The Distinguishing Mark of Authentic Christianity

The 19th century pastor J .C. Ryle once preached, you little know what an anxious situation a minister of the church is placed in at all times.

And never more so than when preparing for the pulpit. Perhaps you may think

I have nothing to do but open my Bible, take the first text that meets my eye, and write off a sermon in two or three hours.

But it is far otherwise. I have to watch for your souls as one that would give account.

And if you will not think about them yourselves, I must try to persuade you to it. Now I search the

Scriptures and compare them with what I see and observe and hear of those who live about me, and I declare to you with grief and sorrow, in many, many cases,

I cannot make the two agree. Ryle is telling the people entrusted to his care, he observes people and he observes the

Scriptures. And too often, he cannot make the two match up. So I ask

Providence Baptist Church this morning, what think ye of Christ?

Will you turn to Ephesians 6. The captain says, come over here. We are approaching our destination.

So we will eventually land this plane. We're on the final approach in Ephesians.

We will not land today, but we can start preparing ourselves, lifting our tray upright on our tray table, fastened securely.

We are going to land this plane. But we have some more work to do today.

Maybe after today, another two to three sermons. But the runway is certainly approaching.

Today, though, we want to consider this idea of the distinguishing mark of authentic Christianity.

What is the distinguishing mark of authentic Christianity? And that will be set up in next week's sermon on Doctrine Produces Devotion.

So what do you think, ye of Christ? Would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word?

Lord, keep this in the back of your mind this morning. And we are on our final two verses.

Paul concludes by writing this, which by the way, is also under the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit. Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith from God the

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our

Lord Jesus Christ. With love, incorruptible.

Father, help us to understand this text. Help us to understand the distinguishing mark of authentic Christianity.

We look around today and see there is a phantasm, if you will, between what people say

Christianity is and what the Bible describes Christianity as. And we want to just recover what the book says.

We want to be like our forefathers of old. We want to hold fast to the Word. We want to be people of the book.

We want to declare the glory of Christ to the nations. Help us today to examine ourselves, to understand, do we have peace with God?

There's nothing more important in this room today than to discern whether or not we have peace with God.

If we have peace with everyone else, but not with you.

Our life is in vain. Help us to understand this reality.

And help us to see also those who have received your peace love Christ. Oh, we don't love

Him as much as we ought. But that loves

Christ. Bless us this day under the preaching of Jesus Christ.

Let fresh rain fall today as the rain is falling outside. Let your mercies from heaven fall upon us.

I can't stand before these people upon my own prayer life, my own

Bible reading, my own righteousness. I need your mercy and grace. And Lord, your people need it too.

Feed us richly from your mercy. Let us understand these truths. Thank you for this great letter.

We pray that we would apply it to our hearts. It is upon our hearts today.

Amen. You may be seated. A good friend visiting.

And you know, you're ready to get back to New York. You're about to leave and you're sad to see them go. That's how

I feel about this letter. What a wonderful letter Ephesians has been to us. This letter is one of deep doctrinal truth, practical instruction,

Gospel encouragement. Ephesians, of course you know, is six chapters long.

It divides rather nicely in half. J. Siddlow Baxter says that the first three chapters are about the believer's wealth, and the last three chapters are about the believer's walk.

And so in chapters 1 -3, we saw the unsearchable riches of Christ.

We observed God's election and human depravity and God's sovereign love and His amazing grace.

And we beheld the great Gospel unfolded. And we saw reconciliation in chapter 3 between Jews and Gentiles.

And then we get to chapter 4, and the text just says this, Therefore a prisoner of the

Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. And we think about all these great things that we read and studied in the first three chapters and things we sang about today.

The great love of God for His people. The great love of God for even His creation.

The great love of God displayed for the church and in the cross. And we say, hallelujah!

And we live out the realities of what God is worth. Ephesians is heavily theological, because when understood rightly, right theology produces holiness and love in God's people.

Doctrine produces devotion. So that's a bit of a reminder of what's in the middle of the book.

And we're not in the middle of the book anymore. We're at the end. So I remind you how Paul begins and ends the letter.

I go back to Ephesians 1, verse 2. Paul begins the letter by saying this,

Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the

Lord Jesus Christ. He begins the letter with grace and peace. And then you have all the middle that we talked about, and he ends the letter.

