WEBVTT 00:00:04.559 --> 00:00:06.240 Uh let me ask you this. 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:11.759 How many of you have ever been a victim of the pay it forward movement? 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:12.720 Anybody? 00:00:13.119 --> 00:00:15.839 Yeah, it's it's a victimizing thing if we're honest, right? 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:28.640 So someone before you at like uh Chick-fil-A or something uh pays for your lunch and then you drive up to the window unbenounced, and then they're like, hey, uh someone paid for your lunch and you they want you to pay it forward. 00:00:28.879 --> 00:00:34.240 Well, why are you because you're stuck, like if you don't pay that forward, you're a jerk, right? 00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:43.759 If we're just honest, like someone was so nice to go out of their way to be able to actually pay for yourself, and they're like, oh, pay it forward, and then you're like, I'm not, I'm just not gonna do it. 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:52.479 Or you forget, or maybe, maybe you're just intrinsically uh bad and don't love other people, so you just say refuse to do it, but you'll take all the free stuff, right? 00:00:52.560 --> 00:00:57.520 Anytime anybody wants to pay it forward to you, you'll take it, but you ain't paying it forward to no one else. 00:00:57.600 --> 00:01:02.399 So so it is it is kind of an attack mode, like surprise, you have to be a good person. 00:01:02.719 --> 00:01:06.319 Um that's kind of what Jesus does to us, right? 00:01:06.480 --> 00:01:21.599 That when he when we talk about this loving one another, and we talk about this debt that cannot be paid back, that this is what the God, the gospel is a giant cosmic pay it forward initiative that you're now stuck having to be nice to people. 00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:26.560 You're stuck having to love people the same way that Jesus loved you. 00:01:26.879 --> 00:01:33.519 And so what we're looking at this morning is Paul has brought us through what genuine love actually looks like. 00:01:34.079 --> 00:01:37.920 He's helped us understand what it looks like in the context of the church. 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:40.959 How do we actually love one another with genuine love? 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:47.040 And then he also helped us to understand how does that translate to not just the individual, but the institution? 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:50.159 How do we then love governing powers and rulers? 00:01:50.319 --> 00:01:57.760 And he helped us at the end of that to say, whatever is owed to someone, give it to them. 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:01.920 Owe them uh if it's taxes, pay them taxes, if it's revenue, pay them revenue. 00:02:02.079 --> 00:02:04.560 If it's honor or respect, pay them those things as well. 00:02:04.719 --> 00:02:09.599 So he put this caveat: whatever is owed to them, make sure that you pay it to them. 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:11.680 But we run into a problem. 00:02:12.159 --> 00:02:18.800 You and I know that many people in our lives, we don't owe them love, if we're honest. 00:02:19.039 --> 00:02:30.319 If we're honest with the encounters that we've had, with the way that we've been treated, the ways that we've been wronged, our natural kind of mindset is not that we owe them love. 00:02:30.639 --> 00:02:33.199 It's probably we owe them payback. 00:02:33.439 --> 00:02:41.840 Or we owe them to uh uh to have wrong happen to them in the way that wrongs happen to us or so forth, right? 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:55.599 If we're honest, when we think about what do we owe other people in our life, we probably won't come to the end conclusion that we owe them love because of the lavish way that they've loved us. 00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:59.199 Paul is not going to allow us to get off that easy. 00:02:59.439 --> 00:03:16.080 The gospel is not gonna allow us to get off that easy because it's actually not determined on how other people have treated you, but on the relentless way that God has pursued you in his love and purchased you by the Son of His, by the blood of His Son Jesus. 00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:22.719 So Paul starts this off with owe no one anything except to love each other. 00:03:23.120 --> 00:03:31.360 If we dive into the body and we try to just summarize verse 8, what we'd understand is this that love is a debt we cannot pay off. 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:34.639 Love is a debt we cannot pay off. 00:03:34.879 --> 00:03:40.400 In the previous passage, Paul told us to pay what was owed to others, specifically those in government. 00:03:40.639 --> 00:03:42.639 Taxes, revenue, respect, honor. 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:49.360 Now here he's instruction instructing us to owe no one anything but to love them. 00:03:49.759 --> 00:03:57.759 Even that, even the paying of taxes, revenue, respect, honor should be motivated and empowered by love. 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:01.120 The reason that we do these things is because we love them. 00:04:01.199 --> 00:04:07.919 And so ultimately, the debt we are owing to them is still one rooted in love. 00:04:08.479 --> 00:04:17.279 It's as though love is the all-encompassing debt we have as Christians and informs and drives every action that we take. 00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:23.680 To love someone faithfully should be the only primary reason that we actually do anything at all. 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:28.000 Yet love is a debt that cannot be discharged. 