Doing Well: An Investigation of the Connection between Loving God and Loving Others
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Introduction
Introduction
C.S. Lewis says, “Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.”
Lewis is correct. Practical spirituality is measured by how much a person knows the living God of the Scripture and has a relationship with God built on affectionate respect and devoted obedience.
Today, we are going to expand on our time in James 2:8-13 by investigating the importance of loving others as an expression of loving God. And we would add to Lewis’ statement that a person’s spiritual health is exactly proportional as his love for others as it relates to loving God.
PRAY
8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.
Scripture connects loving God and loving others.
Scripture connects loving God and loving others.
1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
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.”
Love of God and love of neighbor are connected. We cannot love God rightly if we do not love our neighbors, especially our fellow Christians, and we cannot love our neighbors rightly if we do not love God (1 John 4:20). As we grow in our sanctification, we must find ourselves loving both God and neighbor more and more. If we lack love, biblically defined, for either God or neighbor, we are not living a life that pleases our Creator.
Loving others is the fulfillment of the whole Law.
Loving others is the fulfillment of the whole Law.
Scripture teaches in several places that love of neighbor fulfills the whole law or the law of Christ.
8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Ligon Duncan comments on verse 10 above, “Paul again emphasizes that love and law are not contradictory tendencies in the Christian life, as if obeying the law somehow made one less loving or that being more loving made you less interested in obeying the law. They are not contradictory tendencies in the Christian life. One, love, is the fulfillment of the other — law. The law, he tells us in verse 10, proscribes harm to our neighbor. Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't covet, he's just said that in verse 9. And what he tells us in verse 10, love abstains from that kind of harm, for neighbor love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, Paul says, love impels you to do precisely what the law would have you do. So, love and law are not enemies in the Christian life, they are not competitors in the Christian life, they are not contradictory tendencies in the Christian life, they are friends.”
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
1 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. 2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Loving others is taught by God.
Loving others is taught by God.
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 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. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 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. 16 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. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
Loving others is a result of the new birth.
Loving others is a result of the new birth.
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. 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
John MacArthur comments, “This kind of love cannot be conjured up by the human will. It is wrought in the hearts of believers by God Himself. “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Love for God and love for fellow believers is an inevitable result of the new birth, by which we “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Just as it is God’s nature to love, love is characteristic of His true children. “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5).”
Loving others is required because of the image of God.
Loving others is required because of the image of God.
Every man is created in the image of God. Certainly, sin has defaced that image and dimmed the reflection but it has not completely destroyed it or erased it. We see this in the following passages to one degree or the other.
7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
What is the conclusion? Wayne Grudem writes in his Systematic Theology, “Every single human being, no matter how much the image of God is marred by sin, or illness, or weakness, or age, or any other disability, still has the status of being in God’s image and therefore must be treated with the dignity and respect that is due to God’s image-bearer. This has profound implications for our conduct toward others. It means that people of every race deserve equal dignity and rights. It means that elderly people … and children yet unborn deserve full protection and honor as human beings.”
Practical Application
Practical Application
Loving God is a necessary priority of the two greatest commandments.
Loving others is an expression of doing well spiritually.
“Love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is not the product of our hard work for God.” John Piper
Loving others must never be separated from loving God.
Loving others is the incarnation of loving God.
God’s love was “enfleshed” with the sending of the the Son, so it must be with us.
Loving others requires us become more like God.
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Loving others has three primary applications:
Love for the neighbor
Love for the body of Christ
Love for your enemies
Loving others has one motive and many forms.
The motive is the glory of God and the good of others.
The forms or expressions are as numerous as your imagination governed by the principles and patterns of Scripture.
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 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. 12 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. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.