Verse 23, Jesus, grace be with all who love our

Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. He begins the letter with grace and peace. He ends the letter with peace and grace.

And so here is something to note about authentic Christianity.

Authentic Christianity flows from grace and peace.

Peace and grace are the believer's possession. So when he says in verse 23,

Peace be to the brothers, he means their brothers and sisters.

Peace be to the family of God. Peace be to the brothers and sisters. He's not just saying peace to the men of the church, right?

That's not what he's saying. He's saying peace be to the family. Peace be to God's family. This is what

Christianity is. This is who Christians are, brothers and sisters in God's family.

And we've received God's peace. The strife is over. Peace be to the brothers. In love with faith from God the

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.

Peace and grace are the believer's possession. Not because we work to get it.

Not because we love God first in order to get it. But because it has been given out of God's decree and part of His sovereign plan because of who

He is and because of what He has done. It was A .W. Tozer who said this, What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

Friends, I tell you this morning, we must let the Bible elevate our view of God. The mark of an unbeliever in Roman history is this, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

They live and they do as they please and they order their life without any worry or concern about God.

And no fear of consequences. That's the unbeliever. But if you survey the evangelical landscape today,

I wonder if you see what I see, that the evidences of the fear of God are lacking in so many who claim to follow

Christ. We seem to consider grace and peace as our divine right, right?

Of course, of course God is gracious to us.

Look how much we deserve it. Who wouldn't want to be gracious to us? Of course God has brought peace to us.

Who would not want to be my friend? Who would not want to be at peace with us? Friends, this is because we view man too high and God too low.

Consider for a moment the glorious majesty of God. Daniel, sorry,

Deuteronomy 7 .21 says, Yahweh your God is a great and awesome

God. Yahweh your God is a great and awesome

God. Now the reality is, the problem is, we use words like great and awesome in very ordinary ways.

The Hogs won. That's great. That was a great movie. He just made an awesome play.

I got an awesome raise at work. And so the temptation is that we use the words great and awesome in this ordinary way when it comes to God.

Pizza is awesome. God is awesome. You understand how that kind of breaks the word awesome?

And so the reality is that when we do that, these words in our text, verse 23 and 24, peace and grace, they don't actually seem as wonderful as they really are.

These aren't just filler words, friends. Let me put it to you this way. Do you know what would happen to any person that walked into the holy presence of God apart from grace and peace?

You would be consumed by his holy awesomeness. You would be, and I don't mean consumed like some evangelicals sing start a fire in my soul or something.

Like I don't think they understand the holy awesomeness of God. I'm not talking about consumed like in the great and majestic, but I'm talking about obliterated.

Right? To walk before God, obliterated by the mere sight of him.

If you tried to stand in his presence apart from grace and peace, I'll prove it to you.

Go outside and stare at the sun. Actually, disclaimer, this is being recorded.

Don't do that. Don't actually do that. It's hyperbole, right? Somebody's going to sue me because I told them to go out and stare at the sun.

You understand it's hyperbole. Why? Because if you go out and you stare at the sun, it will burn your retinas.

You will go blind. And the sun, I haven't done the math lately, but I think it's something like 93 million miles away.

And it is a created object. And if you go outside with your puny little eyes and you stare at the sun, you will go blind.

And it is created. You heard about the congressional subcommittee that devised a way to use our tax dollars to visit the sun, right?

And what they decided was, here's how we'll do it. We'll just go at night. Obviously, that's a joke.

You can't do that. It's foolish. You can't visit the sun at night because there is no night on the sun.

It always is shining in its radiant brilliance. And what

I'm saying to you this morning is, its radiant brilliance is pointing us to something that is infinitely someone,

I should say, infinitely more glorious. It's just like you can't visit the sun at night, neither can you approach

God apart from grace and peace. As foolish as a congressional subcommittee would be to use our tax dollars, it sounds just like something they would do, to visit the sun at night is like someone saying,

I'll stand in the presence of God apart from grace and peace. Foolish.

And so Paul writes to remind the church, peace to the brothers, in love with faith from God the

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ, with love incorruptible.

Now we're going to push this a little further. Okay, so grace and peace are divine gifts.

They flow from the attributes of God, from the triune God's very

Godness, but they also flow from the action of God. So let me explain it this way.

If a foreign country bombed our capital, what a terrible thing that would be.