00:04:28.879 --> 00:04:33.199 There remains an eternal balance in yours and mine account. 00:04:33.519 --> 00:04:43.040 We can never reach a place where we are no longer required to love others because the fullness of our debt eternally incurs a balance. 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:48.800 Because it's not about the relationships and interactions that you have with other people. 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:55.439 You see, we kind of come with a system where it's like, hey, you do something nice for me and I'll pay you back. 00:04:55.600 --> 00:04:59.680 I'll be in debt to you, I'll do something nice for you, and then we'll be even, right? 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:10.240 If you ever uh watch The Office, there's this whole scene where Andy, uh, who's a worker and Dwight, who's this kind of nerdy guy, they they keep trying to outdo one another. 00:05:10.319 --> 00:05:13.680 If, oh, if I'm gonna fix your tile, oh, let me come over here and uh polish your desk. 00:05:13.759 --> 00:05:26.160 And it's like this 20-minute scene where they're just continually trying to pay their debt to one another by doing something nice, and then they never allow each other to be uh discharged of their debt. 00:05:26.639 --> 00:05:34.480 You see, we can really never reach a place where we no longer are required to love, where our balance has been paid in full. 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:37.040 But how is this the case? 00:05:37.279 --> 00:05:40.319 How do we have a debt of love that we owe to others? 00:05:40.480 --> 00:05:46.000 If we were to look at our life, we may be able to find a person or two that we are eternally in debt to, right? 00:05:46.319 --> 00:05:59.120 You probably have someone uh that you're just like, man, I could never pay them back for what they did for me at this season of my life or this moment of time, or the way that these people really loved me well, I just feel like I could never pay them back. 00:05:59.279 --> 00:06:04.079 We might have one or two people in our life that we can uh uh make that claim about. 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:10.399 But more often than not, we would think of scenarios where our debt could be measured and paid back. 00:06:10.720 --> 00:06:13.439 Or what we owe them is actually not love at all. 00:06:14.079 --> 00:06:17.839 We do not hold this debt of love because of what others have done for us. 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:23.040 We hold this debt of love to humanity because of what Jesus has done for us. 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:29.360 This, as in Romans 13 at the beginning, is the agape love of God. 00:06:29.759 --> 00:06:33.839 This is what Paul's talking about when he says, owe no one anything but to love him. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:39.519 It's talking about the agape love of God, the love of a father for his child. 00:06:39.759 --> 00:06:42.079 That brought us into the family of God. 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:54.000 That was the driving love that made us who were foreigners, exiles uh from God's family, uh, be brought near intimately in as sons and daughters. 00:06:54.399 --> 00:06:59.519 It's reciprocated, then, from us to humanity. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:10.319 Agape love is an eternal debt we owe to our fellow man, since it is by this very love our debt of sin has been canceled and found paid in full. 00:07:10.800 --> 00:07:20.240 We are being called ultimately to express the same love to one another that we have had lavished on us by the Father through Jesus. 00:07:20.879 --> 00:07:32.480 You see, it's only in understanding the love of God in Christ and the unending grace and mercy of the gospel that we'll be able to live out the call to owe no man anything but to love them. 00:07:32.879 --> 00:07:43.680 If we try to find this resource from within ourselves, this balance of love that we're to dish out to other people, we'll find ourselves empty. 00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:47.120 We'll find ourselves unable to withdraw from that anymore. 00:07:47.279 --> 00:07:49.519 We're just not capable of doing that. 00:07:49.680 --> 00:08:02.319 And so we have to plunge the depths of the gospel to be able to understand rightly the agape love, the fatherly love that made enemies' children, that brought us into his family. 00:08:02.480 --> 00:08:12.480 And it's then that we reciprocate that love back to God and out to one another that we're able to love in the way that the Bible calls us to love. 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:19.759 We don't love in our own understanding, we don't love in our own strength, we don't love by anything intrinsically within us. 00:08:20.079 --> 00:08:22.639 We love because of the gospel. 00:08:22.879 --> 00:08:25.920 We love because he first loved us. 00:08:29.439 --> 00:08:34.320 Paul then tells us that the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 00:08:35.039 --> 00:08:39.200 Love is not only the debt we owe, but it's the driving motivation of our action. 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:44.000 Love is the fountain from which all the deeds and works of the law flow. 00:08:44.240 --> 00:08:52.480 So if you think about all the 600 and some laws of the Old Testament, what's the fountain from which those laws should spring? 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:55.679 Obedience of those laws should spring? 00:08:55.919 --> 00:08:57.120 Well, it's love. 00:08:57.440 --> 00:09:07.679 Because if we can take all 600 and some of those laws and distill them simply down to love your neighbor as yourself, then love is the actual fountain of obedience. 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:12.159 It's what motivates us to do righteousness. 