Obedience in the Christian Life
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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.
Opening Prayer
Opening Prayer
So, we pick up where we left off last Sunday, as Jesus commands us to…
Abide in His Love
Abide in His Love
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.
When Jesus says…abide in my love
Jesus is telling the eleven to remain in His love.
He’s not telling them to gain it.
He’s already told them they have it.
They have the perfect, fullness of Christ’s love upon them.
But, now Christ says abide/remain in it.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
This Jesus telling us that the place you want to dwell is in His love.
Jesus is not opposed to us feeling our weakness.
Jesus is not opposed to us confessing our proneness to wander out from the daily experience of Christ’s love.
Jesus wants us to feel it, and come to Him in prayer and ask for what we need to abide in His love.
Jesus wants us to feel the daily insufficiency of self and run to Him and ask Him to keep His promise to never leave us, nor forsake us.
And, knowing we have such promises should encourage us to ask for the things we know we have.
The Abiding in Christ & His Love
The Abiding in Christ & His Love
This is not perfection.
10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
As we read the gospels, and the NT...
What we see explained in the doctrine of obedience to Christ involves a few things…
#1 – Repentance in the Christian Life
#1 – Repentance in the Christian Life
I want to take a little time to show you how we are called to repentance, even after justification, by looking at what the Bible teaches about Church discipline.
We see this first taught in the NT by Jesus in…
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
This is Jesus teaching the doctrine of Church discipline or accountability within the Church.
The purpose of Church Discipline is for:
the purity of the Church.
Open, unrepented of sin.
ignorance
rebellion
the restoration of the Christian.
Experience the love of Christ in daily living.
Experience the sweet fellowship of the church.
Now, let’s look at the purpose worked out in practice…
1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. 4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
There’s unrepentant sin going on in the church.
The church, at least a large part of it, was celebrating such gross immorality.
The reason, they were misunderstanding forgiveness.
They were misunderstanding the liberty we have in Christ.
They were thinking…
We have forgiveness for all sin. We have freedom from condemnation. Live it up then. Fill up your cup of pleasure.
Paul says, “No!”
Paul had to combat this in Romans 6, as well.
If you are in Christ, you’ve been given a new heart.
Part of that new heart is a love for righteousness, not sin.
The Corinthian Church seems to have taken the correction well.
And, followed the biblical prescription for handling sin in the church, and in particular this specific situation.
Now, let’s see how it went…
5 Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. 6 For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, 7 so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.
The discipline worked.
The unrepentant brother was removed from the church fellowship…
The external blessings of being part of the church removed.
The Church now treating this person like a Tax Collector or Gentile as Jesus stated…
Meaning they are a recipient of evangelism.
The church has removed their affirmation of their confession.
The church, the people, are calling this person to repentance and speaking the gospel into his life.
And, God used it to bring the same person to repentance.
And, now Paul is having to tell the church that was the goal.
So, now they are to restore him to the membership and fellowship of the church.
So, we see that not only is repentance of sin something that should take place in our life, even after justification…
But, it something that is biblically prescribed to every Christian…
And the Church is given a blueprint to help it take place.
The very fact that repentance is the life long duty and privilege of the Christian, speaks to the nature of our obedience, does it not.
The Christian life is not one of perfection in our own words and deeds.
It is a confession that perfection is the goal and standard of righteous living.
But, it is at the same time, a confession that only Christ has lived such a life…
And, our hope is that by faith His perfect righteousness has been imputed to our account.
The Christian life is a pursuit of obedience to what Christ calls us to do, even when, and especially when we fail to do so.
Our repentance is a picture of our sinfulness and that our hope is not in our perfection…
—> But, rather, the perfection of Christ.
#2 – Obedience in the Christian Life
#2 – Obedience in the Christian Life
I started with Repentance because I wanted you to see that imperfect obedience and even disobedience in the Christian life is accounted for in the NT.
But, I also want us to see that obedience is also important to the Christian life.
Commands for the Christian Life
Commands for the Christian Life
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.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
The problem we have with hearing verses like this is we have been saved from a Covenant that declared…
Keep my commands perfectly or Die.
