Love One Another (John 13:31-35)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel centered church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

To our neighbor, please stand at the reading of the Holy Gospel.

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

When Judas Isariot had left, Jesus said, Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.

If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and will glorify him at once.

Little children, I am with you a little while longer.

You will look for me.

Just as I told the Jews, so now I tell you, where I am going, you cannot come.

I give you a new commandment love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

And together with saints around the world through time, it's our privilege to join them in confessing our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

I give you a new commandment.

Jesus says, love one another.

Let's pray.

Lord, those who run after another God shall have great trouble.

So says our psalm this morning.

We pray, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would do a work in our hearts such that we would not want to run after any other God or find any other substitute or replacement for you.

But Lord, that we would come to you this morning, ready to know you and be known by you, to love you and be loved by you, for there is nothing else aside from you that can truly satisfy.

Lord, would you speak your word to us, illuminate it by your Holy Spirit, and strengthen us by it.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, it's good to be back this morning.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

That's what I heard this morning, and I think that that's true.

We were on uh vacation, Rachel and I, this these last two weeks or so in the UK, which is one of our favorite places uh to be.

And last Sunday we engaged in an activity we called a church crawl.

You might have heard a pub crawl, but this is much holier.

We had about I had two churches in mind in London that I particularly wanted to check out.

And you know, I'm not in the neighborhood often, so I figure since we're in London, I want to check these churches out.

And for some reason we have it in mind that we're gonna get the full spectrum of what London has to offer in these two churches.

We're gonna go to what you'd call the lowest low church, right?

Very evangelical, lots of singing, lots of hymns, etc.

And then very, very, we're gonna go to the highest high church, right?

Smells, bells, etc., etc.

It's a bit of a different world that way.

And we love the experience.

Now I know I'm married to the right person because not only do we give those two, but Rachel added one to the itinerary, and we enjoyed a beautiful choral service there.

We wanted to explore different churches being in that town, but I mean, just loving church and loving to see uh what God is doing in different corners of the world and in cities other than our own.

I mean, it confirmed for us that we love New Song and we're very glad to be here.

It's the right church for us to worship and serve in.

But you see churches of all different sorts, and maybe we visit churches when we're out of town, et cetera, and we see churches go about worship in sometimes very different, and uh.

You know, on the candle.

I won't I would want to submit to you a church is not uh a church is not as healthy, let's say, simply by amount of attendance.

You know, a healthy church has hundreds of people rather than tens of people in attendance, etc.

I would I would rather submit, based on my observation, just reflecting on our little church crawl there and reflecting on the life of our own church here.

A healthy and maturing church is defined by the gospel.

And however the gospel is put into place, whether that's in a low setting or a high setting, if the gospel is there, the church is going to be healthy and fruitful.

What does it look like to put the gospel into action within the life of a given church?

What does it look like to do the gospel together?

That's the question that I've kind of been thinking about in these reflections.

What does a healthy gospel-centered church do?

And this is what gets me thinking about these uh so-called one-another commands that we find in the New Testament.

There are 59 examples of an imperative connected to the phrase one another.

Love one another, serve one another, be devoted to one another, that sort of thing.

There's 59 examples of those what you'd call one-another commands.

That suggests one another commands are pretty important.

How the church treats one another and how we as Christians treat one another is really important.

Now, most of those commands, at least the more significant ones, let's say, are repeated about two to four times.

Love one another is repeated 16 times in the New Testament.

I submit that's that's kind of important, don't you think?

Love one another is where a healthy, gospel-centered church starts, where it continues and where it ends.

Love one another is at the heart of what it means to be a healthy, gospel-centered church.

And isn't that what we want to be, New Song?

We want to be a healthy, fruitful, thriving, growing, gospel-centered church.

And we cannot do that apart from loving one another.

So as we explore these one-another commands over the course of this summer and get a better sense of what it looks like for the church for us to do the gospel, we want to begin with this central command, this important command to love one another.

Here's what I want us to see in our gospel reading this morning.

I want us to answer three questions.

Why do we love one another?

How do we love one another?

And what's the outcome of loving one another?

Loving one another is at the heart of what it means to be a gospel-centered and growing church.

Why do we love one another?

How do we love one another?

What's the outcome of loving one another?

So uh let me encourage you, take out your Bible, take out your order of service.

Let's explore this together.

Like I say, I just accidentally left out a verse in this morning's reading.

