The Royal Law of Love

Good morning.

The reading from God's Word this morning is from James chapter 2, verses 1 through 13, and can be found on page one thousand and eleven in your pew Bible.

James 2:1–13

For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in.

And if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, You sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, you stand over there, or sit down at my feet?

Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?

But you have dishonored the poor man.

Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court?

Are they not the ones who blasphemy the honorable name by which you were called?

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.

But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

For he who said, Do not commit adultery, he also said, Do not murder.

If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

So speak and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.

For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.

Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Here ends the reading of God's word.

Thank you, Kathy.

Thank you, kids choir.

Boy, I agree with Greg on uh what he said about that.

I'd like to have you turn this morning, please, to James chapter two.

And if you think I have forgotten something I haven't, just be patient.

James chapter two.

Um we're continuing this morning in our study, our attempt to understand, our desire to put ourselves under what God has said, our desire to listen and to respond.

And we're going to be looking at verses 8 through 13 this morning.

Kathy read the whole section.

Two weeks ago, we did the first part of it.

Today we're doing the second part.

They're intimately tied together, and yet, as you will see, there's a bit of a different emphasis in this part.

I think it's worth emphasizing that when we turn to listen to James, younger half-brother of the Lord, leader of the church in Jerusalem, one of the important people in the first century, we are not just listening to the words of James.

These are James' words.

James spoke in his own way, with his own vocabulary, using his own images.

If we turn to Paul, we hear the words of Paul saying things in a different way.

If we turn to Ezekiel, we hear words of the prophet.

And yet, when we wherever we turn, when we turn to the scriptures, while we hear the words of the human authors, there is something else that is there.

We are hearing precisely what God intended for them to write.

The kids actually sang about that in the first part of the message of the song.

These are the words of God.

God has spoken, and he has not stuttered, and he accomplishes with his word exactly what he wants, and in a way that is actually a mystery, a miracle, although the human writers may not have had any idea about what was happening, God so superintended the process of their sitting down and writing, so that although they wrote, God was so guiding the process that the end result was precisely what he wanted, and believers throughout the centuries have believed that this is not just the good thoughts of James.

This is the very words of God through the vehicle of James.

Authentically from James, but God so guiding the writing that the end result down to the words was just what God wanted to have said.

It's called the technical term, the verbal plenary inspiration of the scriptures.

The writers were inspired, not the way you shouldn't picture them sitting on a mountaintop looking over the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, watching the sun go down.

Yeah, I guess it went down to the west there, usually goes down to the west, and being inspired by what they saw, and so they sat and wrote.

It's not that kind of inspiration.

It's rather this amazing thing that God has spoken through humans.

And in this case, in his plan, what James says was what God was saying.

And when we turn to the scriptures, what we're wanting to do is to expose that, to bring it to light.

And James spoke in his time and his place to a specific group of believers with a specific spiritual background.

And some of the images he uses and the words he uses, we have to get to understand because it's somewhat removed from where we are.

Actually, we find Paul much easier to understand.

That's because Paul spoke like a Westerner logically.

You can outline Paul.

You can't outline the Gospel or the Gospel of John or the writings of John.

John wrote in a whole different way.

But through it all, God was speaking.

So when we turn to the book of James in this section, we are turning and our desire is not just to hear Walt, but to hear what God has to say to us.

Okay?

It's worth just reminding ourselves what this is all about.

My words are not the same as James' words.

Okay?

Now, if all we needed was the scriptures, and the scriptures are all sufficient, in a sense, that's all we need, but really I could just we could just stand here and read the scriptures and I could go and sit down, and that would be valuable.

But our goal is to try to bring it more tangent to our lives and to understand it as it is and as it applies to us.

So I get the privilege of doing that.

What James has been talking about in the first seven verses of this chapter has been the issue, a living issue and living problem for the congregations to whom he was writing.

And that was there was what he calls partiality.

In our terms, it would be called discrimination.