Killed thousands of people. How would our country respond? We would respond with justice.

We would go to war. But what if we said, no, no, no, we are such a wonderful country and we're full of grace and peace, therefore, the country that attacked us is forgiven.

Well, we would understand that that is actually wickedness. That is injustice.

It would not be gracious of our nation to let justice be averted and let the lives and the blood of our fellow countrymen go unanswered.

Now the analogy is this. You already know it. God is offended. Not offended like the lady at Starbucks who wanted seven pumps of soy milk, but she only got three.

Right? He's offended in the sense that His holiness has been attacked.

And we are the terrorists. By breaking His law, we have called Him weak.

By breaking His law, we have called Him pathetic. By transgressing His law, we have called

Him unworthy. We have brought a charge against Him, and we do this when we fail to comply with His righteous law.

When we do what His law says not to do, and when we fail to do what His law has commanded us to do, we are transgressors clinging to our own righteousness as though God is bound to accept us based on what we are.

Well, that's fine, one says. I can do what I want, one says, because God is full of grace and peace.

But like a nation that ignores a wicked attack upon its capital and its citizens is a

God who ignores mankind's attack upon His holiness. So the grace and peace of God for His people do not merely flow out from who

He is, but is also founded on what He has done. And that is the

Gospel. Friends, the Gospel is the answer for how

God can bestow grace and peace upon us while upholding

His justice. The Gospel is the answer for Paul being able to give this pronouncement.

Peace be to the brothers, why? The Gospel. Grace be with all who love the Lord Jesus Christ, why?

The Gospel. These flow out of the Gospel. Paul says in Colossians that we have peace with God by the blood of the cross of Christ.

In Ephesians 1 -7, he says this, I'll just flip over and read it. In Him, that is in Christ, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

So don't miss this church, redemption through His blood. The blood of God, Acts 20 verse 28 calls it.

That's another verse you can use for your Jehovah's Witness encounters.

The Gospel of peace and grace is first, bloody, death, sacrifice.

Okay, you go to the car dealership. They sell you a used truck. You get home.

Three days later, the transmission goes out. The dealership won't do anything about it.

They have deceived you. They have wronged you. They have cheated you. What do you feel inside?

Righteous indignation. Someone walks by your child and backhands them as hard as they can.

Blood coming out their nose and their mouth. A grown adult backhanding your child. What do you feel inside?

Righteous indignation. Someone flirts with or hits on your spouse.

What do you feel inside? Righteous indignation. Now, what do you do with that anger?

Well, a lot of people maybe do a lot of different things perhaps, but true righteous indignation cannot just go away.

It craves, rightly so, justice. Now, we don't ascribe human emotions to God, but because God is not an emotional wreck like we are, but the

Bible says things like this. Listen, I'm going to give you a spattering of verses. Psalm 711

God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. Isaiah 30 verse 27

Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar, burning with His anger, and in thick rising smoke

His lips are full of fury, and His tongue is like a devouring fire. Zephaniah 3a

Therefore, wait for me, declares the Lord, for the day when I rise up to seize the prey. For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger.

For in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed. Nahum 1 verse 2 The Lord is a jealous and avenging

God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.

You don't see a lot of these verses on Christian t -shirts. God doesn't merely hate sin.

Hear me carefully. It's true that He hates sin, but these verses teach us it's deeper than that.

God is righteously indignant and full of wrath towards sinners.

That's us. What do we deserve?

Do you understand these words? Grace and peace. We deserve the opposite. What's the opposite of peace?

War. What's the opposite of grace? Do you understand that by implication here, we are receiving these gifts from the

Who God is and what He has done, but what we deserve is the opposite of these gifts. We don't deserve peace and grace.

We deserve war and wrath. And what you need to hear this morning is clear from the

Bible that God is going to go to war on sinners. Listen to Revelation 17 -20.

Listen to this. Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle.

And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.

So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

And the winepress was trodden outside the city and blood flowed from the winepress as high as a horse's bridle for 1 ,600 stadia.

I did the math one time because I know that we don't speak in stadia. How far is Conway? That's a few stadia.

No, 1 ,600 stadia would be the distance from one side of Alabama to the other side.

