Gospel-Shaped Love: Part 2 (Romans Week 28) by Michael Williams

We're going to continue.

We're in a sort of a little mini two-part message about genuine love, and that's where we're going to be this morning.

We're going to be in Romans 12.

But before we go there, I just want to give a brief review and then we'll dive into our next verses.

But as we go into the review, I I think last week we really talked about this idea of love, of genuine love.

We live in a culture that's obsessed with love.

And love is one of those things where the idea of it and the reality of it can often not match.

There's a lot of things in life that are like that.

One that immediately comes to mind is camping.

Some of you love camping.

Some of you love the idea of camping.

And then you you get there and you realize, you know, I could see the stars from my own backyard.

The ground looked flat, but I managed to sleep on a route, and there's no AC in my tent.

And in the idea of camping and the reality of camping are two different things.

And a lot of times love and relationships, community, they're all kind of like that.

There's the idea we have in our head that like this is good.

And then there's the reality.

Another way you might think of it is like a car in the showroom.

A showroom car, the lights are on it, it looks beautiful.

But it doesn't tell you how this car is gonna drive in Ohio after it's hit 10,000 potholes that could be identified as craters.

It's not gonna tell you how it starts when it's randomly minus five degrees in March.

Right?

It's a showroom car.

It shows what it's like when things are good.

And a lot of us, that's what we think of when we think of love.

We think of this idealized showroom love.

When everybody's healthy, when everybody's happy, when everybody's getting along, community and love, it's great.

It's great.

But as soon as life happens, as soon as it's tested, we come to realize it's it's actually hard, it's actually rare.

In our culture, we tend to measure love by moments of intensity.

Whether there was a lot of chemistry, a lot of emotion, and we think of these moments of intensity, but but genuine love, what we're talking about, is probably better measured by durability.

Can it last?

Can it grow over the long haul?

And as we think about genuine love this morning, I want us to wrestle with where does this come from?

Because the contention I think Paul is making is this isn't something that you just do.

It's something that's produced in you by the gospel.

And so that's where we're going to be this morning.

Let's pray, and then we'll get into our text.

Lord, we welcome your presence here.

We thank you that the gospel has come to us.

That we know it is a privilege that we have heard the good news of what you have done, Lord.

That we know the name of Jesus, that we've seen its transformative power.

We thank you, Lord, for that.

We thank you for your word.

We thank you that this letter to the Romans has come to us, that we can dive into it, that we can hear your voice.

And ask, Lord, that you would speak this morning.

By your grace, may we have ears to hear and hearts to obey.

We welcome you, Holy Spirit.

It's in the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

So we're gonna be in Romans chapter 12, and I'm gonna just read last week's verses because it does kind of all go together.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with mutual affection, outdo one another in showing honor.

And then we'll pick up in verse 11 this week.

So last week we we talked about how Romans was divided into two parts.

If you remember, chapters 1 through 11 was all about the gospel.

It was all about what God has done.

And Paul, he's writing to the church in Rome, it's his longest letter.

He's writing to Jews and Gentiles, and he's telling them this is the gospel.

He wants them to support his missionary journey in Spain, but he also wants them to know how do we live this out in this pagan Roman Empire?

And so he has several purposes for writing, but but without a doubt, his main goal is to give them the gospel.

And so for 11 chapters, he does just that.

He explores the depths of the gospel in probably the most beautiful and expansive way we have in all of the Bible.

And then in chapter 12, part two starts and he and he pivots.

A lot of times you hear people talk about doctrine and then Christian living, and it's this pivot to like, so what?

What do we do in the light of the gospel?

He actually begins, therefore, in the light of these mercies.

In the light of what God has done, what do we do?

And the first thing he says is we offer ourselves to God.

Our first response to all that God has done is to recognize we're not our own.

We give ourselves to God.

But then he says that our minds have to be renewed, that this gospel, it has to change how we think, that it has to produce a new way of living.

He goes on to first say it has to change how we see ourselves, we have to see ourselves soberly.

We have to see ourselves as part of a community, a body.

We have to see ourselves as having gifts or contributions to bring to that community.

