Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 25 (05-27-19)
We read from John 5:42, where Jesus spoke to the world, and said, “I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.” Bob George earlier explained that Jesus came to dwell with men so they may see they are dead, without the Holy Spirit living in them, in order that they might hear the words of life and come to Jesus Christ to receive his life. The life that is in Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit of God. Having emptied himself of his divine attributes, Jesus, as God in the flesh, walked on the earth as a man. He lived as a man, showing us how mankind was designed to live, by being total dependent on the Holy Spirit (John 5:19, John 8:28).
Bob George digresses to teach from 1 Corinthians 13 to explain how the fruit of the Spirit must come from abiding in the vine, the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. God is the source of love for God is love. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:8). The pride of men, as in the religious world, whom Jesus confronted, hinders men in coming to Christ for life. The opposite of love is not hate, but pride. Pride keeps men from coming to Christ to receive new life. Prideful flesh is what hinders a person from abiding in the Spirit so as to walk in the newness of life.
Bob earlier shared about the parable of the vine and the branches in John 15, to show how Jesus lived in total dependence on the Holy Spirit, giving honor and praise to God the Father (John 5:23). Whether in our dead state or born again, we cannot produce love. Love is of God, the source of love. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). When we heard about and received the life of Christ and became born again, through faith in the finished work of Christ, in regards to his death, burial, and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4), we became a new creation. The Holy Spirit was placed in us and we began a new life in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17). We live by this same faith (Romans 1:17). The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love (Galatians 5:6). Love is one of the characteristics of God, all of which is a fruit of the Spirit. Only God can produce these things of the Spirit. These characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit are listed in Galatians 5:22-23. These things are produced in us and through us as we abide in God, trust Him as Jesus trusted his Father.
Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:6
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love
Turn now to 1 Corinthians 13.
1 Corinthians 13:1-8
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
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.
As we look, we see how that the opposite of this love is pride. You do not have love in your heart without Christ. Let us look in our own lives here today. How much of the love of God do we have in our hearts. How we are doing in the love department is a direct correlation on how we are doing in the abiding department. Love is a reflection of abiding on the source. The fruit of the Spirit, listed in Galatians 5:22-23 – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control – are not to be gained as in a vending machine, putting in a quarter and out pops love, joy, peace, and all those things listed.
All of these will be ours when we are abiding in the source. It is not like this, when you say, “I do not have much joy, so I will try to get some joy”. Neither is it saying, “I will try to command somebody to love. Penny, get some peace in your heart.” Against such things there is no law. You cannot command these things to somebody. That is the fruit of the Spirit, that only he produces, and that is produced through you by abiding in the source. It is like saying to a water facet, “Give me water”. Well, you have to turn it on. A water facet is plugged into the source of the supply. The problem is you are not loving because you are not abiding in the source, the Holy Spirit of God. Love, joy, peace, and all those others listed are characteristics of the Holy Spirit of God. There is your problem. So you do not worry about what you are not doing. We need to see why such characteristics are not coming out of me and it is because of not abiding in the source of love. You do not have the love of God in your heart.
1 Corinthians 12:31
And yet I will show you the most excellent way.
The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is pride. Love is patient. Pride is never patient. Love is kind. Pride is never kind. Love never keeps record of wrongs. Pride cannot afford not to. Pride says, “In case you get one upmanship on me, I have got your record of you to throw back at you. You did those things. The response you get back is, ‘Oh, that is what you did too'”. That is a prideful thing that we have to shoot back, or take revenge. We do not want people to get too close. Why? In case we get hurt. The opposite of hate is love.
There are three types of love. Phileo love originates from the city of brotherly love. Philanthropy love comes from the root word meaning a brotherly kind of love. Eros is sexual love. Then you have agape love which means the love that only comes from God, not a feeling, but an action taken by God on behalf of man. The agape kind of love can only be produced when attached to the source. Pride is the problem. I want to protect myself because I do not want to get hurt. So we do not want to give to people because we are fearful of getting hurt. People say I have poor self image. A young girl says, “I do not like myself because I am ugly.” That is not true. If you hated yourself, you would be glad you are ugly. If someone across the street was uglier than you, then you would be glad. It is the fact that you love yourself too much. The world comes along and says you need to love yourself more, which can lead to pride. Agape must be produced by God. It cannot be produced by us. What are some of these areas where man is susceptible to pride, spiritual pride? These are listed here in 1 Corinthians 13. We all fall short but God knows our heart.
