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Okay, before I begin the scripture reading for today, I did want to address one of the hymns that we sing.
And can it be that I should gain? One of the lines there says, it says that Christ bled for Adam's helpless race.
And that's more of an Arminian understanding of the atonement. Christ, he died for his people that he intended to save, not for everybody indiscriminately.
So that's something that we want to make sure we address, that we distinguish. That Christ died for his people, like we've seen many times in many passages throughout the
Bible. And so with that, let's go ahead and turn in our
Bibles to 1st John chapter 5. And I actually wanted to revisit a passage and kind of dive into it once again a little deeper.
Since there was a lot here that I think would be good for us to address together as a church.
And in 1st John chapter 5, verses 2 through 3. 1st
John chapter 5, verses 2 through 3. And I'll begin in verse 1.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the one who gives new birth, loves also the one who has been born of him.
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love and do his commandments.
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.
Amen. So the last time we visited this passage was very clearly, this is very clearly about the subject matter of love.
The subject of love and God's love, but also our love to God and our neighbor.
So love and obedience being very closely tied together all throughout
Scripture. This happens to be another passage which very clearly points us to that.
We know that we love God and the children of God, when we love God and do or keep his commandments.
So we saw in the passage here, there is the source of our faith, which is very clearly pointing to God's regenerating
Holy Spirit and means of grace. Such that everyone who believes has been born of him already, has been born already.
You don't believe in order to be born again, much like in Armenian understandings, and similar to what the hymn teaches about Christ dying for all, and it's just up to you whether you believe or not, in order to be born again.
No, that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible says everyone who believes that Jesus is the
Christ will be born again, or has been born again of God already, right?
And so that's what is important for us to understand in the order of salvation. The Latin phrase, the ordos salutis, that's the order of salvation in God's redeeming process for us.
Justification, election, all of those things, all the way up to glorification. So that's what this is pointing to as well, the order of salvation, that there are logical priorities or things that take place first, logically speaking.
Our Heavenly Father gives us faith, the gift of faith, graciously, by first begetting us by His Spirit, by making us born again, by regenerating us spiritually.
And faith, therefore, presupposes and requires the new birth.
That's what Jesus taught in John chapter 3. Let's turn there briefly in John chapter 3, where Jesus Christ really, literally, very plainly teaches this very thing.
In the Gospel of John, when He is speaking with Nicodemus the Pharisee, a ruler of the
Jews. In John chapter 3,
I'll begin in verse 1. Jesus answered and said to him,
He cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Nicodemus answered and said to him,
How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things?
Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness of what we have seen, and you do not accept our witness.
If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
Amen. This is also tying into the previous sermons on bearing witness.
On the heavenly, the witnesses that Christ brings through the
Word, and His miracles, and many other aspects of His ministry. Yet here, even
Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, which Jesus calls Him, did not quite understand what
Jesus was talking about. This is talking about spiritual things. And in order to enter the kingdom of God, in order to see the kingdom of God, you must first be born again.
That's the prerequisite. And the Spirit blows wherever it wishes. We don't know where it's going. We don't necessarily know who the
Spirit is going to save. Right? But we know that we must be born again first in order to believe, to see the kingdom of God, to enter the kingdom of God.
Seeing the kingdom of God, remember, seeing a lot of visual metaphors, visual seeing, perceiving, a lot of those aspects, verbs, are used as metaphors for believing, understanding, right?
The light, seeing the light, much like 1 John does in his letters. So that's very important that we grasp properly in light of our day and age where this understanding is not predominant in a sense.
So we need to make sure that we understand that the external call of the gospel is how
God works, the external call, and then leading to the internal effectual call, as it's called in our
Reformed tradition. That's when God the Spirit regenerates us and grants us the gift of faith.
Adoption, the legal aspect of being adopted into God's family, not by nature but by legal privilege.
Then repentance. In other words, repentance as a change of mind, as a change of mind, a change of conviction from not believing or understanding the truth to now understanding and believing the truth of the gospel.
And faith. And faith. Faith being understanding and agreeing with the truth of the gospel.
The truth of the gospel, which is impossible for the natural man to do apart from the
Spirit of God, which is exactly what Jesus was teaching us here in John chapter 3. Justification, adoption.
Once again, these critical doctrines of the scripture are all part of the order of our salvation.
Sanctification, perseverance, assurance, glorification. And note, obviously, we have to understand that sanctification follows our justification.