And then he begins to shift and he says, this is actually how the gospel brings us together.

It brings us together and he uses this phrase, genuine love.

Love without hypocrisy.

And what follows in verses 9 through 13 is 12 or 13, depending on how you divide it up, 12 or 13 little commands, all under this heading of genuine love, and he's saying, this is what the gospel is going to produce in you.

This is what's going to be birthed.

See, the gospel, it brings about a certain way of life.

Many of us in here, we've had history with the vineyard, and we would consider ourselves kingdom people.

And oftentimes when we think of the kingdom, we think of the way of the kingdom, our kingdom ethics.

How do we live?

And what Paul is doing is he's building a bridge between the gospel and the kingdom.

And he's saying, the gospel is going to make you a kingdom person who lives a kingdom way.

And so these words, they're commands, but they're really a description of life in the kingdom.

This is what will happen if the gospel gets a hold of you.

And as we look at these today, these instructions from Paul, I think we have to look through the lens of if these aren't true about us, then the gospel still has a lot of work to do in us.

That we need more of the gospel.

The gospel is like fresh water.

You need more than one drink.

And it's the only fresh water around.

It's the only thing in our world and in our culture that can produce this kind of love.

And so last week we talked the very first thing.

He says, let our love be genuine, let it be without any masks.

The gospel produces this authentic love.

How does the gospel produce authentic love in us?

Well, it gives us security, it gives us freedom.

We realize that we have been genuinely loved.

That God, in Christ Jesus, loved us with sincerity.

There was no fakeness about it.

He loved us while we were enemies.

He loved us while we were opposed to him.

He loved us while we were still sinners.

That we have been brought into his family, and it's a work entirely of God.

As we realize that we have been loved genuinely, we will begin to love other people genuinely.

The second command that flows from that was we're to abhor hate what's evil, and we're to love or cling to what's good.

Paul kind of takes a surprising turn.

He says that love has a moral component.

Love is not just me supporting you, whatever you do.

That love is to seek the highest good of another, and to know the highest good, there has to be some moral judgment.

And that moral judgment is determined by Jesus, who is the perfection of moral beauty.

And so we look at Christ to see what is good, and the gospel does this.

The gospel doesn't gloss over evil.

At the cross, we see that love is not turning a blind eye to our brokenness.

The cross shows us the depth of our evil.

The cross shows us the cost of our evil.

When we look at Christ, we begin to have new attractions.

Paul is saying something really, really important here.

He's saying, when you get the gospel in you, when it begins to shape you, it's not do good and don't do evil, it will change your loves.

It'll change your affections.

You'll begin to find evil gross and abhorrent, and you'll begin to find good things beautiful and attractive.

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You've had encounters with Jesus, and there's things in your past that you used to love, and now the very thought of doing them sounds just awful.

Your affections have changed.

The third command he gives, he says that we're to have genuine love for each other as brothers and sisters.

We're to have this mutual affection, this familial love.

The gospel produces in us an awareness that we have one father.

Many of us we've had the revelation that we are children of God, and it's made an incredible impact on our identity when we thought of ourselves as sons and daughters.

But here, Paul is saying there's just as big an impact when we realize that we are brothers and sisters.

That you have been brought into a family, that you're not belonging just to yourself, but that you belong to each other.

Genuine love as mutual affection for each other.

And this is what the church ought to be.

It doesn't happen by a slogan.

It doesn't happen by putting we are all family on every hallway in the church building.

It doesn't happen by singing certain songs that say, we belong to each other and mutual affection and you're my brother.

It doesn't even happen by greeting each other as brother and sister and some sort of old-fashioned Christianity.

It happens when the gospel gets into us, when the gospel renews our thinking of other people, when the gospel breaks down our distinctions.

Just as an aside, this isn't the topic today, but one of the beautiful things that happens when the gospel breaks down our distinctions, the way we make ourselves different from each other is that it doesn't actually eliminate our differences.

But when the gospel first makes us family, we're actually able to bring our differences to the community as a gift.

And the very thing that used to divide us now becomes a grace to the community of God.

