If I Have Not Love, I Gain Nothing
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This might seem like a lot of information or overwhelming to some in this sermon. Just listen and realize. All this sermon is the same thing from all the Bible. It’s about love.
Here is the proposition, or main point:
God is love, He shows us His love in Jesus Christ, without love we gain nothing, not Heaven or anything else, and as we believe in Jesus and see Him we should also love like Him. If we do not love, we do not know Jesus. Without love all we will receive is judgment in Hell.
Today’s sermon will be from what we call selected Scriptures. Although I usually do a teaching from a specific passage and focus mainly on that, it is acceptable for an expository preacher to, on occasion, speak from the Scripture in general. Some of the greatest faithful Biblical preachers do this and did this, such as Charles Spurgeon, John MacArthur, John Piper, and others. Today what we will be talking about from the Bible as a whole will be love. Why talk specifically about love from the Bible as a whole? Many reasons. Of course, everyone knows, even those who are not Christians, that Christians are supposed to be all about love. Some doubt whether talk about judgment, Law, homosexuality, women’s roles, and others things that the Bible states in countercultural ways is really loving and some even suggest that Christians and the Bible can even be hateful. But God is love, the Bible says, and real love is in Christ even as He speaks on these topics in ways people who do not understand Him find hateful at times.
So right now we are doing evangelism, and there are always conflicts in churches, we also need love for the lost and love for each other. We need to work together and to forgive together. We need grace for our sins from God and each others. Without love, there is no Gospel. We will fail in everything we do without true Biblical love.
I will try to point out specific Scriptures when I quote them or mention that what I am saying comes from a specific chapter or verse, but you might recognize that I am not always referencing the Scripture as I preach today. That is on purpose so that I do not fill the sermon with references that are hard to take down or make the message sound confused or choppy. If anything I say sounds wrong, please talk to me about it afterwards, but my hope is that you will recognize I am speaking what the Bible says, the meaning and sometimes exact words of it, at least in this sermon.
The Bible says God is love. That we are to love one another. It says that love covers a multiple of sins. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that if I have not love, I gain nothing. 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.
Paul said that we are nothing at all if we do not have love in my hearts, love in our words, love in our choices and actions.
Christians, from the Bible, know that God would not be anything at all if He is not love. Without love, there would be no covering of sins and we would gain nothing, no salvation, and would not be able to enter Heaven. This is the Gospel itself.
With prophetic powers we might know the past, present, and future, but without love all of it would be sadness and destruction for us. The Bible says that pride is the opposite of humility, and that love comes through humility. We will not enter Heaven unless we become like little children, Jesus said, and in this humility that Jesus Himself showed is the essence of love. Knowledge can puff up, Paul said, but loves builds up. Knowledge can lead to pride and pride comes before destruction, King Solomon told us in Proverbs. Knowledge can be good, but Solomon who had it knew that we needed wisdom. And wisdom is the application of God’s Law. Jesus said that the fulfillment of the Law is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love others as yourself. Jesus is the demonstration of God’s Law. God gave the world, both Jew and Gentile, the world in general, so that He could demonstrate His love for those who would believe in Christ His Son. Remember John 3:16.
Back in 1 Corinthians 13, we might understand mysteries and knowledge without love, but there would be no faith in those mysteries and knowledge, so there would be no power to remove mountains. Jesus told us clearly that God the Father and Him both can move mountains with their perfect power and love, and we through His same power coming through the Spirit can do great things too in His name with the faith that works through love.
