Identity: Love over Everything
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Introduction of series on the New Identity:
Recap: We’ve discussed how a new identity with Christ requires us to set aside the temporary and embrace the eternal.
Our new identity in Christ is held up on pillars. These pillars are attributes of Christ that we should have in common with him.
These pillars can be found in Eph 4:17-5:20. In these verses, Paul describes the new life we achieve in Christ.
These are the subjects Paul discusses:
THE PILLARS OF THE NEW IDENTITY:
FOUNDATION: LOVE OVER EVERYTHING Eph 5:1-2
GRATITUDE OVER ANXIETY Eph 5:20, Phil 4:4-6
TRUTH OVER LIE Eph 4:25
PEACE OVER ANGER Eph 4:26
GIVE OVER TAKE Eph 4:27-28
ENCOURGE OVER GOSSIP Eph 4:29
FORGIVENESS OVER REVENGE Eph 4:32
SELF-CONTROL OVER PROMISCUITY Eph 5:3
GOD SPIRIT OVER DRUNKENNESS Eph 5:18
In order to make this next step, we need to understand Christ.
Paul singles out one particular attribute to imitate in Eph 5:1-2.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Christ’s foremost quality is love. Imitating Christ is impossible without love.
IMITATE
IMITATE
What does it mean to imitate? The greek word is mimetes.
Which means to mimic. In our lives, we should start to look like Christ.
The KJV uses followers, perhaps they are picking up on a theme in the New Testament. Jesus told Peter follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Follow here means “come to me,” but notice how Jesus did not just say to come here because I need a friend. Rather he said follow me because I want you to be like me.
Jesus’s goal is for us to be like Him.
Paul shares this goal. Be like Christ.
Love God; Love Your Neighbor
Love God; Love Your Neighbor
There are so many attributes to Christ that Paul could have singled out, yet he chose love. Jesus gave us the reason in Matthew:
THE FIRST AND FOREMOST PILLAR
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Jesus is not creating a new commandment of God. God did not change his dogma. They first appear in the Torah.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.
Paul anchors the other attributes of our new life to love.
If we wish to have a life connected to Christ, we have to embrace love.
In John’s epistle, he explains how there is no connection to God or Christ without love:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
John’s lesson here parallel’s Paul’s because they both mention how the sacrifice of Christ is crucial to understanding love.
God is the source of love, for he is love. The sacrifice Jesus gave is the ultimate act of love.
It was a visual sense of love, but God has always loved. He loved so that he created, but he loved also that he would redeem a broken creation.
Or as Luke puts it:
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Two Points to understand here:
Just because you treat people with love does not mean that they will treat you with love.
This is misleading if we do not apply the rest of the scriptures to this. People will become disappointed when they realize because you love others they wont love you back.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU! IT’S ABOUT CHRIST! You love others because Christ loves you. It is what he would do!
Christ want’s you to look like him. “I want you to look like me!”
AGAPE
AGAPE
Is the greek word used to describe the love Jesus illustrated.
Agape love is not an affection or a romance but an action. Having love like Christ’s means to act out love.
The strength of Agape love is
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
How you treat your enemies shows your true character. Search yourself: if you hate your enemy, you do not reflect God’s love.
Our lives should reflect Christ’s. Jesus fed the hungry, gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, but most importantly he was a friend to the sinners.
In Dane Ortland’s book Gentle and Lowly, he speaks of Jesus friendship to sinners. In Luke 15:1 the sinners and tax collectors, the worst of the worst people of the time, drew close to Jesus. Why? Jesus made them feel comfortable. Speaking of Jesus, Ortland states, “This is a companion whose embrace of us does not strengthen or weaken depending on how clean or unclean, how attractive or revolting, how faithful or fickle, we presently are. The friendliness of his heart for us subjectively is as fixed and stable as is the declaration of his justification of us objectively.”
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.
We are never out of reach of our God’s love. The greatest act of agape was performed on the Cross. Paul calls it a pleasing aroma to God. Jesus’s sacrifice was for the sinful, for those who appose God, but importantly it is available for those who draw near to Him because of His love. It is His actions on the Cross that we can have a relationship with God no matter what our circumstance.
In John 15, Jesus states,
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
And the Cross is characterized in this light by Paul in Romans:
For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
Ultimately, love is the foundation of our Christ-like identity. Having gratitude, speaking truth, having peace, giving, encouraging, forgiving, having self-control, and living in God’s spirit all build off our ability to love. Loving God and others shows our obedience and reverence to God.