Habits of Holiness: Part 4

Holy Love

INTRO: When I was 13, my dad and I cut down a tree in the back yard. We burned it with poison ivy on it. That allergen got in my blood stream through me inhaling the smoke and it spread all over my body in the common rash. I was miserable. My mom called me the elephant man because my face was so swollen.

If the last three sermons about habits of holiness have not gut punched you as a Christian, this sermon will definitely bring you to your knees. The sermon in particular may sting a little because of the consistency of this struggle in the Christian life. I speak from experience because I once again was reminded in my study of this passage just how easy it is to fall into the former struggles of our life.

REVIEW:

1. Look to Jesus (4:32b-5:2)

Paul is following the order of his applications of the Christian life but he concludes his thoughts in chapter 5 with the theological foundation for our Christian response. I am going to start with the theological foundation and then move to the actions it spurs within the Christian heart. All of this is conditional with what we believe and so it is necessary to start with the issue of the heart.

A. The Love of Jesus Is Demonstrated In His faithful and Selfless Sacrifice

In order for us to truly live the Christian life, we have to look to Christ. I don’t mean that we must simply see Christ as a good person, but we must look to him with complete admiration and devotion. To admire Him and be fully devoted, we must see and understand who he is and what he has done for us.

Friends, I pray we never grow tired of hearing of the glorious work of our Lord and Savior Jesus to bring about forgiveness of sins for the enemies of God. Instead, let the constant cry of the gospel be a refreshing and uplifting balm to our souls at all times.

Paul reminds the Ephesians that they should consider the LOVE of Christ demonstrated in his selfless sacrifice.

Ephesians 5:2 NASB95

2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Now the LOVE of Christ is the AGAPE love that is taught in Scripture. Agape love is the hightest from of love, its a divine love built on God’s faithfulness and his character. This term was used by the authors of the bible to differentiate the other pagan terms that were used regarding love like EROS (lustful passion) and PHILEO (friendship).

Agape love is a faithful love that is demonstrate by God to His elect people based soley on his faithfulness to us in spite of our rebellion towards him. Christ’s love then sets the bar for a love that is faithful to the one to which it is given.

Paul descries the faithfulness of love in 1 Cor 13:8

1 Corinthians 13:7–8 NASB95

7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails;

Consider the context this afternoon the important of the faithful love of God. It is so faithful that nothing would be able to oppose or restrain the act of God’s love being carried out in Jesus’s death on the cross. Enemies would try to oppose it,. The religious leaders, the demons, Satan himself all failed in keeping Jesus off that cross. He willingly endured until the end so that we might understand that love is faithful to those whom it is given.

be reminded of these statments of our Lord:

John 14:3 NASB95

3 “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

Matthew 28:20 NASB95

20 … lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Acts 18:9–10 NASB95

9 And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; 10 for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.”

This enduring love is important to a world who experiences the opposite. Clothed with the name LOVE, the world experiences a counterfeit love-an unfaithful love. With God, love never fails but the world produces a false love that continually fails. this love cheats, withers, and is easily replaced. its like an ADHD love- its easily distracted and never settled.

We must see the difference as we seek to love others as Christ loved us. Love is enduring to the end regardless of troubles and conflict that might arise. This is the love that Paul commanded the church to practice.

As we consider the faithful aspect of Christ’s love, so we must See that the love of Christ is in Sacrificial love.

Ephesians 5:2 NASB95

2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

It is crucial for us to see that Jesus did not die for our sins unwillingly but that he willingly sacrificed his own life so that we might be free. His willing sacrifice is crucial in understanding the love of God for us in Jesus.

John 10:18 NASB95

18 “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

Notice in this verse, Jesus is both obedient to the will of the Father to die and yet also equally willingly to be killed in order for the atonement of sin to be completed and sufficient.

Paul considered this such an important aspect of the Christian life that he once again defines love at the end of Chapter 5 in the marriage relationship with similar language,

Ephesians 5:25 NASB95

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

B. The Life and Death of Jesus Was a Pleasant Offering To God

Secondly, Paul uses language at the end of v 2 that remind us that the all that Jesus accomplished with his obediently life and sacrificial death was a pleasing offering to God. In the OT sacrificial system, the aroma itself being pleasing to the Lord because it is done in obedience.

In Gen 8, Noah and his familiy, with all the animals descend back upon the earth after the flood. Noah immediately builds and altar and offers a burnt offering to God.

