The Greatest Attribute of a Disciple is Love
Lessons in Discipleship • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Today we are continuing our study through the Gospel of Mark. As I’ve mentioned during a few of these lessons, one of the overall themes of the book of Mark is Discipleship, and we can probably be even more specific than that. We could say Mark places a heavy emphasis on the cost of discipleship. In other words, Mark makes it clear that things like suffering, experiencing hardships, and opposition from the world are all things believers can expect as we follow the example of Christ. This is what we see all throughout chapter 2, Jesus facing opposition from Israel’s religious authorities.
Now this should make it clear to everyone who reads Mark’s Gospel that when we follow Christ, we are going to face opposition. In other words, the world will hate us for proclaiming Christ and living in obedience to His commands. But here is the good news. We can take comfort knowing that Jesus, who is now seated at the right hand of the Father, is there praying for us. He is our great High Priest who can sympathize with what we are going through. He can sympathize with our struggles, our suffering, and our pain because He experienced it first. The Lord gave us the perfect example of what our lives should look like.
Now our job as disciples is to follow the pathway that He traveled first. The Lord Jesus Christ blazed the trail for believers. He perfectly modeled what it looks like to put our brothers first. He showed us the greatest example of what it means to love our brother. Listen to what John writes in his first letter.
16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
I absolutely love this verse. John says, “By this we know love”. John says we know what real love looks like because Jesus showed us. In other words, we know what love is “because He laid down His life for us.” Jesus showed mankind what God’s love is like. That is how we know what love is. We should meditate on His love, and we should let it motivate us to live self sacrificial lives. Lives that demonstrate the love of Christ for our brother. John says, we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
This is really a mind blowing verse isn’t it. John tells us that we know what love is because Christ demonstrated it by dying for us. But He doesn’t stop there. He tells us that we should willing to do the exact same thing for our brother. Man. That is convicting isn’t it. We should be willing to die for our brothers. Listen, love like this doesn’t exist in our flesh. We need God’s love to be produced in us to love like that. That means we need to be consistently staring into the mirror of God’s word so we are constantly reminded of who Christ is and what He has done for us. We need the word of God filling our hearts and minds so the Holy Spirit can transform us into the image of Christ. And when this process is taking place, the less we love ourselves and the more we love our brothers. Here is the key point of today’s lesson.
The Greatest Attribute of a Disciple is Love
The Greatest Attribute of a Disciple is Love
When we are walking in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, when we are living our lives empowered by the Holy Spirit, when we are growing by the word of God, we become more and more selfless. In other words, our lives begin to look more and more like Jesus’ life. And the more our lives look like Jesus’ life, the more we are willing to lay down our life for the brethren.
Again, the Lord gave us the perfect example of what our Christian lives should look like. And in order to model our lives after His, we need to know Him intimately. We need to be learning from Him constantly. You see, love for our brother is the defining characteristic of a disciple of Christ. And I’m not just saying that because it sounds good. This is what the Lord Jesus taught us. This is what he taught His disciples on the eve of His death. The Lord said to His disciples.
35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Church, our lives should be defined by our love for one another. When visitors walk into this church they should see our love for one another. Legacy our love for one another should be a supernatural love that the world can’t understand. We should be willing to die for one another. Boy, that is extreme isn’t it.
Here is another point. The type of love mentioned in these verses, isn’t a warm fuzzy emotional type of love. No, it is a commitment type of love that is based on what we do (actions). What do we do? We put our brothers needs before our own. Can you imagine what this church would look like if we loved that way. I’ll tell you this, we wouldn’t have any fighting. If we approached our Christian lives with a commitment to put our brothers needs first, this church would be unified by the Holy Spirit accomplishing great things for God. Amen. A very common question that Pastors get asked is, What is your vision for the church? Well, my vision for the church is for us to love one another the way that Jesus loved us. This is what Jesus told His disciples.
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Legacy, if we can accomplish this commandment from the Lord, that means everything else has fallen into place. Loving our brothers this way is the fulfillment for God’s plan for the church. This means that each one of us individually is walking in fellowship with the Lord, and it means that God’s Holy Spirit is producing agape love in us. If we love our brothers the way Christ loved us it means we are being transformed into His likeness and this love will have an impact that we can’t even imagine.
