love and hate

Last week I said that spiritual gifts was one of the most misunderstood subjects of the Bible.  Paul lists seven gifts in Romans 12.  And to understand these gifts correctly, we must understand why God designed them and what His purpose is for them.  We broke this down Wednesday evening, but I realize a lot of you cannot be there on Wednesdays, and so I will try to briefly bring you up to speed.  Because none of this can be taken in isolation.  Paul builds this great dissertation we call Romans precept upon precept, and it’s imperative that you always look at what has proceeded the passage that you’re looking at if you want to interpret it correctly.

So, notice first of all that chapter 12 begins with exhortation and application, following 11 chapters of doctrine concerning our salvation.  Paul wants us to thoroughly understand our salvation.   And we have learned that we should not base salvation on good works, or our merits, or our heritage, or our nationality, or church membership, or circumcision or baptism or anything that we can do in and of ourselves.  But Paul makes it clear in those 11 chapters that salvation is  by grace, it is the gift of God to those who trust in the  atoning work of His Son Jesus Christ.

Therefore, he says in 12:1, on the basis of God’s great mercy by which He has saved us and made us born again into new life, having become a new creation, old things have passed away and all things have become new, Paul says I urge you to lay down your bodies on the altar as a living sacrifice to God.  He says this is your reasonable service of worship, considering the fact of all that God has done for you.   Lay yourselves on the altar, consider your body as dead to the world, and yet spiritually made alive unto Christ.  All the things of the flesh that once were a source of pride and accomplishment, lay it down at the cross.

And then he tells us that we should no longer think as the world thinks, no longer be conformed to the standards and expectations and desires and passions of the world, but instead be transformed by the renewing of our mind through the word of God, and there is a very important clause on the end of verse 2.  “So that we may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  In other words, we are made living creatures by God’s grace, we are transformed by the Holy Spirit working through the gospel,  and we lay down our old fleshly nature at the cross, SO THAT WE MIGHT DO THE WILL OF GOD.

Folks, this is so essential.  It’s so fundamental.  You know, there is a lot of so called theology out there being written about in books and taught from pulpits and presented on television that has missed that principle completely.  They will tell you that if you will have a relationship to God then He will basically do YOUR will.  All your dreams and fantasy’s will come true.  You want a better paying job?  Come to God.  You want a new car?  Come to God. (Hey, if you believed that by coming to God you could get a new car, who wouldn’t come?)  You want to be healed of some disease?  Come to God.  They will tell you that God is just this giant Santa Clause type of guy up in the sky that wants you to love Him and wants you to tell Him you love Him, and through having a relationship with Him that is based on mutual love and admiration, He will give you the desires of your heart.  And you can have your best life right here on earth because God loves you and just wants you to be happy.

The sad thing is, many, many people are falling for this false doctrine hook, line and sinker.  There was a time in my life that I wanted to believe it as well.  But listen, vs 2 tells us that we are saved not so that God might do our will, but that we might do His will.  Rather than God giving us everything our heart desires, Paul tells us that we should lay our fleshly desires down on the altar as a sacrifice to God. Phl 3:7 “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.”

So then, if our purpose now that we are born again is to do God’s will, then the list of spiritual gifts that Paul gives us starting in verse 6 are to be understood not in terms of pride but practicality.  Having laid down our fleshly body on the altar, God gives us the means to do His will.  Remember the last verse of the preceding chapter?  “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”  So then as we have received from Him new life, become a new creation, then we now receive new gifts or empowerments that enable us to do His will.

And I don’t have the time this morning to go through all the gifts and unpack each of them again, but note one important characteristic that they all have.  They are all for the edification of someone else, rather than for your own edification.  In other words, we are given the gifts to build up the body, not to build up ourselves.   Pride is marked by building up yourself, but humbleness is marked by building up someone else.  And everyone of those gifts, or the combination of any of those gifts, is designed by God to build up the body, the church, not for your own building up.  That’s why Paul says in verse 3 not to think more highly of yourself than you ought, but to have sound judgment. We all belong to the body, and the body belongs to Christ, and so therefore we belong to one another and our gifts are necessary for the benefit of each other in the body.

Now moving on, we come to today’s text.  And I really don’t think we’re going to get further than one verse today.  But don’t get your hopes up that the message will therefore  be more brief than normal.  Usually, the shorter the text, the more longwinded I get..  Verse 9 says, “Let love be without hypocrisy.  Abhor what is evil, cleave to what is good.”

Now if spiritual gifts were misunderstood, then I must tell you that it pales in comparison to the misunderstanding of the word love.  Love has so many connotations and meanings in the English language and in our culture. It’s used for everything.  I’ve said it before, I love ice cream, I love my dog, and I love my wife.  Not necessarily  in that order.  And so we really need to define our terms before we can  understand what Paul is getting at.

