but you will have my joy.

That's an unbelievable statement because he's not just saying, Hey, you're going to find some happiness. Is there anyone who is more joyful in the universe than Christ?

And the answer to that is no, he's never, he's, he doesn't have sin that blocks him or detracts him from, from joy.

And he accomplishes everything he means to accomplish. And what's wild is we're told that he delights in us and he delights in like the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called faith versus faithfulness, a primer on rest.

And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer. So Jesus says,

I tell you what, then the question you have to say is, what did he say to them? What things did you say that we could have that?

He said that you love one another. And then he goes, and this is love, right? This is my definition of love.

Cause then he, he, Jesus, thankfully in his kindness understands, we may not understand the definition of love.

So just let me define it for you that I lay my life down for my friends. So the definition of joy, you are promised complete, full, satisfying joy of Christ when you unconditionally and sacrificially love one another.

Yeah. That is a, that isn't, that is an unbelievable promise. So we, we hear that and like, I don't think that's,

I don't know. That doesn't seem right. And then we run back to our selfish love, selfish definition of love.

And we continue to be hurt and empty. And we keep trying to see if that's going to work.

And there comes a moment where it's like, if you trust in God's word, then trust in God's love.

And then give that, I mean, can you imagine, Justin, we already talked about this, but could you imagine what it would experience to have an experience of another human being who legitimately said,

I'm going to make it my mission that you experience physically in person, what I am experiencing spiritually from my father.

Yeah. That would be an un, and if both people were doing it, that's an amazing marriage right there.

It's an amazing relationship. And we're going to get here in just a minute. Imagine a church full of people who have this perspective on loving others.

And imagine what it would be like as an individual who has never been loved that way to walk into a congregation of people who love one another like this and who seek with open arms to welcome others into the fold that they, that others might taste and see that the

Lord is good and that others might enjoy this kind of love amongst the saints because of how

God has loved us. That's right. Which makes sense of how like the new Testament writer, like Paul, for instance, in Ephesians says, when this is established, he says be eager to maintain a bond of peace because it does bring peace.

Right. Amen. Because it's the opposite of James. Why are you fighting with each other's passions? And of course, when we talk about marriage,

I'm gonna make this clear. I know John agrees. When we talk about marriage, marriage is just a subset of our relationships, you know, with all, with all people.

And what I mean is this, we're told to love our neighbors ourselves. That's right. Well, who is, if you're married, who is your primary neighbor, your first neighbor, your first neighbor, it's your spouse.

That's right. If you have children, they would be next because you are responsible with them in unique ways.

For all of us as brothers and sisters in Christ, we then very high priority in our lives, the household of God, those believers with whom we have covenanted and are a part of the church.

We're under the same doctrine. We're under the same authority. And so we're called to love one another in these ways. So when you hear us talking in specific terms about loving each other as husband or wife, or, you know, as brothers or sisters, you can understand this to apply broadly and to apply in a general sense when we are told to love our neighbor by the

Lord himself. So let's apply some of these things specifically and broadly,

John. I mean, as we think about loving people, start wherever you want and then

I'll jump in. Yeah. So I want to go back to a podcast we have done a couple of weeks ago for you. We did it yesterday on church.

Um, how do we title that? Church discernment and pretty culture where there was a wrong reaction, including, you know, we had talked about, uh, a couple of authors in there, including

I guess, dating goodbye. And there was a reaction to all of this. And I, I, I agree with the world's perspective of dating and the world's perspective of marriage is wrong.

It's damaging. So we'll agree there. The response then I felt like was, um, an overreaction and it was an external, it was an outside in approach.

If I control the outside scenario, like enforcing certain kinds of laws and regulations around whatever it is that you want to do as far as dating and meeting people, then

I'll, it'll, it'll protect the purity of the individual. Well, that, that never works. Um, what does

Jesus do? He says, yeah, you're not sleeping around with other people, but you are in your heart. And that's what condemns you. And that's where the real problem is.

It's festering on the inside. So when I'm thinking about, so I've got children, I've got a youth, I've got youth in my church.

And so I am trying to shepherd and care for them. And I finally decided to put my foot down and say, I'm not going to let the world define what is acceptable.

Yeah. It's just ridiculous. I have seen so many teenagers, my children, I have an 18, 16 and 14 year old.

So many of their friends just pummeled by ridiculous relationships where young people who don't understand what the word love means, who doesn't, who don't really understand what marriage is really about.