Our differences are actually meant to be graces, but the gospel first must do the work of us.

We use them as ways of distinction, we use them as ways of boasting, and the gospel breaks that down so we can embrace each other as brother and sister.

And fourth, where we stopped last week, the Paul commands we are to outdo each other in showing honor.

We're to honor each other.

For those who are competitive, here you go.

You can be competitive about this.

You can outdo people in showing honor.

You can be more honorable.

This doesn't mean you fight about who gets to hold the door open.

But we we can show honor to honor is to see the good in another person, to recognize it.

Glory is inherent goodness.

Glory is there whether we recognize it or not.

But honor is recognizing what is in somebody.

It's calling it out, it's truthful, it's not flattery.

It's not calling out what you think should be in somebody, it's truthful.

And when we honor, we we recognize what is true, that other people are made in the image of God, that other people have gifts, that other people, they're not all bad.

We live in a culture that really doesn't do honor much.

In fact, you rarely hear the word honor outside of church settings.

Maybe you hear of like honor killings or things like that, but we we live in a culture that's very different.

Sociologists talk about how there's different kinds of cultures.

There's cultures of honor and shame.

When somebody does something wrong, they they think in these categories of how does this reflect on my reputation or the reputation of my group.

We live in an innocence guilt culture.

When we think of somebody doing something wrong, or we think of somebody in the community that isn't right, we think of somebody as guilty or innocent.

Those are sort of our categories.

There's other cultures that are that are power and fear.

If you do something wrong, you primarily think, what power have I come under?

And the answer is some sort of deliverance, some sort of coming out from under these powers.

And because of that, we we live in a culture that doesn't honor.

Combined with radical individualism, it's it's rare to see honor.

In the church, it's often been abused.

We we talk about honor culture, and usually that's this honor upward towards pastors or towards celebrity Christians, and we think like honor is just upwards.

But but what made honor and this command so radical is actually that it wasn't just honor upwards, although it is that.

We are commanded to show pastors honor and show them double honor even, and we are to honor authorities, but we are to honor everyone in our midst.

We are to honor people that our culture doesn't think to honor.

This can be hard.

We live in a culture.

Last week I talked about a culture of contempt.

The two features of a culture of contempt is we tend to see the flaw in somebody and make that our entire picture of them.

And then we compare ourselves to a caricature of that.

We consistently do that in our culture.

Of course, media doesn't help because we're already getting somebody else's caricature of a person.

But we see a person, we see the flaw, and we make the flaw who they are, and then we compare themselves to that and we feel morally superior.

Sociologist Jonathan Haidt talks about the reason we do this is because it feels good to be morally superior to somebody.

If you think about it, it does.

It's nice that I'm not as bad as them.

There is somebody, when I said them, you can think of somebody, right?

At least I'm not them.

We feel morally superior, and it's different, it's the opposite of what this command is instructing.

Genuine love, it honors.

It looks for the image of God, it looks for the graces, it looks for the story, it looks for what it can affirm.

Honor has the power to break down walls, it has the power to lift people up.

Honor is the upside-down kingdom, particularly when we honor people, that we as a society tend to dismiss.

How does the gospel produce this honor in us?

Well, it begins by realizing that we have been honored.

God in heaven sent his son, Jesus Christ, who became nothing, to serve you.

And as a result, you have been justified by faith.

And all of his reward, all of his honor, all of his favoritism has been given to you.

You can't sit in that reality and dishonor somebody else.

When you sit in that reality, that you have been unfairly honored beyond your wildest imagination, that you have been unfairly lifted up far beyond the station you deserve.

You will begin to see that God has not only done that for you, he's done that for each of us.

That every person you meet is a person God has honored.

Every person you meet is a person God has honored with his image, is honored with gifts, is honored with grace, is honored with a history with him, has honored.

And so we honor others.

And then today we'll pick up our next command after honoring one another.

Verse 11, do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.

Read that one more time.

Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.

These three sort of go together.

Another way you could say that is be zealous, stay on fire in the spirit, and serve the Lord.

Some of your translations might talk about that word ardent, as if you have a footnote, it can mean like boiling hot.