You do not need to sanctify yourself or be fully sanctified in order to be justified, contrary to many false teachings and religions today, including that of the
Church of Rome and of Eastern Orthodoxy. So, then this brings us to the fruit of our faith.
The consequence, the outcome, or the result of our faith, which is that both faith and love are begotten of God.
They're both begotten of God. Not only our faith, but our true love is also born of God, His Spirit.
It's also born of God and comes from God, who is love Himself. Like 1 John 4 tells us, right?
So, this is what we really need to make sure we understand carefully and distinguish properly in scripture.
Rightly divide the word. Rightly understanding and dividing the word. So, we want to understand also, here in this passage, what takes place during our sanctification.
During our sanctification, which follows our justification, our declared righteousness legally before God by grace through faith.
This is, in other words, the Christian life. The life after we are justified and saved.
Not in order to get saved, but because we are saved. We live a life of love and gratitude and grace.
Just like the Heidelberg Catechism is organized into those paradigms. Guilt, grace, gratitude.
Gratitude. Sanctified gratitude. So, there are many of these doctrines recurrently repeated in John's letter, including in chapter 5, all throughout.
There's these assurance, you know, by this we know. We know by these things.
Love. Obviously, love is a huge subject in John's letter.
Most of John chapter 4 and on after that is that other love chapter that we've explored before.
Both horizontal and vertical. Horizontal being toward our neighbor and vertical being
Godward, toward God. So, the relationship between love and obedience, as we will clearly see once again.
And, obviously, regeneration and adopted. We are children of God because God regenerates us and adopts us by His grace through His Spirit.
So, this brings us now to the assurance. The assurance of our faith. Back in the passage, regarding the assurance of our faith, is where the
Apostle tells us in 1 John 5, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and everyone who loves the one who gives new birth freely, as a gift by His grace alone, loves also the one who has been born of Him.
By this, we all know that we love the children of God who have been spiritually reborn by Him already.
When we love God and keep His commandments, keep
His commandments for this is the love of God. This is what it means to love
God. In other words, that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome.
His commandments are not burdensome. In that last part, regarding His commandments not being burdensome, we read in our call to worship in Psalm 119.
In Psalm 119, back in verse 174, it says,
I long for your salvation, O Yahweh, and your law is my delight.
Your law is my delight. God's law for us is not a burden the way many people see it, who may very well not be saved or may have a very poor understanding of our relationship to God and His law.
How we relate to the law of God reflects very much on our spiritual state and condition because as believers, the law of God is our delight.
We should delight in the law of God because we know that it is holy, righteous, just, and good, like Paul says in Romans and several other passages.
Amen. So we need to be sure to have a proper understanding.
The law is not a bad thing. The law of God is a good thing. And the law grounds many things that have fundamental things about how we relate to God and man because the law is based on, or love rather, is based on the law of God.
It's the other way around. True love is based on the law of God with respect to us.
And love, God is love, of course, and He Himself is righteous, but our love is based on the law of God fundamentally.
And so there's a clear repeated emphasis on loving
God by obeying Him, by keeping His commandments. In particular, the emphasis is on loving
God's people, right? God's people. By this, they will know, the world will know, by their love for one another.
That's what Jesus even said in His high priestly prayer that I preached on not too long ago in John 17.
So faith, all of these gifts, faith, sanctification, love, obedience, assurance, all the chain of redemption, the golden chain of redemption and more, they are spiritually necessary outcomes and consequences of God's love for us in our new sanctified life in Christ.
Because everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, of being graciously united to Christ by faith, because it is
God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure, like Philippians 2 .13
reveals to us. So the believer will grow, will grow.
If you are justified and have received God's Spirit, you will grow. You will grow in your love for God and for other believers, especially, and for your neighbor, even for your enemies, for those who also have been born of Him.
That's what the passage in 1 John particularly focuses on. Because the one who has been born of God, everyone who loves the one who gives new birth, loves also the one who has been born of Him.
He loves his Christian neighbor, his brother and sister. And it was funny, because I was thinking about this, because there's a pastor, he has a
YouTube channel, and he'll say at the end of his videos, he'll say, Love you lots. And it's like, well,
I thought about that. How can you love somebody you don't know, though? There's something in there that didn't sit right with me.
And that's part of what we also must understand, is that love is not ignorant.
Love is not ignorant. Love has knowledge of the individual person that you are loving.
You really cannot love somebody you don't know. You cannot love somebody you don't know.
