Life With Others Pt 1

We would be the greatest Christians
the world has ever seen. We would be the most holy. We would be the most passionate.
We would be the most faithful. We would be the most diligent.
We would be the most hopeful. We would be the hardest working. We would be the most productive. the most evangelical, the most
righteous, the most godly Christians the world has ever known, if it were not for people. You see, people act funny. People are aloof. They’re argumentative. They’re backstabbers. They’re
boastful, they’re boring, they’re bothersome. They’re cheap, they’re
critical, they’re crude, they’re cruel, they’re deceitful, demanding,
disloyal, disruptive, egotistical, extroverted. You see where I’m
going. Flippant, foolish, they get on our nerves, they get under
our skin, they gossip, they’re greedy, they’re grumpy, they’re
impatient. They’re insensitive. They’re
insincere. They’re introverted. They’re intrusive. They’re irritating. They’re lazy. They lie. They
look funny. They’re loud. They’re mean. They’re
needy. They’re negative. They offend. They’re opinionated.
They’re overbearing. They’re ornery. They’re phony.
They’re pretentious. They’re proud. They’re quiet.
They’re rude. They’re self-centered. They’re
selfish. They’re shallow. They slander. They smell funny. They’re sneaky. They’re snobby. They steal. They’re
stingy. They swear. They talk too much
or talk too little. They test our patience. They’re
thankless. They drive too fast or drive
too slow. They have bad habits. They’re
unfriendly, unproductive, untrustworthy, withdrawn. Well, that’s just
a partial list. We would be the greatest Christians
the world has ever known if it weren’t for people, because people
are what provoke and challenge our sanctification. And really
cause us to withdraw and come to a halt on the exercise of
our God-given graces. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, he moves on from an offering of
a better way. From a question of dealing with
gifts To a new way, a way of love. And here in the passage
before us, Paul moves on from outlying a good portion of those
gifts that are available in the church to specific instances
of Christian character. And if it weren’t for people,
we’d have it all nailed. Paul. Paul seeks to move from
these gifts that he has been discussing to virtues, to graces
that are employed in the lives of believers that ought to be
fleshed out in the life of every believer. You might say that
you may not have the gift of evangelism, but the virtues before
us this morning, everyone is supposed to possess and everyone
is supposed to be growing in those graces. Paul presses upon
these duties that all believers are supposed to observe and manifest. They are the practical elements
of Christianity, and they touch really every diverse corner of
life. As such, they are responsibilities,
duties that no Christian can afford to neglect. And yet, Duties
in which no Christian is perfect. If you would, take up with Paul,
beginning in verse 9 of chapter 12, where Paul says, let love
be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to
what is good. Be devoted to one another in
brotherly love. Give preference to one another
in honor. Not lagging behind in diligence,
fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, persevering
in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of
the saints, practicing hospitality. Bless those who persecute you,
bless and curse not, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep
with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one
another. Do not be haughty in mind, but
associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never pay back evil for evil
to anyone. Respect what is right in the
sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends
on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge,
beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written,
Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.
But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. And if he is thirsty,
give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap
burning coals upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good.” We would be great Christians
if it weren’t for people. And essentially, that’s what
Paul begins to deal with. It’s life with others. Life with
others, I would suggest, is a section that begins here in chapter 12,
verse 9 and courses all the way through chapter 13 at least. Because even when you come to
chapter 14, Paul is dealing with weaker brothers and with essentially
the gray areas of life. Paul begins, though, in dealing
with Christians. And the sad thing is, is that
even with Christians, we let them get under our skin. We draw
irritation from them and we fall back from the responsibilities.
This shouldn’t be affected. It shouldn’t be affected by how
others are treating us, it shouldn’t be affected by how they are behaving. We have our mandate. We have
our expectation before God. We have our great example in
the Lord Jesus Christ and we fall short because of the way
other people live. That’s what Paul wants to deal
with. He’s not saying that we don’t live. He just means that
there are times where we love other people. We have all expressed
that emotion, that sentiment, We have all verbalized those
things we have all perhaps even shown genuine love. For a short
while. And then someone gets under our
skin or begins to bother us and the love becomes hypocritical.