Stay on fire, stay zealous, serve the Lord.

Genuine love does these things.

I'm going to read real quick from Timothy chapter 1, because we see the same idea.

He says, For this reason I remind you, rekindle or fan into flame the gift of God that is within you.

Stay on fire.

Stay on fire, stay zealous.

Genuine love stays on fire, and it serves the Lord.

In the Old Testament, we have this picture of fire coming down on the sacrifices in the temple and in the tabernacle.

And it's really clear, and I believe this is a picture pointing ahead.

It's clear the fire must come from God.

But the job of the priest is to keep the fire going.

That it's upon you and me to keep the fire burning, that we are to keep ourselves on fire.

We're to continue with zeal.

That genuine love is not temporary, but it stays on fire.

Now we live in a culture, and I'll blame it on the culture because it's not us individually, right?

We live in a culture that tends to be passionate about things at the beginning.

In fact, many of us, we we might actually have a few things around our house that represent, it's kind of a hall of fame of things I used to care about.

We have the guitar we bought four or five years ago when we were gonna become the next Jimi Hendrix, and we have that, you know, treadmill that now has six shirts on it and a clothesline you're using kind of over on the side.

I personally have that Duolingo account that still believes I'm learning Spanish.

In fact, I get emails once a week saying, Michael, your last lesson was 887 days away, like previous.

Are you still here?

Are you still learning?

We are sort of infamous in the United States about picking up these interests, short-term passions.

I was reading somewhere about Will Farrell.

Before Will Farrell was a famous comedian, he worked at Disneyland for one day.

He made it one day, made it eight hours.

So before he made it big, he worked at Disneyland, thought he would get a great job maybe in like the jungle rescue kingdom thing, and instead they stuck him in the ticket booth outside Disneyland, and he made it about eight hours.

He actually told his boss that he had to quit after eight hours because he was auditioning for the Dallas Cowboys.

That was his excuse.

I'm auditioning for the cowboys, the ticket booth is not my future, and he he quit.

And we we do that, we burn for five minutes.

Paul is saying genuine love burns for a lifetime.

Genuine love, it lasts, it stays on fire.

There's zeal.

It's hot.

And then he connects it with serving the Lord.

See, what makes you passionate about God is not singing loud during worship.

Your passion for God is determined by your willingness to serve.

He connects it.

We are to serve the Lord with this passion, with this zeal.

When we serve the Lord, we we see problems, and instead of complaining, we we go towards them.

When we serve the Lord, we we take responsibility in community.

We don't just wish the community was different.

Remember the context here.

He's talking about how we genuinely love each other.

And we genuinely love each other by serving the Lord, by staying on fire, and by having this zeal.

How does the gospel produce this in our lives?

How does the gospel make me like that?

Well, I think first we have to see that the gospel gives us the very Spirit of God.

The energizing power of God is in you and me.

If you remember in Romans 8, we have the Spirit which can now govern our minds.

We have the Spirit in us which raised Jesus from the dead.

The Spirit of God is in us that can keep us on fire.

You and I, we can stay burning because God has not just visited us, but he has taken up a residence in us.

The second way that we can stay on fire, how does the gospel produce this?

We can see Jesus serving and on fire.

The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us.

Have you ever looked at the life of Jesus?

Have you ever just admired?

No matter who he was around, he was on fire with the Spirit.

He was zealous.

It was said of him, zeal for my house consumes me.

He was passionate.

He served God even unto death.

When we see Jesus serving, we are shaped and become drawn to that.

If you're struggling to serve, if you're struggling to wake up from a spiritual slumber, if zealous is not a word that would describe your spiritual life, maybe part of the solution is to look at Christ, to look at his obedience, to look at his servant heart.

Third, the gospel changes our master.

When we have been justified, something happens to us.

We move from being under the mastery of sin and death, and we move to a new master.

We have the ability to serve God now because we've been set free from the things we have been serving.

Many, many people they struggle to serve the Lord because they have not experienced freedom from the thing they're actually serving.

And it's really hard, if not impossible, to have two masters.