1 Corinthians 13:1
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
Why bring it up? People are out there with the gift, or falsifying it, and have pride full of it. It does not make any difference if gifted or not. The prideful attitude say, “Just let you hear me speak”. Listen to me speak! This is a pride element. That is an exaggeration that is written down in this passage of scripture. That does not mean an angel language. So many people get hung up on language and God does not listen to what we are saying anyway. So the man in prideful thinking says, “If God is listening to what I am saying then who is the only one talking to God when I am praying up here on Sunday morning? For you are not talking but I am. I get up and speak on Sunday morning. I am the only one evidently talking to God for he is the only one hearing my word”. How much sense is it to say let us have silent prayer then if the only one praying is the one talking? What sense does it make if you did not have a tongue to talk, or had a disease that you could not communicate? Are you then all of a sudden a second rate citizen? No! God is too smart to listen to what we are saying. Most of the time what we are saying, 9 out of 10 times, we do not mean. That is why we say, “How are you doing?” The other person replies, “Fine” yet silently his guts are hanging out. The man looks on the outward appearance but God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). He does not need a United Nations interpreter to know what I am thinking. God is not listening to what I am saying but he is listening to what I am thinking. You can be thinking one thing and saying another. A person can be thinking, “I do not like you at all” yet say “you look good”. Man can be phony. So Jesus says he does not accept the testimony of man for he knows what is in a man. God does not care what language you are speaking in, whether Chinese or Japanese or whatever. He is not listening to your voice anyway but he is listening to your heart. If we do not understand that then we get hung up in how we are talking. One lady from Scotland came to a fellowship, with a Scottish accent and everybody enamored in how she can pray. God is not impressed with her accent yet we are impressed with that stuff. How glib people can be! But a prayer that comes out of the heart says “I do not even know how to pray”. A parent, waiting for the first child to be born, is all excited to hear the child’s first words. When the child first says, “Da Da”, we are excited and we should be. Yet when the child grows then we want to say, “Please shut up”.
1 Corinthians 13:1b
If I do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal
There are people, well meaning, but who are taught this way, that believe tongues is a sign you are filled with the Spirit. It would be very difficult to call somebody a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. That is not a sign of anything. That is not a sign of being controlled by the Spirit. What is the only sign of being controlled by the Spirit. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
So Jesus is knocking down all pride, the things done in pride.
1 Corinthians 13:2
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Think about if you have faith that moves mountains then how many Television interviews you would have, if you had such faith to move mountains. You would probably be called a mountaineer of the year. The thinking of the world is so contrary to the thinking of God. Man’s natural inclination is pride. God says if you had such faith without love then you are nothing.
That is pretty big, isn’t it? Have you ever tried that? Try moving an ant hill.
Matthew 17:20
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Yet if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, and have not love, you accomplish nothing.
God is not interested in how big your faith but in how big your God is. It is not the size of my faith that counts but on the size of my God that counts.
Galatians 5:6
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Jesus is hitting these areas of pride. If you do not love, you are nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:3
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
If I surrender my body to the flames, or died as a martyr for Jesus, yet if I do not have love, I have not gained anything. There is nothing you can do to impress God if you do not love one another.
1 Corinthians 13:4
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
Before this definition of love, I must first understand that that is how the Source loves me. This is a definition of how God loves me. Is that not what we have learned from the Old Testament? We have hundreds and hundreds of years of failure of people and the patience of God. How patient was God with you and me? God is patient.
God is always kind. Kindness is almost a loft characteristic, for people to be kind to one another. kindness is not only in action but also in thought and in how we say things to one another.
God is not envious and does not boast. God is also not proud. Even though God is big enough to create the universe, he is small enough to live in the hearts of men. That is humility.
1 Corinthians 15:5
5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Have you ever heard the teaching that when you go to heaven everything you ever did, said or thought will be on a movie screen. And you wonder why nobody ever wants to go? I think I would ask for another place to go. No, God keeps no record of wrongs. Where were all those wrongs placed? What happened to all of them? They were placed on Jesus Christ on the cross, never to be remembered anymore.
