True Gospel Love and Community

I must be honest. I began studying through Philippians last week with little enthusiasm. I wasn’t excited to study through it like I have been about other books which I’ve studied. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe it was because Philippians doesn’t have any major church messes to address and therefore I felt it might be less instructive. I don’t know. After spending a few days hem-hawing around trying to get excited, I just decided to dive in. I’m pleased to report that I haven’t even finished chapter one and it’s been very rewarding.

The very first thing I was struck by was the relationship which Paul had cultivated with the Philippian people. It was a deep, heartfelt, emotional relationship which existed between them.

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

From the get-go, Paul makes his feelings clear about the church at Philippi: he loves them deeply. From the moment they believed, they have partnered with Paul in his ministry efforts. Presumably they supported him in every way; through prayer, through financial giving, and perhaps even by helping supply Paul’s physical needs.

However, Paul’s most precious words to them in these opening verses are words of assurance and words of promise. In verse six he reminds them all that God will finish the good work which he began in them. He will see it through and bring it to completion when they stand before Jesus. This should bring hope to all of us that no matter how discouraged we may become as we live in this world that God is ensuring that we will persevere that we will make it to the end and that no matter how we may struggle, how we may fail, nothing will prevent us from being transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

He doesn’t accomplish this by forcing us to obey. On the contrary, even though our transformation is orchestrated by God, it is a willing transformation on our part. Rather than forcing us to obey and violating our ability to choose to obey, he instead gives us new desires which go to war with our old desires. Our old desires are still present and active, but where before they stood uncontested on the throne of our heart, now we have a new heart with new desires and the ability to choose whether or not we will obey God or obey the lusts of our flesh. And because the Holy Spirit resides within us, he gives us what we need in order to overcome the old desires. So it is incumbent on us to make use of the power of the Holy Spirit in choosing to follow our new desires and undergo transformation.

But this isn’t what I came here to talk about. The portion of chapter one which has really got me excited is what comes next.

7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace,[4] both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

It is right for us to have deep affections for each other in Christ. This rings true with Jesus’ command for us to love each other in John 13:

“34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

It is blatantly offensive to our faith when we live in a virtual isolation from fellow believers. And I don’t mean that we wall ourselves up in our homes. There are people who go to church every time the doors open who are isolated in their relationships and lonely. American/Western Christians have a monumental problem. We have forgotten how to truly love each other. True love for each other goes way beyond:

• Prayer groups
• Prayer chains
• Bible studies
• Church meetings
• Giving to missions or charities
• Feeling empathy for someone

While there’s nothing wrong with any of these things, they all can be used as substitutes for real loving community. People hide behind them all the time and insist that they are experiencing loving community, but they have never reached out and invited people into their home, they have never spent time with other believers outside of church activities, so they don’t really know the people who they claim to love. This must change. Deep love means breaking bread together, spending time together, investing in one another in a way that means if one suffers, we all suffer and if one rejoices, we all rejoice.

I am as guilty as anyone of lacking hospitality. I am as guilty as anyone of expressing a form of love that is filled with empty words of well-wishing and empty prayers of unfelt emotion. I want this to change in me desperately. And I believe the Holy Spirit is changing me in this regard, but the change must happen in more people than just me. I’m hoping and praying that God will do a work in me, in my family, and my friends where we insist upon deep, emotional, risky relationships (risky because of the potential for shared pain). This is what Paul had with the Philippians. This is what we should have with each other. This is what Jesus had in mind when he commanded us to love one another.

However, even as great as this love between Paul and the Philippians was, Paul prayed that it would increase. No matter how good we may be at loving each other, as long as we live here, there will be room for improvement. Paul throws in two particular ingredients which we are to add to our growth in love: knowledge and discernment.