So if you have your Bible, that might be handy to be following along.

What does it look like to love one another?

First off, why love one another?

Let's look at verses 34 and 35 in particular.

That's what I want to zoom in on this morning.

So Jesus says to his disciples, verse 34, I give you a new command, love one another.

Well, let's stop right there.

What do we mean by love?

What comes to mind when we think of this important word, love?

I'm a bit, you know, clueless sometimes, so I don't want to make any assumptions.

I went and looked up a definition for the word love.

And I thought the first definition that I found captured, I think, uh, at least what seems intuitive for me.

I wonder if it's intuitive for you, if this is how we'd intuitively define love.

Love is an intense feeling of deep affection.

Does that sound right?

I mean, that that doesn't sound wrong.

Certainly, affection, deep, even deep affection, is included in what it means to love one another.

But let's notice what we're saying love is definitively.

Love is an intense feeling.

Love is something to be felt.

And I wonder if that's a general truth for the moment that we live in, or if it just seems intuitive to us that love would be something that's felt, felt first and then expressed, it's acted upon.

So if that's true, it's curious to me that Jesus would command us to love one another.

Can you command someone to feel something?

You can't really, I could say, get excited, and you're gonna go, well, about what?

You know?

Love one another.

If love is a feeling, then why is it commanded?

Is that something that we can perform?

I mean, I wonder if uh if if it's true that love is some sort of a feeling and it can't be commanded, that maybe it makes sense of um a trend that I've been observing at, you know, uh certain weddings that revise the wedding vows to rather say, you know, till death to us part, to something like for as long as our love shall last, something like that.

Which suggests to me that if love can't be commanded, well, we should prepare ourselves for that intense feeling to, you know, subside.

We're not gonna, you know, fool each other, we're gonna be, you know, as committed for as long as our love shall last, I suppose.

But is that what we're talking about here in John 13?

Is that the kind of love that we're commanded to?

The word here used for love is a word that we might be familiar with.

It's the word agape.

And agape, one scholar writes, is a selfless love that is passionately committed to the well-being of others.

Let me repeat that.

A selfless love that is passionately committed to the well-being of others.

That sounds very different than our first definition, doesn't it?

Where our first definition locates love as a feeling, anope locates love as a commitment.

It's an act of the will.

It involves our feelings.

I don't want to undermine or downplay our feelings, but love isn't the same thing as our feelings, or at least so scripture would challenge us to think.

So I love what C.S.

Lewis writes in Mere Christianity.

He says love is a state not of the feelings, but of the will.

That state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, we want our own well-being, we must learn to have about other people.

Love, Lewis says, is a commitment of the will.

It's taking the right action and letting the feelings follow.

Does that make sense?

Maybe that's why in Scripture we read in 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it's not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Now, certainly 1 Corinthians 13 doesn't rule out feelings of deep affection.

I hope we feel those for the thing I feel I hope we feel those feelings for the people we care about the most.

But the first thing uh St.

Paul has in mind when he thinks of love is patience and kindness, a refusal to envy, a refusal to resent others or hold wrongs against them.

Love principally is a commitment of the will.

I'm going to choose the very to will the very best for another, even at my own expense.

This is the kind of love that I see parents having for their children when children drive their parents nuts.

And surely you've experienced that one way or another.

It doesn't have to be parent to child, it can be one spouse to another because marriage is not always easy.

It can be one friend to another because there's always bumps on the road.

What is it that keeps us glued together and uh persevering when times get tough?

Is it intense feelings?

Because feelings can get hurt.

It's the commitment we have to one another, isn't it?

Love, true love, works itself out in willing each other's best, in willing the good of the other.

And it's this kind of love that we as the church, we as Jesus' disciples, are called to show one another.

Sometimes we naturally really like each other and we get excited to go to church.

And sometimes we have a hard time liking each other, don't we?

That's like that's living in a family, isn't it?

But love, true love, Christian love, charity, let's call it, is willing each other's good even when it's difficult.

It's committing to one another, and it's showing Jesus' committed love to one another through that commitment.

Maybe that's why we read at the beginning of the service the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

And the related commandment, the second commandment, is this love your neighbor as yourself.

We're reminded again and again that love is at the center of what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be the church together.

We are called to be committed in love one to another.

How do we get going on that?

Lewis develops a great thought on this again in mere Christianity.

Lewis is just so pragmatic sometimes, and I so appreciate that, because I'm a pragmatic guy.