The book of Romans, directly and indirectly, explains to us that without love of God and others, there is no Christianity, there is only Hell and judgment, there is no evangelism, there is no church fellowship, there would be no friendship, loyalty, marriage, there would be no weddings, we would never be able to resolve conflicts and there would be nothing but conflicts. We would hate each other. You would hate me if I did not love you. Even if you knew I did love you, you would not see it if you had no love. Without love there would be no forgiveness, and grace, and desire to be like Christ. The book of Ephesians confirms that in the first chapter when it speaks about the love of God for His people. His glorious grace that results in holiness and praise of that glorious grace. The work of His Son as He died and brought His people to Himself in the wonderful story of election. By this we know love, 1 John 3:16 like John 3:16 says, that Christ laid His life down for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. Our love as Christians must express itself in sacrifice for others, especially other Christians in the Church. And as we serve each other it should build trust in each other, trust in God. Someone might have the love of Jesus in their heart 1 John is telling us, but if someone will not trust that person when they see the love, what happens is the darkness of selfishness and blindness to their great love, it will always end in betrayal like Judas had for Jesus in the Gospels. 1 John says again in 1 John 3:11-15, let me read it:
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
The message has always been love, from Genesis to Revelation. From Matthew through the entire New Testament, in the epistles of Paul and the rest, the Law and the Prophets, major and minor, the wisdom literature and poetry, it has always been the message. Love one another. Cain failed to love his brother and even before he killed him physically, he murdered him in his heart. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 5:21-26 when he told the people of Israel as He spoke from the mountain, including the Scribes and Pharisees, that when you do not let go of your anger and forgive others, trying to reconcile the best that you can before you go worship in spirit and in truth, that your anger will not only destroy your life, it will destroy your relationship with God, your brother, and destroy your soul in Hell. What a warning against the murderous nature of Cain.
And John tells us that if you have a real love of a Christian a strange thing will happen to you as love others with the truth, the world will hate you in return. John tells you not to be surprised. And we will know our salvation by our extraordinary love for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and also for those who do not know Jesus. We should know this, be able to see it in our lives and the lives of other Christians around us in our Church. Those who do not show love for everyone around them, including their enemies, abide in death. Jesus talked about loving our enemies in Matthew 5:43-48 because God Himself loves His enemies in many ways and we too must be perfect in some sense, or mature, in order to enter Heaven. We are not to retaliate against others who hurt us or offend us, Jesus teaches just verses before in Matthew 5:38-42. We can protect ourselves against violence and stand up against abuse sometimes, but not for the purpose of protecting our own self-righteous pride. For that is the subject of the Sermon on the Mount. The Scribes and Pharisees had no love for God or for others in their lives. They were hypocrites who only loved themselves and did many things out of love for themselves instead of others and God. They only saw other peoples sins and not their owns, like in Matthew 7 at the beginning of the chapter, and judged them for small things while they themselves saw none of their own sins or faults. They saw tiny speaks in other people that were sins for sure, but they had giant problems of their own that they ignored in self-righteous ways as they condemned others. It was not loving of them to do that and it would end in destruction for them as their pride grew and their love of others dwindled. Jesus, in Matthew 7:15-23 said that people with no love for Him or others, filled with pride, were false prophets with a false message, that everyone should avoid because of the bad fruit of hatred in their message and words. And in the end though they had did certain deeds for Jesus, supposedly, they would be rejected by Him because they had not obeyed the Law that they were to love God and others, which He spoke to them in Matthew 22 right before He condemned they all with seven great statements of judgment in front of all the people. Read about Jesus’ righteous anger and condemnation of them in Matthew chapter 23. The greatest judgment for someone who claims to follow Jesus is not to show love for others and instead only to love yourself and those who agree with you.