Why knowledge and discernment? In verse ten, Paul says it will help us approve what is excellent so that we might stand blameless. The truth is that when we love people, there will always be a temptation to “go soft” on our loved ones when in actuality they may need a swift kick in the pants – in love of course! It is easier to enable a person to sin than it is to warn them and hold them accountable. It is easier to allow someone to go their merry way, especially when they appear to be happy. But if we mix with our love, knowledge and discernment, we will keep each other from blindly stumbling into sin. Community should be built around this! This is the type of community which will cause us to be filled with the fruit of righteousness. This is the fruit which brings glory to God (v 11). So if we don’t live in this type of community, what exactly is the fruit we are displaying?

The best answer I can give you is the fruit of religion. Religious fruit puts people in bondage to rules and regulations. It ministers guilt when we fail and ultimately condemns us in every area of life. It is no wonder that so many have fled the church seeking something which doesn’t bind them up in slavery to performance and condemnation! It’s not that the community of believers shouldn’t take sin seriously, but rather we should be taking Jesus seriously. We should be shifting our focus to Jesus and only Jesus and away from sin and techniques on how not to sin. When sin happens, we should deal with it, but we should deal with it by looking to Jesus and not rules and techniques.

So to sum up, we need to change the way we love each other and it will by necessity cause us to change many other things in our lives. We need to break bread together, we need to know each other on a much deeper level than we can achieve by seeing each other at church or church functions. Paul and the Philippians have demonstrated for us here a gospel-centered, deep, emotional bond which was cultivated as he lived with them and shared life with them on a level which I’m afraid we have yet to experience. May the Holy Spirit grant to us this bond and in doing so bring glory to himself, Jesus, and the Father and cause his church to shine brightly before a lost and dying world so that they may see and believe.

Love the Sinner and Hate the Sin?

I was reading this morning from the book, Death by Love, and came across an interesting point. The phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” actually has its origins in the Hindu Gandhi’s 1929 autobiography, yet Christians toss about the phrase as if it comes directly from the Bible. (Before you jump to a conclusion about what I’m saying, please read on.) However, in contrast we can find several places in Scripture where God clearly says that he hates certain individuals or people groups.

“The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.” Psalm 5:5

“The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” Psalm 11:4-5

“Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels.” Hosea 9:15

(NOTE: I’ve heard people say that “hate” means “to not prefer”, and that almost always is used in the context of Jacob and Esau. Without outright denying that interpretation, I will say you cannot apply that particular translation of the word “hate” every time the Scripture says God hates something or someone.)

How do we reconcile our use of this phrase “love the sinner and hate the sin” with the Scriptures? If we are going to so freely toss this phrase about, then we must build a case from Scripture that will help it stand. I find it troublesome that Hindu wisdom has crept into the vocabulary of the born again church.

The trouble is that most people, when attempting to build a Scriptural case for “loving the sinner and hating the sin” will turn to places in the Gospels where Jesus fellowships with sinners and tax collectors, and yet ignore the places in the same Gospels where Jesus speaks very harshly to the Pharisees and chief priests. We can’t build an argument for loving sinners without taking into account the fact that for some sinners Jesus reserved some very harsh judgments (woes). Even in Jesus’ ministry, there seems to be some sinners upon whom he poured out love, and some sinners upon whom he poured out anger.

The importance of this question is actually huge. It’s not that we become hateful in our demeanor toward the person sinning, but if we see someone sinning, we do become angry about the sin and toward the person who is committing the sin. What’s the difference between rape and the rapist; murder and the murderer? Can the person sinning be completely extracted and separated from the sin they are committing and be treated as two separate entities? So in the church, when a person is living in open sin, do we say to the person in sin that we don’t agree with what they’re doing, but continue to treat them as if they were doing nothing at all? That’s called a passive condoning of the behavior and actually makes us accomplices to the sin because we enable it to continue. That’s what happened in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 5 when they continued to fellowship with the guy who was sleeping with his step-mom. And in their passivity they too were sinning.

