Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at The Word of God P40 (05-10-21)
Synopsis
The one thing people are looking for is unconditional love and acceptance. We cannot give that to someone else, not in the energy of our flesh. So much marital strife is because one spouse has unrealistic expectations on another, expecting their partner to provide what he or she is unable to provide. Yet, the Lord Jesus Christ commands us to love one another just as He loved us. So what is Jesus saying to us? Is He telling us to do something that is impossible for us to do? Yes and no, because it is not us doing it.
The key to the Christian life is a life of dependency, of trust in the one who loves you perfectly, and only God can do that, for God is love. Jesus, as the second Adam, modeled perfectly for us how we are to live. He limited Himself in the use of His divine attributes in a manner that we would have to relate to God, after having the Spirit placed in us at a new spiritual birth. Was it not from His complete dependency upon His Father? Yes. And love is how He fulfilled the law, for love does His neighbor no wrong.
John 5:19
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
John 15:5
5 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.
So you see, Jesus demonstrated to us what a dependent relationship looks like. Jesus, the only man born with the Spirit of God in Him, chose to live as man, so we, who are not God, would know how to live as He designed us to live with the Holy Spirit living in us. He modeled perfectly of what He explained to us in the parable of the vine and the branch in John 15. He is the vine and we are the branch. The branch cannot produce fruit. It cannot create fruit of love and joy and peace, but by remaining on the vine, abiding, or depending on the vine, it can bear fruit, drawing from the one who can produce fruit, the source of spiritual nutrients, and that is the vine.
So the Christian life is to realize that apart from Him I can do nothing. It is realizing I cannot but He can. That is why the apostle said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain” and “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”.
Romans 8:11
11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
So as you read the definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, that is really a definition of who God is, and love is an action, not mere words, and that action must be in response to God initiating His love to you, and you are responding to His love. As you respond to His love, your love of God results in dependence upon God, that then results in obedience to God. It is in that order. The Love of God results in dependence on God resulting in obedience to God.
Transcript
John 13:35
35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Because we cannot pull that one off, we have given up on that. So what we have done is to say that a loving Christian would witness. Therefore, I will go witness. Therefore, I will be loving. Is that true? I know people who have witnessed who are mean as a hornet. So that is obviously not true. Loving people will pray. So I will pray, and therefore I will be loving. Is that true? No. That is not true. Loving people will go to church three times on Sunday, or whatever it might be. So, I will go to church so therefore I will be loving. Is that true? No, that is not true.
People have substituted every one of those activities for love because I realize I cannot pull this off. But I want the world to know that certainly we are His disciples but I cannot pull it off by loving one another. So I will pull it off by building big institutions, churches with stained glass windows, or get on television, and then the world will know that I am His disciple. No. They still will not know. The only way that the Lord is ever going to know that there is reality called a living Christ, alive living in you, is when you love one another. Apart from that it is not going to be there.
Once again, as we said earlier, I cannot love one another so let us get unified. Let us see if we can unify with one another, then the world will know. How can the world not know if we are disciples of Christ, if we can get all the Catholics, Muslims, Baptists, and whatever else together, meeting in one place and singing some music, not mentioning Jesus, but at least it is a religious song. News media will record that. Then everyone will know we are a follower of Christ? No, they will not. People are too smart for that. They see you at home and at work. Quite frankly, people are not impressed how you act in a gathering anyway. But people substitute, saying that if we unify, the world will know we are disciples of Christ. The word did not say that. The world will know you are My disciples when you love one another.
Incidentally, you cannot do that. We will learn that shortly. In chapter 14, it says this.
John 14:14
14 Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.
So how in the world am I going to pull this love off? There is a way of doing that, and that is to trust in Me. One time the Jews asked Jesus, “What is the work of ministry, or the work that God requires?”
John 6:28-29
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Do you want to know what your work is, Christian? To trust the Lord, to abide in the only one who can produce what He said is the only way that the world will know that you are my disciples, and that is love. Jesus identified Himself as the only source of that.