First of all, the word Paul uses for love here is the Greek word agape.  It is probably the most common word that Paul uses when he refers to love.  There are three words in the Greek that were commonly used for love;  there was eros, from which we get the word erotic, and I don’t think I need to explain for you any further what connotations that word has.  There is another word that is used for love, in fact it is used in verse 10, and it is phileo, from where we get the word Philadelphia.  And some of you folks here today I’m sure are from that city.  What slogan is associated with Philadelphia?  The city of brotherly love.  That’s what  phileo means.  Familial love.  And then agape is the other word most commonly used by Paul to describe Christian love, and it means a sacrificial, selfless love that puts the needs of others ahead of one self.

And I would submit to you that Paul isn’t starting some new thought here, but when he mentions agape love immediately following the gifts of service to the church, it’s because love is the attitude with which those gifts must be administered.  Love isn’t some completely new concept that he is going to talk about, but it is the underlying component of effective spiritual gifts.  And we only have to look at 1 Corinthians 13 to verify that.  Gifts that are self serving, that are showy, just end up being prideful, selfish, ways of trying to manipulate God for the benefit of our will.

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.  Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,  does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;  bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part;  but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.”  (1 Cor. 13: 1-10)

So then, love is an attitude, it’s our motivation.  In Christian love, it’s the attitude of humility, the attitude of service, it’s the attitude of putting your self on the altar to be used by God as a living sacrifice to serve the body of Christ.  Love isn’t an emotion.  Love isn’t a feeling.  I know our culture tells us that love is all those things.  John Lennon told us the world’s theology: that all the world needs is love.  But the kind of love he espoused has not been the answer for the world’s problems.  And if we are not careful, the world’s theology will creep into Christian theology.  We will end up with silly sentimentalism rather than the kind of love that the Bible teaches.

The Bible tells us what love is: 1John 4:9 “By this the love of God was manifested in us, [ this is what love looks like] that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

So what are the two major characteristics then of love as shown by those verses?  Love is service, and love is sacrifice.  Jesus became our servant, He became our substitute and He became our sacrifice so that we might have life through Him and forgiveness of our sins.  So true love is marked by service and sacrifice, not sentimentality, not emotion, not feelings.

And so we know what love looks like and how love acts, and  in2 John 1:6 we learn what love does.  “And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.”  That takes us full circle doesn’t it?  Acting in love brings us right back to doing God’s will.  Walking according to HIS commands.  HIS will.  And His will is stated in John 15:12  "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”

Now that we have defined our terms, we know what love is, notice our text again.  Paul says let love be without hypocrisy.  Do you know what the Greek word for hypocrite means?  It means an actor on a stage.  Someone who performs for public acclaim. Public applause.  Someone who performs to be seen of men and acknowledged by men.  Paul is saying, don’t let your service which is supposed to be done in love, don’t let it be for public acclaim.  Don’t do it so people will notice how spiritual you are.  What did Jesus say in the sermon on the mount?  If you do your works for other people to see you then you already have your reward.  But do your works in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

Now maybe in your Bible another word is used rather than hypocrisy, you might see the word unfeigned.  But it means pretty much the same thing.  It means don’t fake it.  Let your love be genuine.  Let your love be sincere.  And Paul illustrates this principle beautifully in the next statement.  He says, “Abhor what is evil, and cleave to what is good.”  See, I believe that this statement is an explanation or illustration of the preceding statement that we are to love without hypocrisy.  How can you have a love that is unfeigned, not faked, that is sincere, and not hypocritical?

First, abhor what is evil.  Or some versions say, hate what is evil.  Now notice first off that Paul doesn’t say hate someone or some person.  He says hate evil.  Abhor evil.  We are to be like God are we not?  We are made in His likeness, filled with His Spirit, so that we may do His will and be conformed in the image of Christ.  And what does the Bible say that God hates?  God hates sin.  He doesn’t hate the sinner.  He loves the sinner so much that Jesus came to die for Him.  But He hates sin.  And so Paul is telling us that if we love God then we will love what He loves and hate what He hates.

In fact, that love and hate relationship is what defines us as being children of God.  Look at 1John 2:15 “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”  That’s why Paul started off telling us that we needed to lay our bodies down on the altar as a living sacrifice to God right at the beginning.