And they start developing these relationships in such a way. And they're, they're doing everything that the world is telling them to doing it right.

And they're, they're consuming each other, right? Upon their own lusts and desires.

And then they wonder why that doesn't work out. Well, too selfish people trying to be selfish. Isn't going to work out.

You know, what you did is you had two three -year -olds in the nursery who couldn't, who couldn't agree over a toy and they fought over it. And the same thing happens when they're 16, just manifest itself.

That's right. So being able to shepherd our children to say what you're looking for in a relationship is someone that agrees with you on what is love because it does this person understand

God's love for them and that the greatest joy that they have is not what they get from you, your emotions, your body, your affections.

What they get from you is that what they get to give, they're going to give an unconditional sacrificial, ever steadfast love because they understand it's reflecting

God's love. And I understand that that relationship on the general is true, but the

Bible does talk about how it becomes a special and mystical relationship with those who decide to unite in one, become two bodies into one, right?

To leave their families and join together. So if you aren't centered in agreement on what is love, it makes complete sense of why kids are dating all over the place, really dabbling in things that they shouldn't be dabbling in.

And let's just be frank, having intimate relationships they should not be having because they're trying to reach that moment of, well, this is the pinnacle of love because now we're going to, and instead of just standing over here and yelling at kids and saying, don't, don't have sex outside of marriage, don't kiss, don't hold hands, don't date.

The don't list doesn't fix the real problem. What they're seeking is they're seeking this joy and acceptance and they're seeking real biblical love, but they're doing it the way of the world.

And so I think the church has to step in and say, we want you to experience the absolute supreme joy of being one with another person in Christ.

We want that. So let's figure out how to get there and not hurt other people on the way. I say this all the time.

I don't care how you pursue, uh, getting to know somebody, if you want to call it dating or courting,

I really don't really care. You cannot violate scripture in that you cannot selflessly take advantage of this individual.

And the Bible says, you still need to be eager to maintain the bond of peace. So whatever relationship you're developing, if at the end of that relationship you guys can't be in the same church or causes fraction in the church, it's sin.

Yeah. That was, I'm going to come at some different things. I'm going to talk in a more broad way.

Um, I think I've said this before. When we think about love for the brethren, love for the brothers and sisters and how we're to love one another in the church.

If that's not at the top of our list of what characterizes a

Christian, we're wrong. If you survey the new Testament, love for one another and unity in the spirit are,

I think the two most clear things that show up over and over and over again in the writing of the apostles, when it comes to how we live together in the church.

So if you're asking me, what does a Christian look like? Well, a Christian looks like a person who loves his brothers and sisters or her brothers and sisters, right?

Okay. Well, what might that look like and how is that accomplished? How has that realized?

Well, it's realized first and foremost, through God's love toward us, which we've talked about the sacrificial, unconditional, steadfast covenant, love of God toward us that he has shown us so powerfully in the

Lord Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished on our behalf. And then united to Christ, we love one another.

We look to Christ and we love one another. And what does that love look like? How do we love others?

We look to God's law. I mean, the Lord tells us what love to him looks like. And he tells us what love to neighbor looks like.

And so we assess those things and we think in these terms. And Luther's got some wonderful stuff in his shorter catechism where he unpacks the commandments, the commandments of the moral law.

And he talks really well about the second table of the law and what it looks like to love neighbor. And how we ought to look at this is

God has loved us sacrificially. God has loved us unconditionally. He's loved us in a covenant way. And we are in return to love and fear

God. And when I say fear, I mean reverence. I mean all. And then out of all of that, we honor our father and mother.

Well that means that we submit joyfully to those who are in authority over us. You know, and we don't seek to subvert that.

We don't disrespect them. You know, we don't murder. So we don't seek to harm other people, but we actually pursue their good, their benefit, their flourishing.

We protect them. That's how we live. You know, we're not to commit adultery, right? So we're not seeking just self gratification, the using of other people.

But we look to be faithful and upright in how we interact and live with one another. You know, we're not to steal.

So we're not to harm other people in those ways. We're not to take things that belong to others. We're not to rob our neighbor of his property.

We're actually to help him increase what he has, you know, and do good things for our neighbor.

We're not to bear false witness. So we're to use our words for good. We're to use our words to build up. We're not to use our words to tear down for our own gain and our own advantage.

We're not to covet. We're not to envy what our brothers and sisters have. We actually want them to do well.