So essentially, the subject of the Bible, of the teaching of Jesus, is love and whether or not someone demonstrates it in their life. If you love Jesus truly than you will love others who love Him. And when you love others who don’t, you will show them great works of love but also condemn their hatred and evil, their self-righteousness and pride, with your words as Jesus did, calling them to repentance and faith in Christ. That is the message of the Gospel. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Romans 8:1 says, but if you do not have the Spirit of Christ in you you do not belong to Him, verse 9 says, and all of us know that the Spirit of Christ is love. Back to 1 John 3:15
15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
So everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and no murderer has eternal life. Thus, there will actually be condemnation for everyone who is not in Christ. There is Hell and condemnation for those who hate their brother. We can be free from condemnation if we live by the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of love, but otherwise we will not. Love is the essential fruit of the Christian life. As we said earlier from 1 Corinthians 13, without love we have nothing. We have no salvation. Romans 8:28 is another favorite verse like John 3:16. Romans 8:28 says:
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Those who love God will be blessed. All things work together for their good. Only those who love God and are called according to His purpose. At this point without further verses we can easily conclude that God’s purpose is love of Him and love of neighbor. We will review what Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 22 first. Matthew 22:34-40
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
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These are the greatest commandments. Love God and love your neighbor. On these two depend everything.
Lots of Scriptures now. Not truly overwhelming. They say the same thing. Hear some of them again. John 3:16
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
God shows His love to the world by giving His Son to those who believe in Him so that they will not perish in Hell but have eternal life in Heaven. The Gospel is about the love of God the Father and Jesus for His people as He dies specially for them, the ones who love Him by believing in Him.
3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
We know God by keeping His commandments, which we have seen are to love Him and love others. When we say we know Him but do not love, it is not true that we know Him. We have lied. If we keep His Word to love our love of God is perfected. We are to walk like Jesus did with love for everyone including the Father and we will know that we love Jesus and are in Him. We will know we are saved and going to Heaven when we love God and others. To say it again: Keeping His commandments is about loving God the Father. To do that we obey His entire Bible the best that we can. To obey His Bible, above all else, it is about loving others as we love Him.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Very straightforward again: Love one another. Love is from God. If you love, you are born again, saved and going to Heaven, and you know God. But if you do not love, you do not know God, because God is love.
But how do we know for sure we are living in love?
One passage from Jesus in John 14.
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
If you love Jesus, you will keep my commandments. Yes, to keep the commandments to love, but Jesus is including all of His commandments. The entire Bible. How do we know? Because Jesus says that when you love Him and keep His commandments He asks the Father who will send the Helper, or the Holy Spirit, to be with you forever. Who is the Holy Spirit? The Spirit of truth. What is the truth? Every single word of the Bible. The world cannot receive the Bible. And when Jesus sends the Spirit of truth you love Him by keeping His commandments in the Bible, all of them from Old and New Testaments, as He dwells with you and in you. Jesus says that He is coming back, we will not be like orphans. But we will see Him through the Spirit of truth who reveals His Word and we will live, those of us who have His commandments and keep them. Those who love Him. And the love of God the Father will come to us through Jesus who loves the Father and goes to Him after the resurrection.
One last question. How do we know how to obey Jesus when we are called to obey Him? Which Scriptures can help us?
We now have John 3:16, 1 John 3:16, easy to remember, and now 2 Timothy 3:16 all pointing us to how God loves us, how we are to love Him and love others. 2 Timothy 3:16 explains where to know how all this happens. The Father’s love, Christ’s love, and our love.
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
The entire Bible, all Scripture, is breathed out by God, written in this book, so that we could be taught how to love, rebuked when we do not love, corrected when we love wrongly, and trained in how to love righteously. To love God, to love Jesus, to love one another, and to love our enemies. So read this Bible, study it, listen to it preached, hear it explained by those who demonstrate love themselves, trust in it, never contradict it when you know what it says, repent when you disagree with it, disobey it, tell people the truth when they do the same. And finally, spread its message as passionately as possible. Confirm what we have talked about here in this sermon with clear references to Scripture.
Let’s summarize and apply what we have learned and then close. If you are confused about something, ask me later.
