TOUGH LOVE
Romans: For the Gospel • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 5 viewsNotes
Transcript
Handout
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
Paul is still working through the idea of being a living sacrifice and how that works itself out in the life of the church. Particularly the idea of seeing ourselves rightly and being members of the body of the church.
In this text, he begins a series of admonishments to the church, giving them practical application of how to be a living sacrifice in and among the people of God.
In our text, we find a simple set of instructions, but that simplicity shouldn’t make us run through this verse without thinking through its implications.
It reminds me of a fact I once learned about butterflies.
Butterflies are amazingly beautiful creatures. What’s amazing about them is they begin life as pretty ugly bugs called caterpillars. One of the ugliest is known as the spiny caterpillar.
Show picture
These ugly things will one day go into a cocoon and emerge as the Malachite Butterfly
Show picture
Isn’t that amazing.
But there’s a peculiarity about butterfly development that speaks to our text today.
Butterflies, as it turns out, release a chemical when they’re getting out of their chrysalis, a chemical that strengthens their wings. Their movements inside the chrysalis pump fluid into their wings, which help the wings expand.
Their Houdini-like escape act helps them build the necessary muscles to do all things butterfly related.
Plus the timing of their emergence from the chrysalis is key; too early and they’re doomed because they won’t have developed enough.
So if a well-meaning human interferes and tries to ‘help’ the butterfly with its struggle, it likely will doom the butterfly to weak wings and lack of development and ultimately death.
So this brings me to my main idea:
Main Idea:
Sincere Love Demands Tough Love
We are Called to SINCERE LOVE
We are Called to SINCERE LOVE
Paul calls the disciples to sincerely love one another.
The word for sincerity of love is agape anupokritos which has the idea of judging rightly in love - to love sincerely. Paul is calling them to love in a way that is honest and faithful, to love not just in a flippant way, but to love with sincerity.
This is a call to a deep love for one another in the body of Christ. A love that is lasting.
As Colin Kruse notes, we are to have a love, as recipients of grace that is ‘sincere’ in the sense of ‘genuine’ or ‘without pretense’.
It’s the kind of genuine love he speaks of in 2 Corinthians 6:6. The character and quality of true love is not like worldly love. True love as we see in scripture is actually foreign. Biblical love is described in 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
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.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Sincere Love vs. Worldly Love
Sincere Love vs. Worldly Love
Biblical love is something we don’t understand in our culture. Kimie Pearl describes modern love as "what is left after the narcissistic influence of popular culture gives Love a makeover...We have given culture a Sharpie and let it mark all over Love to make it fit our grocery list of appetites.
Narcissism is defined as an ‘excessive or erotic self-interest’. It’s the “all about me” mindset on every level. Modern Love is identified by who it serves. Marriage was once considered a partnership protecting from the realities of life. Whatever life throws at you, you can survive better if you have a partner, someone to cover your back. The luxury of freedom and romance crept into the concept of Love more recently. Now it is more about feelings than the reality of commitment.”
But the love that Paul is calling us to is not a narcissistic self-interest but one that is focused on the other.
Notice what 1 Corinthians describes:
Love is Patient - John MacArthur said it this way: “Love’s patience is the ability to be inconvenienced or taken advantage of by a person over and over again and yet not be upset or angry.”
Love is Kind - “not merely patient or long-suffering in the face of injury, but quick to pay back with kindness what it received in hurt.” D. A. Carson
Love does not envy or boast in itself - it is never jealous. He is glad for the success of others, even if their success works against his own.
Love is not arrogant or rude - it is not self-focused, but others focused.
It doesn’t insist on it’s own way.
It isn’t irritable or resentful - as John MacArthur rightly notes, “in our society today is the overwhelming preoccupation with our rights and the consequent lovelessness.”
Love isn’t like the love of the world because true biblical love is others first.
True Christian loves primary focus is about Him, and then it’s about them. True Christian love desires what’s best in the lives of the brothers and sisters Christ puts us in community with.
And part of that process, Paul states in our text is Hating what is evil and holding fast to what is good.
We cannot stress this enough: The idea of Going along to get along and Christian love are antithetical to one another. True love understands that like the chrysalis of a caterpillar, Christian love demands that we hold our brothers and sisters in Christ to the truth.
That’s the next part of 1 Cor. 13:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
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.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Sincere Love HATES Evil.
Sincere Love HATES Evil.
English Standard Version Chapter 13
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love does not overlook sin, nor does it glorify sin. It rejoices in truth. Love seeks the Truth and it speaks the truth.