We want them to have good things. We want to rejoice with them as they do have good things. And when they do suffer, we want to weep with them.

You know, this is clear. I mean, you hear me say these things from the 10 commandments, and you're saying, well,

Justin, you sound like you're reading from Paul or you're reading from James, or you're reading from John. Exactly.

Because the word of God is so consistent. So this is what it looks like for us to love each other in the church. And a comment really quickly.

We've said some helpful things. You in particular, John, I think have said some very helpful things today concerning marriage and dating. I can't help but think that one of the passages that is so often read at weddings, 1

Corinthians 13, is actually written to the church in the context of corporate worship and the gifts that God gives for worship and for the building up of the body of Christ.

And we know the passage well, you know, love is patient and it's kind and it bears all things.

You know, it doesn't take advantage and all this stuff, very consistent with what we're talking about. So this is how we're to live with one another in the church.

And just like we will fall on our faces, if we think in transactional self -gratifying terms in marriage or with our kids, we'll fall on our faces in the church too.

Think about how many times people get upset and leave the church because they haven't had their needs met from their perspective, or they haven't been gratified from their perspective, the way they want to be.

We could maybe talk more about some of these things in the SR portion, but a lot could be said here.

I've talked for a minute. Why don't you say some things? Yeah, no, I think what you said is very helpful. Cause I wanted to add on that.

I wanted you to finish your thought. Everything you said, it sounds like this long list.

And the difference is, this is what I love about reformed theology is that what is always kept at the forefront of the promises of what we're given in Christ is that peace, hope, and joy, right?

It's not do this or else. They're not threats. That's why I always quote 2 Peter 1 .9, because he says, if you're not doing these things, you've forgotten, you've been cleansed.

He's pulling you back to the freedom and the hope and the joy of the gospel. So what I love is that the

Father says, I want you to love. I want you to take the experience you've had with me, this unconditional, self -sacrificial, steadfast love, and I want you to have the joy of giving it to others.

And then he goes, by the way, this is what it's going to look like. He's going to patience and gentleness and meekness and kindness and long suffering.

Right. And then, so you think to yourself, okay, so when I am patient with this church member, with my wife or with my brother and sister at home or whatever, my neighbor, that God promised me is that he'll bring me joy.

And you, you have to remember that because we want to glorify

God. We want to glorify him. We want to please him. And as we do, he doesn't promise us just to tap on the back.

He says, no, I'm going to give you that thing. The world is promising you that you were pursuing selfishly.

That's right. Because Justin, think about it. Human nature, we're naturally, we desire to be satisfied.

We desire to be happy. We want those things, right? Well, and that's why we're told to love our neighbor as ourselves. No man hated his own flesh, even

Paul would say. Took it right out of my mouth. Right. That's the illustration he uses that naturally we want to do what's best for us and it's so upside down.

The whole kingdom of God is completely flipped upside down in order to live, you die, right?

In order to have joy, you instead of selfishly pursue it, you selflessly let it go and you have it.

It's like the moment you stop pursuing it, you get it. Yeah. In order to be filled, you empty yourself.

Right. Yeah. We could go on and on. Right. And so this is why in the kingdom ethic, in the kingdom society, it doesn't, this is why

Jesus says, when the world looks at you, they're going to call you crazy because the way that we live, like it doesn't, it's just an outside, uh, outside of the kingdom of God.

If, if we were to take Jesus' advice where it says, um, let's, you know, do good to those who hurt you.

Yeah. That's bad advice outside the kingdom. Well, that's right. Because nations would then destroy each other.

Well, and take advantage and take advantage. But inside the kingdom, we know what we're trying to accomplish and we can do that.

Yeah. I mean, I really want to talk about, you know, kingdom of Christ and like redemptive kingdom, common kingdom stuff, but that's another day.

Yeah. But it really is important that people understand that in the kingdom of Christ here, when

I hear you hear me say that here, the church, right. In the church, we have our own faith. We have our own liturgy, but we have our own ethic, like you're saying.

And that's what we're talking about today is that ethic of love. Like if there's one word that is the banner that flies over the ethic of the kingdom of Christ, what is it?

Yeah. It's love. What drives the people of God? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, this, so this redefinition I think is important and it's hard because Justin, it takes time for our natural flesh reaction.

We meant, you know, you and I, if we're willing to admit this when we will is that you and I, we wrestle this with daily.

Like we, we get upset with our children. We get upset with our wives. We get upset with our, you know, I mean, wives singler, you know, we don't have multiple lives.