Depending on external things about the people, they would be treated differently.

And so he warns them and presses in and explains that if we're impressed with people because of external things, we're wrong.

So in that case, somebody would walk in, they were dressed fine, they had their fingers filled with rings, they were impressive people in the world standing, and so the believers were impressed with them and treated them differently than people who didn't have those impressive things.

They were looking at people the way the world looks at people, and so we ask ourselves two weeks ago, what are we impressed with?

And the danger is very real that without even meaning to, our tendency would be to respond people that we think are impressive, people of competence, people who are well-dressed, people who are well spoken, people who have resources, people who are leaders in society, people who are self-impressed, people who can catch footballs, politicians who speak well, or whatever.

We're drawn to those, and those are all external things.

And when we treat people on the basis of such external things, we're wrong.

Now that was the focus last time.

Now he moves, and it's a continuation of the thought, but he moves us in a slightly different direction.

He's pressing in now, and if you thought he was pressing in two weeks ago, uh back up.

Because he he, God, through the writings of James, was putting his finger on an issue in the lives of the early believers about how they related to other people, and he's continuing to do that now.

And so he's going to press in, and the theme of this section, and that I want to emphasize, is the royal law of love, and I think by the time we're done, um, I hope that will become clear.

But what he's doing is he's not content just to look at the surface issues.

He's not just talking about our behavior.

In the first section, he wasn't just saying that it was wrong to discriminate, and so people who were impressive to you came in and you treated them differently.

He says that was wrong, but there's a deeper issue there.

And last time, that deeper issue is how do we really evaluate people and what are we impressed with?

Now, he's going to turn the direction of his thoughts, but he's pressing into as we relate to people what's in our hearts.

What's in our hearts?

We have our behavior, we have our speech, we have our mind, we have our thoughts.

And all of that comes from somewhere.

It flows out of something within.

So he doesn't even invite us to take a journey into issues of the heart.

He forces us there.

And this whole section is talking about the issues of the internal person.

Now, in our setting, some people are very uncomfortable apparently when we start talking about issues of the heart.

Well, then you're going to be uncomfortable with God most everywhere you turn in Scripture.

Because it is never just about our behavior, but the motives behind it.

It's never just our speech, but where that is coming from.

And he always, God always is concerned not just with the externals, but the internals.

So we, if we're not careful, we set aside, and in opposition, issues of the heart and our understanding of God's word, the Bible and heart, which is a ridiculous, totally inappropriate, I'm trying to think of appropriate ways of saying how inappropriate it is.

That's a false dichotomy, and we're wrong when we pit the two against each other.

It's both and.

And actually, one is a fruit of which the other is the root.

So how we treat people when they walk into the assembly here together reflects something about our hearts, and how we interact with people in general, and how we respond to one another, is more than just a surface issue, it's a reflection of something far deeper.

So he he moves forward with us.

The first couple of verses, he just kind of introduces this matter and he talks about the law of love.

Let's look at that.

He says, if you, and remember what he has just said, forget that Daryl was here last week, forget that 14 days have gone by.

He had just gotten done pressing into us, saying, if you treat people differently based on external things, you're wrong.

Stop it, don't do that.

And now he says, if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scriptures, and then he defines what the royal law is, and he quotes, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Interesting that Daryl talked about that last week, the summation of the law, the great commandment, the great commission.

But listen to what he says.

If you really do that, if you really are ruled by the royal law, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing well.

Well, that's pretty nice.

You know, when we do well, it's appropriate to hear that.

It really is.

It's kind of like when you raise your kids.

If you every once in a while catch them doing something right, wow, talk about that.

That's pretty impressive.

And we're to be encouraged when we do well, and we're to pause when we're not doing well.

So if you really fulfill the royal law according to Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing well.

But, and he's reaching back to two weeks ago, if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

Let's examine that a little bit further.

So, the royal law, it's a very unusual expression.

In fact, it's the only time we find it in all of Scripture.