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Here is how this is going to take place.
John 14:16
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever”
There again, it is not the Spirit of unity. It is the Spirit of truth. Unity comes by unifying around what is true. He will be with you forever. So He talks now about the Holy Spirit coming to live in you. He lives with you, that was Jesus, and will be in you, that is the Holy Spirit, and will never leave you as orphans.
John 14:17-21
17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day [day of Pentecost] you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
The issue is, if I am not obeying His commands, it is because I do not love Him. What commands did He leave us with? He left us with a command to love one another. He continues explaining this in the parable of the vine and the branch in John 15.
John 15:4-5
4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
He is the vine and we are the branch. The only way we can bear fruit is to abide in Him. A branch cannot produce fruit. It can only bear fruit.
John 15:7
7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
So He says to remain in Him, and My words in you, and ask what you wish and it will be given for you. If I am remaining in Him and He is remaining in me, what do I wish? To do what He just got through saying, to love one another. I desire that, to love God and to love one another. That is bearing fruit.
John 15:8
8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
What did He just get through saying so the world will know you are My disciples? By loving one another. What is the fruit of the Spirit? Love. And all the rest flows from love.
Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
So this is God’s glory. This is the Father’s glory that you and I are bearing fruit of love to the world around us, showing ourselves to be His disciples.
John 15:9-12
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Then He gives us His command, to love one another as I have loved you.
John 15:13
13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
As we pick up again in John 15, I want to establish this foundation.
John 15:14-15
14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
It is interesting that Jesus calls you and me friends. That is probably one of the most comforting things I can think of, to be able to not just sing a song, ’What a friend we have in Jesus”, but to realize that is true and not only is He our friend, but I can be His friend as well.
John 15:16-17
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
There again, when it is talking about the bearing of fruit, that is a result of abiding in Christ. That is an attitude of “not my will, but yours be done.” When the Father, in that attitude, the Father gives you whatever you ask in my name, when you are abiding in the will of God, what will you be asking? The will of the Father. People confuse that, that all I have to do is come up with some fleshly desire and ask God and God will give it to me. That is not the context here. If you are abiding, God’s desires will become your desires. When God’s desires become your desires, what you will be asking Him for is your desires that have been placed there by God. It is a very interesting thing how that works. This is my command, He says, to love one another.
Turn again to John 17. You will see once again, as we talked about earlier, that in Jesus’ prayer, the true Lord’s prayer to the Father. It was not the apostle’s prayer that He gave to them prior to the cross, but His prayer also prior to the cross for His disciples after the cross.
John 17:23-26
23 I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
What is this unity we are all after? It is to be brought to complete unity for the purpose of letting the world know that Jesus came from the Father, and has loved man even as the Father has loved Jesus. There is the unity. It is a unity of purpose to come into this world, not as a citizen, but as an ambassador, to let a lost world know that Jesus came from God. He is not a Mohammad. He is not a Buddha. He is not a glorified man. He is not just some kind of a godly prophet. He is God Himself in the flesh, who came to this world and became a sacrifice for mankind so that we would have an abiding relationship with Him. He in us. I in Him. We in the Father. That is the unity and the only unity that God is talking about.
Colossians 3:12-15
12 So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so must you do also. 14 In addition to all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. 15 Let the peace of Christ, to which you were indeed called in one body, rule in your hearts; and be thankful.
Therefore, with that in mind, that our command from God is to love one another, and also there is no way to pull that off apart from abiding in the one who is love any more than you can command a branch to love the world, or to command the branch to produce love. You cannot do that. I know I am supposed to but I cannot do it. How can I pull that off? By abiding in Him who is life, and He will produce it if you abide in Him.
Let us turn to Matthew 28:19-20, that has been called the Great Commission. When I first heard that terminology, coming out of a business background, I thought it was fifty percent on top of retail. I found out that is not true. People put names on things. Man calls it that. God did not call it that. People try to put names on things, trying to get it to say something it does not say.