That's not love. Love knows a person well enough to forgive and overlook faults, for example.
True love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Right? Love bears no record of wrong.
How can you hold no record of wrong, if you don't even know the person? If you don't know their wrongs, or their faults, or their sins committed against you, how can you love that person?
So therefore, we must see, we must know and understand that love is based on knowledge, true knowledge.
Not on a deception or something that's not true. But love sees the truth for what it really is, and it overlooks the bad, the faults, according to God's law and love.
Because God Himself overlooked our faults by sending
His Son to die for us, right? While we were yet sinners, Christ died. He loved us enough to die for the ungodly.
Amen? So we must therefore love even our enemies. Because we understand that God's love for us, we don't deserve it.
None of us do. That's why we are called to love in the same way. Because we don't deserve
God's love. And yet we received it graciously by faith, through His Spirit. So, we will grow.
If we're not growing in our love, something is wrong. Because that's what
James 2 talks about as well. We're making God a liar. You cannot say or profess
God when you don't have love in you. If you don't have love in you, then you don't have
God in you. Love according to God's law. Not perversions of love or lust or anything else.
We're talking about God's love according to His law. To love God and neighbor based on His Decalogue, the
Ten Commandments and beyond that. So, His Word as a whole.
So, we have to make sure that these things are not lost in the mass of confusion today, even in many churches.
So, we see that verse 2 also closely ties together love with obedience to the law of God as well as our assurance.
As well as our assurance. As we've seen many times previously in the letter as well and in John's Gospel.
Because love helps to give evidence to our neighbor and to us that, hey, yes, we belong to God because we have love.
We have true love and even though it's not perfect, we are growing in love. But love also brings us to repentance when we do sin and we forgive others when they sin against us.
That is love. It doesn't mean that we're perfect, but that we are striving and growing in perfection of God's love in us and for us.
So, obviously, if there's anything that's utterly clear and not confusing in the
Bible, it is that to love God is to obey Him. One of the clearest teachings in all of Scripture.
For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments. But not only that,
His commandments are not burdensome. That's also evidence of our salvation that we love the law of God.
We delight in the law of God. That doesn't mean that we always perfectly do it and sometimes we struggle and we sin and we don't want to do the right thing.
Those are struggles because we are in the flesh. But the flesh no longer defines who we are.
We have received the renewed nature that is according to God's Spirit and Word because He births in us new desires and new convictions of the truth of His Word.
And that causes us also to seek to love, please and obey Him. Amen? So there's another parallelism here.
To love God's people. To love God's people, to love one another, means that we also love
God. It's a consequence or a reflection of the fact that we love God.
Because only if you love God can you love anybody.
Our love for God must be rectified first. If we don't have love for God and that means fundamentally to believe and obey
Him, to believe His Word and grow in that love for Him.
If we do not have that love with God first, nothing else is going to align.
Nothing else. Because God is a source of love. He is love. He is a source of all true love. Whether it's marital love or friendship love, fellowship, it doesn't matter what it is.
Love for neighbor, for enemy, all of it comes from the God of love, who is love.
Amen? So that's fundamental for us to understand.
And verse 2 in 1 John 5 further reveals to us the order, right?
The order or priority of loves. Because God's love is always first and foremost.
It's always fundamental. It's necessary prerequisite for any other love to take place.
Every aspect of love that God ordained and designed is based on His love.
His love within the Triune Fellowship of the Trinity, the three persons of the Godhead, and in His love for mankind.
Love us so much that even though we didn't deserve it, He still sent His own
Son to die for us and redeem us so that we may be restored by His love and be able to love others according to God's law of love.
So 1 John 4, 19, remember that? We love, why? Because He first loved us.
Amen? He first loved us. And the very first commandment from God that we must obey in order to begin to obey all of these other commandments, though, is based on a fundamental conviction.
This is why we see that love is based on knowledge. True love is based on knowledge.
Love is not ignorant. Love, in fact, what does 1 Corinthians 13 say? Love rejoices in ignorance or love rejoices with the truth.
Amen? Love rejoices with the truth. And it is why, in order to love, we must first repent and believe the
Gospel and believe that Jesus is the Christ. But that faith and belief comes from God.
It comes from His Spirit. Apart from that, we cannot have true love because faith, belief, is our first response.
It's our first response to what God fundamentally requires first and foremost that we must believe.
That we must believe. And that belief is a gift. It's not a work that we ourselves do.