There are times where perhaps we have really relished in what
Paul refers to here is brotherly love. We felt it. We’ve sensed
it. Tears came to our eyes knowing
the richness of the fellowship that believers have with one
another. And then it began to dwindle. Perhaps somebody rubbed
us the wrong way. Perhaps they stepped on one of
our little pet peeves. And we were no longer devoted
to one another. There are times where we have
sought to honor others. Key moments in their life where
we have elevated someone, which is their due. They have earned
it. We recognize them as such. As a child of God, we put them
before others and we honored them. And then something went haywire
there as well. We just began to see perhaps
they acted proudly because of it. Or perhaps they didn’t express
gratitude reciprocate to us. That’s usually the case. And
we gave up preferring them in honor. There was a time when
we were so diligent. And then we began to lag behind,
as Paul says, there was a time when we were so fervent, when
our Christianity was new and fresh and we were passionate
about what we believed. Then the fire began to dim. There
was a time that we served the Lord and served him only. There
was a time when we saw heaven as so real. And it was a hope
that welled up within us that if all of this world falls away,
that’s fine, but there is a heaven and I have a hope there. And because of that hope, I can
rejoice. And yet in time, that too gets dimmed. We lose sight of that hope. This
world is all we see. All of its difficulties. All
of its challenges. Tribulation. Tribulation comes
up as it will. And we begin to lay down our
swords. We begin to give up the fight. We begin to even give
in. We no longer could be seen as
persevering. Nowhere is this, all of this
seen than in the area of prayer. There was a time when we would
rise early and stay up late. There was a time when even the
briefest thought that fleeted through our sleeping mind would
wake us and stir us to prayer on behalf of some other saint. We were devoted to prayer. We
lived by prayer. We were passionate in our prayer.
We lived as if prayer was everything. A lifeline to God Himself. Yet, we asked the average Christian
if they could say that they were devoted to prayer and the answer
must be no. Not just contributing to the
needs of the saints, Paul says, but being one with them in what
they go through in this life. There was a time, there have
been times where perhaps each one of us have had the privilege
of seeing a need, recognizing that need and having the means
to respond to that need. But it goes beyond that. It goes
far beyond that to really empathizing. Not just with feelings, but really
understanding and putting ourselves, as it were, in their shoes and
really beginning to live in light of what they are experiencing. Each one of us Each one of us
have done what we call hospitality. Each one of us have shown hospitality
to others, meeting some need, providing some particular need,
perhaps a meal, perhaps a place to stay. But for how many of
us is it something that we go out of our way to look for? Opportunities to serve, people
to serve, people to love in a practical way. Paul says, essentially,
life with others is the difficult part of Christianity. For Paul,
the 12 chapters of doctrine that he’s laid out before us already,
the 11 chapters of doctrine, as he gets here into chapter
12, he begins to get practical. This is the hard part of Christianity.
Head knowledge. We could all recite all kinds
of different doctrines and verses. It’s living it out and it’s not
just living it out for the day. It’s living it out day by day,
day after day when people get difficult, when people are people.
That’s when Christianity really gets difficult. Paul wants to deal with it. The
first thing that he deals with in this section that I would
entitle life with others is affection. Affection In the church. One of the sure ways that you
can get people to recoil is to bring up the concept of the brotherly
kiss. Well, affection is the same way.
You begin to talk about affection in the church and people immediately
think, well, this is a hugging church. I’m not a hugger. OK,
they usually tell you that at the door. Look, I’m not a hugger.
All right. Paul has something else. by far
in mind. Paul has something far deeper. In this life with others, he
calls us to a Christ-like interaction. And the first mark of this affection
in the church is what I would call genuine affection. Look
down at verse 9. Genuine affection. Where he says,
let love be without hypocrisy and that must sting every one
of us. Every one of us knows this sentiment.