James lays it out in pretty bluntly.  He says in James 4:4 “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

You know, I was joking while ago about loving my wife.  I really do love my wife.  And the really amazing thing is that she loves me.  She puts up with an awful lot.  But one thing she probably wouldn’t put up with is if I told her that I loved her, and I sang love songs to her and put notices on face book that I loved her, but then I went and hung out with old girlfriends that I used to have.   I can tell her how much I love her all day long, but if I’m running around with my old girlfriends in the evenings she is going to know that I’m a hypocrite.  That I am not sincere in what I say.

I believe that God feels sort of the same way when we go back to the old ways, the old paths of the world and yet say we love God.  When we still go back to the places which once enslaved us.  Like the Israelites when God brought them out of Egypt, they constantly yearned for the things that God had delivered them from.  Listen, grace is not a license to sin.  God’s mercy should never be presumed upon.  God is a jealous God.  He loves us with a jealous love.

As Christians, grace doesn’t mean that we can try to see how close we can get to sin without being burned.  But being saved by grace means that we devote ourselves to holiness and purity, that we consider ourselves betrothed to one husband and we want to keep ourselves pure and unblemished by the world for Him.   As Jude said, “hating even the garment polluted by the flesh”,  in other words, staying as far away as possible from the disease of sin.

I’m reminded of the story of the millionaire that wanted to hire a limousine driver.  And so he arranged a little road test for the applicants.  He told them that there was a hairpin turn down the road and he wanted to know how well they were able to negotiate the turn.   And the first limo driver said, “Sir, I can take your limo at the speed limit within one foot of the cliff without going into a skid or running off the road.”  And the second limo driver, not to be outdone said, “Sir, I believe I could drive that car at the speed limit within 6 inches of the cliff without running off the road.”  And the third limo driver said, “Sir, I would stay as far away from the cliff as possible.”  Needless to say, the millionaire gave the job to the third candidate.

As Christians, we need to stay as far away from the world as possible.  Folks, I said last week that if Satan can deceive you into thinking that you can get to heaven without being born again by the Holy Spirit, then he can destroy you.  But if you do become born again, he doesn’t stop trying to destroy you.  He can’t take away your eternal destiny, but he can destroy your testimony.  He can destroy your ministry.  He can destroy your effectiveness in the church and perhaps cause you to be a stumbling block to others.  I was never a soldier, but I read once that in warfare it costs the army much more to take care of the wounded than it does to take care of the dead.  Satan knows and employs this tactic very effectively.  He is working to deceive and destroy the church. Satan wants wounded Christians.  And Christians are being duped into thinking that they can have a relationship with God and keep their relationship with the world.  And they don’t realize the danger that they are subjecting themselves to.  Folks, we need to be more like Joseph, who when faced with possible temptation left his coat in the hands of the woman and ran.  We can’t flirt with sin.  We need to have a holy abhorrence of evil.

Then finally, Paul says back in our text that we need to cleave to what is good.  To use the marriage metaphor again, when you were married, chances are you said something like this:  “forsaking all others, cleave only to you.”  It comes from the passage of scripture found in Genesis 2:24   “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”  That is a picture of our relationship with God.  Not a feigned love, where we try to have our cake and eat it too.  But where we forsake all others and cleave only to you.  We give ourselves, fully, completely to God to be used for His glory.

We need to love what God loves.  We need to love righteousness.  We need to love His word.  We need to love one another.  We need to love the church, because Christ loved the church and gave His life for her. We think we can walk the center line between God and the world.  But you can’t be in neutral with God.  God said you are either for me or against me.  You can’t have a little of the world and a little of God.  The problem with most Christians is that they want just enough God to be safe, but not so much as to be sorry for what they might be missing out on.  But God says He wants all of us.  Not just a part of us.  Cleave to what is good.

 I’ve noticed that behind every good man is a great wife. A good wife gives herself totally to her husband.  She not only says she loves him, but she also shows that she loves him.  She cleans up after him.  She cooks for him.  She supports him.  When I was in the antique business I was always amazed at how the wives would come along to some of the shows that we did around the country and support their husbands.  They learned to like what their husband liked.  My wife got to be a pretty good judge of antiques because she supported me in my business.  She cared about me, and so she cared about the things I cared about.  I can’t tell you how much my wife has gone through to support our family in surfing.  Our vacations for years now have centered around surfing.  My wife doesn’t surf, but she loves us, and so she cares about what we care about and is willing to sacrifice what she wants many times so that we can do what we want.

Listen, God does want a relationship with us.  He does want us to love Him. But He wants real love, not some faked love.  He wants us for Himself, He doesn’t want to share us with the enemy.  He wants us to love what He loves, and hate what He hates.  He wants us to abhor what is evil, and cling to what is good.  And folks, He is good.  He is good.  You can trust Him with your life, with your future, with eternity.