Ok, let’s work our way to today’s passage of Scripture. In today’s text we are going to see Jesus once again model for us what love looks like. We are going to see Jesus perform another miraculous healing on the Sabbath. And the compassion of the Lord Jesus is going to stand in stark contrast to the Pharisees. Once again, we are going to see the cold legalism of the Pharisees completely ignore the needs of the Jewish people. In fact, we will learn today that the Pharisees would rather see a man with a paralyzed arm remain that way, rather than see their religious traditions violated. So, there is a very obvious take away from today’s lesson. If our religious rules trump showing love for our brother, we have drifted into legalism.
OK, turn with me if you will to Mark chapter 3 and let’s read verses 1-6.
1 And He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.
3 And He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Step forward.” 4 Then He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they kept silent.
5 And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.
Let’s pray.
As we dig into the text this morning let me point out a couple of details about the first two verses.
1 And He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.
Notice it says, “He entered the synagogue again”. Obviously, Jesus has been in this synagogue before, and it seems most likely that He was in Capernaum where Peter and Andrew lived. Now as we saw last week, Jesus has already had a confrontation with the Pharisees regarding what was allowed on the Sabbath. Let me catch you up if you weren’t here.
Jesus was with His disciples on another Sabbath, and HIs disciples got hungry so they picked a few heads of grain to eat. Well, in the Pharisees minds they had violated the Sabbath, so they brought the issue to Jesus. Well, Jesus gets them straightened out and the last thing He says to them is,
27 And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”
Now I’m reviewing the verses because what the Lord teaches here ties into this Sabbath healing. When Jesus says, the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, Jesus is teaching the legalistic Pharisees something. He was teaching them that the Sabbath was suppose to serve man. In other word’s the Sabbath was supposed to benefit man by giving him rest. In short, the Sabbath was a day of blessing for the Jewish people, but the Pharisees had made it a day of burden. You see, because of all of their added rules, men were having to serve the Sabbath, and it had become a burden for them. How exactly had it become a burden? Well we have two examples. Last week we saw that the disciples wouldn’t have been allowed to eat, if they followed the Pharisees oral traditions. They would have suffered through their hunger. Having to starve on the Sabbath was not the Lord’s intention. And in today’s text we see an even more extreme example. Let’s look back at verse 1 of Chapter 3.
1 And He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.
Let’s focus in on this man’s hand for a second. It says a man was there who had a withered hand. Now I looked this up in the Greek, and I found an interesting definition. It means to become dry to the point of being immobilized or paralyzed. This definition makes me think of a plant that has dried up and died due to lack of water. Once a plant dies it withers and dries up. It becomes stiff, and brittle. Well, something paralyzed this man’s arm and it had dried up and withered. It makes me think that there is no muscle left, and it was most likely frozen in awkward position.
Now this is what blows my mind. Let’s read verse 2. “So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.” The verb here “watched closely” is a single word in the Greek, and it indicates that they did it maliciously while lying in wait for Him to do something wrong. Also tense of the verb indicates that there was continuously action. It means the were keeping an eye on him.
It is amazing when you stop and think about what is going on here. Remember the setting is the synagogue, the house of God, and God is standing right in front of them. But they have already rejected Jesus, and they are seeking to accuse Him. The Pharisees are using this man a bait. He is a pawn being used to trap Jesus. You see, according to their oral traditions you couldn’t heal on the Sabbath. Again, this wasn’t in the Law of Moses. These were added legalist traditions that had made the Sabbath a burden for the Jewish people.
Think about this for a moment. Think about how coldhearted these Pharisees were. They couldn’t care less about this man. Think about how this paralyzed limb impacted this man’s everyday life. Did he have a family, was he able to provide for them? Think about the difficulties of trying to get through life with one arm. If he was able to work it would have been extremely limited, but the Pharisees don’t care. They just want to trip Jesus up. They are trying to bait Him into healing on the Sabbath, so they can accuse Him. Talk about loveless. Talk about lack of compassion. And this is what legalism does. It drains love, compassion, and mercy out of our faith, and make it nothing more than a set of rules. It is mystifying to me that these religious leaders are so far from the Law’s intended purpose. Remember what Jesus said the two most important commands were. Let’s turn to Mark chapter 12, and read Jesus’ response to a scribe who asked Him what the greatest commandment was. This is Jesus’ response.
29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.
Now pay attention to the next verse.