It isn’t enough for Paul just to say go love each other. Because
he knows that no sooner do we begin to do that we’re going
to come up against some of those things that irritate us and we’re
going to begin to go through the motions. It’s not genuine. It’s not heartfelt. It’s not
passionate. Paul had commended some churches. He commended the Colossians for
the love that they had for one another. Paul, in the opening
verses of Colossians, said, We heard of your faith in Jesus
Christ and the love which you have for all the saints. Their
love was passionate and it was practical and it was real in
the Colossian church. It was the same in the Thessalonian
church. Thessalonian church, Paul wrote
to them in his first epistle, May the Lord cause you to increase
and abound in your love for one another. And it’s not like they
were falling short. It’s not that the Thessalonian
church was faltering in this regard. Paul just saw a good
thing and he wanted to fan the flames, as it were. Well, it
must. Must have worked because when
he wrote to them again, second Thessalonians chapter one, verse
three, he said, we ought to always give thanks to God for you, brethren,
as is only fitting because your faith is greatly enlarged and
the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater. God has answered my prayer, your
love for one another is real and it’s passionate and it’s
genuine. See, up to this point in the
book of Romans, Paul, he’d only used love with regards to God.
God’s love for us. But now Paul wants to drive home
the point and he wants to discuss the most uncomfortable concept
of love towards one another. And that that love is supposed
to be a genuine love. You see, the Corinthian church
struggled in the genuineness of their love towards one another.
Paul addressed that in 2nd Corinthians. James addresses it that we are
to be full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. Why would he have to say that
if he hadn’t seen it? Peter, the most astounding of
the apostles, a life that was so utterly transformed So this in verse 122 of his first
epistle, since you have an obedience to the truth, purify your souls
for a sincere love of the brethren. Fervently love one another from
the heart. Peter knew hypocrisy. Peter knew
false report. Peter knew half heartedness. Peter knew quitting. And here,
Peter, with a heart transformed by the grace of God, says, fervently
love one another from the heart. Don’t go halfway. This hypocrisy
is such a great tendency in the church. Check yourselves. When was the last time you said
something you really didn’t mean? Some kind of compliment. Some
kind of commendation. Some kind of kind word that you
really didn’t mean. And God knew it. And God showed
it to you. And perhaps even you confessed
it. This sincerity goes beyond even
that. It means that it’s not supposed
to consist in words merely, and that really is the occupational
hazard of the Christian, isn’t it? Where we actually can say,
oh brother, be warmed, be filled, right? It’s exactly what James
addresses. We can even talk about how we
are praying for you. And we roll our eyes. And we
wander off. And our love is not sincere.
It’s not genuine. It’s not passionate. One pastor
said, no vice is more reprehensible than hypocrisy. I love that. And that’s true. I’d rather have
somebody come and to my face, tell me what they think of me.
Then lie to my face and pretend that they’re my friend, wouldn’t
you? No vice is more reprehensible than hypocrisy. No vice is more
destructive of integrity because it is the contradiction of truth. You see what it tends to build,
it begins to build a life of a phony. Someone is only pretending
there is no integrity and he begins to lie with his face with
a smile that really betrays his inner feelings. And the next
thing you know, he has no integrity. You can’t believe a single word
that he says. He goes on, no vice is more destructive
of integrity because it is the contradiction of truth If love
is the sum of virtue and hypocrisy is the epitome of vice. What
a contradiction to bring these two things together. That’s what
Paul’s saying. How dare you try to blend hypocrisy,
the worst element of the human personality with
love? the highest expression of the
human personality. As lovers of our brethren, we’re
supposed to be honest. We’re supposed to tell the truth,
even if it’s unpalatable, even if it’s distasteful to our brother. We’re supposed to be real and
genuine. We’re supposed to be straightforward.