I wonder what the royal law is.

Well, he tells us what the royal law is, but just this concept of royal law.

I wonder what what does royal mean in this context?

And uh there's different things that he might have been thinking of.

One is the the law given by the king, royal in that sense.

And in a certain sense, that's what uh what Matthew said when uh he was asked what is the greatest commandment?

And actually the king was being asked, but he reaches back into the Old Testament and he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

And all of the law and prophets hang on these two commandments.

And that's actually what he says here.

The royal law is loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Now, the sense of royal law could be that it's the king of all laws, it's the law of all laws, um, it's it's the mother of all laws, it's it's it sums up the whole law and the prophets.

That's what uh that's what Jesus said.

Uh Matthew 7.12.

Um he pointed to the fullest expression of what God expects of us and demands of us.

And there in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7.12, we find the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And he says, this is at the heart of what God wants.

This is part of the king of all laws.

This is at the core.

The heart of the matter is a matter of our hearts.

Very interesting.

So if we're going to take this to heart, then we need to understand what it is.

And I guarantee you, if we take this matter of loving others as we love ourselves, um it will transform our relationships.

Uh we need to be very clear about what is meant in the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them to do unto you, and love others as you love yourself.

A lot of sloppy thinking about what this loving ourselves means.

A lot is often said, it's often said that this is, this implies a command to love ourselves and that we can't love other people until we love ourselves.

That's interesting.

That's not what the that's not what the scriptures say.

It's not as though somehow or another we have to finally begin to love ourselves and then we're free to love others.

No, what he's saying is you do love yourself.

That's the norm, that's the point of departure.

Now, in a similar way to how we already love ourselves, that becomes for us a paradigm or a pattern or a template for loving other people.

You see, we all love ourselves.

We we do whatever it takes for us to have food and clothing and shelter, and there's nothing wrong with that.

We take care of ourselves.

We take care or not of our bodies.

We know we should.

We seek our own good.

That's just the nature of being a human being.

And that is not in and of itself wrong.

It can become wrong, but we do love ourselves.

And even people who, in perhaps strange ways, have developed patterns that are self-destructive, there's something going on in their mind, something in their experience, something that has caused them to begin to feel this is really what will meet their needs, even though it's self-destructive.

So what I'm saying is our bent is to love ourselves.

You don't have to work at loving yourself.

The scriptures don't suggest that we love ourselves too little, but that we love ourselves too much.

The point of this is not that we first have to have a good self-image in order to love someone else.

In fact, the scriptures don't encourage us to have a good self-image, as somehow or another that's hugely important.

The scriptures always point to the reality of ourselves.

And sometimes when we're doing good, we ought to feel good about it.

When we're not doing good, we shouldn't feel good about it.

The point is not to have a strong self-image or a good self-image, but an accurate self-image.

To see ourselves as God sees us.

And when we're doing well, as he just said, then thank God for that and be encouraged by that.

By God's grace, you don't screw up all of the time.

And I the longer I live, the more I am impressed in God's grace and patience to me.

With all of my faults, with all of my shortcomings, with all of my imperfections, which I live out in ways that I hate all of the time, every once in a while, the power of God and the reality of God and the love of God breaks through, and I am just always amazed and impressed with God when I actually find myself doing something right.

That's not a given, folks, and it's not for you, and it's not for me.

Christ wasn't concerned about having a positive self-image.

We're to follow Christ.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who didn't regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself.

He gave up himself.

The whole point is not that we be possessed of ourselves, but that we give up of ourselves that we might then begin to relate to people in a whole different way.

So just I I could go on and on, you probably think I have already.

But boy, I just there's so much sloppy thinking out there about self image and thinking highly of yourself as a criteria and a necessity to love other people.

That is not what this is talking about, and that is not the pattern for us as believers.

The issue is we do love each other, and so that becomes a pattern for us.

I'm going to try to unpack this as we go along, especially by way of application.