I may sound like a warmonger, but I assure you I am not. I’m just kind of tired of hearing Christians say that born again people should never become angry over sin. And in part, I attribute it to the acceptance of worldly or pagan philosophy, like “love the sinner, hate the sin.” I readily admit that ultimately our anger should always be a motivator to see that justice and righteousness prevails, which is the most loving thing that could happen to the person in sin, thereby in a sense, making Gandhi’s statement applicable. But due to bad teaching in the church at large, we have redefined love to mean the absence of hate. Any parent should know, if I don’t hate the things that would harm my children, then I will eventually allow those things to bring harm to them simply through my passivity. So even though I have hate in my heart toward certain things, I am still a loving father, and I am more of a loving father because I allow myself to hate certain things.

“What about my own sin?” Some people, when confronted with the sin of another person, may begin dwelling upon their own sin and thereby feel condemned because they have exhibited self-righteous anger toward another person for sins that are just as damning as their own sin. I understand why someone may think this way. We must remove the plank from our eye before removing the speck from someone else’ eye. I firmly believe this needs to happen. But let me be clear about this. Satan will attempt to diffuse your righteous anger over sin and injustice by sort of “blanket condemning” you over your own sins. If he can successfully diffuse your anger, then the motivation to hold anyone accountable will be quenched. This type of general conviction over your own sin is not from God, but rather is condemnation from Satan. Conviction from the Holy Spirit is specific and tells you exactly what needs to be repented from. The counterfeit conviction from Satan is often vague and non-specific as if there’s a mystery sin issue you need to deal with, but you just can’t finger it, or it maybe just a general sick feeling about your sinful condition as a whole. This is what will entangle you and could even cast you into a kind of spiritual depression. And it is this sort of non-specific spiritual malaise about our sins which Satan will cast upon us to attempt to derail the healthy, righteous anger which we should have about sin.

I admit that what I am proposing here walks a knife’s edge. If we allow anger to rule over us, we fall into sin. But if we do not exhibit anger and stifle it when it is the appropriate respone, we also sin. Jesus never said that trying to live like him would be without difficulty. So after all of that, let me refocus and ask you all this question: Can a solid Biblical argument for “love the sinner, hate the sin” be built which takes into consideration healthy, righteous anger against sin and those who commit it willfully?

A Great Joy

I really love my wife. She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. She’s a great wife, a great mom, and the person I love laughing with the most. That is one of the best joys of my life. Laughing with the woman I love most. She loves Jesus more than she loves me and I don’t think I could ask for anything more.

The Lord is Gracious

This morning, Matt Lambrecht sang a song. I’m not sure of its title, but the chorus goes, “The Lord is gracious, He is slow to anger, He is rich in love, He is good to all.” That song sings right to my heart. This week I’ve been a bit retrospective, thinking much about the day I was born again, and the events surrounding my new birth. It was in May of 1992 at crusade on the New Albany High School football field. I had been raised in church, and had actually already been baptized (twice – ask me later). So you might guess that when the Holy Spirit began convicting me of my lostness, I was a bit confused and not sure of why I was under such heavy conviction. The counselor, Sheldon, and I battled for at least 45 minutes about my salvation. Actually, Sheldon was a spectator to the real battle. I was actually hearing very little of what he was saying to me. My mind and soul was busy doing battle. Satan did his best to keep me confused. Everyone had gone home, and they were packing up the chairs, but Sheldon and I remained. It was the battle for my soul that night. Then very suddenly, all things became very clear to me. The Holy Spirit triumphed, and breathed life into me, giving me the faith I needed for trusting Jesus Christ.

The Lord is gracious. The Lord is slow to anger. The Lord is abounding in love. He is good to all. He was definitely good to me that night. This week I have found joy that I didn’t know existed, just from simply dwelling upon the goodness of God and how He chose to save me, when I was still in my sins. I have wept this week, tears of exceeding joy, because of His grace that He has given to me, an undeserving, wretched worm. He is my King. The joy of my salvation is found in His love and mercy which He has given me. That joy has moved me this week. It has helped me shine brighter for Christ. Due to the joy that has filled my heart, I have had needed conversations with people this week which I have put off for a long time. I pray that you find this joy that is found in God and let it be the pursuit of your life: to seek out and find the joy that is found in Christ.

Many blessings this week.