00:09:14.480 --> 00:09:21.440 Yet we do not look to be fulfillers of the law in a sense of earning the affection and love of God. 00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:26.159 We don't work for love, we work from love. 00:09:26.559 --> 00:09:28.720 This is the reality and truth of the gospel. 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:34.480 We don't labor in these things to love our neighbor as ourselves so that we might earn the affections of God. 00:09:34.720 --> 00:09:46.960 No, it's because we have been so freely given his affection through the gospel that we're able to now work from love and his acceptance to see others experience that love. 00:09:47.519 --> 00:09:53.679 Because Jesus has fulfilled the law perfectly, through perfect love, we are able to love others. 00:09:54.159 --> 00:09:59.200 This is the crux of agape love and the call to love one another. 00:09:59.679 --> 00:10:05.039 You see, love is a debt we cannot pay off because of the eternal love from which Jesus loved us. 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:09.039 So let's look at 1 John chapter 4, verses 10 through 12. 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:12.080 He says this in this is love. 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:16.879 Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us. 00:10:17.039 --> 00:10:19.120 See, see, that that's critical to understand. 00:10:19.279 --> 00:10:19.919 What is love? 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:23.919 It's not that we love God intrinsically through our own power, strength, or merit. 00:10:24.159 --> 00:10:25.679 It's that he loved us. 00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:26.639 And what did he do? 00:10:26.799 --> 00:10:30.000 He sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. 00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:34.320 That word propitiation means uh wrath absorber. 00:10:34.559 --> 00:10:40.240 Uh one who stood in the gap between us and the wrath of God and took it on himself. 00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:43.919 That's propitiation, so that we don't have to bear the wrath of God. 00:10:44.159 --> 00:10:49.200 Jesus himself stood in our place as our substitute and bore it for us. 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:51.600 That's what propitiation means. 00:10:51.759 --> 00:10:52.240 For what? 00:10:52.480 --> 00:10:53.120 Our sins. 00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:59.759 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 00:11:00.080 --> 00:11:01.840 No one has ever seen God. 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:07.039 If we love one another, God abinds in us, and his love is perfected in us. 00:11:07.279 --> 00:11:34.399 This is why being a gospel-centered church is imperative to our health as Christians, because we have to understand we cannot uh exhaust the depths of the gospel, to be able to understand with what love God loved us, to be able to understand the ways that we are inheritors of his blessing through the gospel, to understand the ways that he made enemies, his friends, he made orphans, his children. 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:38.080 We cannot exhaust the beauty of the gospel. 00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:44.000 It's like a diamond with all these facets that every time you turn it, it's a new array of light. 00:11:44.159 --> 00:11:48.080 It's a new beauty that shines forth, it's new clarity that you see in it. 00:11:48.159 --> 00:12:06.559 And what that's going to equip us to do is as we continue to plunge and seek to try and exhaust, though impossible to do so, the depths of the gospel, our love for Him and one another will be cultivated, fostered, and grow inside of us. 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:12.240 When we look at verses 9 through 10, we see this. 00:12:23.120 --> 00:12:28.240 This is what the transformation, the switch that Paul is calling us to make. 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:30.960 That the law, the gospel calls us to make. 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:34.080 Paul reminds us here of the particulars of the law. 00:12:34.240 --> 00:12:38.240 So when we look at this, uh not just the 600 and some laws of the Old Testament. 00:12:38.320 --> 00:12:40.159 Now we're gonna kind of look at the Big Ten, right? 00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:45.440 If you look at like uh football conferences, you have all these teams that nobody really cares about, then you have the big ten. 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:49.200 That's kind of what the Ten Commandments are for how you should live your life. 00:12:49.360 --> 00:13:00.320 Uh so he's gonna pull out some of the big ten, and he's only gonna pull out a few of them, but he's gonna pull out the ones that have uh implications on the way that you and I interact with one another. 00:13:00.559 --> 00:13:00.879 Right? 00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:09.519 He's gonna forego the ones of how we engage with God, and he's gonna pull out some of the ones of how we love and engage with one another. 00:13:10.639 --> 00:13:19.039 Ultimately, he uses three commands that speak to self-satisfaction, adultery. 00:13:20.240 --> 00:13:37.200 It's our satisfaction of lust, murder, our satisfaction of hatred, stealing, our satisfaction of greed, coveting, our satisfaction of envy. 00:13:38.080 --> 00:13:44.559 You see, these laws, if we look at them rightly, are self-satisfying. 