So as we love ourselves and want to be loved by other people, can we or can we not find the grace to extend the grace that we expect from other people?

Can we not extend that grace to them?

And doing that would be really what James is talking about, the royal law of love.

Can we extend that to others or do we just demand it of others?

So he's talking about a problem within, a problem of our heart.

And the problem within is the problem with sin.

That's just what the scriptures say.

Why do I always talk about sin?

Because we're always dealing with it.

And because it it's what the answers that God gives are not superficial.

It's not just behavior modification.

Being a Christian isn't just changing our behavior.

Raising a Christian family isn't just getting kids to comply on the outside, but rather developing within them a heart that is responsive to God so that they want to follow God, not because they have to, and if we're not careful with all of the best intents, we cram behavioral modification or socialization to Christian norms, and we think that's what's helping people, and we think ultimately that's what God wants of us.

No, he that behavioral change, those attitudes that get expressed, comes from a fundamental change inside, because the stuff that we're born with and that we wrestle with is sin.

So he says in verse 10 and 11, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

For he who said, Do not commit adultery also said, do not murder.

If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you're a lawbreaker.

You're a lawbreaker.

So a number of significant things with this heart issue and this heart problem we have.

First of all, by breaking any part of the law, you break the entire law.

That's what it says.

Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

You say don't commit adultery.

Um do not murder.

If you don't commit a murder, but do commit adultery, you're a lawbreaker.

You know, there's something bound up with within us with when we're confronted with our shortcomings.

What's our response?

You know, that you know, well, all right, I screwed up there, but I did really well over here.

I'm not as bad as I'm not as bad as I could be.

I'm not as bad as I once was, and that's all good stuff.

God doesn't want us to be as bad as we could be, and God doesn't want us to be as bad as we once were, but we're so quick, we're so quick to point to the good that we do when confronted with the bad, and somehow or another we think it's this balance that if our good things outweigh our bad things, then somehow or another it all washes out or actually ends up with a positive balance.

And what he's saying, you it's more like being pregnant.

I mean, you're not partially pregnant if you're pregnant.

You either are or you aren't.

Now, there's other things like wisdom and maturity.

Um, we can be more mature and more wise or more foolish, but you can't be more or less pregnant.

And and what he's saying here is if you you can't just be a little bit uh guilty of sin.

If if you break the law, you're you're a lawbreaker.

One writer said it this way.

Uh the Jews were very apt, you can blame the Jews on this, of course.

It doesn't have anything to do with us, but the Jews were very apt to regard the law as a series of detached commandments.

To keep one was to gain credit, to break one was to incur a debt.

People could add up the ones they had kept and subtract the ones they broke, and so emerge with either a credit or a debit balance.

And then as though it's as though that's what it is?

That's a very familiar way of looking at it.

It's the way left to ourselves we tend to look at it.

Um I I really was was tempted to have a very vivid illustration here.

I I pictured a big, huge pane of glass over here, maybe, I don't know, four feet by six, and then another pane of glass over here, four feet by six, and I would I would have two hammers.

One was this huge sledgehammer.

Barely lift it.

The other was this little tiny tack hammer.

And to go over here and smash that glass, shattering all over the place with a sledgehammer and come over here and just bing, shatter the whole thing.

As though the the tack hammer is better than the sledgehammer, the whole glass is sh is is shattered.

Um it's it's an all-or-nothing kind of thing.

Even one sin shatters our relationship with God.

Um imagine that you were out in your car and you were tooling along the highway, and your right foot got heavier and heavier and heavier, and the car got going faster and faster, and then there was this red flashing light behind you, and you pull over, and uh um I have a vivid memory of that happening to me.

We'd been out of the country for many years.

I was traveling someplace, the policeman pulled me over, and I looked back, and he was sitting in his car, and and I thought, you know, what's the problem?

So I opened the door, stood up, and started to walk back to the policeman.

He threw that door open, he said, Sir, you stay where you are.

