The Gospel and... Loving One Another

Here are the notes from last nights LightHouse:

Scenario A
You are due to meet a friend from church for coffee, you wait and wait but they don’t show or let you know they won’t be able to make it. It’s not the first time they have done it and they never apologise or even acknowledge that they have let you down. What do you do?

Scenario B
You give your testimony at church in the service. Afterwards someone comes up and asks you a number of questions about it. You feel like you’ve been a bit grilled by them so you ask them why they wanted to know. They say; “I just wanted to check you really were a Christian, because you didn’t mention a number of key things in your testimony.” They walk away, what do you do?

Scenario C
You have someone new to church over for a Saturday afternoon, after the children have gone to bed you sit and chat. A while later, and a bit out of the blue, they confess to a having a problem with self harm. It began at uni, and though it has been better lately it is still a problem. How should we react?

Scenario D
You are chatting to someone from church and they start being critical of your children and their behaviour in church. They basically say church is not for children and you should be keeping your children quiet so other people can worship God. What do you do?

Scenarios discussion.

When faced with these types of situations we have two normal responses. One is to go into confrontation mode and challenge the other person about what they have done and fight our corner. The other is to simply take what they say. One looks more godly than the other but both are ultimately destructive.

The first one simply escalates the conflict and can result in a downward spiral of recrimination or sniping. Our concern when we react that way is not grace or love or even the relationship it is getting across my point of view, defending or excusing my actions or feelings. It rarely ends well.

The second way of dealing with it looks better, at least on the surface, there is no heated exchange, no angry words or confrontation. But if we never deal with the issues, it will fester and rot and produce bitterness and resentment. Long term it will poison the relationship and potentially other relationships in church.

As we look at the gospel and loving others tonight we are going to focus on 1 Peter 4:8, but we need first of all to understand why this is so important.

I hate Big Brother because it is car crash TV, 12 people in a small confined space forced to live alongside people hand-picked by the producers to clash and provoke one another. Why do people watch it? Because they like the fly on the wall perspective, the cliques forming, dislikes and clashes playing out in public, sides being drawn, fall outs escalating and causing division. And in such a small group they can have serious consequences quickly.

Peter writes to small churches scattered across an increasingly hostile empire. To people who have been made un-family because of their faith, who have been ostracised and isolated by society because they follow Jesus. (1:6)They are facing trials and griefs, (2:11)they are foreigners and exiles and feel it, (2:12)they are being falsely accused, (3:16)spoken maliciously about, and (4:6)abused. But they have found a new family in the church, a new community forged by the gospel and distinguished by its committed love, love which they have experienced from God by grace and which then flows through them to others in this new family.

Four times in the letter Peter exhorts these beleaguered believers to love:

1:22 ”love on another deeply, from the heart, for you have been born again...”

2:17 “show proper respect for everyone, love your fellow believers, fear God, honour the emperor...

3:8 “finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble...”

4:8 “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

These believers need the church as they seek to live for Christ in a hostile world fighting sin, doing good, enjoying God, proclaiming and modelling the gospel. It is where they are trained, equipped, encouraged and loved. And in order for the church to thrive and grow it must be marked by love. In fact Peter says it is vital, it must be a priority in the church. So what does it look like to love deeply?

What is love?
A sociologist has written a book called ‘Liquid Love’. On the front cover is a heart drawn on a beach in the sand and the tide is coming in. That front cover captures the central idea of the book; people today want togetherness and companionship, we want to express and receive love. But we don’t want the burdens that come with commitment, and we certainly don’t want to be trapped or caught up in other people’s problems. We want a liquid love.

But the love that Peter is calling believers to show one another is the exact opposite of liquid love. It is a love like God’s love. The word ‘agape’ usually describes the active love of God for his Son or his people and their active love for him and one another. It is not a naturally occurring love, it is different from the love between parents and children, or husband and wife, or brothers and sisters. It is the result of experiencing God’s love for us which we see demonstrated supremely in Jesus incarnation, living, dying, resurrection and current interceding for us. We respond to that love with love for God but also with love for others, an active love which sees God and his people as our treasures.

