Beloved, Let Us Love One Another

John 13:34-35; 1 John 4:7-11
Gerrit Buddingh’ | Sunday, February 12, 2023
Copyright © 2023, Gerrit Buddingh’

What is the mark of a Christian? There are millions of people around the world who claim they are Christians. But are they really? In the book of 1 John, the apostle John objects to just accepting a person’s claim to be a Christian without evidencing certain biblical proofs in that person’s life. I am sure that John had in mind the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:16: “By their fruit you will recognize them.” That is, you can identify people by the way they live. Behavior proves the character of a person.

What, then, is the pre-eminent mark of a Christian? One word: Love. Love is the fulfillment of God’s will for us, and his will is expressed to us in his moral law. It is spelled out in the Ten Commandments. When Jesus was asked by a lawyer hostile to him, “Teacher, what is the greatest command in the law?” Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

So that is the challenge for the day. The Ten  Commandments can be summed up in one word: Love. Expressing love according to the Ten Commandments is the evidence that you are truly born again of God. In 1 John 3:10 we read, “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” So true Christians love God and love the brothers. In a loose sense, the Beatles asked the right question when they sang, “All you need is love,” even though they did not have the slightest clue as to what they were talking about.

This morning we will again examine God’s exhortations in the New Testament to “love one another.” Now, some of you may be thinking, “Why hear yet another sermon about “loving one another”? After all, it was only recently that we heard such a sermon. The answer is that God put it on Pastor Mathew’s heart that we address the topic again. Repetition is needful and good for each of us and for the church as a whole.

It is interesting that when God addresses the Ephesian church in the book of Revelation, he rebukes them because they had left their first love (Rev. 2:4). Regarding this verse, the question should be asked, “Was Jesus solely talking about love for God in a vertical sense, or also love for God expressed in the horizontal sense in love for each other?” The truth is, you cannot separate love for God from love for each other.

People’s love for each other in the local church is something that must always be nourished. Jerome, the man who wrote the Latin Vulgate translation of the New Testament, wrote this story about the apostle John in his commentary on Galatians: When the apostle John, who was living at the time in Ephesus and who lived well into his nineties, became so enfeebled with old age, the people would actually carry him to church on a stretcher. When he was no longer able to preach or teach, his custom at the various gatherings was to prop himself up and simply say, “Little children, love one another.” At some point his disciples and the other Christians who were present became tired of always hearing the same thing from him. “Master, why do you always tell us this?” Whereupon John said, “Because this is the commandment of the Lord and it alone, when kept, is sufficient.” So if you want to know the basics of successful living as a Christian in a local church, this is it in a nutshell. All you need to know is, “Little children, love one another.”

There are fifty-nine “one another’s” in the New Testament. They include exhortations to serve, encourage, forgive, greet, consider, esteem, and bear with one another. In addition to these, there are three negative “one another’s”. We are told to stop passing judgment on one another (Rom. 14:13). We are warned that we will be destroyed by each other if we keep on biting and devouring one another (Gal. 5:15). We are exhorted not to become conceited, provoking and envying one another (Gal. 5:26). It is interesting that two of these negatives are found in a book, Galatians, that addresses faithfulness to the gospel. Thus, we can say that we are disobedient to the exhortation to love one another if we do not heed its commands, and we are being unfaithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.

This morning we will examine love from 1 Corinthians 13. The first point will be “An Obnoxious Noise Maker”; second, “Christ, Our Example”; third, “Who Then Are The Others”; fourth, “Love Defined”; fifth, “What Love Is Not”; and then finally some concluding thoughts.

I. An Obnoxious Noise Maker

It is important to remember that these “one another” exhortations are commands. Rev. Gregory Perry once noted that the “one another” statements “should not be qualified so that we say, ‘Pray for one another, if you feel like it,’ or, ‘Serve one another, if it is convenient,’ or, ‘Honor one another, if you really like the person.’ As with all commands from God, we will be blessed if we obey and we will be cursed if we disobey. We must approach these ‘one anothers’ with that understanding in mind.”[1]

We must watch out lest we lose the gospel and all our religious activity counts for nothing. First Corinthians 13:1 tells us that you will just be a noisy gong. It says, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a resounding gong [you can say a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal].”