I had no idea that that would be perceived of as aggression.

So when that happens, don't do it, don't get out of the car.

But another thing to not do is, so you sit in the car and you roll the window down, and he says, Well, sir, uh, do you realize that you were going 90 miles an hour and the uh the speed here is only 70 on this interstate?

And if I were to say, Yeah, but I pay my taxes, as though because I do this well and then I don't do that, I should be excused for what I you know that's just that's the way we think.

Um verse 10 for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

One sin a sinner makes.

No, the the problem with that is that we're all we're all guilty, and and the scriptures talk about that all the time.

And the solution is to repent and to receive forgiveness, not based upon how many sins we do or don't commit.

No, there's something far deeper than just our behavior.

It's God doesn't just want to change our behavior.

That is not the biblical solution to sin.

The biblical solution is to transform our hearts.

You must be born again, you must have a new heart, you must have a new nature, and that's something that we can't do, but God does.

So it's never just about our external behavior.

The solution that God gives, well, the problem, it'd be easier to go to Romans than it would be to look in here, because uh we're familiar with Romans.

And Paul says, there is none who is righteous, no, not one.

We have all gone our own way, every one of us.

And then later on, Paul will say, Wretched man that I am, the the good that I want to do I find I can't do, and the evil that I don't want to do, I find I do.

Wretched man who can deliver me from this body of sin and death, thanks be to God through Christ Jesus.

Okay?

See, that's that's the reality.

And so what James here says is that, yeah, you have a heart problem, and God doesn't just deal with your behavior, he deals with your hearts.

And the way he expresses it is through the phrase, the law of liberty.

He's spoken about the royal law, and now he says, verse 12 and 13, so speak and so act as those who are to be judged under a different law, the law of liberty.

For judgment is without mercy.

To one who has shown no mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment.

What he is pointing to here is a fundamental reality that there is something more at play than just our behavior as we deal with one another.

And he says, the issues of the heart, at its core, God has a different way for us to live, the law of liberty.

And it is a law, a principle of freedom.

Freedom from what we were, freedom to be quite different.

Not because we try real hard and our good outways are evil, but that there is a new principle at work within us.

The law of liberty, a law of freedom.

Um chapter 8 talks about those whom Christ sets free, he sets free indeed.

Free from what?

Free from slavery to sin, free from this being in bondage to our old nature that inclines us to do things wrong and free to respond to the new nature that, well, new birth that we have.

Um in Romans, Paul talks about this, and he says, this was our old nature, here's our new nature, and and he realizes that he is conflicted, you're conflicted, I'm conflicted, I'm not who I once was, but I'm not yet able to fully be who I want to be or who I one day will be.

And so Paul says, sometimes I just realize that I do things the wrong way, the old way that's still within me, and sometimes I actually do things the right way, but the wrong I don't want to do, I find myself doing, the right that I want to do, I find myself not doing, I'm conflicted, I'm a wretch.

Who will deliver me from this?

And he says, Thanks be to God, Christ Jesus, our Lord.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

It's not a matter of being condemned.

When we come to faith, the righteousness of Christ is credited to us.

Justification.

We are freed from the bondage to sin and to death and to the old nature.

And at that point a process begins, Pauline terminology, sanctification, where we have been freed from the penalty of sin.

Now, over time we are freed more and more from the overpowering sin and its control over us, that's sanctification, and one day we shall be completely freed from that nature within, and that's glorification.

We're caught somewhere in between.

And he says the the real us that James wants to talk about is this law of love, judged and discerned and evaluated by a law of liberty, set free to something, not just from something.

The Bible talks about the new birth, that we're a new creation, have a new heart.

These are not just incidental thoughts.

This is God's solution to the mess that you are and that I am.

God's solution is not just to clean up our act a little bit on the outside.

Um talk about born again.

Must be born again, so that you become a whole new person.

Shortly after, a few, a few weeks after I came to faith in Christ in college, I came across, I discovered.