Listen, that's a lot of blood. And those outside of Christ are at enmity with God, and the final war of God upon them is coming, whereby one day the

Bible says what I just read to you, listen to the imagery. He will pop his enemies like a man steps on a grape and pops it out.

That's how God will crush his enemies. Their blood will flow, the text says, out in the streets like someone stepping on grapes in a winepress.

Now, why would the pastor get up and tell you that? Well, number one, because it's what the Bible says. But I also want to help you see something this morning.

God will go to war on sinners. He will. It is coming. But He has already went to war on His Son 2 ,000 years ago on the

Roman cross. Peace, He says, be to the brothers. Peace upon the family of God comes at the expense of war upon His Son.

I simply mean this. The fury of God's wrath and indignation upon sinners was unleashed upon Jesus 2 ,000 years ago whom

God put forward as a propitiation, a wrath satisfying sacrifice.

All the things we sing about this morning, all the love of God and the love of God upon Calvary, and we love

Jesus, He first loved us. All of this is a demonstration of the wrath of God satisfied in what

Christ has done. The war of God is coming, but the wrath of God has been satisfied in Christ to everyone who looks to the

Son. And trust this. Peace with God is possible because Christ was crushed on Calvary.

This Gospel we preach is a bloody Gospel. It is a bloody atonement.

Grace and peace flow from the Gospel where the blood of Christ was shed for sinners who deserve wrath and war.

And justice has been satisfied. And Jesus rose again on the third day. This is the only peace we proclaim.

Peace by the sacrifice of the Son in the place of sinners and by His victorious resurrection.

So hear me today. I don't know who needs to hear this, but this is the question of the age.

How can I have peace with God? Peace, Paul proclaims in our text, verse 23.

Peace be to the brothers, to the brothers and sisters.

Peace be to the church. How can a person have peace with God? Mankind has been asking this question since Genesis 3.

Cain brings his paltry offering. Will this bring me peace with God? No. Rejected.

The ancient Aztecs sacrificing their children, having them burned alive.

Other tribes cutting the throats of virgins, offering them as sacrifices. Will this bring us peace with the

Creator? Muslims journeying to Mecca. Will this bring me peace with God?

Jews relying on an incorrect understanding of the Torah. Will this bring me peace with God?

Roman Catholics doing all their indulgences and confessions to the priest.

Will this bring me peace with God? New Agers trying out a smorgasbord of religious practices and incense.

Will this bring me peace with God? What if I homeschool my children?

Will this bring me peace with God? Young people all over our country today, many who may even deny the existence of God.

You've watched it in the news. You can't avoid it. Riots and foolishness happen at all the universities.

Why is this happening? Because within created beings and humanity, there is no turmoil.

There is no peace with God. Or perhaps if I can't get peace with God, maybe can

I just get peace with my conscience? So many people are deceived today because what they believe, they believe the majority believes and therefore they think if so many people believe this and I believe this, then now

I'm not accountable before God for it. They've tried to numb their conscience or maybe they've tried to numb their conscience in another way.

I'll numb it with drugs. I'll numb it with alcohol. I'll numb it with immorality.

I'll numb it with social media. What if I just numb my conscience by downplaying or redefining sin?

What if I just numb my conscience by just outdoing all the other moms on Facebook?

What if my kid makes an Ivy League school or my child makes the team or maybe if I just make more stuff and get more money than all the other dads,

I can distract my conscience. Maybe if I try my best and do good deeds and be generous and just, you know, make the world a better place, then

I can have peace with God. What can bring a wretched hell bound soul into peace with God?

And when the lights are off and the room is dark and the cell phone ain't got no battery left and it's just me and my thoughts and I see my sins and I know actually,

I can't drown them out. I can't make up for them. I can't erase them.

I can't do enough good to outweigh the bad. I can't do anything about them at all. I want to know, is real and lasting and abiding peace with God?

Is that really a thing? Is it possible at all? And the text says yes.

Peace be to the brothers. Peace be to the church. And the answer is

Christ alone. Are you a believer? Are you a

Christian? If you are, the strife is over. The war has ceased. Peace to you.

And this is because of Romans 5 .1. Therefore, we have been justified by faith. Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Or as we saw in Ephesians 2 .17, Paul says, And He came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near.

That is, to the Gentile son of God. Truly God became truly man. Jesus, if I may say it reverently, has entered into the chat.