00:13:44.799 --> 00:13:51.759 We we do these things because we seek to satisfy and gratify ourselves in the pursuit of them. 00:13:52.080 --> 00:14:10.320 And what what why they're there in the Big Ten, why they're there before us on how we should love one another, is because we're supposed to be a people who don't seek to gratify themselves, but seek to be self or to be serving, self-giving, serving to the people that are around us. 00:14:10.639 --> 00:14:16.000 And so these aren't things that to try and make you not have fun, to not enjoy life. 00:14:16.159 --> 00:14:26.799 It is so that you can actually have life to the fullest because we are only gonna have life to the fullest when we transition from self-serving to self-giving. 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:40.480 And we don't realize that life is actually found in the denial of self, not in the full-on uh uh uh taking in and absorbing and consuming of our desires. 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:52.559 These commands are in contradiction to love and are ultimately rooted in selfishness or what I would refer to as hyper-self-love. 00:14:53.120 --> 00:14:54.080 We're gonna look into this. 00:14:54.159 --> 00:15:02.480 There was actually a uh a story a few years back of a uh woman who was in the Lutheran church. 00:15:02.559 --> 00:15:13.600 She was a pastor in the Lutheran church, and she came out as a homosexual woman, though she was already married and had uh children with her husband. 00:15:13.840 --> 00:15:31.759 She abandoned her marriage and her children and pursued a same-sex relationship, and they promoted her as a hero to be so bold and courageous as to go after your happiness. 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:37.039 But see, that's their measure of what love looks like. 00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:48.320 This hyper-self-love that doesn't matter who's impacted by the choices and decisions that you make, it's about are you happy? 00:15:49.840 --> 00:15:56.720 In fact, the crazy thing is, if we look at the scriptures and we look at the laws of God, they're so contrary to that. 00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:00.720 What happened to the call of pick up your cross and come after me? 00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:03.519 What happened to deny yourself? 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:09.679 What happened to love your neighbor first, not love yourself first? 00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:12.799 We're gonna get into that. 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:17.519 These commands are in contradiction. 00:16:17.840 --> 00:16:24.879 These commands and all the law can be summed up, he says, through in loving our neighbor. 00:16:25.039 --> 00:16:32.720 To love our neighbor as ourselves demands that we cease from being self-seeking and operate in a life that is self-giving. 00:16:32.879 --> 00:16:37.919 The opposite of God's love and law is to be a person who is self-seeking. 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:38.879 Let's say that again. 00:16:39.200 --> 00:16:50.159 The opposite of God's law and the opposite of what he dictates is love is to be a person who is self-seeking. 00:16:50.799 --> 00:16:52.480 That's in contradiction. 00:16:52.960 --> 00:16:55.200 There's no harmony in that, right? 00:16:55.279 --> 00:17:01.840 If you're a person who is self-seeking and you say, I love God and I serve him, those are contradictive. 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:04.160 There's no synergy between those two statements. 00:17:04.319 --> 00:17:07.599 They stand in isolated opposites. 00:17:09.920 --> 00:17:17.039 In response to Jesus, who fulfilled the law through love, we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. 00:17:17.759 --> 00:17:20.559 What does it mean to love our neighbor as ourselves, right? 00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:22.880 That that's where we're gonna start getting tricky. 00:17:22.960 --> 00:17:35.039 And we're gonna work through some of this in just a moment because we've taken that word, that language as ourselves, and we've manipulated it, the mess out of it in today's culture and society. 00:17:35.279 --> 00:17:39.680 We're gonna get there, but what does it actually mean to love our neighbor as ourself? 00:17:39.839 --> 00:17:46.400 It does not mean we need to focus on self-love or self-esteem to better love our neighbor. 00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:48.880 I like functioning definitions. 00:17:49.039 --> 00:18:01.599 When we're talking about things, when we're uh debating or when we're discussing uh theological uh uh topics, it it's it's and when we engage with culture, it's beneficial for us to define terms. 00:18:01.839 --> 00:18:04.240 When you say this, what do you mean? 00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:14.000 Because we can assume a lot of things on one another that we're not actually saying because we're assuming the definition of the words that they're using, right? 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:17.519 So we have to make sure that we use functional definitions. 00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:21.519 So here's how I would define as ourself. 00:18:22.079 --> 00:18:30.160 It means this: our desire for good becomes the measure of good we also desire for others. 00:18:31.119 --> 00:18:38.880 Our desire for good becomes the measure of good we also desire for others. 00:18:39.039 --> 00:18:43.200 This is a functioning definition of as ourselves. 00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:45.200 How are we to love our neighbors? 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:52.240 The way that we desire good for ourselves becomes the very functioning measure of what we desire for good for others. 00:18:52.559 --> 00:18:56.559 And that can translate into any aspect of our lives. 00:18:59.680 --> 00:19:05.440 Here's how it's explained to us through the scriptures in the context of husbands and wives. 00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:08.319 Let's look at Ephesians chapter 5, 28 through 29. 