That doesn’t mean we have to be harsh or mean or nasty. Doesn’t mean we have to go looking
to break our brother’s heart. Here’s a little principle that
you could live by. Don’t say it. Don’t offer it. Don’t do it if you don’t mean
it. Don’t say it. Don’t offer it.
Don’t do it if you don’t mean it. Try it this week. Try checking your heart and be
prepared. Wait till you see how many times
you begin to offend. You begin to offend against your
own genuineness. You begin to say, well, I really
don’t believe that. I remember one time offering
for someone to move. Yeah, I’d love to help you move. And you really don’t mean it.
We’re willing. Sometimes we’ll offer things
Our heart really says. Not true. John Calvin is. Quoted. In this manner. On this issue of hypocrisy, he
said it is difficult to express how ingenious almost all men
are in counterfeiting a love with which they do not really
possess. Did you hear what he said? Almost
every one of us is guilty of this, he says. Difficult to express
how ingenious almost all men are in counterfeiting a love
which they do not really possess. In other words, we begin to just
go through the motions. We know we’re supposed to say
certain things. We’re supposed to act a certain
way. And we’re supposed to show a certain kind of love. And we
begin to act like so many robots. But we really don’t possess it.
It really isn’t coming from the heart. We really don’t mean it.
He goes on and says they deceive not only others, but also themselves. That’s the frightening part.
They deceive also themselves while they persuade themselves
that they have a true love for those whom they not only treat
with neglect, but in fact reject. In other words, they just go
through the motions, they pretend to love, they say that they love,
they act like they love somebody. But deep in their heart, they’ve
written them off deep in their heart. They want nothing to do
with them. And he concludes with these words. He says, the state
of the man who believes that he’s loving. When he is not. Is even worse than that of the
man who pretends to be loving, knowing that he is not. See,
the problem is you start by pretending. And after a while, you begin
to believe your own lie. And you have lost all integrity. You are a living lie. It’s nothing more than pretend.
But you begin to buy your own lie. You begin to believe why
I do love my brother. And all the while, God would
say, no, you don’t. No, you don’t. John Brown, the
Puritan, said it pretty straightforwardly, too. They said vain showmen wrangle
and contend about their differences in opinions, faith and worship,
pretending to advance a religion by an imposition of their persuasion
on others. You see, that’s how we think
Christianity works. If I could only get so and so
and this guy and this guy thinking like me, if we could only get
on the same page doctrinally. That’s how Christianity works. Pretending to advance religion
by an imposition of their persuasion of others unless this holy love
be again reintroduced among all those who profess the name of
Christ. All the concerns of religion will more and more go to ruin
the very continuance of the church depends primarily on faith in
Christ. Secondarily in the continuance
of this love where this faith and love are not there is no
church. Wow. That’s John Brown. That’s John Brown looking and
saying, you know what, look, if you’ve got a bunch of hypocrites
walking around pretending that they’re loving, there’s no such
thing. It’s not a church. We need to be passionate in the
way that we love one another, we need to be genuine and sincere,
and like I said, don’t offer, don’t say it, don’t suggest it,
don’t do it. If it isn’t coming from the heart.
If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. Living with others is the ultimate
challenge of our faith. It’s the ultimate challenge of
our Christianity. And this love that we have towards
our brothers and sisters in Christ in the midst of this Christ-like
interaction that we’re supposed to have Not only, number one,
is there to be a genuine affection, but secondly, it is to be a purified
affection. Look at verse nine again. Where
Paul says, let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil,
cling to that which is good. That was astounding to me to
see people obliterate the point made in the first part of that
verse by misapplying the second point of that verse. They said
that what we should do is hate what is evil in our brethren
and cling only to that which is good. And in that sense. We purify our
love for our brothers. I think that this is a much more
general. I think this has more to do with
our own hearts than it does with our brothers and our brothers
life or lifestyle. Would our brothers struggle with?
