Who’s Really Loving You?

Subject:  How can you tell the difference between someone who wants to form you and someone who wants to use you?

Complement:  Those who want to use you court you in order to isolate you; those who love you labor in anguish until Christ is formed in you.

Dominant Thought:  Real spiritual love is not measured by the attention it gives you — it is measured by whether Christ is taking shape in you.

Aim:  To awaken the hearer to whose voice is actually shaping them, and to lead them to entrust themselves to the slow, painful, faithful work of Christ being formed in them through the true gospel.

Propositional Statement:  Real spiritual love labors in anguish until Christ is formed in you.

Big Idea:  Love that forms, not flattery that uses.

Sermon Thesis:  If you want to know who’s really loving you, do not measure the attention they give you — measure whether Christ is being formed in you through them.

Galatians 4:17–20 ESV

17 They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18 It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, 19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20 I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

INTRODUCTION

Every heart in this room wants to be loved. That is not weakness. That is the fingerprint of the God who made you.

A little boy from Gary, Indiana knew it. That is how he could stand at a microphone at eleven years old in 1969 and sing an ache older than he was. Who’s loving you? That song still hurts because the question still hurts. You can be surrounded. You can be applauded. You can be called by name every day of the week — and still lie down at night with a hollow place in the middle of your chest, wondering who is really loving you.

Church, last Sunday we stood in verse sixteen and watched a man get treated like an enemy for telling the truth. Paul opened his mouth, said the thing they did not want to hear, and lost his standing over it. Now look who is standing in the doorway he just got pushed out of. Verse seventeen. Somebody smooth. Somebody warm. Somebody who has never told these people one hard thing in their lives — and they love him for it.

That is the trouble with a room full of hungry hearts. The one telling you the truth can look like your enemy, and the one using you can look like the only friend you have got left. So Paul leans over this congregation like a father through a hospital window and asks the question every one of us has whispered in the dark:

Who’s really loving you?

Galatians four, verse seventeen.

SOME LOVE USES YOU.

Galatians 4:17–18 ESV

17 They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18 It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you,

Paul in verse seventeen. Picks up a verb — ζηλοῦσιν (zēlousin) — the word behind our English “zeal,” and underneath it sits an older word that means to boil. This is affection at a rolling boil: hot, bubbling, impossible to ignore — and heat feels like love right up until you find out what is cooking. They court these Galatians. They pursue them. They make much of them.

And then in one clause Paul rips the mask off: “but for no good purpose.”

He tells you exactly what the purpose was: “They want to shut you out.” One Greek word — ἐκκλεῖσαι (ekkleisai) — to bar the door. Picture a man standing on the porch of the house he used to live in, hearing his own family laugh on the other side of a lock. That is what flattery does. It does not just pull you close. It pulls you away.

Then Paul closes the trap: “that you may make much of them.” Same verb, come back around. Now you can see the whole transaction. They make much of you so that you will make much of them. Two parties in the room. Both getting exalted. Nobody getting Jesus.

Now — verse eighteen. Do not run past this one, because this is where Paul hands you the test. “It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose.” Paul does not say attention is evil. He does not say zeal is the problem. Somebody making much of you is not automatically a wolf.

Paul says the purpose is what puts it on trial. The question was never are they courting you. The question is what are they courting you toward — toward Christ, or toward themselves?

And then he adds a second test, and it is a quiet one: “and not only when I am present with you.” Real love does not require an audience. Real love keeps working when the one who loves you is out of the room and gets nothing for it. Flattery is a performance — and every performance needs somebody watching.

Illustration: Everybody has met someone. Came in smiling, calling you their favorite. Told you how anointed you were, how sharp you were, how nobody in the building could do it like you. And it felt good — who doesn't want to be wanted? But watch it close. Every compliment had a hand attached to it. "You're so gifted" — now can you cover this for me? "You're the only one I trust" — now can you loan me that? "I don't know what I'd do without you" — now can you show up one more time? They weren't loving you. They were milking you. And the day you finally ran dry — nothing left in the account, nothing left in the tank, nothing left to give — you looked up and they were already three phone calls into somebody else. That was not love. That was a transaction. And you were the merchandise.

Application: So let me ask you the question you do not want to answer this morning: whose voice have you started defending that you never used to defend?

So let me ask you the question you do not want to answer this morning: who in your life only comes around when there is something to collect? Scroll back through your phone and find the name that lights up only when they need a ride, need a favor, need you to co-sign, need you to cover — and notice how the sweetest thing they ever said to you showed up about four seconds before the ask. Then add it up. Add up what you have handed over — the money you will not get back, the Saturdays you will not get back, the yes you gave when everything in you was already tired — and ask yourself honestly whether the affection has ever once come without a hand attached to it.