True Christian love will not allow others to live in unrepentant sin or hold to damaging theology.
As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,
nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion,
Paul understood that true love means that we sometimes confront. You do not really love those you never confront.
Tell the story about Jenny and her mother.
The lack of confronting the cancer in her body did not make the cancer go away, it let it metastasize and ultimately kill her.
In same way, Paul is calling us to lovingly deal with each other in the issue of first sin.
When we see sin in the lives we are called in love to go to one another.
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.
For each will have to bear his own load.
Notice the language here, and this is where we get into trouble. The call to confront sin is given in the context of love. When we see patterns of sin in the lives of other believers we are called to go to them for the purpose of restoration in Christian love.
And this is the key: We do it because we love them, not because we being judgmental. And that’s the question we should ask before we go to one another: Am I confronting this sin because I love them and am concerned about them, or am I confronting this sin to justify myself, make myself seem more spiritual or for others to see me as such.
We should no more be able to see a brother or sister go on in unrepentant sin that we could allow them to continue with a rattlesnake attached to their leg. But it must be done as Paul encourages in Ephesians 4
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
Sincere Love HOLDS TO what is Good.
Sincere Love HOLDS TO what is Good.
But it’s not just about pointing out sin, but true love seeks to speak what is true.
Paul puts it this way, “cling to what is good.”
The word used for clinging to or holding fast to is the same word Jesus use in describing the relation to a man leaving his father and mother and being joined to his wife. (Matthew 19:5)
Truly loving the saints means telling the the truth of God's Word.
One of the ways we love each other is by protecting the theological and biblical truth of God's word. It's unloving to not hold to the word of God.
As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,
nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion,
desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
Paul is speaking about the importance of Christian love among the brothers, and one of the was we do this is by preaching the truth of the word of God.
Biblical fidelity is a key to genuine love for the church. It's essential to a healthy growing body.
We must in the same way that we gently point out sin, gently teach correct theology to the saints. We must take very seriously what we teach as a church and how we teach the word. What we teach matters.
"Love is not genuine when it leads a person to do something evil or to avoid doing what is right - as defined by God in his Word." - Douglas Moo
So what is the good we are to hold to?
Throughout Romans, Paul notes several things:
1. Doing what is right in God's eyes (Romans 12:2)
2. Doing what is right in the eyes of the authorities (Rom. 13:3)
3. Doing good to one's neighbors (Rom. 15:2)
4. Returning good for evil (Rom. 12:21)
5. Do good works (Eph 2:10)
We are to be marked as a people who seek to do what is good and encouraging each other to do what is good. That’s the measure of Christian love.
Christian love demands that we do the hard work of holding fast to what is good in the face of a world that does
2 Timothy 4:3 (ESV)
not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
This is the danger Paul is calling us to avoid.
So what can must we do?
Ask God to help us love His church as He loved.
Ask God to help us love His church as He loved.
True biblical love is a work of the Spirit. I want you to think about your prayers. Your prayer reveals a lot about what you love? Do you pray for your church? Not that it will merely get bigger, but do you pray that our people would grow in their love for and passion for the word of God, that they would be more faithful as they walk after Christ? Our prayers reveal what is important to us.
Love God’s Word and encourage others to love it to.
Love God’s Word and encourage others to love it to.
Another way you can encourage others to love is by loving God’s word and encouraging others to do the same. Maybe start a bible study in your home where you and others read through a book of the Bible with a theologically sound commentary.
Speak in love to others your testimony of forgiveness
Speak in love to others your testimony of forgiveness
Another way you can love others is to show them your sin and God’s grace to encourage their own repentance and confession. One thing I love about our Men’s Samson ministry is every Wednesday night men faithfully and honestly with no pretense confess their sinfulness and need for God’s forgiveness in front of other men. I feel closer to that group of men that I do just about any Sunday School class or Bible study I’ve ever attended because of the raw honesty and bare vulnerability of that group of men. Every week men confess their failures and receive love and acceptance from a group of men who have been there before. But it’s Matt and the other men’s raw confession of their own sin that frees men to be honest.
Speak the Truth in Love
Speak the Truth in Love
Part of loving well is holding fast to good doctrine and theology, speaking the truth about sin, and speaking often of the freedom and forgiveness thats found in Christ. We must be quick to remind each other of this truth: “I am a sinner saved by Grace who is being transformed daily by grace.”
The call to love is