The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Transformative Love

Romans 12:1-2, 9-21; 13:8-10 The Moral Vision of the NT Transformative Love Introduction​: ​If it is your first time joining us - Welcome! We have dedicated this past year to Biblical Literacy; meaning we as a church are reading the Bible for ourselves to know first hand what it teaches and in order to be shaped by the story of God. And along with that we have been teaching through - the main themes, message and characters of the Bible. Today we come to our last teaching in The Year of Biblical Literacy series - The Moral Vision of the NT. What do we mean by The Moral Vision of the NT? - As we’ve said - We believe that the Bible is THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE STORY FROM GOD - containing laws, commands, statutes, principles, and wisdom, etc - that show us how life works best - It teaches us God’s way, the way of his kingdom. The bible tells us the story of the world from God’s point of view - what went wrong with it and how it will finally be put right through God’s anointed king and rescuer - Jesus Christ. So the ​Moral Vision of the NT​ is about how we now live in light of that story, how we live in a way that is consistent with this story - or more specifically how our lives continue to tell the story of God. In weeks past we’ve been looking at how Romans 12:1-2 is all about calibrating your life according to the Gospel - the mercy of God - rather than the perspectives, goals, drive and motivations of this culture or cultural moment.​ Paul appeals to these Roman Christians, and to us - to present our bodies (that is the everyday, in and out aspects of human life, life at it’s best, life at it’s hardest - it’s the whole of you - your identity, your sexuality, your relationships, your career, your present, your past, your future). Present yourself, as you are, in your everyday living, to God — as an instrument or tool to do what its right! As we do this individually and collectively - we discover what is God’s perfect will. Paul’s teaching on this transformation culminates in this Biblical vision of Love. So as providence would have it - we end our year long series on the Bible on the subject of Love. For Paul and the writers of the NT the ultimate evidence or display of our transformation to the image of God is not rule keeping, doing religious acts or services or anything like that. The evidence of the Life of God and of our Transformation is love; Love is the goal, the Telios, the perfect will, that that we are growing into. For we have been reborn, into the family of the God who is love, through the great display of God’s giving and forgiving love in Jesus Christ crucified, buried, and risen again for our sakes.. And as John the Apostle tells us - When we love one another the Love of God is made perfect (same word Paul uses) -Telios - it finds it’s completion, it comes full circle… Give yourself to be transformed into the Image of our God of giving and forgiving love… 1. What is Love? 1. Our culture talks of love constantly; we’re obsessed with love and talk of love. You see it posted all over, you hear it talked about constantly - but rarely is it defined for us. What is love? Many times, when asked, people can’t define it. “Love is Love,” they say. Or some might make a joke out of this and just quote some lines from a famous song.. Or maybe they can’t define it but say, “But I know what it is when I see it.” Which doesn’t leave a whole lot of confidence.. 2. With our cultural definitions of love, it’s probably rather strange that Paul commands certain emotions of people, or says, “let love be sincere,” as he does here - How can you command someone to love sincerely? 1. A huge mistake that we can make is to look up this word in the dictionary and think that we’re getting the right idea as to what Paul is talking about. What we will find is love described in terms of passion, affection or feelings. 2. God’s Love 1. In scripture Love is always defined in terms of action - specifically the action of the God who is Love. ​To Paul and the Authors of Scripture love had been defined by The Story of God. The Hebrew word we often translate as love in our Bible's is the word Chesed - and it means unfailing love, steadfast love, or faithfulness.(First mention of Love in the Bible?) It is based on God’s covenant faithfulness to the family of Abraham. It really has nothing to do with our modern terms of falling in or out of love, or the way we feel about a certain person or thing. It has everything to do with commitment. So first and foremost when we are talking about love in the Bible it is commitment - covenantal commitment - But because God was committed to Israel it meant that he was present to help, to provide, to save, to heal, to listen, to answer. God’s love was always described in action. 2. Paul and the writers of the NT came to see the greatest act of God’s covenant faithfulness was in his saving, redeeming, serving, listening, sacrificing action through his son -Jesus Christ. And ultimately it is at the cross where this God of covenant faithfulness would show his unfailing love and faithfulness to Israel and the rest of the world to redeem, to restore, to conquer evil, to bring resurrection - even at cost of his own life. 3. John the Apostle, defines love for us in his 1st epistle - He says,​ “​In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.​ - 1 John 4:9-10 1. “Certainly every expression in the Bible that refers to God’s love shows God in action; in love He sent His Son to be our Saviour and our Redeemer. Likewise, Christian love for others is a love that will engage in loving acts – acts of kindness, tenderness compassion, protection, perseverance, and so on.” - Tremper Longman and David E. Garland, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary 3. Transformative Love 1. This means then that the love that Paul is calling Christians into is an active love and a TOUGH love - a covenantal love, an unfailing love. Our modern definitions of love can't hold a candle to it! 2. Look at the range of love that Paul is calling Christians to. This is a love that is to be practiced, this is ​love as a way of life​ for God’s people, and it is worked out in the most regular, mundane, in and out relationships of everyday life. The range is from, “love one another with a familial love" to “if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.” ​It’s a love that overcomes evil - by doing good. That is real love, that is powerful love. But it is also a practical love. A love that is desperately needed everyday in our fractured world of politics, sex, and power. 3. Of course this isn’t the only place Paul talks about this love as a way of life - we find Paul’s most famous teaching on love in 1 Corinthians 13. 1. “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!​ ​Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.