I believe Jesus taught about that.

Many of us, our Christian life is merely good intentions.

And the reason it never moves from intention to reality is we never move from one master to another.

We accept Jesus at an altar call, we show up on Sundays, but finances are still our master.

We say yes to Jesus, we raise our hands in worship, we even give the church a check, but our work is still our master.

How can you serve God when these other things master you?

The gospel says that when Jesus came and died for us, that we've been justified, when we put our faith in him, that he is now Lord.

Romans is a declaration about who is truly Lord.

The gospel, as it baptizes us, as it renews our mind, it brings about this truth over and over and over again.

Jesus is Lord.

Jesus is Lord.

He's your Lord.

He's my Lord.

Many of us, we've we've given Him, to use a metaphor, a couple rooms in the house that is our heart.

And the gospel, as it comes to us again and again, it demands more.

It demands all.

And if we want to serve the Lord, we have to give him all.

Paul starts this letter.

Paul, a slave, a dulos, a slave, a servant of Jesus Christ.

The gospel changes us.

It makes us able to stay on fire.

It produces in us this ability to be a servant.

The next commands we read in verse 12.

He says in verse 12, we are to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.

These three group together, and I just called it that the gospel-shaped life perseveres in suffering.

The gospel-shaped life, it perseveres in suffering.

For those who are making notes, the first one, the gospel-shaped life, serves with passion.

Serves with passion.

But now the second point, the gospel-shaped life, it perseveres in suffering.

The gospel does something to us.

Notice the three commands that go together about hope, affliction, and prayer.

He says, rejoice or be joyful and hope.

Be joyful in hope.

That we, that genuine love in us, is to be joyful, to be happy, to be exuberant in hope.

This is not primarily about optimism.

This is not about evaluating life and saying, you know what, I think things are going to turn out okay.

Instead, it's a confidence in the promises of the gospel.

We can be joyful in hope because we believe that God has the last word.

We can be joyful in hope because we know that God has raised Jesus from the dead and that he is in charge.

We can endure in affliction.

Notice he doesn't say that genuine love escapes suffering or affliction.

He says it endures, it stands up under it.

Genuine love endures hardship, it endures affliction.

It makes it through, it perseveres.

We see in here this tension of a kingdom of God not yet realized.

We're hopeful, but we are in affliction.

And what does love do?

It endures.

It makes it, it holds on.

And then we're consistent in prayer.

Some translations say, I think the NRSV says that we are not just consistent in prayer, but we are persevering in prayer, persevering in prayer.

That we endure in praying because we have this hope.

How does the gospel help us live this out?

The gospel gives us the reality of the resurrection.

This is important.

I think a lot of Christians' hope is kind of like a wish dream.

I believe at the end of life everything will be okay.

And we don't have much confidence in that reality here and now.

But the resurrection of Jesus is not just showing that death is defeated.

It is actually the inauguration of God's kingdom.

It's the first fruits, it's the proof of what is to come, it's the appetizer for the rest of the meal.

So the gospel produces joyful hope in us.

Why?

Because we look to the resurrection of Jesus.

We look to the defeat of death.

We look to the defeat of sin and we have hope.

There will be a new creation and it's already started.

There will be a renewal of all things.

There will be a great reunion.

That all that is lost can be restored, that evil itself can be undone.

The gospel produces a joyful hope, and it's not based in circumstances.

It's a hope based in our belief that God in Jesus Christ has already started what He will finish.

Secondly, the gospel gives us access to God.

How do we persevere in prayer?

We believe that we can come unencumbered into God's throne room.

The gospel says that the distance between us and God has been closed, that we have the righteousness of Christ, the favor of Christ, that his answered prayers are our answered prayers, that we can approach our Father in heaven.

And so we persevere in prayer because we believe that we are heard.

We believe that God actually wants to answer our prayers.

We can persevere in prayer because of the work of the gospel in our life.

And if our prayer life is not persevering right now, if you say, you know what, I am struggling with prayer.

I do it at church and that's about it.

And I would challenge you.

The answer is not guilt.

The answer is not atomic habits.