00:19:08.799 --> 00:19:13.039 Here's one of the more clear definitions of loving someone as ourselves. 00:19:13.200 --> 00:19:16.240 In the same way husbands should love their wives, how? 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:19.440 As their own bodies, he says. 00:19:19.599 --> 00:19:21.839 He who loves his wife loves himself. 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:22.960 Now, here, hold on. 00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:30.079 It's not, he's not saying a man who is so consumed with himself automatically loves his wife. 00:19:30.400 --> 00:19:31.839 That's not what Paul's saying. 00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:36.880 He's saying a man who loves his wife evidently loves himself. 00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:47.920 For, next part, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. 00:19:48.079 --> 00:20:01.200 So when Paul says, if you want a clear example of what it means to love another person as you would love yourself, there's two uh uh attributes in this pursuit, to nourish and to cherish. 00:20:02.079 --> 00:20:03.680 To nourish and to cherish. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:06.880 We do not hate our own flesh. 00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:13.279 By and large, the normative posture of humanity is that we, if we are thirsty, we will find something to drink. 00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:15.599 If we are hungry, we will find food. 00:20:15.920 --> 00:20:19.599 If we are in pain, we will seek alleviation, right? 00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:23.839 That's the natural propensity to the human condition. 00:20:26.079 --> 00:20:26.880 So what do we do? 00:20:27.039 --> 00:20:30.400 We cherish and nourish our flesh. 00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:38.000 To nourish means to provide substance necessary for health and good condition. 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:41.680 Provide substance necessary for health and good condition. 00:20:41.759 --> 00:20:45.759 This is why Jesus says if someone says that they're hungry, give them food. 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:48.480 If they say they're thirsty, give them something to drink. 00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:51.359 If they say they're cold, give them a jacket. 00:20:51.519 --> 00:21:03.440 He's talking about physical realities that we physically engage with other people to alleviate their suffering, to bring about the very same good that we desire for our own lives into theirs. 00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:05.440 Don't just say, hey, brother, I'll pray for you. 00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:07.359 Hopefully everything turns out right. 00:21:08.799 --> 00:21:09.599 Because why? 00:21:09.839 --> 00:21:12.079 Rather than starve, we feast. 00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:14.799 Rather than thirst, we drink. 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:18.079 Rather than feel pain, we protect. 00:21:20.240 --> 00:21:22.160 This works into cherishing. 00:21:22.559 --> 00:21:27.039 To cherish something means to protect and care for lovingly. 00:21:27.599 --> 00:21:30.960 How do you protect and care for others lovingly? 00:21:31.119 --> 00:21:33.440 How do you cherish their presence? 00:21:33.759 --> 00:21:39.440 There's too many times with inside the church specifically, we don't cherish one another's presence. 00:21:39.680 --> 00:21:56.559 Uh we don't act as if we're a blessing to one another, that we have gifts that actually are for the benefit of the growth of each other's faith, that we're actually been made brothers and sisters in the Lord that have an eternal standard of which we will live in and function in, even in glory. 00:21:56.640 --> 00:21:59.759 We don't act as though we cherish one another. 00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:00.559 Another. 00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:06.720 And if we can't do this for the church, I'll make the argument we can't do it for the world either. 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:11.680 This should be the easiest place for us to live out the one another commands of the gospel. 00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:15.599 When it says to love your neighbor as yourself, look to your right and left. 00:22:15.680 --> 00:22:18.000 You ain't seen much closer neighbors. 00:22:20.960 --> 00:22:28.160 The call to love our neighbors is rooted in us moving from being self-seeking people to self-giving people. 00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:35.839 Yet we can't default into a love found in our own strength or dispersed through our own resources. 00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:41.200 We have to stay anchored to the very reason we are called to love in the first place. 00:22:42.480 --> 00:22:47.359 Because God so loved us that he gave us Jesus. 00:22:48.799 --> 00:22:55.440 So our main idea this morning is this God's inexhaustible love is our surplus. 00:22:56.880 --> 00:23:00.079 God's inexhaustible love is our surplus. 00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:09.839 God's never-ending, overflowing, always and forever, love is what we draw from to be able to. 00:23:09.920 --> 00:23:10.640 Because guess what? 00:23:10.799 --> 00:23:13.359 It's a debt that we cannot pay back. 00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:20.799 And that means that we don't have within us the resources to even try to be able to start to pay that back in the first place. 00:23:20.960 --> 00:23:28.960 We, when we you ever, you ever, I don't know about you, but when I was like 18 through a certain age, my bank account came up insufficient funds. 