It has more to do with ourselves. We can hate their sin, but we are still supposed to
love them. What Paul is issuing here is
a genuine and general command that we are supposed to have,
in essence, a purified, a solid doctrinal moral standard. And we are supposed to be uncompromising
in that standard. The sad truth is so many Christians
have no standard at all. They don’t know what it is they
believe. They don’t know even the basic difference between
what is evil and what is good. Words. These two words abhor
and cleave, they are incredibly strong words. They on one hand, with regards
to abhor or hate, you can’t say it any more strongly. We are
to hate evil. Well, we, you know, Christians,
we don’t like to hate anything. We even feel badly about, you
know, cocking an eyebrow at the devil. We’re supposed to hate
evil. Evil is destructive. Evil is
what kills. Evil is what ruins lives and
families. And we are supposed to hate evil. But on the other hand. The other
word is also particularly strong. We are supposed to be utterly
devoted to that which is good. On the one hand, the word of
horror is it’s almost like we can’t even bear to look at it,
can’t bear to think about it. And yet so many people, they
see not how far they can get from sin and from evil and from
what is inherently bad. They see how close they can get
without getting burned. As Christians, we are to hate,
utterly hate things that are evil. Paul said it in first Thessalonians
5 abstain from every form of evil. Yet we are to cling to that which
is good. I’ll describe that in a moment.
One pastor said no criterion of our alignments is more searching
than the antithesis instituted between the evil and the good.
In other words, he says nothing is going to clarify who you are
and what you believe. Then where you fall on that continuum
of what you do with evil and good. Our reaction to evil, that
which belongs to the kingdom of darkness in all its forms
is to be that of instant abhorrence. And yet our attachment to the
good, all that is good and well pleasing to God is to be that
of the devotion illustrated by the bond of marriage. Did you
hear what he said? Cling. cling to that which is
good. It should be literally like we
are gluing ourselves to that which is good. And like we are
repulsed and utterly repelled by that which is evil. That’s what it means to really
be affectionate for those in our midst. That when we sin,
we don’t just sin independently. But if we are to love our brothers
and sisters in Christ and to love them purely, we are to hate
evil and to love what is good. We are to worry more about what
our actions and life might do to them, even than what it would
do to ourselves. See, these Roman Christians,
they lived in a fallen, vulgar, hedonistic society. Oh, wait
a minute. So do you and I. We live in a
fallen, vulgar, hedonistic society, and if we don’t chart a course,
if we don’t walk out of our homes each day, if we don’t wake up
and immediately recognize that evil exists in this world and
that it lurks around every corner and that we must chart a very
cautious course in this life, if we don’t hate it, before our
feet hit the floor. We will succumb to that evil. We will embrace it in all of
its various forms, little bits at a time, until we are just
totally overwhelmed by it. We need to watch what we do.
Watch what we think. Watch what we watch. Watch what
we love. Watch where we go. Watch who
we’re with. We need to hate evil. We need
to despise evil. And we need to cling to that
which is good, really good, inherently good. Good as God defines it
to be. God has a standard. God has a
way. But this love, this affection
that we’re supposed to have for one another, as Paul begins to
talk about life with others, life with not only believers,
but life with unbelievers, And not just life with unbelievers,
but people who are positively against us, not only people who
are positively against this, but civil government who is allegedly
neutral towards us. As Paul begins to talk about
life together, he starts with Christians and says there must
be affection. There must be what he calls a
natural affection. There must be love for one another,
but it’s a love that is, first of all, genuine. Second of all,
purified. And third, this morning, it must
be practical. It’s got to have legs. It’s got
to move. It’s got to do something. It’s
not a feeling. Years ago, I was doing a wedding. And I described our society in
which we live. as having been deeply and severely
influenced by Elvis Presley. Because Elvis Presley’s idea
of love is, I can’t help falling in love with you. And the opposite
end of that spectrum says, I can’t help falling out of love with
you. See, love isn’t something that
you feel. Love is a commitment. Love is a passionate commitment
to someone else. That’s what Paul wants to point
out. That this affection that we have one for another is supposed
to be practical, supposed to be real. It’s supposed to be
tangible. We’re supposed to be able to
look at it and see it. And recognize it for what it
is. We’ll introduce it just this morning. We’ll take this up. Next Lord’s Day, but look down
at the passage. Verses 10 through 13, Paul begins
by saying, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, give
preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in
diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in
hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing
to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality. That is practical
affection. That is the way that we show,
that we exhibit, that we live out what we are called to do
and to be towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. Look at verse 10. King James
says, Be kindly affectioned toward one another. I get that. That’s
not a bad translation. But I think the newer translations
go even clearer when they say, Be devoted. We’re devoted to
very little. Do you realize that some people
aren’t even devoted to their God given wives and husbands.
