A Special Love Within the Church – Pt. 2

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Romans 12:9–10 ESV

9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

Opening Prayer

Setting the Stage

Remembering the Covenant that You Belong to in Jesus Christ.

Not in order to excuse yourself from pursuing holiness and delighting in what your Savior delights in…

But, so that you can pursue holiness and delight what God delights in while understanding the absence of a necessity for you to be perfect in experiential holiness.

Agape Love

Genuine

Abhorring evil

Clinging to good

Loving One Another with Brotherly Affection

Here love = phila & storgoi

Meaning a family love.

The church is a family.

There’s only one kind of covenant family in the NT and that is the Church.

The love that we are supposed to have, commanded to have, and empowered to have…

—> Is a love that a family has for one another.

The kind of love that spends time with one another.

The kind of love that pursues one another.

The kind of love that is interested in one another, especially one’s well-being.

The kind of love that cares deeply for the other members.

Brotherly affection is one word…

philadelphia = brotherly/sisterly love.

Paul is stating that we should have tender family affection for one another in brotherly and sisterly love.

And, a clarifying thought that is absent many time within a natural family…

Paul states a truth that the natural family should display…

—> But, because of sin does not.

However, the spiritual family, by the power of the HS should…

Outdo One Another in Showing Honor

outdo = to delight in having others honored above yourself.

Easier said than done.

What keeps us from doing this is the old flesh within us.

The old Pharisee that still tempts us to find our righteousness in self.

And, if we’re finding our righteousness in our self…

Then everything is a competition for self-glory.

You ever notice that within a family, quite often siblings will avoid the things their other siblings excel at…

Especially, if the other sibling seems at first attempts to be better by a long shot.

A reason that contributes to that is we want glory…

So, if we cannot find glory in a certain area we go looking for areas in which we feel glorified.

This is not to be in the household of God.

We have died to the fleshly desire for self-glory.

Everything we do should be to glorify God and benefit others.

Especially our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

And, we have died to the need and desire to find righteousness in self.

We acknowledge our bankruptcy of righteousness.

We confess loudly that our value, our righteousness, our worth is fully and exclusively found in Jesus.

So, we honor our Lord by honoring others over our self.

And, this is not some fake honoring…

In which we pretend others are more gifted when they’re not…

This is a searching out and knowing what brothers and sisters are gifted at…

And, celebrating their giftedness by:

Honoring them…

outdo one another in showing honor.

The word honor = to show respect

In the flesh, our natural action is to outdo one another in order to receive honor.

God calls us to outdo each other in showing honor to others.

This kind of agape love serves for the benefit and preservation of the recipient.

This command to love in this way was from the very beginning.

Encouraging them…

Thanking them.

And, ultimately thanking the Lord.