Lewis writes, do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor.

Act as if you did.

As soon as we do, as soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets.

When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

Whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self made like us by God and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more, or at least dislike it less.

I love that.

Church is the best opportunity we have as fellow disciples to put that into practice one to another.

Whatever our feelings are, our feelings come and go, but that commitment, that commitment that Jesus calls us to, commands us to, stays.

And that's why we as a church are committed to outreach because we love our community.

That's why we're committed to giving generously to those in need, because that's an act of love.

It doesn't matter how we feel about it, it's an opportunity to act on that command.

Why do we love one another?

Well, love is commanded, it's a commitment to the well-being of others.

But how do we love one another?

That's the question.

Have you ever, uh, I don't know, maybe when you were, think about when you were young, did you ever hear your parents say something like do as I say, not as I do?

Something like that?

Have you ever heard someone say that to you?

That's infinitely frustrating, isn't it, when you are a child.

It's like, you know, anyway.

Jesus does not, he is not a do as I say, not as I do kind of savior.

He's gonna show us what it means to love one another.

Verse 34 again, we're gonna look at the last half of this verse.

Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another, just as I have loved you.

So then the question is, well, how does Jesus love us?

And we want to think about the context in which Jesus is saying these words.

Verses 31 to 33, Jesus is talking about being glorified and God being glorified in him.

What's he talking about?

He's talking about what comes next.

And if you've read through the Gospel of John, maybe you joined us for our Bible study through the Gospel of John this past year, you know that what comes next is his betrayal and his trial and the cross.

The cross hangs over all of this conversation.

The cross, Jesus claims, is his glory, and it is where God's love for us is revealed most fully, most completely, because it is exactly where God is most committed to us and our salvation.

There is no length to which God will not go to rescue us from the penalty of our sin, to put our death to death.

He will go to hell and back for you and I.

And that's what the cross is.

It shows us God's immeasurable, complete, withholding nothing kind of love.

Jesus will go on to say that greater love has no one than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friends.

He is not talking theory, is he?

He's talking reality.

And that, my friends, is the love he has for you and for me.

This is a very different sort of love than that intense feeling we were talking about earlier.

It's a very different love than I sort of find batted around social media, which is often framed as something like self-love.

And I don't want to be too critical here because loving yourself in the right sense is a very important thing.

God thinks very highly of you and I.

We should probably not think little of ourselves.

But self-love, when it comes at the expense of loving another, when it comes at the expense of sacrificing of oneself for the sake of another, becomes something that curves us in on ourselves.

And rather than willing the good of the other, we end up willing the good of ourselves at others' expenses.

This is something that's portrayed in the parable of the wicked servant in Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Maybe you know this story that Jesus tells to illustrate.

Here a servant is forgiven an enormous debt, like billions of dollars worth of debt from his master.

I mean, how would you feel if billion dollars worth of debt was forgiven you like that?

Elated, overjoyed, and that's exactly how he feels.

He runs out of his master's presence, and yet someone owes him 20 bucks, so he goes and chokes him out.

Can you imagine that?

The master calls him out on that.

Because the master understands that you have not, you have not drunk in the amount of love and mercy that has been shown to you.

The generosity that's been shown to you is something you have failed to show forth.

And sometimes we can be petty like that if we're honest with ourselves, right?

We can fail to be transformed by the generous, overwhelming love that God shows us through Christ.

If we're not careful.

Church reformer John Calvin writes, Christ holds out his own example not because we can reach it, but that we may at least aim at the same end.

Self-love keeps all our senses bound in such a manner that brotherly love is altogether banished.

Whoever then desires to be truly a disciple of Christ, let him form and direct his whole life to love the brethren, to love his brothers and sisters in Christ.

That's what the Christian life is all about bending us out of ourselves towards the other, just as Jesus loved us with an Immeasurable, complete, withholding nothing, selfless kind of love.

Friends, this is why we have to hold the gospel front and center.

If we are going to be a church defined by our love, one for one another, we need to keep the gospel always in focus.

The gospel means that the gospel is a just as I have loved you kind of good news, not a just as you have loved me, so I will love you transaction.

Do you see the difference there?

Because that difference, I think, will make the difference between religion, religiosity, and gospel Christianity.

If it's a transaction, I'll love one another and I'll love God to the best of my ability, so long as it keeps God happy and I can get a relative sense of my own happiness, I'll keep plugging away the gospel and says, instead, since, no, no, no.