The answer is the gospel.

The gospel.

When the gospel reveals to you a heavenly father that would withhold no good thing, when the gospel reveals to you a heavenly father who's accessible, who's not too busy, when the gospel reveals to you Jesus walking this earth, bringing the kingdom of God here now, that it's not just all, not yet.

That there is an already, there is a right now.

When the gospel shows you those things, it awakens in you a desire to pray.

It awakens you faith to believe that prayer matters.

And the gospel helps us endure through affliction.

Does it primarily in two ways.

One, we already mentioned it.

It shows us that suffering has an end date.

But two, it also shows us that we are never alone.

The gospel says that Jesus went to the cross and he died, he suffered alone so that you and I might never suffer alone.

You can endure through affliction when you realize you're not in the fire by yourself.

You're not in the fire by yourself.

Genuine love endures affliction because it knows that we are ourselves loved and never alone.

Genuine love endures affliction because it places us in a community that can be the tangible love of God to each other.

The next thing we see, the gospel-shaped community, it shares freely.

In verse 13, contribute to the needs of the saints.

Contribute to the needs of the saints.

The gospel, when it gets a hold of us, it causes us to contribute to one another's needs.

Contributing to the needs of the saints means I have something, you need something, and so I share it.

It's not super complicated.

We share what we have.

We give freely.

We have this awareness that we belong to each other.

The gospel, it shapes us to give freely.

This word give and koinania is the word for fellowship to each other.

It's not just I throw money at you.

It's not just I, you know, give you what you need and move away.

It's rather like we we collectively own the problem together.

That your problems are now my problems.

It ties in very closely with his other command, which is have mutual affection for each other.

Of the early church, it was written that they had no one among them in need.

That we, when we genuinely love, we care for each other's needs, that this is what the gospel produces in us.

Now, for this to happen, there has to be two things.

We have to have vision and we have to have vulnerability.

For those who are giving, we have to see the needs of the community.

We have to be aware of the people around us.

We can't be so self-absorbed in our lives and our schedule, our kids, our sports, all the things going on, that we're not even aware that there's people in our community, people in our road this morning, that have great needs in their lives that we could perhaps help.

We have to have a certain kind of vision.

We also have to have a certain kind of vulnerability.

We can't hide our needs from the community.

See, if we're honest, most of us are more comfortable giving than receiving.

Because to give, feel like you have the power to receive, feels humiliating.

And if we hide our needs from each other, we can pretend like we're doing better than we are.

And then we can't live out this command together.

We can't share with each other because we haven't been honest.

And so there has to be a vision and there has to be a vulnerability.

And let me just say, because a lot of times this seems like it could end up in a power dynamic between the wealthy and the poor in the church, but all of us have needs.

And all of us have something to give.

Those here who seem like they have it the most together have vulnerabilities, things they need from the community.

And those here who seem like the most needy have a lot to give to this community.

We must broaden our eyes beyond just money to the whole picture and say each of us have things to bring and each of us have needs to make the group aware of.

It's really, really simple to sit in church week after week and to never make our needs known.

It's really simple to look like you have it all together.

To toss some money at disaster relief when it comes up, to maybe help a person if they're in our small group and it comes up.

But we we kind of have the community at arm's length, but genuine love, it doesn't do that.

Amy Carmichael was a missionary in India in the 1880s, and I don't know if you've ever heard of her story, but she went there to evangelize and she went there to share the gospel.

But but what ended up happening is her her mission path kind of took a deviation.

These girls, starting with a seven-year-old named Prina, who had been offered to be servants in Hindu temples, they began showing up at her house.

And at first they were an inconvenience to why she thought she was there.

Like I'm here to see people come to Jesus, not to take care of the seven-year-old who doesn't have parents.

But gradually the Lord shaped her heart, beginning with this seven-year-old Preena.

And she adopted Preena, she took care of her, she met all of her needs.

She just cared for her.

And as she was doing that, the Lord brought another and another.

Over the years, she served thousands of orphans, just giving away what she had to care for other people.

How does the gospel produce that in us?

How does it produce this generosity in us?