Genesis 8:21 NASB95

21 The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.

In Exodus, as Moses commands Israel to offer sacrifices to God, he writes,

Exodus 29:15–18 NASB95

15 “You shall also take the one ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram; 16 and you shall slaughter the ram and shall take its blood and sprinkle it around on the altar. 17 “Then you shall cut the ram into its pieces, and wash its entrails and its legs, and put them with its pieces and its head. 18 “You shall offer up in smoke the whole ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord: it is a soothing aroma, an offering by fire to the Lord.

Now consider that Jesus obediently and willingly went to the cross after living a life in complete obedience to the commands of God. He lived a sinless life and as our sacrifice for sin, he offered up himself as the only truly perfect offering that every was and ever will be. That sacrifice not only served to provide the benefits to us in salvation but it more importantly was intended to be an act of pleasing worship to God.

Loving like Christ is an act of worship to the Lord, pleasing in his sight.

2 Corinthians 2:14–16 NASB95

14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. 15 For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; 16 to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things?

Now that we understand the theological foundation of Christ’s defining love for us, let us now consider secondly…

2. Love Like Jesus (4:31-32a)

Disclaimer: you cannot adequately love like Jesus without Jesus living within you by his Spirit. You can love others but its always going to be a self-glorifying love. It will be a love that truly serves your own interests and not the interests of others.

Now listen to Paul’s commands to the church who have received the sacrifice of Christ on their behalf:

A. Put Off Acts of Self-love and Protection

Ephesians 4:31 NASB95

31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Because you have witnessed an enduring and sacrificial love of Jesus, to love like he loves is to first turn from these things that prohibit genuine love. This list are qualities of self-love and self-protection. Paul’s list is best observed as a list that grow with intensity. It starts with bitterness within, moves on to rage, hostility, shouting, slander and overall malice. We must understnad that all these Paul lists are qualities of self-love and self-protection because in them, we are playing judge over the matters of offence instead of releasing these issue for God to judge.

Romans 12:19 NASB95

19 Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

Some of you may be guilty of this progression of sin displayed today in your life. I pray that you will evaluate your own heart as we look at these qualities of self-love and you will put them far away from you by the power of Christ.

Bitterness: this is the poison of the mind that is most often called resentment. Bitterness is our act of holding on to hurt that has been done to us and with our firm grasp, that bitterness takes a deep root in our soul.

We all have probably watched an infection take root and spread in our bodies. This is what bitterness does to the soul of a person who holds on to hurt.

We looked previously in 1 Cor 13 as love that “keeps no records of wrongs.” There is not excel spreadsheet on offences from others in the Christian’s mind. Bitterness keeps us from true worship of the Lord because we are not allowing that hurt to be dealt with by God. If we cannot trust God to be a faithful judge over these hurts. we cannot worship him.

Wrath is an outburst of passion and rage with an angry heart. This is the outward manifestation of deep rooted bitterness or its momentary and reactionary displeasure with something or someone. This Gk term THYMOS is often used for God’s rage against sinners with his impending judgement.

Anger (ORGE) is the third term that is used by Paul. He already used this term earlier in our sermon on bridling our passion. With it bridled and directed towards righteous pursuits of God, it is holy. But the selfish acts of anger reflect the general disposition of we wanting to punish those in the short term or long term.

Clamor literally means shouting or raising your voice at them in anger. If you are deaf or not listening to someone, they raise your voice so you can hear them. If you are angry, you raise the level of your voice in judgment

Slander takes our anger even further into self-glorification because now we are attempting to find allies for our cause. Not only have we sat in judgment over them, but we are now rallying the troops against that person.

Bitterness is our inward punishing of them while rage and anger lead to our outward acts of judgment against them. We scream at them in anger or “ghost” them from our lives. For our older members, ghosting them is ignoring them. This might lead to shouting and even slander. Overall, Paul calls this malice which is evil and wickedness.

All of these aspects of evil Paul tells the Ephesian church that we must turn away from. These are heavy burden that weigh us down and keep our fellowship with the Lord healthy. A life lived in bitterness continually cannot be a life that is submitted to Christ. If you love him, you will turn from these evil ways, no matter how difficult.

Let me say that over the years and even in recent months, these have crept back up in my own life. I am constantly fighting this fight with my past experiences and I am thankful to the Lord for His grace in forgiving me as I seek after him. I say all that to say that putting these off is daily putting them off. We don’t do it once and its done.