Wasn't it great of me to discover something in God's Word?

Uh 2 Corinthians 5, 17, behold, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature.

The old has passed away, behold, new things have come, a new creation.

I said, So what I did, good little Pharisee that I was already becoming, in my fraternity house, had a little desk, and I wrote out in long hand, uh, 1 Corinthians 5.17, I'm a new creature.

Behold, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

He's changed me from within.

Wrote it out, and I put it up there right next to a carton of cigarettes.

Now, there's actually something beautiful about that.

I don't want to be who I am, I want to be who God wants me to be.

And I'm not talking about smoking.

I'm talking about whatever it is that I was trying to fulfill through that stupid habit.

But what I also found myself doing was, I think I can, I think I can, I'm little fire engine who could.

And if we would put it in today's world, then I would find a support group, or I would find a mentorship or an accountability group, and they're gonna keep me accountable for this, and that's how I and those are all good things, folks.

But if we're not careful, it just deals with the externals.

And God is going so much further, he's pressing in and he's saying, There's a new heart.

In Ezekiel, he talks about a heart, um a heart of flesh and not of stone, a heart that's no longer stony and resilient, resistant rather to God.

There's a new nature from within.

Uh Jeremiah will write his law in our hearts, so that our outer behavior will flow from fundamental changes within.

That is at the core of the gospel.

And so that's what he's, that kind of thing is what James is pointing to when he talks about the royal law and the law of liberty.

It's a whole new way to live.

Free, free, free at last, free from the slavery to sin, not inconsistent, perfectly free, no not yet, but I am not who I once was.

And I have now a whole new set of desires, and praise be to Christ Jesus, who changes my desires and changes what I want to be.

My wantabe is changed.

Now I'm still stuck in this in-between stage, and one day I will be what I should be, and I won't be what I shouldn't be.

And I look forward to that, but now there's a new principle within, a principle of liberty.

I have, by God's grace and through his spirit, I've been fundamentally changed.

So, and out of that, then, out of that new you, a new me, our behavior and our attitudes are to flow.

A whole new way of living.

Now, what I believe James is doing here is he's taking this reality.

And he was speaking to Jews who had a certain way of thinking based upon their background.

And I think, honestly, if we put it in our background, and we're much more familiar with Paul than James, as I've said, that the things that I've been talking about are the very same issues that are at root when he's talking about uh loving others as we love ourselves, and as we talk about um the uh the the whole matter of the law of liberty in which we're to live.

Let me try to make this as practical as possible and I'll land this thing and we'll be done.

So I want to think by way of application what what all of this means.

Now, let's just assume that as Christians, there's times that we struggle with other people.

It's probably a pretty safe assumption.

Uh we disagree with other people, or other people disagree with us.

Big surprise, right?

Um we feel like we've been treated unfairly, or we think that somebody else is done something doing something wrong that impacts us, or something that we don't like.

This could be at work, it could be in the office politics, somebody is maneuvering and is putting you in a bad light in uh the eyes of the boss.

It could be as uh kids are out on the playground, we only just get bigger, we don't really get any different.

It could be between parents and kids, uh, it could be between husband and wife, it could be between believer A and believer B in the church.

We struggle in relationships.

Now, my question is, or my observation is, just as James was saying, okay, the problem with showing partiality is that we're valuing people in accordance with the world, and now he's talking about being sinners and judging uh one another and being judged.

Um I think he's moving us into, or at least it's appropriate to apply this in the area of our struggles with one another.

And how would it be like, or what would it be like to apply the golden rule in a good argument, or the law of love?

How can we have a lovely argument or disagreement or seeing things in a different way?

What does this how would we respond differently?

I think what this is saying, among other things, is that we are free to live out the law of love in the goal and the golden rule now in our relationships.

That those we who are no longer judged and condemned can learn to no longer judge and condemn other people who disagree with us, or because we disagree with them that they judge and you know, it goes both ways.