But Paul says be devoted to one another which means nothing comes
between us. How many people could you say
that about two maybe five. But when Paul says be devoted
to one another and brotherly love, he has the entire church
in mind that we ought to be so dedicated, so devoted to one
another, so unwilling to leave off for our brotherly affection
for one another that nothing could stop it. Nothing could
make me stop showing my love and affection for you, nothing.
Not your bad habits. Not your rudeness. Not the fact
that you talk too loud. Not the fact that you root for
the wrong team. Paul is highlighting this truth. That Christians are part of the
same family. What could possibly come between
us? I love when I see family affection. Because I know there, I know
it can grow. They’ve gotten it right in their
home. They love one another. They love each other. They’ve
begun to love their children. The circle is widening. There’s hope. That’s the same kind of love
that we’re supposed to have for one another. The church isn’t
supposed to replace your family affection. You’re supposed to
bring your family affection into the church. I remember in the 60s, I don’t
know how I remember this. stuff, but I remember a commercial
they used to play. Treat your friends like family
and your family like friends. I thought, how sad that there’s
a difference. How sad that there’s a difference
in the way that we tend to treat one another. But it’s true. We don’t tend to, you know, we
tend to have our family thing and that’s all separate and that’s,
you know, that’s our thing. And then we have our church thing
and the circle begins to grow a bit. But if you realize that
the family of faith has a much stronger tie, a much more enduring
tie than blood relation, some of your family, some of those
in your intimate family don’t even believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And if they don’t, you have a
much stronger tie with those who do. the core of this and we’ll pick
it up here next time. It points to the little word
kindly affection points to the Latin that pointed to kin. It’s
the affection that you would have between your blood relatives. And that’s why it’s so appropriate
here to express that spiritual relationship that binds Children
that are of the same Heavenly Father. It binds us together
and allows us to function. It allows us to show patience
toward one another. It allows us to love one another
in the most practical and passionate ways. We’ll take it on their next Lord’s
Day. But I would have God’s people
begin to examine their hearts. Begin to examine your heart and
to see if your love is genuine. Begin to focus on this passage.
Begin to look at whether your love is genuine. Do you have a tendency to say
things you have no intention of fulfilling? Do you have a
tendency to say or do things that your heart really isn’t
in it? Do you have a tendency to secretly love evil? Or tolerate evil? Or show an
inclination toward those things? Do you have a secret disdain
even for good things? Pure things? And how is your practical love?
You could glance down at this list and examine your hearts
and see on each point where you have begun to lag, where you’ve
begun to fall short, where you’ve begun to make excuses for the
way that you love your brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s a
great exercise for us all. Let’s pray. O merciful King, we humble ourselves
before You. And Lord, You have loved us so
perfectly. How could we ever fall short?
How could we ever try to justify The way that we shortchange others
in the way that we treat them. The way that we care for them.
The way that we think about them. God grant us the grace, not only
to examine our hearts, but to confess these things as we come
across them. And having confessed them, to
cry out and to begin to live a different way. Lord God, examine our hearts
we pray. It’s in Jesus’ name that we ask.