Yes, we respond with this faith because God gives it to us. He gives it to us.
Because apart from that, the natural man doesn't want God. He wants only what he wants. And at the same time, loving both
God and our born -again believers, brothers and sisters, are tied together.
You cannot have one without the other. That doesn't make any sense. And the
Bible clearly shows that that's a contradiction. You cannot have that. You cannot have a love for God but not love your brothers and sisters in Christ.
That's a contradiction. That is actually more likely hypocrisy.
Just like the Word says. You cannot contradict this link or this chain of love in our faith and our practice because it reveals a disconnected, a false, a dead, hypocritical faith.
Like James 2 .15 tells us. Because if a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warm to be filled, and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?
Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead by itself.
So even if you wish them well, even if you say go in peace, be filled, but you wash your hands of any burden of helping your neighbor in their time of need, that shows hypocrisy on our part.
Love is not just empty words. Love follows through with action.
And this is very basic. This is something that everybody can understand. This is not a complex doctrine of the Trinity or Christology.
How is Christ both God and man? This is not difficult. This is very simple, practical things that God gives us a heart and a desire for.
Because faith without works is dead. And faith without love, in other words, is dead.
That's true love. True love looks out for the benefit of others, especially our brothers and sisters.
So we need to take heed then, beloved, to the faithful and true words of Jesus the
Christ, our Lord and Savior. What did He say repeatedly in the
Gospel of John and all throughout the Gospels in His word? If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my
Father and I will love him and will disclose myself to him, reveal myself to him. That's John 14.
So one of the clearest teachings of the Bible, sadly, is often distorted today by this pietism and the sense of emotionalism.
It's not about how you feel is secondary to what you know, what you believe.
And your action, that's what fundamentally love is.
We may feel certain ways, our emotions come and go, they sway, and our emotions really should follow our conviction.
That's why the psalmist says, I delight in your law because I believe you and your word, and I believe and understand that your law is good.
That's why I delight in it. Otherwise, I wouldn't. So we know, therefore we love, because we know
God and His word, His Gospel of salvation.
These are Gospel guarantees, by the way. God will guarantee this new life and all these new ways of obedience in us, in our lives as believers, purposing and endeavoring us constantly to walk with Him in all the ways of new obedience, like the larger catechism says.
I love how our Baptist confession also says in chapter 16, paragraph 2, which is on good works.
And these good works done in obedience to God's commandments are the fruits and evidence, consequence, result of a true and living faith.
By them, believers express their thankfulness to God, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, enhance their profession of the
Gospel before the unbelieving world, salt and light, and silence the opponents of the
Gospel. So they glorify God, whose workmanship they are created in Christ Jesus to do good works and to produce the fruits of holiness which lead to eternal life.
They bring us to the point of glorification and eternal life, not by virtue of doing them.
It's by the consequence of God working in us. And with that said, let's turn over to the
Gospel of Luke 10. The Gospel of Luke 10, verse 25.
As we read through a very familiar parable of the
Good Samaritan. This is an amazing passage that sadly gets very twisted and misunderstood, but with a proper understanding of the
Word and the law Gospel distinction, we can really be blessed by the teaching of God's Holy Word.
And this passage is a very powerful teaching from Christ our Lord. Luke 10, verse 25.
And behold, a scholar of the law stood up and was putting him,
Christ, to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Notice the words there.
What shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he,
Christ, said to him, what is written in the law? Christ points him to the law. How do you read it?
And he answered and said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.
And Christ said to him, You have answered correctly. What does he say? Do this and you will live.
Do this and you will live. Do and live. Do and therefore live.
By wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
Jesus replied and said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
And a priest happened to be going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion.
And he came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, and he put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
And on the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when
I return, I will repay you. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands?
And he said, The one who showed mercy toward him. Then Jesus said to him,
Go and do the same. So notice the very important teaching lessons here in this episode of Christ's ministry.
The teacher of the law was wishing to justify himself with the law.
And Jesus was showing him the law. And he was showing him a particular story because this story is very offensive, was very offensive to Jews back in that day because Samaritans were considered like half -breeds.
They were considered true Jews. They were considered unclean, second - or third -class citizens.
So it was considered shameful to even be associated with them. And yet it was the
Samaritan who demonstrated that he belonged to God because he actually loved his neighbor enough to care for him after being beaten and robbed.
Whereas the priest and the Levite went about their way and just kept going.