Matthew 28:18-20
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Now, He is talking to His disciples, the apostles. His command to go and make disciples and the command is not going. The command is making disciples. The literal Greek is rendered, “As you are going, make disciples.” It is not “Go”. We have put the imperative on “Go” instead of the imperative on “make disciples.”
At any rate, He was saying to His disciples, and He just got through telling them that He was going away, and was about to depart physically. So He said He is going to send the Holy Spirit to them. Those same disciples, later went out, walked in denial of the Lord. Peter and all of them in hiding, scared to death, and are are the same ones, several days later, on the day of Pentecost, boldly proclaiming Him to the very people who crucified Him.
John 20:19
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
Acts 2:1-4
1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Acts 2:22-24
22 “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23 This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.
They had all the information. If there was ever a group of men prepared to give a sermon, it would have been those guys. But there was still something lacking. They did not have the Holy Spirit in them until then. “You know about me but you did not have my life in you.” Without that life in them, they could not produce any more than a branch can produce that does not have that vine in him. The reason a tree can produce apples is because the nature of the tree is apples. If you can take the nature of apple out of the tree, then you might as well have pumpkin as far as the world is concerned, because it cannot produce anything.
In essence, Jesus is saying, “You have all the information but you do not have my life in you so you do not have what it takes to produce my life. But if you wait, I will send my Holy Spirit to you. When you have the Holy Spirit sent to you, then you will have my life in you, and then you can produce what that life can produce, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
Matthew 28:19-20
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
So He goes on to say that all authority has been given to me. “After I come to live in you, I want you to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” That is starting with Israel. Do not leave until you go to Israel. The first deal was to the Jew. That baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit has great significance. They did not know the Triune God. They knew the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If you were to ask a Jew then, or even today, that is how they would answer you, that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was their God. I want you to know your God. But they did not have a clue as to the Trinity. Not a clue. So what He is saying is not about going out and dunking them in water. He is not talking about that. I want you to identify people with the Triune God, with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I want you to let the Jew know who God is. It is not just the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but who that God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is. He is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
The Jew was not identified with that God. He was identified with the God of Judaism. So baptism is identification. It is a term of identification. It was the term that was used to dye cloth. You dipped a white cloth in a red dye and it came out something brand new, a red cloth. It’s whole identity has been changed. A Jew is identified with being a Jew. I want you to be identified with being a child of God. A Gentile never had that type of strong identity. We would not as a Gentile identify myself as a Gentile. And, of course, even though I do not think people think about that. As we saw in Nazi Germany, it is more, “I am a German”, a Nazi, rather than a Gentile. “I am German.” People oidenify iwth country of origin. “I am American” or “I am a Frenchman”, To a Gentile, that is an identity, your country of origin. Suppose as a Gentile we did have that identity. In both cases, He is saying I want you to give up that identity and become a child of God.
Colossians 3:11
11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
He wants us to identify with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything Christ had commanded you. What has Christ commanded you? He commanded you to love one another. That is the only command He left us with.
Matthew 28:19-20
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
When we are talking about going and making disciples, you are talking about making disciples to love one another. You are talking about making disciples to trust. If Jesus says the work of the ministry is to believe in me, to trust in me, then that is what it means to make a disciple, to encourage a person, to give them the reasons why they can trust the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what equipping the saints for work of ministry is about. What is the work of ministry? To go out witnessing? No. To be praying? No. To be studying the bible? No. The work of the ministry is to believe in me. That is what Jesus said. You can argue with that if you want to but you have to argue with Him on it, for that is what He said the work of ministry is. When you are abiding in Him, then He will put His desires on your heart. His desires will become yours. What are His desires? Certainly to seek and and to save the lost. So that will be your desire. He said He does nothing unless the Father tells him to say it. So He was abiding in His Father. We also will be abiding in His word. He says, “I only do what I hear.” But those are by-products of abiding in Him, trusting in Him. If I am going to equip somebody for the work of ministry and make disciples of somebody. Making a disciple is not in techniques. It is teaching a person on the reliability of and how trustworthy Christ Jesus is.