Now, as Christians, we’ve been delivered from that Covenant that brought death…
Into a covenant that declares the law has been kept perfectly by Christ on our behalf…
And, we are having to learn our new relationship with the Law of God.
It no longer has curses for us…only blessings.
So, in the NC, commands are not instructions of how to get into the NC, nor how to not get exiled from the NC.
Commands in the NC are how to enjoy the NC life to the fullest.
And, commands tell us what is pleasing to the Lord.
Which we want to know because we want to please the One we love…the One who saved us from our own condemnation.
That’s why Jesus states in…
11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
If Jesus is saying this is how you gain entrance into the NC…
—> Or this is how you don’t get exiled…
—> This would not fill us up with joy.
Because it would be no different, nor any better than the OC.
—> The OC that was breakable and was broken.
The NC is not breakable, because it has already been kept by Christ for all those in it.
We cannot forget, as well, that Jesus has already taught us that love produces obedience.
Obedience never produces love.
So, if you love Christ, you will obey Christ because you love Him and trust Him.
The Purpose of Obedience in the Christian Life
The Purpose of Obedience in the Christian Life
Now let me pose some questions…
Is obedience important in the Christian life?
—> Absolutely.
Must we obey in the NC?
—> Absolutely.
But, the obedience is not to earn, but to enjoy.
The obedience is not to keep the blessings of God.
The purposes of obedience in the Christian Life are:
To glorify God.
To enhance your enjoyment of the blessings of God.
To enhance the beauty of the Christ & His bride, the Church to a world living in drakness.
Remember, when we started this passage, we looked at two ways in which this passage is misinterpreted.
Now, I want us to see a massive way regarding…
How This Passage Is Misapplied in the Church?
How This Passage Is Misapplied in the Church?
This sort of goes back to similar things that I said when I preached about the dangers of Spiritual Disciplines.
And, what I’m about to say regarding the misapplication of this text actually goes against Jesus’ command of priority in this passage…
—> Which is love for one another.
The way this passage is misapplied is that many appoint themselves as “Fruit Police.”
They have determined what is fruit.
They have determined that they bear that fruit.
They measure everyone according to the resume of fruit.
They tell people they’re not saved based on the absence of the fruit the Fruit Police want to see.
Or what the Fruit Police feel is important in the person’s life that they’re speaking to.
It’s almost always Spiritual Disciplines, like:
Reading you Bible
Verse memory
Church attendance (quantity)
Sunday School
Clothing, modesty (their definition)
Lifestyle comfort (their definition)
No liberty in these people’s views.
They rarely address people about…
22 …love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control;
Because they’re not doing those well, either.
And, honestly, they are dangerous to the church.
It’s the group Paul warned the Galatian church against.
Those who seek to be justified by works.
Those who seek to be in & stay in the NC by what they do…
Rather than by what Christ has done.
They crush people with their legalism.
It is not what Christ has called us to, as His bride.
Listen to what Jesus says…
17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
Let’s think about this...
Let’s think about this...
Stop creating resumes and measuring people by yours.
Focus on your weaknesses and pray for others’ weaknesses.
Love one another.
If you were doing the same, or if someone was confronting you with an area of weakness…
How would you want to be treated?
This means that we should be gracious and patient with one another.
It is much more loving to walk along with someone than to just bark commands at them…
Or bark rebukes at them.
This means that Church Discipline should take as long as it can.
I know that I’ve had people come up to me through my 25 years of ministry…
And, their idea of Church Discipline is immediate.
Kinda like a repent or your out.
But, that doesn’t take into consideration that sometimes people may be sinning out of ignorance.
And, so they need to be taught with grace and patience.
Sometimes people are sinning and they really need help getting out of it.
They’ve been enamored with a sin, and they’re trying to break free…
And, they need patience and grace as you walk beside them through and out of their situation.
We have to be careful to not break a bruised reed.
Or to not quench a smoldering wick.
Sometimes there are multiple parties involved and it is working all sides to the same conclusion as Scripture.
And, that can take time.
Sometimes it’s a very serious situation, with a heart that is hardened to the Scripture and circumstances force you to go more quickly.
But, church discipline should always take as much time as it can.
And, it should always be done out of love.
For the glory of God.
And, for the restoration of the offender.
Closing Prayer
Closing Prayer