Whether you are the one who is being criticized or you are the criticizer, whether you are the one who is being rebuked or you're the rebuker.

Well, you it applies on both sides, these kinds of things.

What does loving our neighbor as ourself and the law of love, how does that relate to it?

Um what I want to say is we can actually begin to love and treat other people in the way that we want to be loved and treated by other people.

And if we don't think about that in the midst of our struggles with each other, we are far, far away from the scriptures.

What does this look like in practice?

Well, you're having a you're you're righteously indignant about something that has happened.

I don't have a problem with righteous indignation.

I have a problem with unrighteous indignation.

But let's say that you're and you think this other person is wrong or they think you're wrong about something.

Is it possible, in just a real practical way, could we talk to the other person in the tone of voice that we would like to be talked to?

I would like people, when they're criticizing me, to to talk in an appropriate way.

And I want to then talk to somebody that I disagree with in an appropriate way.

I think that's just we're loving our neighbor.

How how I need to be loved or who what I think being loved is, can I or can I not, in the heat of an argument and a disagreement, legitimate or illegitimate, can I not look at that person?

And just begin to talk to them the way I would like to be talked to.

And can I not, if I'm the one who needs to confront somebody, can I not do that in the right tone of voice?

I don't do that perfectly.

In fact, I don't even do it very well.

I do it a whole lot better than I used to, and I'm not as bad as that.

No, that's not the point.

The point is, I deeply desire in that situation to be a different person because I'm a different person from within.

How about in that situation, seeking first to understand rather than demanding to be understood?

If any of you are familiar with Stephen Covey and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the best principles there.

Stephen Covey, by the way, was a great Mormon, and I've learned a great deal from that great Mormon.

Seek first to understand rather than to demand to be understood.

Isn't that what Christ expects of us?

Isn't that loving like you expect to be loved?

Or how about quick, slow, slow, quick to listen, slow to speak, and forget about anger.

I don't do that very well, folks.

And you don't either.

But that's the wrestling.

That's the wrestling, and that's our desire that we would be living out of that new nature, not just the patterns of the old.

That's where our Christianity meets the road.

The rubber meets the road.

That's real Christianity when we're by the power of God's Spirit.

The transformation of ourselves, inner self, begins to express itself when we're under stress and when we're criticized or when we're criticizing.

How about just extending other people the kind of grace that you would like to have extended to you?

I don't even want to talk about what that means in a marriage relationship.

Guilty as charged.

I expect Jane to give me a great deal of grace about things because I'm not a perfect person.

How come I don't, by nature, instinctively stand back and extend to her the same kind of love and grace that I would want her to extend to me?

You see, that's the kind of thing James is talking about.

How about assuming the good motives of another person instead of assuming the bad motives?

We quickly interpret, we quickly take statements to extremes that were not ever said and never intended.

We quickly put that in the bad light instead of just saying, huh, there's something here I don't get.

It seems like they've got evil.

Could there be some other reason why they're so upset about things?

Um, assuming good motives.

Uh love covers a multitude of sins.

Forgiven sinners can extend love for sinful brothers and sisters or people out in the world.

And if we're not able to do that, if we're not working at doing that, if it doesn't transform our relationships, then we have indeed a heart problem.

Do you have to be proven right?

I sure do.

Do you have to be proven right?

Do you have to justify yourself?

Do you have to explain all of the right things that you're doing?

I pay my taxes, so don't.

The games we play.

I truly believe that what James is talking about here is the way that loving others as we are to love ourselves plays out in our relationships.

Today is Sunday, the 6th of March, 2016.

And in these areas, God is still on the throne.

He was all week long.

He is today, and he will be in the week to come.

But is it possible for us to love others the way we want to be loved?

Well, like I said in the first service, you already know what the benediction is, so just leave.

We're gonna stop here.

God bless.

And help us do something with what God is saying.

Have a great Sunday.

You're dismissed.