Walking in Love

Introduction

Forward by faith - we walk by faith not by sight! Well we are looking at the walk portion first and we are learning about Walking God’s way.

First we learned to walk in wisdom, then we learned about walking in the light, then walking in unity, now walking in love.

Dearest Jimmy,

No words could ever express the great unhappiness I've felt since breaking our engagement. Please say you'll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you, I love you, I love you! Yours forever, Marie.

P.S., And congratulations on willing the state lottery.

Here in our last lesson on Walking God’s Way, we find that we are to walk in love. We are going to learn this morning from the examples of God and Jesus Christ.

The walk of God’s children is a walk of love and we must display it all the time.

Ephesians 5:1–2 AV

1 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; 2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

1. Means to Be Like God

Verse 1 gives us some specific instruction. Followers is such a popular word today. We may find out how many followers someone has on a social media account.

Well this isn’t quite what this word followers means.

A. We Must Imitate Him

The word followers is the Greek word mimetes. It means to imitate. It means an imitator, follower, actor, or imposter. One who is like another.

It’s the Greek word that we get the English word mime from. To express something by means of imitate.

We of course think of a mime, acting out a certain activity and we’re trying to guess what it is.

It even has the idea of lip-syncing (how many of you did that this morning?!)

Therefore here is important because of

Ephesians 4:32 AV

32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

Matthew 5:44–45 AV

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Matthew 5:48 AV

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

The idea of miming or being a follower or being an imitator is that your actions should speak much louder than your words! We are to mime God.

B. Follow Him as Dear Children

So we are to imitate God, but he includes extra description, as dear children.

Of course as Christians we have been adopted into God’s family.

Ephesians 1:5 AV

5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

We’re being told here about the way we are to imitate God and the reason for imitating Him. As children we directly experience His love and forgiveness and this should motivate us to mimic it.

We often say, Like Father, like son!

Children often resemble their father. They look like and act like their dad.

Sometimes we even say that a son is a spitting image of his father.

So if we are to walk in love it means that we are to copy, imitate, or mimic our Heavenly Father. You can’t forgive, you can’t love? You should know better because you have the perfect role model who has given you all kinds of love and forgiveness!

2. Means to Know God’s Love

Here we get to take some time here and evaluate the love of God. It’s a very important topic because the Bible teaches us that,

A. God is Love

Sometime in describing someone, we may say, “Oh that’s just Fred.” “That’s who she is.” That person has said or done something consistent with their personality or character. So it is with God – love is always defined by God. God does loving things because He is love.

1 John 4:8 AV

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

1 John 4:16 AV

16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

1 John 4:19 AV

19 We love him, because he first loved us.

This kind of love is commanded to believers. This love ought to something we show naturally by walking in the Spirit. This love should constantly exist in the church especially!

It is seen primarily in the Father’s love for mankind by the sacrifice of His Son on the cross.

Illus: In December 2010, a Spanish woman was arrested for faking her own kidnapping. She had taken a photo of herself and texted it to her husband, showing her hands and feet bound. In the text was a message from the ‘kidnapper’, demanding 20000 euros for her release. Follow up texts repeated the ransom demand and warned him not to contact the police. She wanted to see if he would pay for her release. Well he went to the police and they found her in a shopping center in Gandia, Spain. She told the police that her kidnapper had released her, but later admitted that she was just wanting to find out what her husband would be willing to do for her.

** With God we don’t have to wonder or guess. We know He loves us, because He is love.

B. God’s Love is a Gift

1 John 4:9 AV

9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

The love of God is something that is free and unconditional. It does’t depend on or require a response. God’s love is for the lovable and the enemy.

God’s love is a choice, based on the will and is also an action. It’s not necessarily sentimental or emotional but a desire to seek the other’s highest good.

Since it is unconditional, this love is always given even if its not returned. It is never withheld.

We have clear evidence of the love of God because of his gift.

John 3:16 AV

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

God’s love is expressed through giving!

Ephesians 5:25 AV

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

1 John 4:10 AV

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

His love is a faithful gift to us everyday

Romans 8:39 AV

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

He loves you…to the end.

God’s love is defined by His nature – not by your abilities, failures, or good intentions.

C. God’s Love is Displayed

Remember our word walk - it means our conduct, behavior, how we act day in and day out. It means to make progress and take advantage of our opportunities.

Since we are God’s children, and we are to imitate him, then we should walk in the love that He has. We should display His love to others!

Mark 12:30–31 AV

30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Because God loves us, we can love one another. God fills us with His love for others, so that we can love them.

