Mission Control | Love

what is a mission?

Missions are nothing new to us. NASA launches missions into space. The military deploys operations and objectives that embark upon a strategic mission. And churches have always raised up and sent out these people we call missionaries to spread the gospel message of Jesus all over the world. Consider the things that missions all have in common. A mission is something that has a focused objective; it provides a filter for deciding what activity fits within mission parameters, and what activity is beyond the scope and necessity of mission parameters. A mission is something that is deployed; it often involves travel or movement—mission seeks to go somewhere or take us somewhere. But also consider this: even though missions are deployed and sent out, there is often a support and guiding structure in the place from which the mission is sent. Many times we refer to this as mission control. NASA keeps headquarters in Houston. When NASA launches missions up into space, those missions are guided and supported from mission control back in Houston.

missions have focused activity, parameters

missions are deployed, sent out, travel, involve movement

Our lives as followers of Jesus have something in common with this idea of mission. We talk every now-and-then about the mission of the church—that the Bible declares a set of objectives which focus our activities and send us forth into the world. And so it is not uncommon for churches to have mission statements. This church is no different; we have a mission statement. Our mission to go forth into our communities includes focused activities and mission parameters that benefit from the guidance and support of a mission control just like an astronaut team launched into space benefits from the support and guidance of the mission control in Houston.

This is what I want us to talk about for the next three weeks. I find it helpful that once every year we do a short series which reminds us and refocuses us together on our mission as followers of Jesus. We have a mission. At this church we have a mission statement. It’s good to have a mission control so we can benefit from some guidance and support.

Let’s get into it. Pop quiz – does anyone know our mission statement at this church? It would be awesome for every single person here to have our mission memorized. But maybe that isn’t fair since I only preach on it once a year. Let me parse the question back to something that might be a little more reasonable to expect. Our mission statement focuses on three activities; there are three key words in that mission. Does anyone know the three main action words of our mission?

LOVE, GROW, SERVE

Fellowship Christian Reformed Church exists to LOVE God, to GROW meaningful relationships, and to SERVE our local community

Here’s our mission. Fellowship Christian Reformed Church exists to LOVE God, to GROW meaningful relationships, and to SERVE our local community. Loving God, growing relationships, and serving community sets up for us our mission parameters which guide and focus all our activity in this place. And it also becomes the mission control which supports and equips us to go forth into our communities and live out that mission in our world.

We are going to take one activity each week in this series. So, today we consider what it means for us to be guided by a mission of love.

Galatians 5:13–23 NIV

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Sarx vs Pneuma

Here’s what’s happening in this passage. The apostle Paul is talking about the mission of love with new Christians in the region of Galatia. And he does this by setting up a series of comparisons and contrasts. Let’s work through this; and we are going to do this in a way that learns a little bit of Greek today. This is why your outline looks like there are garbled unknown words. The first contrast is this. Sarx vs Pneuma.

sarx = “flesh” — that which is mortal in the physical world; Paul uses it as reference to sinful nature

The Greek word sarx literally means flesh. Paul uses it five times in this passage. If you were following along in one of the Bibles here in the chairs, you didn’t see it at all. This is because the older 1984 NIV Bibles we keep here does not translate the words sarx as flesh. Those Bibles translate sarx as sinful nature. Let’s clear this up. In the ancient Greek world, flesh simply referred to the skin and other material that covers the bones and makes up the body. But beyond that, the Greeks used it as an abstract reference to the part of humanity that is mortal, that is temporary, that eventually dies. The apostle Paul, then, associates death with the brokenness of sin. So, Paul’s use of flesh is correctly understood as something that is pointing to the sinful nature into which all mortal humans are born.

pneuma = “spirit” — the Holy Spirit of God; Paul uses it as a reference to new life in Christ which will never die

By contrast, the opposite of sarx in this passage is pneuma, which literally means spirit. It also carries the nuance of wind or breath. Paul certainly has a reference to the Holy Spirit in mind here. He is adamant that those who receive new life in Christ are given the gift of the Holy Spirit and now have a life filled by the indwelling of the Spirit.

NOT a contrast between physical material world and spiritual world, but between that which leads to death and that which brings new life

Now then, it would be a mistake to take this contrast as a simple comparison of the physical world against the spiritual world. It is not that the physical world is all sinful and the spiritual realm is all perfect and free from sin. After all, Paul also makes reference to the spiritual battles which take place in which there are forces of evil which exist in the spiritual realms. And Paul also urges believers to honor God with their bodies which leads us to believe that not all things in the material world are inherently evil just because it is physical. There were people in the early Greek world who believed this; it was a heresy known as Gnosticism. The biblical letters of John in particular address the false teachings of Gnosticism. It is not Paul’s point to simply say physical world is bad, spiritual world is good. The comparison here in Galatians 5 is going after something else. To understand this we have to look at the next set of words contrasted in this passage: nomos vs agape.