John 14:21
21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
Through abiding in Him, allowing Him to carry it out, everything Christ commanded us, is an impossibility for us to do. Have you ever thought about that? There is not one thing He commanded us to do that is possible to do in the energy of the flesh. You can do it for a while but you cannot do it for long. Everything He commanded us to do is an impossibility for us and absolutely no problem for Him. So He is saying , this is my standard. This is what is good for you as my creation, but you cannot pull it off. But if you abide in the one who can, you will see it occur in your life.
John 14:21
21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me
In other words, obedience comes as a result of love. Once again, we cannot love unless the Holy Spirit loves us first. You can have legalistic obedience or you can have obedience that is an outflow of the love of God. That is what grace does. It is the grace of God, as said in Titus, that teaches us to say “No” to unrighteousness and to live self controlled upright lives. Do you think it might be His command to us? Yes.
Titus 2:11-13
11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ
What He is saying there is it is the grace of God, which is the manifestation of God’s love without reservation toward us. It is that love of God for us, causing our response back to Him that brings about our obedience. In other words, folks, it is your love of God that then results in dependency upon God, that then results in obedience to God. It is in that order. The Love of God results in dependence on God resulting in obedience to God.
So obedience is a by-product. It is not something you gut out. It is not something you have to work at doing. It is a by-product of abiding in love. So you have people who appear to be obedient. It is phoney obedience, who are trying to be obedient, have the philosophy, “God said it so you just do it.” I have known some like that, that absolutely that when it came to loving one another, they sure fell short of the glory of God on that one. That is not it.
As you walk in the newness of life that has been given to you in Christ Jesus, and walk in love, His love for you, there is nothing that can occur except beginning to build upon a dependency on someone who loves you that much. If God loves me and calls me His friend, then can I depend upon Him? Yes. Can I depend upon Him for truth? Yes. Can I depend on Him to be my friend? Yes you can. If God knows all things and loves me and calls me His friend and He knows truth and I do not, can I depend upon Him when He tells me something? Yes.
When He does tell me something, for whose benefit is it? Mine. Does it make any sense at all that when you know someone who is God, who is all knowing, all loving, trusts you, loves you, is your friend, is He going to tell you something that is bad for you? No. Is He going to tell you something that is good for you? Yes. Then how much sense does it make when you have a perfect friend who knows all things, to do the very opposite of what He tells you that is good for you. You say that does not make much sense, does it? No, it doesn’t. So obedience is not something you gut out. It is a natural flow. It makes sense. Thank you Lord. You have my best interest at heart.
So that passage, whoever has my commands and obeys them, does not mean you go and obey His commands and that will prove you love Him. It means love is what causes you to obey His commands.
1 John 3:18
18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
I love you, brother. When you get letters sometimes saying, “I put a curse on you in love.” It is amazing to me, but it is not in some respects. There are letters we receive from people that are so religious, so vindictive and mean letters, all in the name of Christ, and always signed in love.
That is what He is saying. Do not love in words or tongue. The speaking of that does not mean anything. Love is an action.
So let us turn to look at 1 Corinthians 13.
1 Corinthians 13::4-8
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.8 Love never fails.
This is all God’s definition of love. You will see it is not a feeling or something spoken, but it is an action.
Love is patient. I do not have to try to be patient with people who do things I want them to. I think they are smart. Where does patience come in? It is being patient with people who do not do things you want or are not like you. It is like man and wife. We are two different breeds altogether. Patience comes from understanding that. We are not the same. A woman’s emotions, her thinking is totally contrary to how a man thinks, and vice versa. We learn to understand each other, and to be patient with one another, realizing the other person is not being a clod because they want to be mean today. They are just being a woman today or a man today. We are different. That brings about patience.
Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not self-seeking. As you read through those things, allowing God to do that through us, do you know who the benefactor of that is? We are.