Look at how your week actually gets spent, and ask why the “ministry” that has you feeling important on the internet Thursday night is the same one that has you feeling like a stranger to your church family Sunday morning.

Sit with the way you have started talking about your own mama, your own husband, your own pastor — brittle now, short now, suspicious now, toward the very saints who were praying for you before you knew what prayer was. And go back to the last time somebody who loves you told you something hard, and watch how fast you went and found somebody else to tell you it was not true.

Now run Paul’s test on all of it. For what purpose? Where is this affection driving you — into the arms of Christ, or into the arms of the one giving it? And does it survive when nobody is watching?

But hear me, because somebody in this room has already started condemning themselves. If you have been taken in — if you handed your heart to somebody who was only collecting it — you are not a fool. You are a human being with a heart that was made to be loved, and somebody counterfeited the very thing you were made for. That is not stupidity. That is a wound. And Jesus has never once turned away a person carrying that wound.

Just stop calling it love. Somebody making much of you so you will make much of them is not loving you. And if all you want is to be made much of, you will never notice that you are being made off with. Who’s really loving you?

Transition: “Alright, preacher — but flattery and love use the same words, wear the same smile, and sit on the same pew. Show me one that does not.”

SOME LOVE LABORS FOR YOU.

Galatians 4:19 ESV

19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!

Illustration: The night a fighter wins the title, the locker room is full. Full of people who never lost one drop of sweat. The cameras come. The hangers-on come. The man who has not returned a phone call in three years comes with his hand out and his arm around the champion’s neck, and he is making much of him.

But go back six months. Five o’clock in the morning. Nobody in that gym but two men and a stopwatch. An old trainer standing in the cold, watching a fighter he loves throw the same jab four hundred times, saying again — again — again. He is not enjoying that. He is not getting anything out of that. Nobody is filming it. He is building something that does not exist yet, and it is costing him his mornings, his back, and his sleep.

Which one of those men loves that fighter? Church, you already know. The ones laboring for you almost never look like the ones impressing you.

Now look at what happens to the apostle in verse nineteen. Something in him breaks. This is the man who planted this church. He came as a founder. He came as an apostle. He has every right to stand on that. And instead he drops his shoulders and reaches for a word a man of his standing was never supposed to say out loud: “my little children.” (τεκνία μου) In the biblical language it is — a diminutive; the word a parent uses in the dark, when nobody else is listening.

Then he reaches for a picture that has no business in a grown man’s mouth: “for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth.” (ὠδίνω πάλιν) He speaks of — labor pains; the one agony in this world that has a purpose, the only pain that ends with somebody else alive. The apostle Paul says, I am in labor over you. And he says again. He is on the floor a second time, sweating, crying out — for a people who are currently sending him to the back of the line for a smoother voice.

And watch what is not in that verse. No return. No leverage. No crowd. When a mother goes into labor she gets nothing out of it but a child who is not hers to keep. That is the whole ledger. Love pays. Flattery collects.The false teachers were on the take. The apostle was on the floor.

Application: You think you know who loves you. But can I ask you something honest this morning — are you sure you can tell the difference between somebody loving you and somebody collecting you?

Because Paul says these teachers "make much of you" — but "for no good purpose." They make much of you to shut you out, so that you'll turn around and make much of them. That's not love. That's a transaction wearing love's face. And here's the trap you keep falling in: flattery feels better than love does. Flattery is all compliment and no cost. It calls you king. It never once corrects you. And it always, always performs where you can see it.

Real love mostly happens where you'll never catch it.

Somewhere there's a woman on her knees with your name in her mouth, and you have never seen her do it — not once. That's the tell, church. Flattery performs in front of you. Love labors behind you. And you have spent more thank-yous this month on folks who never lost an hour of sleep over you than on the one who lost her knees.

You know who yours is. Some of you can see her face right now.

So do something before you leave here doing what you always do. Not a post — she's not on the internet. Not a word at her funeral, standing over a casket telling a dead woman what you had the whole time to tell a living one. Go find her. Sit down in front of her. Tell her you finally know what she's been doing, and that you wouldn't be standing if she hadn't been kneeling — while she can still hear you say it.

Because hear me: the reason the Galatians got fooled is the same reason you keep getting fooled. The flatterer is easier to love back. He asks nothing of you. Love pays. Flattery collects. You'd better be sure which one you've been thanking.

Transition: “But laboring for what? A woman in labor is working toward something. Paul — what exactly are you sweating for?”