00:23:29.119 --> 00:23:32.240 I don't know about y'all, but I went, no. 00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:34.079 Hey, I want to buy this. 00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:35.680 No, can't do it. 00:23:35.839 --> 00:23:36.559 All right, cool. 00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:38.720 I guess I have to wait till paycheck hits. 00:23:38.799 --> 00:23:40.720 Uh and that money was already spent, right? 00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:43.359 So that's kind of the way that our love works. 00:23:43.519 --> 00:23:51.119 If we're trying to do this from intrinsic resources, we're gonna be coming up insufficient funds over and over again. 00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:51.839 So what do we do? 00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:53.680 We reach back into the gospel. 00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:59.759 We reach back into the inexhaustible love of God as our surplus. 00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:06.319 It is the agape love, the love of God lavished on us that we are actually able to love others. 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:09.119 God's love for us is inexhaustible. 00:24:09.359 --> 00:24:12.720 And our debt to love others is also. 00:24:13.599 --> 00:24:19.759 We do not pull from our meager means to love others, we withdraw from the eternal account of the gospel. 00:24:20.240 --> 00:24:27.839 In this way, God gets the glory as benefactor, and we get the joy as beneficiary. 00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:35.839 As we do this, God gets the glory as benefactor, and we get the joy as beneficiary. 00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:39.440 We get to draw from his account. 00:24:40.240 --> 00:24:45.119 Our love for others comes out of first having received love from him. 00:24:46.400 --> 00:24:51.440 How difficult it is and can be to love others out of what we have within ourselves only. 00:24:51.680 --> 00:24:58.319 It seems at times like we have nothing left to give, like we can't afford this next payment. 00:24:58.799 --> 00:25:03.119 That's when we need to reach into the storehouse of heaven. 00:25:05.359 --> 00:25:12.400 Many of us believe we're called to love our neighbors as ourselves, but we fail to do this faithfully in a couple of different ways. 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:16.480 Some of us we misunderstand loving ourselves. 00:25:16.799 --> 00:25:19.039 Some of us we misunderstand loving ourselves. 00:25:19.119 --> 00:25:24.000 So if we look at the whole commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. 00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:31.119 We focus on that as yourself, and then we misinterpret or misunderstand what the Bible is actually calling us to do. 00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:40.160 We believe that the emphasis is placed not on loving others, but that the emphasis is first placed on loving ourselves. 00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:48.319 We think to ourselves that we cannot possibly love our neighbor well if we do not first love ourselves faithfully. 00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:48.799 Right? 00:25:49.039 --> 00:25:55.279 This is something that's creeped into the modern church, but but it's a it's a cultural therapeutic. 00:25:55.680 --> 00:26:01.920 You cannot obviously love others if you don't first love yourself really well. 00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:06.400 That's nowhere in the gospel, nowhere in the scriptures. 00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:12.319 It's a cultural therapeutic that we've applied to the text, and let me show you where it's gone wrong. 00:26:13.039 --> 00:26:19.440 We engage in practices of self-love and self-care in order to remedy the issue. 00:26:19.759 --> 00:26:22.559 But here's the problem: it's in the focus. 00:26:23.599 --> 00:26:24.799 It's in the focus. 00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:33.359 As we focus on loving self first before loving others, we get too focused on ourselves and become selfish. 00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:42.960 We adopt tactics that create our best sense of ourselves under the deceptive guise that will cause us to be able to love others better. 00:26:43.119 --> 00:26:45.039 Yet it doesn't work out that way. 00:26:45.279 --> 00:26:45.599 Why? 00:26:45.839 --> 00:26:49.519 Because you start to use this language of boundaries. 00:26:49.599 --> 00:27:00.480 And what you're saying is there are people in my life who are toxic that I can't have in my life, and so I have to actually cut them out to be able to be the best person that I possibly can be. 00:27:00.559 --> 00:27:07.839 I I need to make sure I have conversations and meetings and engagements with people who make me better. 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:26.799 Therefore, what you're doing is categorizing your own church body as people who make you better and who don't make you better, and you ostracize those, and then you try to consume as much as you can from these because you're more focused on loving yourself than you actually are focused on loving your brother. 00:27:27.839 --> 00:27:38.000 It is a wicked cultural self-therapeutic that ends itself in selfishness rather than an actual ability to love others better. 00:27:39.519 --> 00:27:41.279 This is what the culture is going to say. 00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:42.480 Focus on yourself. 00:27:42.640 --> 00:27:45.359 Make sure the relationships that are in your life are benefiting you. 00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:48.559 Make sure that the time in your day is benefiting you. 00:27:48.640 --> 00:27:51.599 And look, there's a reality where you got to get with Jesus. 