Peter describes how believers are to love one another, their love is to be “deep” or earnest. That isn’t calling for passion or fervency, it is about commitment, depth and perseverance. Peter is saying they are to love one another at full stretch. It is not an easy love this is a love that will challenge us. It is not just a love for those people we get on with and find it easy naturally to love. This is a love which stretches both in terms of what it will do but also in terms of who it is shown to. This is a love that pursues those who we naturally find it hard to love. It is a love beyond our natural resources, and that is why the church is so amazing God’s marvel of gospel engineering declaring his praise and glory to a watching cosmos. You can only love like this if you have experienced and daily enjoy the experience of being loved by God like this, and come to a God who delights to give his people a love like this for others.

Do you feel the challenge of such a love? I think we do ok at loving those like us in church but what about those not like us? How are we at stretching to love those we naturally find it hard to love? Who do you naturally sit and talk to on a Sunday, is that exclusive? Are there people in the congregation who you have never spoken to? Don’t hide behind the excuse of ‘I’m not an outgoing person’, they might not be either. Love is active, love seeks, love stretches to build relationships with those we may find it hard to get on with naturally, but that is the beauty and wonder of the love the gospel generates within us.

But why do we need to love like this?

The purpose of love
“because love covers over a multitude of sins.” Peter isn’t saying that loving others when they sin means that God forgives them, as if somehow it atones for it. Nor is he saying churches should be so soppy and sentimental that anything goes, and they never confront sin but cover it up. We dare not do that.

So what is he saying such love does? Why do we need to love each other like this?

Turn to Proverbs 10:12 “Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.” Do you see the contrast, love does the opposite of hatred. Hatred causes an unending downward spiral of bitterness and recrimination. Hatred creates never ending feuds and enduring stony silences. Love does the opposite; it covers the wrong not by just swallowing it but by forgiving it, by stretching to love as God loves and showing grace.

Turn to 1 Peter 3:8-9 and we see clearly that this is what Peter hard in mind. Peter calls on them to stop the cycle of evil and insult, to meet evil with blessing, both inside the church and outside the church.

We are to limit the destructive potential of sin to destroy the people God has called us to be church with by forgiving quickly and loving elastically. The gospel creates a new community marked by love and grace. Where hurts and sin are dealt with not covered up and where forgiveness and grace are always readily available. Where love for others not self dominates because that is how God has loved us in Christ.

So what?
We need to be loving one another actively. (9-11)I think Peter details some ways for us to do this. We are to be open with our homes, generous with the gifts God has blessed up with, and ready to speak to encourage others. Peter there isn’t talking about preaching but the general everyday spiritual encouragement we can all give one another. How do we love deeply? By being open hearted with what God has given us, by looking out for ways we can bless others with relationship, acts of service and encouragement.

We must be forgiving one another readily. In the world there are various currencies which operate – money, possessions, favours, pay back etc... In the church there is to be one currency love. There will never be anyone we need to forgive as much as God has forgiven me. There will never be someone who has wronged us as much as we have wronged God. But we are also liberated from debts to others, if people serve us because of grace then we do not need to pay them back, we do not keep a mental or physical ledger of debts and debtors.

I want to push this on a bit though because I think one of our problems is that we isolate ourselves from these challenges. We don’t open ourselves up to these kind of hurts, we build relationships with those least likely to hurt, offend, wrong or sin against us. Love at full stretch challenges that thinking, it calls us to love those who potentially will sin against us, but to be ready to forgive them and not allow recrimination to build. It call us to love those who are very different from us.

What is the quickest way to destroy a church? It is not to love. You can have brilliant bible teaching, fantastic music, amazing youth work, but if people do not love like this then you will get bitterness, recrimination fighting and a downward spiral of sin and a disintegration of the church that may never be fixed.

Why must we love like this? Because this is the only right response to God’s love which is like that but on a greater scale than we can ever imagine. Because God loves his church, his people and says above all love one another because I have loved you, and made you to need one another.

But we can’t berate ourselves, or manipulate ourselves, our screw up our efforts and just decide or try to love others. It is a love that only flows from understand who God has made us to be and experiencing his love that transforms us calling, enabling and equipping us to love others.

Discussion Questions:
1. What are the barriers to loving like this?

2. What opportunities do you have to love others like this? What can you do to develop and maximise those opportunities?

3. This love for others is to extend beyond the fringes of the church family, how might we show love to those outside?