ONLY ONE LOVE FORMS CHRIST IN YOU.

Galatians 4:19–20 ESV

19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20 I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Paul answers before the verse is out of his mouth. He is not in labor for a crowd. He is not in labor for a collection. He is in labor “until Christ is formed in you.”

That word “formed” — (μορφωθῇ) — Paul never uses it anywhere else in his letters. And it is not the word for a mask laid over a face; it is the word for a face coming through. μορφή is the form that reveals what a thing actually is. It is the same root he reaches for in Philippians two, where Christ was in the form of God and took the form of a servant. So this is not Christ added to your life. Not Christ stapled to the outside of the person you already were. This is Christ’s own shape rising up through you until the people who meet you meet Him.

And Paul puts it in the passive voice. Not you forming Christ. Not Paul forming Christ. Christ being formed — by the Spirit, through the true gospel — in a soul that will stay put.

Stay put where?

Illustration: Picture a potter’s wheel. Wet clay. Shapeless. A lump sitting there going nowhere on its own. Then the hands come down and the wheel begins to spin. And the clay does not get a vote. It gets pressed where it did not want to be pressed. Thinned where it did not want to be thinned. Pushed toward a shape it cannot see. And here is what you have to understand about a lump of clay on a wheel: the clay never sees the finished vessel while it is being formed. It only ever feels the pressure of the hands.

Isaiah stood in that same shop centuries before Paul: “we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” The God who reached into the dirt of Eden and formed a man out of the ground is still in the forming business. He is just working deeper now.

Application: And this is where some of you have to stop running. Because some of you keep climbing off the wheel.

He starts pressing on your marriage — and you go find a new church.

He starts pressing on your calendar — and suddenly Bible study is the one hour you cannot spare.

He starts pressing on your money — and you go find a preacher who says God does not care about your money.

He starts pressing on your mouth — and you go looking for a room where nobody will ever correct you.

He starts pressing on that relationship you know good and well He never gave you — and all of a sudden the flatterer’s voice from this morning starts sounding like freedom.

And then you wonder why Christ is not being formed in you. Look! He cannot form what will not stay on the wheel.

I will tell you the truth even if it costs me: the reason some of you are the exact same person you were five years ago is not that God ran out of grace. It is that you climb down off that wheel every time His hands get near the one thing you love more than Him.

But hear me carefully — the clay does not hold itself on the wheel. If staying were up to your grip, every last one of us would be dust on the floor by now. The same hands that press you are the hands that hold you there. He is not waiting for you to get strong enough to endure Him. He is strong enough to keep you.

Now look at verse twenty, because it may be the most pastoral sentence in the letter: “I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone.”

Do you hear that? Paul hates the way he sounds. He is stuck with a letter, and ink is a blunt instrument. He would give anything to get in the room, sit down, drop his voice, and say the same hard thing with his hand on their shoulder. Somebody in here needs that this morning: the hardest word you ever got from somebody who loves you was not rejection. It was a father who could not get in the room.

“For I am perplexed about you.” ἀποροῦμαι — literally, no passage. Picture a man standing on a riverbank with no ford, no bridge, and no boat, and the people he loves are on the other side. That is the apostle. He is out of moves. He can labor. He can preach. He can weep through a letter. He cannot manufacture the outcome. Only God forms Christ in a soul.

And if you are a broken vessel this morning — cracked, marred, wobbling, spinning off-center — hear the gospel. Jeremiah stood in the potter’s house and watched a vessel get ruined in the potter’s hand, and the potter reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to do. He did not sweep you into the trash. He worked the clay back down and He started again. That is grace. Who’s really loving you?The One whose hands will not quit.

CELEBRATION

And here is how you know it is Him.

The Potter Himself became clay. The One who scooped up the dust of Eden and breathed a man into being bent down and took the dust on Himself. Hands that shaped galaxies reached out and touched a leper. And then those same hands were opened up on a hill called Golgotha — and He was pressed. Pressed until the blood ran. Pressed until the breath left Him. Thinned out on a Roman cross until there was nothing left of Him to give.

And they took Him down and laid Him in a borrowed grave, and the earth closed over Him, and the wheel stopped, and hell threw a party.

But early Sunday morning — while it was still dark — the Potter got up! Death could not hold the hands that made it! He walked out of that tomb with all authority in heaven and on earth in His nail-scarred hands. And He is not finished. He is seated at the right hand of the Father this very morning, and He is still at the wheel. Still shaping. Still pressing. Still holding.

And He will not take His hands off of you until Christ is formed in you.

Who’s really loving you? The One who died to have you, was buried to redeem you, and rose to reshape you.