Jesus entered into the war. Jesus entered into the game. Jesus entered into this rebellion against a good and gracious God.

Jeremiah calls Him a righteous branch. Righteous. Because He did not partake of the rebellion, so He was and so He is righteous.

Fulfilling all righteousness. Upholding the covenant of works. Earning salvation for His people based on His own righteousness.

You can't get to heaven without works. And it's

Jesus who did the works. You understand? Salvation is not unconditional.

It's Jesus who met the condition. It's not a secret what the Messiah came to do.

Crush the serpent's head. Destroy the works of the devil. Heal His people by His stripes.

Bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. To be pierced for our transgressions. That's God's chastisement would fall upon Him instead of us so that we would have peace.

And this is the cost of grace and peace. The blood of Jesus. And it's the

Spirit of God that applies this message to rebellious hearts affecting the only response.

Effecting, not affecting. Effecting the only response. Faith. The only acceptable response.

By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, the people of God are justified.

And God declares us righteous. Legally. Based on Christ's work.

I'm telling you this morning, you need to hear me so clearly. Please, you're just like, I've heard this gospel a thousand times.

Please listen to me. The only way for peace with God is faith in this message.

Not this sermon. The message of the gospel. Turning, that is, repenting from your sins.

True Holy Spirit repentance. And turning to Christ alone. Trusting Him completely as your only way to peace with God.

As your only suitable and all -sufficient Savior. And Paul's point in verse 23 is, this is what the church has.

Peace. Not peace with the governments, right? Not peace with the IRS. Peace with God.

Peace be to the brothers. All believers have this. This is true Christianity.

Peace with God. And the question is, do you hear the good news? Wrath and war and sorrow and suffering turned into grace and peace by the cross.

The love of God! Think, I couldn't sing no songs this morning without tears welling up in my eyes.

All the love and great grace and mercy of God. Wretched, hell -bound sinners. We've shaken our fist of God.

We've got our own way. We've turned everyone to His own way. When the Lord laid the iniquity of us all upon Christ, He suffered.

He went to war so that we could have peace. So that means that this peace with God is not based upon how well you sang this morning.

It's not based upon how obedient your children are. It's not based upon your prayer life or upon your

Bible reading. It's not even based upon a healthy church. It's not based upon a tidy home.

And it's not based upon a good credit score. It is based on God slaying

His Son for sinners. It's the only way you can have peace.

And I'm preaching to you this morning that this peace is for the church and for all who will go to God, quit their striving, quit their self -righteousness, quit their sinning, and run to the cross, and there you may have peace.

And only there. Nowhere else. His wrath unleashed and exhausting upon Jesus for His people, for all and any who would believe upon the

Son, who will look upon the Son in faith, herein is peace with God.

Do you have this peace? It's only

Christ. I know we love our accomplishments.

I love the shelf I made. We post these things.

We text these things. We talk about these things. Look what my children did.

Look how many verses I got memorized. Look how much witnessing I did.

But I'm telling you this morning, it ain't your home, it ain't your works, it ain't the fact that you're here this morning, and it ain't the fact that you don't like that I keep saying it.

Peace with God is only possible in Christ.

Do you know this peace with God? For some people, it's their love of sin that will keep them out of heaven.

For others, it's their love of their own self -righteousness. Oh, yeah,

I hear what you're saying, I know, but I'm holding on to this. Will you believe?

Now, maybe I excited you because I felt like I was concluding, but we got another verse and we need to talk about it a little bit.

It'll set us up for next week. Verse 24 says, grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love and corruptible.

And there's some things about verse 23 we will come back to as well. But we need to start in verse 24 to get us ready for next week because this is a description of Christians.

So listen to me what it says. Grace be with who? All who love our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace is with those who love

Jesus. That's what a Christian is. Someone who loves

Jesus. Now, you understand that the truth of Ephesians is not that we love

Jesus in order to receive grace. Of course not. It's actually the sovereign and effectual grace of God that has brought us out of death and into life and to now love

Jesus. In fact, let me just read Ephesians 2, 4, and 5 just so you can see, so I can be abundantly clear on this.

Ephesians 2, 4, you didn't love Jesus. You didn't love Jesus and then God chose you retroactively because you were gonna love

Jesus. No, you were dead in your sins. Verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of His great love, the great love with which

He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. You didn't always believe in Jesus. You didn't always love Jesus. The opposite is true.