It begins by seeing how God has been generous to you.

Jesus became poor that you might become rich.

Jesus became nothing, that you might have everything.

Jesus gave himself away and said if you want to find life, you too must give yourself away.

I wonder this morning, are you giving yourself away?

Are you giving yourself away?

Do you belong to community?

And are you sharing so that it can be said there's no need among them?

And it's not just finances.

Are you sharing your intellectual abilities?

Maybe you have certain skills intellectually.

Are you sharing your connections?

Are you sharing your gifts, your talents, your passions?

Are you sharing your time?

Are you sharing what you have with those who have needs?

The gospel, it produces this genuine love that shares among the saints.

It shares freely.

The gospel also begins this work in us by giving us an understanding, like we talked about last week, that that you and I are family.

One of the reasons we don't share is because we don't see other people as belonging to our family.

I can guarantee you, I'll just use a real practical example.

There's probably people in here today that need a vehicle.

And there's probably people in here today that that have an extra vehicle.

If it were your family member, it would be quick to meet that need.

It'd be quick to meet it.

But because the people here aren't really your family members, at least it doesn't feel that way.

You would it's not that you're mean, it's not that you wouldn't if you didn't know, right?

It's that, you know, it's you don't know.

I see them at church twice a month.

That is the relationship.

What Paul is talking about here is a very different kind of community.

He's talking about a community that that knows each other.

A community that starts to see the other people as part of their family.

The gospel has somehow baptized their mind and their eyes, and they actually see the people at church differently.

You're not just in the crowd anymore.

This is tough for us.

We're individualistic, we're hurried, we might shake somebody's hand.

Many of us probably know ten or less people here.

If we do know more, it's because a whole bunch of you came from Vineyard Columbus and you knew them there, right?

And it takes work to know each other.

It takes work to live this out.

I think what Paul's saying is genuine love does that work.

Genuine love does that work.

It doesn't leave things on the surface.

It is completely okay.

I don't want any of you to feel guilt.

It's completely okay if things are on the surface right now for you here or new.

But will it stay there?

Or will genuine love force us closer together?

The fourth and final command for today, Paul says that we're to practice hospitality.

Practice hospitality.

Or extend hospitality to strangers, as some of your translations say.

This idea is it's different than caring for the saints.

The word hospitality is to outsiders.

It's a compound word.

It means to love the stranger.

To love the stranger.

Sometimes I wish I could share this one with all the evangelicals in America.

You know, you know what Paul said?

He said the gospel, it's going to cause you to love the stranger.

It's going to cause you to love the stranger.

Meaning, if you keep taking the gospel like you take water every day, if you keep taking it, you're going to love the stranger.

There's no way not to.

This idea of hospitality, it's actually not about having your middle class friends over for a barbecue.

As great as that is, that's entertaining.

Entertaining is about us.

We have the charcuterie board, we get our house nice and clean.

Entertaining is wonderful.

It's a lot of fun.

It's a great Midwestern pastime.

It's a great middle upper class thing to do.

We love to entertain, keep on doing it.

That's not what Paul's talking about.

Paul is saying that genuine love sees people that are different, sees people that are strangers, sees people that are outsiders, sees people that are lonely, sees people that don't fit in, and it makes room for them.

Christianity exploded in the early centuries because of hospitality.

Jesus practiced radically ordinary hospitality.

He was constantly at tables with the wrong people.

He was constantly eating with strangers.

He was constantly making room, willing to be interrupted.

We are told to practice this hospitality.

That we are to make room in our homes.

See, to practice hospitality does require a reimagination of your house.

It has to move from being your castle or your retreat to the place I meet the world.

But that is how the gospel grew.

Christians built rooms in their home.

They call them Christ's rooms.

They let people come in.

They practice hospitality.

They made room at the table.

Metaphorically and literally, is there any empty seats at the table in your life for strangers?

Is there an openness?

Is there a love?

I mean, Paul is not talking about immigration policy.

What he is saying is if you're a follower of Jesus, you will love these people.

Not fake love them, not put up a yard sign that says you love them.

You will practice love for the other.