And obviously they were Jews. Those men were Jews. So here
Jesus is rebuking these false notions of what the
Jews thought about race and about them being God's people simply because they were ethnically related to Abraham or whatever the case.
Or because the Samaritans are not fully Jewish that makes them somehow unclean or whatever.
No. Your uncleanness comes from your sinful, wicked heart. That's what they're demonstrating.
The clean one was the Samaritan because he expressed his faith of love with his neighbor that was in a time of need.
So these are very critical parts of God's Word that we need to understand.
This is fundamental to everything that we do. Do this and live.
Do this and live. Christ here was pointing back to the original covenant that God had made with Adam where he failed.
He was supposed to obey God in order to gain that eternal life. He didn't have eternal life because he died.
He was being tested in that trial. But the whole point of that was you failed.
We all failed in Adam. We cannot do and live. In order to live we must first believe what
Christ did for us. He is the fulfillment of that law and that covenant.
That was the whole reason for Christ coming. If we could do it on our own Jesus would not have needed to come in the first place.
That's why Jesus was always constantly telling them I am the door, the way, the truth, the life.
You have to come through me. No one can get to the Father except through me. I am the Savior.
I am the Christ. That's what all of that means. Apart from him we are lost and fallen sinners, wretched, and we don't have love, true love, apart from God's grace and gospel.
So that, beloved, is of utmost importance.
I'd like to close us out today on the Gospel of John once again.
In chapter 15. We turn to the Gospel of John in chapter 15. A very powerful passage from the ministry of Christ.
The Gospel of John 15, verse 8. Christ is speaking, saying,
My Father is glorified by this, that you may bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.
Notice that. We glorify God by bearing fruit, this fruit of love and obedience.
Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love.
Abide in my love. So God loves us and we love him in return because we now can by his
Spirit and means of grace, his Holy Word, the fellowship of God's people, and so on.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my
Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
Your joy may be complete. This is the joy of our assurance that we belong to him because his commandments are not burdensome.
It's evidence of that. It's fruit. Notice that Christ is speaking about fruit, not about getting right with him.
It's about fruit of belonging to him. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what
I command you. Amen. Verse 17. This I command you, that you love one another.
It is a command. It is not a suggestion. Not only must we love one another, we should want to do that.
It's not a burden for me to love
God's people because God gives us that joy. Sometimes it can be difficult.
Sometimes people can be difficult to love because people can sin against us. Even believers can sin against us.
Maybe we have some unresolved issues or they may have unresolved issues or both that are stumbling blocks and that cause us to stumble into sin instead of loving.
That happens. That is why we also need to repent and to grow and to not let these issues, the flesh, get the best of us.
But nevertheless, we are commanded to love one another.
To love one another. Because both Jesus and God our
Father define true love primarily and almost exclusively as obedience to his word, to his law, to his commandments.
This is the unbreakable chain of love between God, man,
God's love for his people and our obedience to his commandments in return as a gracious response.
As a response to his grace, that is. To his grace.
Remember also, beloved, that the entire law of God, you can sum up the entire law of God with a single word.
Love. That is the law. All summed up.
Love. Love for God and love for neighbor. Romans 13, verse 8.
Let's wrap it up in Romans 13, verse 8. There we find a very clear expression of this very thing.
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another.
He's talking to believers, God's people. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
For this, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And if there is any other commandment, all the rest of them, it is summed up in this word, this one command.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does not work evil against a neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law of God.
Amen? Amen, beloved. Let's bow our heads in a closing word of prayer. Our gracious, precious
Lord, we thank you for your word today and your law of love, Father God. We ask that you guide us and give us that grace.
Help us to grow in the grace of your love, Father, so we will also love you and your people and our neighbors.
Father, we ask that you lead us and guide us unto all truth. Help us to understand and to grasp these things,
Lord. Knowing that love is based on knowledge of the truth, Lord, that because love rejoices with the truth, as your holy word says, help us and guide us,
Lord. In our struggles, when our flesh is weak, when we falter, when we let the enemy gain a foothold, help us,
Lord, to repent. When we fall short, when we sin, we know that we still sin, Lord, that we still are not fully perfected and glorified, that we still struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Father, help us, Lord, sanctify us by the truth of your word, first and foremost, to grow in these things and to grow in our love for you and for one another.
In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the
Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be
Biblical, Reformed, Historic, Confessional, Loving, Discerning Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the
Christian faith. If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com