00:27:51.759 --> 00:27:58.559 You got to reach into that storehouse of heaven, you've got to make sure that you're in your prayer closet, you're in your word, you're doing these things. 00:27:58.640 --> 00:27:59.920 Those things are critical. 00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:02.640 Do you have to have some sense of self-focus? 00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:03.519 Absolutely. 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:06.799 But even in that, let me try to help us understand. 00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:08.400 That's not even self-focus. 00:28:08.480 --> 00:28:12.400 That's still focus on your relationship with God, your father. 00:28:14.480 --> 00:28:22.160 That's worshiping Him, that's giving Him glory through the reading of His Word, through prayer, through communion with Him. 00:28:22.319 --> 00:28:31.039 And then what do you do as you're filled up because you've communed with your Father, you then pour out to those that are around you, loving your neighbor? 00:28:33.359 --> 00:28:41.759 The outcomes of self-love have rooted in them a relationship of transaction of self-benefit. 00:28:42.559 --> 00:28:50.319 When we look at the cultural practice of self-love and self-care, rooted in them is a transaction-based relationship. 00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:52.400 Do you understand how selfish that is? 00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:57.440 Do you understand how anti-the love of our father that is? 00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:00.240 Here's what I mean by transaction-based relationship. 00:29:00.400 --> 00:29:09.759 What you can give me and benefit me, I'll count as worthy to be able to have a relationship with you. 00:29:10.079 --> 00:29:14.480 That's transactional-based, wicked love. 00:29:16.319 --> 00:29:21.279 That's so contrary to the love that we see in the gospel. 00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:24.319 Where God looked at you and said, What do you have to offer me? 00:29:24.480 --> 00:29:26.240 Oh, yeah, nothing. 00:29:27.039 --> 00:29:28.400 Literally nothing. 00:29:28.559 --> 00:29:30.160 So what am I going to give to you? 00:29:30.960 --> 00:29:32.000 Everything. 00:29:32.319 --> 00:29:33.440 My own son. 00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:39.839 I will count everything as lost to gain you, even though you have zero to give me. 00:29:41.279 --> 00:29:43.519 It's not even zero, it's negative. 00:29:43.839 --> 00:29:46.799 It's like we're in a ditch of debt. 00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:51.119 We're not even starting at an at a normative balance with God. 00:29:54.240 --> 00:29:56.640 We use the lens of self-love. 00:29:57.119 --> 00:30:07.680 We establish relationships, set boundaries, make decisions, conduct our lives through this lens of self-love, which I would submit we should just call it what it is self-benefit. 00:30:09.599 --> 00:30:11.680 These are not the teachings of Jesus. 00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:14.240 These are the teachings of false religions. 00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:17.119 Here's a quote from one of the most famous ones. 00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:18.559 Buddha. 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:23.359 You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. 00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:26.400 How many of y'all got a journal with that printed on the front? 00:30:26.559 --> 00:30:30.960 Or some you like that's a sticker on your mirror in your cubicle or something? 00:30:31.279 --> 00:30:31.920 Right? 00:30:32.319 --> 00:30:33.839 This isn't from Jesus. 00:30:33.920 --> 00:30:34.960 This is from Buddha. 00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:38.720 This is that they want you to focus on yourself. 00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:44.640 So what does the Bible mean for us to love our neighbors as ourselves? 00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:49.839 Jesus helps us, as he always does, through clarification. 00:30:50.480 --> 00:30:55.359 Jesus is going to say, you've heard it say this: love your neighbor as yourself. 00:30:55.839 --> 00:30:59.519 Here I give this to you, Jesus says in the Gospel of John. 00:30:59.680 --> 00:31:04.160 He says, Love your neighbor as I have loved you. 00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:08.319 This is the beauty of clarification to this commandment. 00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:11.759 It's not changing the command, it's clarifying it for us. 00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:14.480 Do you want to know what it means to love your neighbor as yourself? 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:19.599 Jesus says, then love your neighbor as I have loved you. 00:31:21.759 --> 00:31:27.599 It is not self-love that is the source of our understanding for loving our neighbor, but selfless love. 00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:34.480 If we truly want to love our neighbor better, then we don't engage in the self-love therapeutic. 00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:40.880 We engage to now how relentlessly and sacrificially Jesus first loved us. 00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:48.079 We can only love others better by plunging the depths of his love for us in the gospel. 00:31:49.759 --> 00:31:53.279 Some of us, though, we misunderstand loving others. 00:31:53.680 --> 00:31:56.000 We misunderstand loving others. 00:31:56.240 --> 00:32:00.880 We believe that loving others is the means by which we make ourselves right with God. 00:32:01.119 --> 00:32:08.480 We believe that the better we can love others, the more we can actually fulfill the law through our own strength and merit. 