It's the exact opposite of being afraid of them.

Xenophobia is the fear of the other.

He's saying genuine love isn't going to produce the fear of the other.

Genuine love, the gospel, it's going to produce this love for them.

You're going to want them.

You're going to view them as a gift.

Do you view strangers in your life as a gift?

Do you view strangers in your neighborhood as a gift?

Do you view strangers in your city as a gift?

Do you see diversity, see different people, and think, thank you, Lord?

What a wonderful opportunity to love new people.

Is that your first thought?

That's what the gospel produces in us.

How does the gospel do this?

How does it produce this in us?

The gospel is a story of hospitality.

The gospel story is that you were the stranger.

That God made room for you at the table.

The gospel story is that Jesus became an outsider so you could come in.

The gospel is the story of every distinction between us being broken down.

The gospel is the story of a reimagined family that does not all look like you.

The gospel is a story of a future with every tribe, tongue, and nation.

The gospel changes how we see outsiders.

It makes us think deep in our heart, ah, you should be my brother.

You're a stranger now, but I want you to be my brother.

Is that how you approach people?

Is the gospel doing its work?

Rosaria Butterfield is a sort of famous example of hospitality.

Maybe you've heard her story.

She wrote a book called The Gospel Comes with a House Key.

She was an ardent atheist, professor at Syracuse, actually was writing papers on why Christians were the worst.

And as part of her research, she was interviewing this pastor.

And this pastor, just him and his wife, kept inviting her over for dinner to talk, ended up giving her actually a house key.

Anytime you're in town, you can just stay at her house.

She ended up coming to faith and pointed back to this encounter as one of the primary reasons she came to faith.

And she wrote a book about it.

The gospel comes with a house key.

Does the gospel you have ever lead you to give away your house key?

Does it ever lead you to make room?

In these short four verses, Paul is saying this is what the gospel will do to community.

I want to let you know something.

We're eight months old as a church, but this is what the gospel must do to this community.

This is what it can do.

If we keep the gospel in front of us, if we keep coming back to it, if we ground ourselves into it, if we renew our minds continually with it, we will end up like this.

You don't practice these commands with willpower and then just ask for forgiveness 800 times a week.

You might have to ask for forgiveness 800 times a week as you're in process, but it's not about willpower.

It's about what you are soaking in.

It's about what's renewing your mind.

It's about the story you live in.

It's about whether the gospel stays in front of you or whether it's background noise.

It's about whether the gospel ever becomes more than that, you know, presentation you said yes to 20 years ago and becomes the treasure, the thing you look at all day, every day, right now.

And if we do that, we will be a community of genuine love.

We'll be a community where people in this crowd view other people with mutual brotherly affection.

That we will take care of each other's needs, that it'll be difficult for anybody to remain a stranger at this church.

Can you imagine a community, a church, local church, where it's difficult to remain a stranger?

Where it's difficult to not have your needs met because people are constantly offering and caring for you.

Can you imagine a community like that?

A community that doesn't confuse love with just affirming everything, but but stays grounded in a moral truth.

But a community that that gives itself away.

That's what Paul's imagining.

That's what he's saying, the gospel, Romans 1 through 11, it leads to that.

And as a church, we're not gonna stay in Romans 1 through 11 forever, but we will stay in the gospel because it produces that kind of life.

I'm gonna end today by just asking you a simple question.

As you look at those commands, 12 commands, genuinely love each other, love, cling to what's good, hate what's evil, have mutual affection for each other, honor one another.

The command to have zeal, to burn, to stay on fire, to serve, to be joyful in hope, and not just be pessimistic about the world, but to endure what you're going through in community, to pray with perseverance.

Is that you?

Is that flowing out of you?

Or do you need more gospel?

Do you need the gospel again?

Not in this jig, you know, vague, you know, we throw that word around everywhere, right?

But the actual story, the actual picture of the life of Jesus, the actual things that He's done.

Do you need more gospel?

Do you serve freely?

Do you love the outsider?

Is that flowing from your heart?

If not, you need to soak in the gospel.

You need to hear again and again what God has done.