James 4:12 NASB95

12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?

In putting this evil off we must come to see God as the judge over those who have offended us. But we also must remember he is our judge. As our judge, he did not crush us or destroy us. He sent his Son to save us and if we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we cannot see past his grace and therefore we wont fixate on how others have hurt us. Instead, we will only see how much mercy he has lavished on us in punishing His Son instead of us. He will see his grace as abundant to forgive and remember OUR sins no more instead of rehashing our own hurts.

B. Put On Acts that Selfless Love and Peacemaking

Ephesians 4:32–5:2 NASB95

32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love,

Our putting on starts with being imitators of God… wanting to live as the Lord Jesus lived. To imitate means to mimic the ways in which Jesus dealt with hurt, how he dealt with his enemies. He prayed for his enemies, he served his enemies, he gave truth with gentleness to his enemies and he died for his enemies.

The church must do the same by the power of the Spirit within us. He empowers us to live as Jesus lived. This includes kind acts of service. Kindness is finding the needs of others and meeting them on their terms, not our terms. Kindness is giving up without payment in return. In our economic minds, a service requires a fee but that is not how Christian love is not a service. Christian love is an act of selfless grace and grace is free.

Being tenderhearted is having an inward affection and kindness towards others. It literally means to have kind bowels towards others because the bowels were considered the inward parts of a man that controlled the feelings and emotions much like the heart. An example of tenderheartedness comes in the OT when Joseph, who is now a major political leader in Egypt sees his brothers who have come to him with great need. He did not keep record of wrongs but he did remember what they had done. His tenderheartedness overwhelmed his memory of hurt so much so that Gen 43:30 tells us that when the brothers brought the youngest Benjamin before Joseph, he…

Genesis 43:30 NASB95

30 …hurried out for he was deeply stirred over his brother, and he sought a place to weep; and he entered his chamber and wept there.

Paul uses a GK equivalent to express the tender affection and kindness that we have towards those in need. Our Enemies and those we are in conflict with have needs. To withhold helping them or loving them is sinful judgment. To give them a cup of cold water in Jesus name is Christian love.

Forgiving goes back to “Not holding a record of wrongs.” Forgiving is a personal act that you do not hold judgmnet over the offender but you leave their actions up for the Lord to deal with. Instead, you seek to imitate Christ and try and live with them, overlooking offenses and no holding their offenses against them. God in his infinite nature as “remembering our sins no more.” This should be our prayer that God will help us love those who hurt us in such a way that we cannot even remember their offenses.

Pastor and Counselor Greg Gifford has an excellent podcast series on Bitterness and Forgiveness. In it he says that our goal as Christians is that we live with others in this world by the power of the Spirit “in an unoffendable way.” This is our prayer to be someone who cannot be offended by others because God’s grace blinds us-in a good way. That should be our prayer…God blind me by your grace so that when others hurt me, the only way I respond is as one who sees the grace given to me and thus I give it to others.

This is most important in the church as Paul says…each other. Paul is calling for this forgiveness and reconciliation to happen in the church. We must live as those so affected by Christ that His love shines through us towards out brothers and sisters in the church. But beyond that, this love shines into the world as well.

Spurgeon writes,

1 John Bound to Love Our Fellow Christians

Christian, by the love that God has manifested to you, you are bound to love your fellow Christians. You are to love them though they have many infirmities. You have some yourself. If you cannot love one because he has a crusty temper, perhaps he may reply that he cannot love you because you have a lethargic spirit. Jesus loved you with all your infirmities, so love your infirm brothers.

1 John God Gave His Son for You

If you are a believer in that dear Son of God, and you do live through Him, if He bore your griefs and carried your sorrows, if He was wounded for your transgressions and bruised for your iniquities, if He put away all your sin, then fall down at His dear feet and weep yourself away. No, rise and sing yourself away. And when you have done that, come back again and go forth to work for Him with all your might, and try to love your fellow men at something like the rate at which God loved you. You will never reach that climax of love, but aim at getting as near it as you can, and God bless you in the effort

As with all these actions of Spiritual maturity, we are so compelled to do them because of the love of God for us and we are so empowered to do them because of the Spirit of God in us. Let us go forth and love others as God loved us in the life, death and resurrection of His Son.