You rejected Jesus. You hated Jesus. You were dead in your sins. But God had other plans.

And you loved Him because He first loved. Grace is getting what you don't deserve.

You owe someone a debt of two billion dollars. Mercy is the cancellation of that debt.

But grace goes beyond forgiving that debt. And it also supplies you with resources.

Grace forgives the two billion dollars, then gives you an additional two billion dollars to live on.

So grace takes us beyond merely being forgiven of sins, but also brings with it

God's power to now live unto Him and in our text, love Christ.

Oh, I don't love Jesus. Then you're not a Christian. Verse 24 says it this way,

Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, with love incorruptible. John Gill says, Love to Christ is a grace of the

Spirit and is in all believers. And though it is imperfect and sometimes cold, it will abide forever.

It ought to be universal and superlative. All of Christ is to be loved. And He is to be loved above all.

And it shows itself in a value for His Gospel and the truth of it and in esteem of His ordinances and a regard to His commands in parting with all for Christ when called for and in bearing all for His sake and a well -pleasedness in His company and presence and a concern for His absence and in an uneasiness until He is enjoyed again.

It should be fervent and constant and cordial and as here said, in sincerity from the heart and with all the heart and without hypocrisy, not in word only, but in deed and in truth.

We will flesh this out more next week, but the distinguishing mark of authentic Christianity is love for Christ.

John 14. It was not my plan to line up John 14 and this text, but God, I guess, had other plans because what

Connell read this morning to open our service goes right along with Ephesians 6. Jesus says,

You love Me while I keep My commandments. Love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

You notice that the full title, look at your text, look, take your eyes, put them on verse 23 and verse 24.

The Lord Jesus Christ. The full title is used in both verses.

You can't just love Jesus as a friend. You can't just love Jesus as a Savior. You can't just love

Jesus as a buddy. You can't just love Jesus as the genie in the bottle, but you must love

Him as the Lord Jesus Christ. No, a Christian does not love

God perfectly. Of course, we don't love Christ perfectly. Oh, what hopelessness that would be.

Nor does a Christian even love Christ as much as he or she ought. But Christians do love

Christ with incorruptible love. That is, sincere and lasting love. This is who grace and peace are upon.

Grace and peace are upon those who love our Lord Jesus Christ and no one else. This is not grace and peace as a result of our love for Christ.

Again, it is the exact opposite. The peace of God by the cross of Christ and the grace of God by the

Gospel of Christ result in a transformation in our soul in bringing us now to the

Christ. You say, I love Jesus. Not if you don't follow His Word. I love Jesus, but I don't love the church.

Then according to the Bible, not me. According to the Bible, you don't love Jesus. I love Jesus, but I don't like all the letters of the

New Testament. Then according to the Bible, you don't love Jesus, right? So the reality is, this is one way that we answer the question.

If the grace of God worked in our heart and brought us to love Christ, then we answer this question, do I have peace with God?

Do I really have peace with God? It's not based upon my love for Christ, praise God. But if you want to have peace with God, another question you might ask is this, do

I love Christ? I'm making up this number, but this is just based on preaching door to door, talking with people, and growing up in central

Arkansas. So it does have a little bit of background, but I'm still making up the number. I don't know for sure.

But if you ask 90 % of the people in central Arkansas, as long as you don't go to Conway, they're big liberal, but 90 % of people in rural

Arkansas. Do you love Jesus? Oh, yes. Oh, yes,

I love Jesus. But there are two areas where we are confused as a culture right now.

Number one, our culture doesn't know what love is. We think love is never making us feel good, always having a bite to eat, whatever the case may be.

We don't understand love. The second problem our culture has today is we don't understand the Lord Jesus Christ.

You got stupid shows like The Chosen. Like there's a lot of problems with it, but even just the doctrine because they don't understand

Jesus. Or you got people that are saying

Jesus is pro -abortion or something like that. Why do they say that? They don't understand Jesus. So we don't understand love.

We don't understand Jesus. So we must understand love and we must understand Jesus in order to examine ourselves to see if we fall within the demarcation of verse 24.

And that's where we're going next. That's a bit of a cliffhanger, but I believe it deserves its own sermon.