Christians are to speak the truth in love as we grow up, and we start growing up by loving and knowing Christ. This means we ought to lay down our lives in repentance for our sin and love for each other like He did. If we do not love God and others we do not know Christ, and love rejoices with the truth. It rejoices with Jesus and being like Him. Jesus was not always the type of loving person that we expect. Jesus did not rejoice at wrongdoing, He bore all things, even suffering for Himself, while always speaking truth even when it was hard. He believed all things that were true and denied lies and sin all the time. When He denied lies, it was not always in the tone that we would expect. He was sometimes even angry at sin or the spiritually abusive actions and words of prideful people. Remember Jesus in the temple, multiple times, overturning tables and declaring the righteousness of a God who had come to love His people and they rejected Him. Remember His truthful confrontations with the religious leaders who had tried to destroy His people by leading them into sin and lies. But Jesus was humble before His Father and would not break a bruised reed, a person who was humble themselves before others and before His Father. He was gentle and weak when others needed Him to be gentle and weak. He was bold and strong when people challenged His Father’s Word and authority. This is the way every Christian is meant to be. Wise and careful in how they deal with others, always loving in the way Jesus was. It is impossible to live out this love perfectly as many different types of opposition come against us. The deceptions of the world around us ruled by Satan, our own sinful hearts and the sinful hearts of others, and the devil himself as he seeks to manipulate and distort the truth, tempting us to disobey God’s Word or reject it entirely.
And on top of all that Jesus was, He had another advantage. Jesus had hope in every promise of God, whether that meant the promise of Heaven or the promise of Hell or the promise of suffering or of blessing and glory. Jesus endured all things because He was content with everything as He was grateful to God His Father.
We love to talk about love and that love needs to be true. And sometimes when we think about love being fake, we are angry and do not want to love. But Jesus knows when we are a fake and He knows who will betray Him like Judas, the traitor to Him that Judas was. And you know what? We have all been traitors. Even Peter denied him three times and he was among the most faithful disciples and even men who ever lived.
Jesus said to everyone that if you love Me, you will keep my commandments, but Jesus even loved those who never kept His commandments like Judas. Yet, shortly after He says that, Jesus makes it clear that there is a special love that He has for those who love Him in return. Whoever it is that loves Jesus will be loved by His Father, and He will love Him and both of them will come to Him and make their home with him.
To have Jesus and the Father, you must love Jesus. That is what the Scripture teaches. You cannot go to Heaven without love for Jesus and love for others. That is the summary of the Law that Jesus gave. There is a way in which God so loved the world, which was that He gave His only Son to them, so that they might not perish and enter Hell and instead have eternal life. God did not want to condemn people, the next verse, but He wanted them to be saved. Yet all those who do not believe in Him are condemned even before He gave His Son. There is no escape, God will only truly love you if in response to His love, you will love Him in return.
19 We love because he first loved us.
Otherwise, there is a love, but it is only the love which God has for His enemies. You do not love your enemies in exactly the same way you love your friends. This is all over the Scripture. And some of us will always remain God’s enemies because we will not love Him back and be His friends.
We do not accept Christ when we become Christians because Christ is Lord and He is the One who must accept us as sinners, but there is one thing we must accept which He offers to all in some way, in a special way for those He chooses to die for, to be His people. We must accept His love. But how could we not accept His love when it is offered to us? His great and special love, not always what we would expect and sometimes not what we think we want, but a love that is greater than all the stars and all the blessings in all the world!
So, believe His promises, which are brought together in the righteous life He lived, perfect and sinless. We have failed to love as we should, but He has loved for us, He has loved everyone including His Father. Trust Him for that love. And then He loved at the Cross, loved all those who would trust in Him, loved so much He not only died for the sins His people have committed, He took their punishment of Hell that they deserve. That all of us deserve. Trust in Him for that. Then He was raised from the dead three days later to declare His love for His people, for His Father, and for His own glory. We need His glory for ourselves. We need to reflect it. To reflect His love. Trust in Him for that and you will. You will love Him and love others for the rest of your life and for all eternity. And it will be the most loving thing you’ve ever done for yourself, except He is the One doing it all for you. Accept His love. Believe in Jesus.
Let us pray.