But what I has got you cleared that up. Yeah. Yeah. You know, wise, what has helped me in redefining my brain and redefining my desires and my flesh and realizing that I will be taken care of and I will have everything

I need in Christ. If I let it all go, what has helped me in this is something that we talk about all the time is the constant feeding of the means of grace.

Because if you think about what the means of grace is offering you, he says, I'm giving you everything you don't deserve.

Everything you don't deserve. And I'm also giving you everything that you lack. That's right. Right. You can't, you can't.

And that is primarily the preaching of the word administration of the sacraments. Right. Go back to a series we just did on, you know, whatever the means of grace we did, you know, what happened to preaching, what happened to baptism, what happened to the

Lord's table. And I love how God says, okay, this is what my kingdom looks like.

Yeah. In the churches. Right. Yeah. This is what my message is. And this is the result joy.

Yeah. And this is how just related thought, because I was having a conversation about this with some people from my church the other day, when

Jesus says to his followers that the church is to be a city on a hill, we're to be light, we're to be salt.

Well, how exactly are we those things? Well, we are those things in large measure.

When we live this way, when we live according to this ethic and when we love like this, it's very compelling to witness it and to walk into such a community of people.

That should be our hope that we love one another in such ways. Not only that people walk in and are just like, man,

I, I am being loved in ways that I can't even comprehend really, but also that they are struck by it in such a manner that they think perhaps

Christ is the reason for this because he is. And we've talked about it. Cause his love for us, the love of God toward us in him is the ground of the whole thing.

Yeah. I have one last thought and I know that we need to get over to our other podcast. But so Justin, if you think about when we defined the nature of love, the first thing we defined it as is unconditional.

And the second thing we defined it as was sacrificial. And then the third thing we described it as was steadfast.

Um, those have to be the description in a world of sin.

Cause if there is no sin, then love is going to be defined differently. Right? But because we live in a world of sin, the nature of it saying it's unconditional, which means there are going to be situations that you are going to be tested by which, okay, this is going to, this is going to challenge my claim for loving you.

Yes. Because none of us are lovable. Certainly not all the time. Right. And God loves the unlovable in how he's loved us.

Which is what the good news is. Right? So I love how, you know, we just did a podcast, uh, was last week, yesterday on forgiveness.

And I think forgiveness works well because there are two things that are commanded without exception to forgive and to love.

Uh, what is, for Shaun say, if you say you love God and you have love for your brother, you're a liar and the truth is not in you. And in fact, you demonstrate your love for God through how you love others.

Right? So we don't want to live in fear of loving one another, because that again, misses out on what the joy of what love is.

And I think this is why the constant preaching of the gospel, Justin, I'll say this and we can talk about it in SR.

I believe that the love of God has diminished in churches because we have preached to fear -based guilt driven relationship with God and that we move that into our relationship with our marriages.

We move it into relationships with our children. Even governments use this. When you put the preaching of Christ and the gospel back at the

Supreme of the pulpit ministry, all of a sudden people's perspectives change, which means their lives change.

Right. We always question the love of God for us because we know we fail. And when we, cause we naturally think in these terms, because when other people fail us, it affects us.

It affects how we feel, whether we want to admit that or not. So we think God has to be the same way that when

I fail God, he's going to feel differently about me, you know, and it affects how

I then think about him in his relationship to me. I agree with you, which is why the preaching of Christ, the extolling of the love and the mercy and the power of the offices of Christ in our place, so important for everything, including how we love each other.

So John and I are about to head over and record another podcast for members, for those who have partnered with Theocast.

That podcast and that membership is called Semper Reformanda. If you're interested in learning more about SR, as we affectionately call it, you can find information about it on our website, theocast .org.

As an SR member, you do get access to this additional podcast content each week, but you're also going to become a part of a community of people.

You can join that community of people on an app where there's all kinds of good interaction taking place.

People are encouraging and helping one another in the faith as we all learn and grow together. We just did a live

Q and A. We did a live Q and A that happened last night. Pretty happy one too. It was.

So there's lots of things that you get access to through becoming an SR member, but largely what

I want to convey is that you're becoming part of something. That's right. You're becoming a part of a group of people who are seeing things that are quite old and whose lives are being transformed by the truths of the scriptures as the saints have understood them through the history of the church.

That sounds good to you. Check it out. So John and I are headed there and we'll talk with the rest of you who might not yet be members of SR next week.