00:32:10.640 --> 00:32:16.160 It's at least for us the metric by which we are able to estimate our good standing with Him, right? 00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:19.759 You guys have heard people say things like, I'm a good enough person. 00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:20.880 What are you trying to say? 00:32:20.960 --> 00:32:24.160 I've loved people enough that God doesn't hate me. 00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:26.079 That's kind of what you're trying to say, right? 00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:30.880 I deserve to go to heaven because I'm not an evil person, right? 00:32:31.039 --> 00:32:36.640 I've done enough good, I've loved enough people that I should be in right standing with God. 00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:39.839 This is a common language of our culture. 00:32:41.759 --> 00:32:47.279 In this, we take on the role and responsibility of actually trying to fulfill the law through our own work. 00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:55.680 This leaves us frustrated, burdened, and even calloused over time because we're faced with its impossibility. 00:32:56.960 --> 00:33:08.400 When we say things like, I'm a good person, in reference to our relationship with God and the reality of eternity, what we're really meaning is that we believe we've loved enough to merit God's love on us. 00:33:09.839 --> 00:33:11.359 Do you know what this is? 00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:13.759 It's an enemy of grace. 00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:17.359 It's an enemy of grace. 00:33:17.920 --> 00:33:23.119 The grace of God cannot be handled like some business transaction. 00:33:23.519 --> 00:33:31.200 You do not earn his affection, you do not earn his grace, you do not earn his right standing through the way that you treat other people. 00:33:31.519 --> 00:33:32.559 We love others. 00:33:32.720 --> 00:33:33.119 Why? 00:33:33.440 --> 00:33:36.319 Because he first loved us. 00:33:37.039 --> 00:33:38.480 That's why. 00:33:40.880 --> 00:33:44.400 The grace of God cannot be handled like a business transaction. 00:33:44.559 --> 00:33:47.440 Our sin created a debt owed to God. 00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:52.720 But how dare we imagine we have within us what it takes to ever repay it? 00:33:53.759 --> 00:33:59.359 Grace is the very evidence of our insufficiency to discharge such a debt. 00:33:59.599 --> 00:34:00.960 Let's look at Romans 3. 00:34:01.039 --> 00:34:05.519 We've covered this in days past, but it's a good refresher. 00:34:05.680 --> 00:34:08.079 Romans 3, 22 through 24 says this. 00:34:08.400 --> 00:34:10.079 God puts people right. 00:34:10.559 --> 00:34:11.119 How? 00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:13.920 Through their faith in Jesus Christ. 00:34:14.400 --> 00:34:19.039 God does this to all who believe in Christ because there's no difference at all. 00:34:19.280 --> 00:34:24.960 Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence. 00:34:25.599 --> 00:34:34.800 But by the free gift of God's grace, all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free. 00:34:35.039 --> 00:34:38.000 It is grace that we are made right with God. 00:34:38.159 --> 00:34:42.880 It is not through effort, work, labor, and toil. 00:34:43.119 --> 00:34:47.519 You cannot fulfill the love of God by perfectly loving your neighbors yourself. 00:34:47.679 --> 00:34:49.119 This is why we need Jesus. 00:34:49.280 --> 00:34:50.800 This is why the gospel exists. 00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:54.159 This is why God's grace is so lavish. 00:34:55.679 --> 00:35:00.239 We do not strive to love others to pay back a debt that our sin created. 00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:05.679 We love others out of the debt of Jesus' blood that paid for our sin. 00:35:08.480 --> 00:35:14.960 And so the beauty of the gospel for us is this: that Jesus fulfilled the law through perfect love. 00:35:16.320 --> 00:35:19.519 Jesus fulfilled the law through perfect love. 00:35:19.760 --> 00:35:25.440 Jesus cannot and dare not be paid back. 00:35:27.280 --> 00:35:30.239 How atrocious of a thought. 00:35:30.880 --> 00:35:33.440 That we could pay back Jesus. 00:35:36.639 --> 00:35:42.480 He cannot because our debt is infinite and we could never pay it. 00:35:43.119 --> 00:35:48.239 Also, all of our acts of so-called repayment are enabled by his grace. 00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:53.679 And so with every one of them, we actually go deeper into debt. 00:35:55.039 --> 00:36:00.239 Our striving to pay Jesus back is futile in every regard imaginable. 00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:04.159 Jesus also dare not be paid back. 00:36:04.719 --> 00:36:09.599 We dare not make any attempt to pay him back because then grace would no longer be grace. 00:36:09.840 --> 00:36:14.960 If you could pay back grace, it would be a business transaction and no longer a free gift. 00:36:16.079 --> 00:36:19.360 Grace is free or it's not grace. 00:36:20.159 --> 00:36:22.480 Grace is free or it's not grace. 00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:25.679 This is also what makes our love free to others. 00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:29.280 It's a love that flows out of Christ's perfect love for us. 00:36:29.519 --> 00:36:33.199 It is a completed and fulfilled love that we cannot add to. 00:36:33.599 --> 00:36:40.000 We can only work to uncover the depth of its riches and extend it to the world around us. 00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:47.840 Love for others is flowing out from what Christ gave us and not what from others gave us. 00:36:48.239 --> 00:36:49.360