Forgiving Love - Joseph - Gen. 45:1-8……lied about, sold as a slave, ripped from his home and father, falsely accused. put in prison, waiting all because of his jealous brothers. YET HE STILL FORGAVE

Compassionate Love – Peter denied Him …..lied about Him

Healing Love

** Bitterness towards anyone is evidence that we are not rooted in Christ’s love.

** God has extended love and forgiveness to us and we should extend it to others.

**We may not always know our offense, but we should always try to be reconciled. Apologize. Pray together. Can we talk? Seek reconciliation to restore that broken relationship.

Illus: A woman asked her friend to help her prepare a surprise evening for her husband. They worked all day long, cleaning the house, setting a fancy table, and scrubbing the kitchen floor. The surprise was interrupted when the woman’s husband returned home from work early. He walked across the sparkling kitchen floor to wash his hands at the sink. “Oh look at all that mud!” the friend exclaimed. She thought the evening would be ruined. The wife quietly replied, “Yes, his boots bring the mud in, but they bring him, too.”

God sees past the mud to love others as they are, rather than as we wish they were.

3. This Means to Love As Christ Loved Us

Here now at the end of v. 2, we are given an example or model of love - Christ.

A. It Must be Self-Sacrificing

We are to walk as Christ love and here we see that he gave himself for us as an offering.

Christ's life and love is our example, a love which led Him to sacrifice His life for us on the cross.

Now that we are saved, we can offer up an acceptable sacrifice to the Lord. True love for Christ can others can only be found in death to self.

Mark 8:34–36 AV

34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. 36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

This self-sacrifice incorporates a real willingness. Jesus was willing to die for us! “He gave himself.” True love is found when we give ourselves!

Galatians 2:20 AV

20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

This means that we must initiate the action in love - not waiting for them to become lovable or to ‘earn’ our love, but to die to self and be the starter of love in every situation.

B. It Must Be Pleasing to God

The other aspect here is that Christ’s offering was a sweetsmelling savour to God. Christ’s example teaches us that the ultimate motivation in showing love to others is in order to please God.

Romans 12:1–2 AV

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

This offering/sacrifice means a presentation - we are bringing something to God, and here we are bringing ourselves.

Jesus Christ enables us to do this through His once-for-all sacrifice in our place.

When we lovingly sacrifice ourselves for God it is a sweet fragrance - a good smell. It means it is pleasing to God.

I want to show you what this means in two different ways. Two different ways in which Christ’s example of love is pleasing to God. The first one He did alone, the second we can do with Him.

Look at the OT example in Leviticus 1.

(S. Lewis Johnson)

This sweet smelling savour is mentioned three times in the description of the burnt offering. When they brought the offering and laid their hands on it, that sacrifice produced the odor of a sweet smell to the Lord. Now, the interesting thing about that Hebrew expression (see Lev 1:9, 13, 17) is that it really means something like this: an odor of rest to the Lord. It means restful, peaceful, tranquilizing.

It means that when God saw the sacrifice, He rested. He didn’t have to execute judgment, His holiness was satisfied; the sin was covered.

Now Jesus in His sacrifice on the cross as He died said, it is finished. It’s paid in full; God is satisfied. When you come to God you come through the cross, where God is satisfied.

Now only Jesus could provide that savour, but let me show you the next one. The one that Jesus models, but that we can walk in too.

The Practical Meaning of the Sweet savour.

In ancient Greece, this word savour (smell) had a very material concept. Aristotle mentioned that ‘some living creatures live on scents.’ We see a bit of this even in

Job 14:9 AV

9 Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.

This dealt with even the humidity of water, but the idea of this essence is important. The smell itself was invigorating - life-giving.

How many of you use aroma therapy? Scented candles? Diffusers that spread a certain scent around the home?

This is the same concept - a life-giving smell - a fragrance that spreads throughout. This is the power of walking in love as Christ taught us.

It brings a great smell into the church, into your home, into the grocery store.

CONCLUSION

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . nor even his partisanship for the poor, humble people. The real trouble was that he got involved with moral failures, with obviously irreligious and immoral people: people morally and politically suspect, so many dubious, obscure, abandoned, hopeless types existing as an eradicable evil on the fringe of every society.

This was the real scandal. Did he really have to go so far? . . . What kind of naive and dangerous love is this, which does not know its limits: the frontiers between fellow countrymen and foreigners, party members and non-members, between neighbors and distant people, between honorable and dishonorable callings, between moral and immoral, good and bad people? As if dissociation were not absolutely necessary here. As if we ought not to judge in these cases. As if we could always forgive in these circumstances.

Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, Doubleday, 1976, 32.

Remember that walking is our conduct, our behavior, what we do as we live life - and we are to walk in love.

What does it smell like when you show up? Are you walking in Christ, so that just by habit and nature you show the love of God? Are you acting like your Heavenly Father? Imitating Him? Have you received the love of God?