A gong, as probably most of us know, is a percussion instrument formed from a flat, circular metal disc that is vertically hung and which is typically struck with a mallet. It can be small or large. And a gong or a cymbal is wonderful if it is played properly. When played in the right context, it contributes to the overall impact of a musical piece, and it signals a powerful message of warning or alarm. It is then fulfilling its purpose and has good meaning.

We see this in Psalm 150: “Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet . . . praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.”

But when played by itself, when a person playing it seeks to impress others with the sheer volume of its tension-producing sound, a gong or a cymbal is irritating, it is obnoxious. It is not enhancing the whole. When played in a way that the gong is intended for, it is good. But otherwise, it just draws attention to itself. It is not there to serve the whole musical piece. It is saying, “Serve me.” It is all about itself then. It does an injustice to its real purpose.

Similarly, the apostle Paul is saying that church activities such as speaking in tongues, prophesying, knowing theology, publicly donating large sums of money, or even becoming a martyr—if done in the absence of love, are simply making loud, obnoxious noises that irritate and distract. They are not the core of what really counts.

Similarly, when you or I exercise our talents and abilities so that others will become impressed by how wonderful we think we are, we are doing a grave injustice to ourselves, to the other person, to our church, and, most importantly, to our God.

In these ways, the New Testament Corinthians presented themselves as spiritual show-offs. They paraded their spiritual gifts before each other, even ones that they probably did not really have. Much of their tongues speaking may have been phony. But even if it wasn’t, their proud bragging was tragically genuine. In the end, such behavior profits the person and the church nothing, for God will not reward such superficial religiosity when it is done not to exalt the name of Christ and not in love toward the other.

Relatedly, this should serve as a warning to any of us who think we might expect to buy our way into heaven by over-the-top public charitable contributions. That kind of philanthropy, done for selfish reasons rather than out of love for Christ and his church, won’t succeed in bringing you any benefit, at least not from God, but rather you will incur his condemnation.

God made you and me to serve his bigger purpose of bringing him glory by unselfishly serving others. We are to use the gift he has given us to benefit our fellow Christians, not to draw attention to ourselves. For if your purpose is to draw attention even subtly to yourself, then you are off track. Your presence in the congregation is disruptive, not unifying. And if you think that others in the church are not recognizing the status that you crave and the abilities that you perceive you possess, you will become embittered and this will drive a wedge between yourself and the others who don’t just seem to understand how wonderful you are.

So regardless of what we say, if we lack love for our brother or sister in Christ, we are nothing but a loud noise: Wah, wah, wah. That is what happens in the church where there is no love.

II. Christ, Our Example

God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, set aside his heavenly glory and came to earth, becoming a man. He did this in order to save his people from their sins and to also live his life as an example, as a perfect pattern of the way God desires all his redeemed people to now live.

Jesus was on earth both as Savior and as a model example of a life that was set apart to God; a life that when walked in the Spirit and in truth brings glory to God and unity to his church. As his crucifixion drew near, the Lord Jesus knew that he would soon leave his disciples and return to his heavenly Father. So he left important instructions for all his elect followers to live out, that having been born again, we should love one another only with a sacrificial love that comes from him—a godly disposition that is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit.

The essence of Jesus’ instruction as to life lived out in the church is contained in his extraordinary command, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Christ willingly sacrificed his own life so that we might live, and we are to do the same for others. Your good at my expense. First John 1:7 says, “If we walk in the light as he is in the light,” that is, in obedience and in righteousness with God, “we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son purifies us from all sin,” from all unrighteousness.

In other words, a Christian who loves Christ and is walking in obedience and righteousness will enjoy true fellowship with his peers in Christ. We should not make such a fine distinction between our fellowship with Christ and our fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ because, from God’s perspective, the two always go together.  Faith in Christ brings us into union with him and with all others joined with him. We cannot love God without loving our fellow believers because we belong to the family of God. To be in fellowship with the Father necessitates being in fellowship with the other children of God. This being true, let us then love one another in the same way Christ loved us and to the benefit of his body, the church, and to the glory of God.

Jesus laid down this “law of love” when, on the night of his soon coming betrayal, he said to his disciples, “A new commandment I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35). So if you don’t love “one another,” you are not Christ’s disciple. 