​ ​All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” 4. This description of Love is one of the most famous statements in all the world on what love is and what love does. This statement is about deep love, about true love, it’s a fantastic statement to hear and strive for because it cuts through all the superficial definitions and poor examples of what the world commonly calls love. 5. But we shouldn’t imagine that we can just step into this way of thinking and living and stay there effortlessly… this love must be practiced in the most mundane of circumstances (this is what Paul is doing here in Romans - showing us how love works out). Everyday in seemingly small and insignificant ways - in committed relationships to one another.. That’s how real character and virtue is formed. 1. Remember we are talking about love as a way of life - That you become love. So that when you are placed in a situation where maybe at this moment you would say, - "I couldn’t love that person, or I couldn’t ever forgive a thing like that.” In fact, that is exactly what you will do, because you have been first living your life with the knowledge that you have been supremely loved by God, not just that God is fond of you and has warms feelings for you - but that he gave the most valuable thing in all of the cosmos in order to redeem you and make you his child - he gave you his son, Jesus, to a horrific death on the cross, that you might be forgiven, and given new life, a new and bright future in his kingdom.. 2. And secondly you have been practicing this love of God for you, by loving others - everyday putting others before yourself, practicing patience, letting go of control, doing kindness, forgiving and letting go of small irritable things that humans do, believing the best about others, hoping and working for their good and blessing… these and a hundred other small ways, that you are working hand in hand with the Spirit to walk in the newness of life this is transforming love - love that transforms us into the image of our Father in heaven who loves all liberally and indiscriminately - who causes his blessings to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. 6. This transforming Love that Paul is talking about is a tough love, in fact there is nothing tougher in all the world.. 1. Mark sayers in his book Strange days says, ​“The Spirit leads not just to joy and praise but also love. Not the soppy, soapy reduction, recycled greeting cards and made for television romances, but the blood and guts love that emerges from Calvary - the self denying love that crosses the borders and barriers erected in our world against God and others” - Mark Sayers, Strange Days 7. Of course there is nothing powerful, life changing, or out of this world about loving, serving, giving and forgiving people who are like you, or people that love you anyone can do that. But Transformative Love, Life changing, out of this world, love loves “the other”, gives and forgives, blesses and prays for, even their enemies. 1. “Paul’s call to love is an alternative not only to the blatant violence that dominates human relations, but also to the manipulative gift-giving and ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’ mentality that permeates many human cultures. T ​ his law of Christ forbids activity in the name of God that does not correspond to the divine graciousness displayed in the faithful and loving death of Jesus, and it requires an ongoing individual and communal discernment of how to actualize the love of God in creative but faithful ways. Those in Christ must ‘keep in step with the Spirit’ (Gal 5:25), learning how the Spirit continues to empower the faithful in a life that corresponds to the reconciling, redeeming love of God in Christ, the love that is both giving and forgiving. Reconciled and redeemed, the community re-incarnates that kenotic, cruciform love of God, not only within itself, but also in the world, as a foretaste of the final salvation to come.” Michael Gorman, Reading Paul 1. This law of Christ forbids activity in the name of God that does not correspond to the divine graciousness displayed in the faithful and loving death of Jesus, and it requires an ongoing individual and communal discernment of how to actualize the love of God in creative but faithful ways. ​Did you hear that?​ It’s about learning together to discern what God is doing in our midst, what he is doing in our community, and then doing it! 2. When we do this WE take the story of God forward in our own time and our generation.. we write, with God, as it were, the next chapters in the story of God and the world.. Closing thought: Practicing this Transformative Love will do exactly that - It will transform us - to be love. To Love like God loves, and it will put the tough transformative love of God on display for the world to see! As N.T. Wright so profoundly put it,​ "Love is the language they speak in God’s world, and we are summoned to learn it against the day when God’s world and ours will be brought together forever. It is the music they make in God’s courts, and we are invited to learn it and practice it now in advance. Love is not a “duty,” even our highest duty. It is our destiny.” - N.T. Wright, After You Believe As I mentioned this call to love is about our own transformation - that we become what God purchased us to be, a family that reflects his image, and his love. But it is also about this family showing the world this great love of God - ​“As the surrounding society loses it’s connecting glue, the most important response is to build local, small scale forms of community, teaching our children and congregations how to re-establish strong, life giving relationships in a world falling apart: “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the dark ages which are already upon us.” Our families and churches must become centers of civilization that reach out beyond themselves with a model form of community. The strongest Christian communities (families, congregations, groups of singles) are those driven by a larger vision - a sense of ministry. If God has given you a dependable income, a loving spouse, a strong church community, a reliable group of friends, those gifts are not just for you. They are to equip you to reach out and draw in those who are broken and searching. God is giving you the opportunity bring hope that Christianity is real and not just words - to put flesh and bones on the message of hope and healing. Christians must be prepared to minister to the wounded, the refugees of the secular moral revolution whose lives have been wrecked by its false promises of freedom and autonomy - we are at a unique moment in history where we have an incredible opportunity to become safe havens where people witness the beauty of relationships reflecting God’s own Commitment and faithfulness.” - Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body