Even while we are still sinners, Christ loved us.

Even while we were still his enemies, he pursued us.

Isn't that what we just sang about?

Come thou of every blessing.

He seeks out the wayward and the wandering.

And that kind of love is a transforming kind of love, isn't it?

That's a generous kind of love.

We love because he first loved us.

And so John writes, Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother and sister is a liar.

For whoever who does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.

I wonder if the Lord gives us the church as a gift to put into practice the kind of love that He shows us.

However imperfectly, however messy that is, this is our best opportunity when we gather as a church family to experience the love of God and to share the love of God, minister the love of God one to another.

We need each other for that.

Because love needs an object outside of itself to will the good of.

How do we love one another?

Jesus gives us the perfect example of committed, complete, immeasurable love.

And what's the outcome of this agape withholding nothing love?

Well, it's our reputation that matters.

Verse 35, by this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

Everyone.

Everyone's gonna know that you are a disciple of Jesus on what basis?

That you love one another.

That's other Christians.

That's Port Perry.

That's the world.

That's your enemies and my enemies.

Well, no, we're Christians, not because we've got airtight doctrine, not because we understand all the mysteries of the universe, because we love one another.

Have you ever heard this quote from Mahatma Gandhi?

He's reflecting on his experience of Christians and he says, I like your Christ.

I do not like your Christians.

Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Have you ever heard that?

Does that ring true?

I wonder if that rings true in the lives of some that we know.

A U.S.

survey not long ago said that Christians, it was surveying characteristics associated with Christians and Christianity.

I should say Christianity.

50% responded that they associate hypocrisy with Christianity, 49% judgmental, 46% self-righteous, 32% arrogant.

I mean, those are some condemning numbers, aren't they?

But let me tell you a number that gives me a lot of hope.

This was a survey conducted in the UK, and in the UK, 60% of people responded positively to the statement, I have a Christian friend who I like.

67% say I have a Christian friend who I like, when 50% say Christianity is hypocritical.

That's a number that gives me hope.

Yes, we've got some work to do in terms of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, et cetera, et cetera.

But to me, the power of relationship, the power of one-to-one, real life, real love and real relationship outweighs abstracting Christianity into this ugly thing.

You and I might be the only gospel witnesses in someone's life.

And when we share Christ's love with them as we share it with one with another, that is, perhaps, the greatest, you might call it the final apologetic, as Francis Schaeffer does.

It's something you can't contradict, it's something that you can't undermine.

When we love one another, we show God's love for the world and for others.

And we gain a reputation as such.

So love is a commitment, isn't it?

Love is a commitment to will the good one of another.

And it's this commitment of love that we, New Song, are called to.

Not just when we feel like it, but often exactly when we don't.

We love one another because that is the command.

We've been given that example, because this reputation, loving one for another, will ripple out into our community.

And I just gotta say, I was so fascinated to just sort of like it was one of those moments where I just sort of stopped in my tracks.

Romans 13, Paul is reflecting on a Christian's relationship with government and finances, things like this.

But right in the middle of this, verse 8, he says, do not owe anyone anything, you know, don't owe each other money.

That's good practice.

He says, Don't owe anyone anything except to love one another.

For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Love between Christians is not earned, it's owed.

Do you see the difference?

That's a pretty big difference, don't you think?

Love is not earned, it's owed.

We owe it one to another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

That doesn't mean we're always gonna like each other, but it means we are committed one to another for the sake of Christ.

Sunday is the best opportunity we have to show up and be present in the lives one to another.

Sunday is a gift that we are given, not just for our own edification, though I certainly hope for our own edification.

But when we show up, the Lord might have someone for you and I in mind that we need to show love to today.

He might want to use us to be an instrument of his love in the life of our brothers and sisters, even if it's just one person.

So when we make a commitment to be there, we're making a commitment to be an instrument of that love and make his love known.

So, friends, love one another.

That's what we're called to.

My prayer for New Song is that as we journey forward and as we journey into the summer and understand more and more of these one another commands, if we don't practice this one as imperfectly as we do, none of the rest will follow.

But if we choose to love one another as imperfectly as we do with God's help, we can begin to see ripples go out into our own community, ripples go out into Port Perry that will bear witness to the gospel.

Let's bear in mind, we do not love one another so God loves us more.

Because God loves us with an immeasurable love, we cannot help but love one another for his sake.

So, friends, let us love one another.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.