2 Corinthians 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Hebrews 10:17
Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Evil destroys humanity. In the sin in the garden of Eden, the decision to choose right from wrong, between good and evil, set up all the sins of the world. War, murder, child molestation and all of this evil all started from this one sin that said “I do not need you, God, to tell me what is right and wrong”. So in today’s world, we have situational ethics taught in colleges. What is that? A situation you are in does not redefine sin. Sin is what God calls it. Situation or culture or evolution does not change the definition of sin. Bible says homosexuality is a sin. The world redefines it to be an alternative life style. A lie is a lie and not an exaggeration of the truth a bit. The world says that worry is not a sin but a healthy concern. Worry is a sin of not trusting God to provide for you. Anything that does not come from faith is sin (Romans 14:23). As God had said to Adam, the day you determine what is right and wrong is the day you will die.
Genesis 2:17
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
God does not rejoice in evil but with the truth. Why? Truth is what sets you free.
John 8:32
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
If you are lost in the woods and had a con man to tell you how to get you out of there, you will not get out of there. If you have God, who has the map of how to get out of there, and you believe him, you wil get out of there.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
That is God’s love for you. This is the kind of love God wants to see coming out of you. If the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love, and that is all that God is interested in, and this is the definition of love, then you should ask yourself, “How am I doing?”.
1 Corinthians 13:8
8 Love never fails.
Does your love never fail? Am I always patient? Do I need to go on? No, that did it for me! Am I never envious? Am I never boastful? Do I ever boast of what a great cook I am? Do I ever boast of how wonderful I am? Am I never rude or self seeking? Am I always looking out for others especially when a promotion comes up? Do I never keep records of wrongs. Whenever someone has offended me, do I never bring it back to mind? Do I always protect others? Do I always trust others? Is there a risk in trusting others? Yes, for they could rip me off. God says if they rip you off, He will take care of me. And our typical response is, “Oh no, I am not taking that chance”.
What this is saying to us is this. “What do we have to brag about?” “What do we have to be puffed up over? When God says that faith expressing itself through love is the only thing that counts, then there is nothing about me in this life. Nothing close about me in this. But these things can come out of me. How? By abiding in the source. Can we produce these things? No. Do I say to myself, “I am going to be patient today.” or “Lord, I will pray to you to get patience and I want it right now”. You cannot work on kindness. Do you say to yourself, “I will take a course on envy”. So what does this say about the self help study courses taught in churches today? Those things do not work. You have to plug into the source. If I am a lamp, and I want to produce light, then I must plug myself into a wall outlet. We cannot strain and grown in the energy of our flesh to produce something we never had. We cannot do it.
That is why Jesus said “I do not do anything unless the Father tells me to do it, and I do not say anything unless my Father tells me to say it and how to say it”.
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 8:28
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.
We can say the same words one way and the same words another way. One way is a blessing to a person and the other is a curse to him. So Jesus said that even he depends on God on how to say things to people.
We are learning something about ourselves Jesus is teaching us this. These people thought they had the love of God in their hearts. Jesus told them plainly the did not.
John 5:41-42
41 “I do not accept glory from human beings, 42 but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.
Jesus said he came in his Father’s name and they do not accept him. But if someone else comes in his own name, then they accept him.
John 5:43-44
43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.
The mere fact you do not accept the one the Father sent shows you do not have the love of God in your heart. Jesus is teaching us that we must learn to live in dependence upon God.
John 5:44
44 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
Jesus is saying to them, “You are so willing to accept praise from others, a pat on the back, but you make no effort at all to accept the praise that comes only from God.”
John 5:45-47
45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”
Jesus is essentially saying this. “You say you are a follower of God, that you believe God and love God, yet the God you say you love is the one who sent me and you refuse to believe in the one God sent, the one you say you are in love with. You listen to all kids of men’s testimony but you won’t listen to mine. You say you are a follower of Moses. No you are not for if you listened to Moses you would listen to me for he wrote about me.”
Jesus knew how to expose the hypocrisy of men. Do not say you love God and yet hate your brother.
