Love for One Another

Introduction

(John 13:34-35; Genesis 29:15-30)

Let me tell you a story (of someone who was taken advantage of)

Pastor Tim has been preaching through Romans 14-15 lately and if you’ve been paying attention, I think you will have noticed that Paul is awfully concerned with how the members of that church interacted with each other. I think we can see in John 13 that Jesus was also quite concerned with how the members of his church interacted with one another. Both Paul and Jesus wished for Christians to interact with love of the highest quality.

John 15:9–17 ESV

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 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, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

Matthew 7:12 ESV

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 ESV

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

One aspect of love, negatively illustrated in the account of Jacob and Laban, is making sure we do not take advantage of other people, particularly our brothers and sisters in Christ. Now, you might react immediately by saying “well, I don’t take advantage of people, I am honest in my dealings.” Be careful. 1 John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” warns us about deceiving ourselves by not acknowledging our sin. It is always a wiser strategy to meticulously check yourself than to assume you are immune. I grew up in the Minnesota lowlands, which means the terrain consisted mostly of swamps, marshes, and woods. These watery lands are filled with the notorious and pesky wood tick. About the size of a kernel of corn, these ticks will grab onto you as you trek the great outdoors, find their way under your clothes, and stick their beak into you to suck your blood. An intelligent hiker will carefully and meticulously check his body and clothes at the end of an outdoor trek to make sure he isn’t donating blood to the tick population. Similarly, we must constantly be on our guard against sin, checking ourselves to be sure we aren’t carrying anything we don’t want.

This afternoon we will examine several ways in which we take advantage of other people. Some of these ways may surprise you, or challenge you, but I want us all to be focused first and foremost on Jesus’ commands to love one another, and how we can better show people God’s love by not taking advantage of them.

We must not take advantage of someone’s ignorance

We do this to make ourselves look better or smarter than another person

We do this primarily through sarcasm

We must not take advantage of someone’s wit

We do this to make ourselves the object of peoples attention

We do this primarily through degrading jokes and jests

We must not take advantage of someone’s will

We do this to get what we want

We do this primarily through manipulation

This can be seductive manipulation, aggressive manipulation, or guilt-shaming manipulation

We must not take advantage of someone’s body

We do this to relieve our sexual appetites

We do this primarily through pornography

We must not take advantage of someone’s inadequacies

We do this to make us feel better about our self

We do this primarily through comparison

There can be countless ways we take advantage of our fellow human beings, and every single one of those ways is sinful and hurts our relationship with God and others.