31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Do you see how miserably the Pharisees have failed to keep the law? This man with the withered arm was their neighbor. Are they loving him like that loved themselves? Do you think if one of them had a withered arm, they would refuse to be healed on the Sabbath? Of course not. Of course they wouldn’t. This is what happens with legalism. This is what happens when we only clean the outside of the cup and dish. To Jewish society these men are the pinnacle of righteousness. But internally they were full of wickedness and full of self indulgence. Jesus tells them they are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside, but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. He tells them outwardly you appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. We are going to see their hypocrisy and lawlessness on full display in a moment.
Let me make a final point before we move on to the next couple of verses. The Pharisees had completely missed the mark. They should have loved this man. They should have ushered Him into the arms of Jesus wanting him to be healed. But all they care about is themselves. All they care about is keeping their power and positions of authority.
I want us to take note of the difference between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were more concerned about their reputations, their authority, and there oral laws than they were about this paralyzed man. We saw it last week with the hungry disciples, and we see it here in their lack of concern for this man. So, here’s the point.
If commandments are more important to us than loving our brother, we are missing the mark.
If commandments are more important to us than loving our brother, we are missing the mark.
Now I realize that this may strike some of you funny. And don’t think for a second that I’m saying we shouldn’t keep the commandments of the NT. So let me make this point. If we love our brother the way Jesus did, we are automatically fulfilling the law. But don’t take my word for it, take Paul’s.
10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
The more we walk in fellowship with the Lord, the more we learn from Him, the more we learn from him the more we will love like Him, and the more we love like him, the more we fulfill the law of Christ. If you want to focus of something, focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, learn from Him, and this will make you love like Him. This will enable you to love your brother the way that Christ loved you. Don’t get sucked into legalism because it produces the opposite of love, and it will actually lead to more sin. Amen.
OK, we need to get to the next couple of verses. Let’s look at verses 3 & 4
3 And He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Step forward.” 4 Then He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they kept silent.
Let me give you some background that will help paint this picture for you. In verse 3, Jesus commands the man to “Step forward”. This command to step forward makes us think of modern-day churches when a person comes down front, but first century synagogues were set up differently. They had an open space in the middle. Which is interesting because a literal translation of the Greek doesn’t say “step forward. It says, “Arise into the middle”. So what is happening here is Jesus is commanding this man to step into the middle of the congregation so that all could see his need.
You see, the Pharisees want to accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath, and I’m sure they want to discredit Him before the people. You see, Jesus’ growing popularity among the people is becoming a threat to their authority. This is what is really scaring them. The common people very much respected the Pharisees as men of God. So, undoubtably they want to discredit Jesus, and show the people that He was breaking the Sabbath. They wanted to make their accusations public so Jesus would be discredited in the eyes of the people.
Knowing this makes what the Lord does here even more awesome. He gets the man with the withered hand to stand right in the middle where every one can see him, and He asks the Pharisees a question. Verse 4 says, He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?
Let’s talk about this phrase, “Is it lawful”. In the original language the word means is it permissible or is it allowed especially according to a rule or custom. So, Jesus is asking them is it permissible (according to your regulations) to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil? And they have no answer to the question. You see, Jesus has done something here by asking this question. He’s made it a question of morality, not just following regulations. He is asking them what is the moral thing to do for this man? Is it moral to leave this man in his wretched state? And the obvious answer is that what is moral is to help this man. In fact,
For Jesus not to heal the man would have been a violation of God’s purpose for the Sabbath, namely, to bring blessing to people (cf.
17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.
3 And He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Step forward.” 4 Then He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they kept silent.
Here is another point. Notice at the end of the verse 4 it says, “But they kept silent.” They were trying to trap Jesus, but now He has trapped them. The Pharisees can’t answer the question. They can’t say is it permissible to do good because then they can’t accuse Him. But the question cuts much deeper than that. You see, Jesus was seeking to good by healing this man, but what were they doing? They were doing evil. That we trying to trap Jesus and accuse Him, and not only that but they were using this crippled man as bait. They were the ones working on the Sabbath, and their works were evil.
Let me point out one more thing about Jesus’ question. He says, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil,” and pay attention to what he says next, “to save life or to kill?” By restoring this man’s limb Jesus was in a very real sense saving this man’s life. This man would receive a new lease of life. All the adversity he faced waking up everyday would be gone. So, Jesus is seeking to save a life on the Sabbath, but you know what Pharisees were doing? Here is the ironic thing. Not only were the Pharisees plotting evil by trapping Jesus, not only were they in a sense killing this man by not allowing Him to be healed, but it is even worse than that. Right after Jesus heals this man, these hypocrites walk right out the door and start plotting to kill Jesus. And they did all of this on the Sabbath. It hard to believe that their hearts were this hardened. Let’s read verse 5.