For this morning, we're going to tie it up this way. The distinguishing mark of authentic Christianity is that God's people love

Christ because they are at peace with God through the work of Christ and are recipients of His unmerited favor.

I'll say that again. The distinguishing mark of authentic Christianity is that God's people love

Christ because they are at peace with God through the work of Christ and are recipients of His undeserved favor,

His unmerited favor. Peace be to the brothers in love with faith from God the

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.

This statement of fact in verse 23 and 24, it's kind of a beautiful microcosm, a beautiful summary in a way of the entire letter to the

Ephesians. Honestly, kind of a summary in a way of the entirety of Christianity.

Peace and grace. You can't love your way into the kingdom. In fact, if you're not a

Christian, I'm saying this, and it's hard for some people to grasp. If you're not a Christian, you don't love Christ at all.

Not in the biblical definition of love. If you are not a Christian, children,

I'm saying this to you today too. If you're here today, your mommy and daddy are Christians. Mommy and daddy may be the pastor.

No, not both of them. Daddy may be the pastor. We just went woke.

Listen to me, children. Your parents may be prominent members of our church.

You need to listen to me here if you're not a Christian. No matter your age. You don't love Christ. You don't seek to honor

Christ with your life. You don't forsake all else for treasuring Christ. You don't submit yourself to His yoke, to follow

His way, to love and commit to His people, to love His Word. If you are not a

Christian and you say that you love Jesus, I'm going to explain to you what has happened in your mind and heart. If you're not a

Christian and you say that you love Jesus, or you live your life contrary to the Scriptures, but you say you love

Jesus, I'm going to explain to you that this is what has happened in your mind and heart. What has happened in your mind and heart is that you have created a fictitious

Jesus. And the thing is, He looks a little different than you, but He thinks just like you.

Everything that you want to do, He approves of. Everything that you think is important, He thinks is important.

Anything that you want to do, He says, go out and do it. It's okay. It's amazing, isn't it?

That the Jesus that you love and that you serve, thinks a lot and acts a lot and believes just like you do.

That's because it's not Jesus that you love, but yourself. Don't you understand?

And you must see today that the biblical Jesus stands before us from the pages of Holy Writ and says, come to me.

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden. I've done the heavy lifting. I've done it all.

I've filled all righteousness and partook the wrath of God upon myself, upon Calvary, and I've risen again from the dead.

You don't have to love a false version of me. You don't have to love yourself. Come to me and have salvation.

This is why the Bible says you must be born again. And this is all of God's grace.

And I wonder this morning, would there be any here who would heed the call of the gospel, even this morning, to repent and believe?

Oh, but you don't understand. If I were to believe the gospel today, if I was to repent of my sins, I don't know how

I would handle all these other things in the world today. I don't know how I'd handle the stuff going on at work, because there's so much

I'd have to do. I'd have to leave. I'd have to forsake. Worry about that later. Repent now and see the

Lord Jesus. Rearrange your life for His glory. Come and see

Christ. And Christian, rest again in the peace you have with God through Christ.

The strife is over. You feel like you're juggling. What's those things called? Do you spin plates or whatever on the stick?

I don't know what it's called. And that's what you feel like your life. Run over here. Spin this plate. Run over here. Spin this plate. Run over here.

Spin this plate. And I'm saying in Christ, it's finished. Your peace with God is not your plate spinning, but in the propitiatory work of Christ.

Rest again there. Rest in the glorious Gospel. The love of God for you in Christ. And even today, ask

God to increase your love for Him. Oh, that our church,

Providence Baptist Church, outside of Toadstuck, Arkansas, would love the Lord Jesus Christ as much as any church in the world today and even beyond any church in the world today, not for our own sake or for our own glory, but because Christ is altogether lovely and worthy of our love.

Oh, God, increase the love of the pastors and members of this church for Christ.

He is worthy. So I end the sermon where I began it.

What think ye? I've got to put these on so I can see your faces. What think ye of Christ?

What think ye of Christ? John Newton wrote these words.

What think ye of Christ is the test. To try both your state and your scheme, you cannot be right in the rest unless you think rightly of Him.

As Jesus appears in your view, as He is beloved or not, so God is disposed to you, and mercy or wrath are your lot.

Let these words sink deeply into our hearts and minds this morning. Grace and peace by the blood of the

Lamb. May we respond in faith and trust, obedience.