Nomos vs Agape

nomos = “law” — rules and regulations which govern society; Paul uses it as reference to the law of Moses (613 rules)

The Greek word nomos means law. Paul has something very specific in mind when he uses this word. He is taking about the Torah. It is the Old Testament law of Moses. We should remember that before Paul’s conversion to Christianity, he was a member of the Jewish ruling scholars. He knew the Old Testament law inside and out. In fact, the Jewish religious authorities in the time of Jesus and Paul had the law of Moses boiled down to a list of rules. There were 613 of them. The goal of life as an Israelite would be to live in such a way that you kept yourself from ever breaking any of those 613 rules. Of course, this was nearly impossible. And so this is why they had an elaborate system of sacrifices which had to be repeated over and over again to atone for all the times those 613 rules were broken. When Paul writes about the law, this is what he means. It is not only a reference to that list of rules squeezed out from the Old Testament Torah, but it also refers to the endless cycle of sacrifices and purity rituals which went along with the law. It is a reference to the entire religious way of life for the Old Testament Jews.

agape = “love” — perfect self-giving & receiving love; Paul uses it as reference to the love of God & command to love one another

And against this idea of endless bondage to the rituals of the law Paul contrasts agape. Agape means love. It is not just any kind of love. Agape is a completely selfless and giving love. Agape is the kind of love which the Bible uses to describe God’s covenant relationship with his people. Agape is the kind of perfect self-giving and receiving love which is shared among the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is this agape love which Jesus brings to light as the foundation of his grace. It is this agape love which Jesus has for the world which sets him on a path to the cross so that his people may be saved. And it is this agape love which Jesus then sets before his disciples and the church as the new commandment for God’s people. Repeatedly Jesus taught his disciples, a new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you. In today’s passage, Paul summarizes the law of Christ this way, love your neighbor as yourself.

the law had become completely cut off from the love of God

Here is what Paul is after in this comparison. All those 613 rules and legal requirements of the Torah law of the Old Testament had lost their connection to the love of God. Paul’s life as a Jewish scholar before knowing Jesus was a life consumed with knowing and keeping rules which were completely cut off and separated from the love of God. But the day that Jesus broke into the life of Paul was the day all of that turned around. The day when Jesus came and met Paul in a vision on the road to Damascus was the day that God’s love returned to become the center of Paul’s mission.

Mission Control

law of Moses = endless bondage without love

law of Christ = eternal freedom within love

Let’s pull all this together to see how the love of God is at the core of our mission as a church. There is one more key word in this passage which I didn’t share the Greek in the notes—probably because it’s a mouthful: eleutheria. Freedom. The difference that Paul is highlighting between the law of Moses and the love of Jesus hinges on freedom. In the love of God we are free. In the law of Moses we are not free. It comes down to that. A mission of love sets us free. And as we go forth into a world held in the bondage of sin, we go with a mission which liberates those held captive in a dark world of sin and brokenness. It was so very important to the apostle Paul that his early church startups knew and understood this freedom. And it is just as every bit relevant for us in the church yet today because we still struggle with this. We still struggle to understand what it means for us to live out a mission in which the love of Jesus sets us free.

mission of love set us free from LAW

Pay attention with me to how this works. I think we pretty quickly see and understand the way in which the sacrifice of Jesus sets us free from sin and death. We have salvation and new life in Jesus through his love. And this is all absolutely true. But this is not the point Paul is trying to make in this passage. He is not—in this passage—urging the people of the church to see and understand that Jesus has set them free from sin and death. He is urging the church here to see and understand that the sacrifice of Jesus sets us free from the law. This is the thing we have the most trouble accepting and understanding. This is the thing which creates an offence to the gospel of the cross of Jesus. For more on that, back up and start reading from the beginning of Galatians 5.

law is bondage just like sin is bondage | only love sets us free | gospel

The crux of the issue for Paul is that there were some among the church who came from a Jewish background before coming to Christ and simply could not let go of all that law stuff which used to be a part of religion. They simply could not let go of the feeling that the only way to safely keep oneself separated from sin was to follow the rules and live by a certain code of behavior which set themselves apart. And Paul says, NO! That’s slavery to the law. You are trading your bondage to sin in exchange for bondage to the law. Either way, you are still trapped in a bondage which will always hold you apart from the love of God. There is no gospel in that. There is no good news in that. Unless we accept that the love of Jesus sets us free from the requirements of law, we can never fully grasp and live out the mission of following Jesus.

God’s love is more than emotion, feeling | more than action, activity | love is God’s character

The feature that sets love as central to our mission is that the love of God gives freedom. The love we have been given by God is so much more than a feeling or emotion of love. Although, God is certainly passionate about his love for the world he created. And the love we have been given by God is so much more than activity and busyness. Although, God’s love certainly shows up in action. Beyond feeling and emotion and action, the love of God is his character. It is not just that God feels love. It is not just that God acts in love. The Bible tells us that God IS love. Love is God’s character. Love cannot be separated from God. it is impossible for God not to love. That is how central love is to the character and being of God. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally united in a perfect bond of self-giving and receiving love which never falters or fades. And the thing about a love like this is that it is FREELY given and FREELY received. Do you see it?

God chooses to love the unlovable

God’s love and his grace did not come upon you because he had to or was forced to. God’s love and his grace did not come upon you because it was obligated by something you ever did to earn it or deserve it. No. God’s love and his grace came upon you because God freely chooses to give it. God chooses to love you exactly as you are simply because that is what God chooses to do. And that is the gospel.

Your mission, then, should you choose to accept it, is to echo the love of Jesus freely given just as you have received the love of Jesus freely given to you. You are not captive to any requirements or laws. We are free to love as God loves us. The new commandment which Jesus gives to his disciples is a commandment overflowing in freedom. Love one another as I have loved you. This is not a law. Because once you love out of required obligation it ceases to be love. The one thing that makes our mission of love work is not that we have to, but because we get to. Friends, we are freed by the love of God expressed in the sacrifice of Jesus. And we are invited to a mission in which we leave this place and go out into a world chained in brokenness and sin, and we go into that world with the freedom we have been given in Christ to share that love freely with others that they may be set free by the love of God just as we have.

the fruit of love shows up like this: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control

The fruit of love which we bear in freedom, then, takes expression like this: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.