5 And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.
The first part of verse 5 says Jesus, “looked around at them with anger”.
This is the only place in the New Testament where a writer explicitly stated that Jesus was angry (Gr. orge, which describes an abiding, settled habit of mind).
Jesus was burning with a righteous anger because of the hardness of their hearts. The word for hardness can also mean spiritual blindness, and both were true of these men. They had hardened their hearts against Jesus, His teaching, and the miraculous healings He performed. They were blind to the fact that the Messiah was standing right in front of them.
This verse says Jesus was angry, but it also says He was grieved. This means Jesus had compassion for these men. The word translated grieved only occurs in this one place in the NT. You see, Jesus was sorry for their spiritual condition, and He wished it wasn’t this way. He had sympathy for them. What a stark contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus is filled with compassion for these men even as they are plotting to kill Him. And on the other hand we have the cold legalistic Pharisees who have no love for this crippled man, and only hatred for Jesus. There is no love for anyone but themselves. They claimed to be worshipping God, who is full of grace and mercy, but they knew nothing of these virtues. Let’s read our last verse.
6 Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.
This may be the most shocking verse we have covered. These leaders were trying to accuse Jesus for healing a man, for doing good on the Sabbath, but look what they are doing. They are plotting to commit murder on the Sabbath. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Remember the question Jesus asked them? Is is permissible on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? They were plotting murder on the Sabbath day. Listen to Jesus’ description of them in Matthew.
28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
These men were hypocrites and these men were lawless. They were plotting murder on the Sabbath, God’s day of blessing. Let this be a lesson for all of us that legalism leads to nothing but sin. Let us evaluate our Christian lives, our motivations, and our fruit. If the number one attribute is not love for the brethren, then we need to make a course correction. Do not focus on the commandments, but the commander Himself. Let us seek to live our lives empowered by the Holy Spirit, always learning from our Master as we await His return.
To close today I want to ask you a question.
What is Love?
What is Love?
In the world we live in, it is extremely common to see marriages end. And often times when they do we hear things like, “we just fell out of love”. You see, the world has embraced this idea that love is an emotional feeling, or it is some kind of physical attraction. But I want us to understand something. When the Bible speaks of God’s love for us, it is always the word agape. And all of the verses we looked at today the Greek word used in all of them was agape. Here is what you need to know about agape.
Agape love is a commitment that we make, and it is defined by actions that we take.
Agape love is a commitment that we make, and it is defined by actions that we take.
You see, when we speak of agape, we are not talking about some mushy-gushy emotion or some warm and fuzzy feeling. This type of love has much more to do with what you choose, instead of, and even in spite of, how you feel.
As I close here let me share something personal. As I young Christian I used to feel guilty because I wasn’t filled with this emotional, warm, fuzzy, mushy gushy love for my brothers and sisters in Christ. I used to think man why don’t I feel this feeling of love toward my brothers. Well, today I understand that loving our brothers and sisters in Christ means that we are committed to them. Today I understand that sometimes we are filled with that warm emotional feelings of affection toward our brothers and sometimes we aren’t. But when God’s agape love is being produced in us we love our brothers regardless of how we feel. Today, I show agape love for my brothers by slaving over the Bible so that I can minister through the word. Today, I long to see fruit being produced in peoples lives as they learn the word of God. You see, when we grow in the faith and walk in fellowship with the Lord we give more and more of ourselves to our brother. And I certainly don’t do it perfectly, no one does. But there is such a freedom in committing yourselves to care for God’s people. There is freedom when we serve others instead of serving ourselves. And the only way to do it properly is through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Steal away every moment you can to be with the Lord, and if you do this, the more your life will reflect His, and the more you will love like Him. This is my vision Legacy. I want us to love each other the way that Christ loves us. The only way to do that is to be in fellowship with the Lord. Please don’t fall into the trap of legalism because it is of the flesh and only leads to self obsession, pride, and hard hearts. Let us follow the example the Lord Jesus Christ gave us and be willing to lay down our lives for the brethren. This is how the world will know we are His disciples, and this above all else is how we live in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray.