III. Who Then Are These “One Another’s”?

Jesus had just finished washing his disciples’ feet at what we call the Last Supper when he spoke this command to love each other. His action that night itself serves as an example of how to love “one another.” He humbly washed their feet.

It also serves both as an exhortation and an example that, if one belongs to Jesus Christ, then, by extension, how we treat the other person corresponds to how we are treating Jesus.

Now, those who love, in a sense, stand in Christ’s place. If we accept Christ, we will accept one another. If we serve him, we will serve each other. If we honor him, we will honor our brother and sister. If we submit to Christ, we will submit to them. If we speak to Christ, we will speak to them. If we refuse to slander him, we will refuse to slander them. If we will not lie to Jesus, we will not lie to his children. If we are humble before him, we will be humble before them. If we love Christ, we will love them.

Interestingly, this foot-washing occurred on the night when it was in many ways dark and portending darkness. Things were about to get very tense. All hell was about to break loose. Jesus was about to be arrested and crucified, and his disciples scattered. The question was, were the three-and-a-half years of Jesus’ ministry about to go down the drain?

Considering this, what counsel did Jesus give them? He didn’t say, “Just hang in there. Be patient,” or, “Do better at your daily devotions.” Nor did he say, “Buck up and face the difficulties with courage.” No, rather, Jesus commanded the disciples and us to love one another. And that sounds strange, if you think about it. This command, though, would strengthen them as a community of faith, and they would need that corporate strength.

There is nothing like being loved to strengthen your heart. It helps you to persevere. So this command to love each other would provide some of the most needed glue, or much of the needed glue, to keep them together when facing uncertainty and even persecution in the days ahead.

But this is a challenging command in a different way. Obedience to this command to love one another would identify them as Christ’s disciples. So I ask you: Are you Christ’s disciple? Do you love others in the church?

Now, this command to love one another is first and foremost above all the other “one another’s” because all of them stem from it. If you love, you will serve. If you love, you will greet. If you love, you will be considerate. If you love, you will esteem. If you love, you will exhort and admonish. If you love, you will comfort the other. If you love, you will teach the other. So all these “one another’s” stem from the one: “Love one another.”

In answer to the question of Tina Turner’s song, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” the answer is everything. Do you remember the example of Jesus? He had every reason to brag. After all, he was the Son of God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. But he did not boastfully glory in himself or glorify himself. Instead, he humbled himself.

Being a Christian is not merely about you. Being a Christian involves following Christ and in this context, following Christ in the church. It is about relationships. Being a church member related to Christ involves a responsibility towards others. Being a Christian means being involved in the lives of others. Being a Christian means looking beyond your own needs to the needs of others. Being a Christian means coming alongside them. Being a Christian means hard work. Being a Christian means ignoring your own wants. Being a Christian means being a vital church member. Being a Christian means being a useful church member. It is the result of being regenerated by God the Holy Spirit and being made new by the gracious love of Christ to us.

Also, a good conscience is vitally connected to loving one another. In 1 Peter 3, starting around verse 8 and continuing, says, “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, sympathetic, love as brothers, be tenderhearted and humble.” You can restate this verse this way: “Finally, be you all of one mind, have sympathy towards one another, love as brothers, be compassionate, and have a humble attitude.”

IV. Love Further Defined

Let’s look first at 1 Corinthians 13:4: “Love is patient.” More literally, verse 4 says, “Love suffers long.” This is a call to longsuffering, to endure irritation and provocation without anger, without lashing out in retaliation. The phrase in verse 5 can also be rendered, “Love is not easily angered.” Love is not irritable. So you can see that these two descriptions of love are different sides of the same coin: not easily provoked, not easily irritated, not easily angered is the flip side of suffers long and is patient.

Patience is the ability to be inconvenienced by another over and over again without being angry and upset. It is the capacity to be injured without wanting to punch them. When you love someone and he has faults, you don’t reject him or judge him or kick him to the side. You are patient with him despite his faults.

What is the opposite of patience? It is having a short fuse, of retaliating, of burning with anger within when you think your rights are being stepped on. However, we ought always to remember that we are beneficiaries of God’s wonderfully patient love with us, and this should help us to be patient with others.

This kind of patience, in other words, is characteristic of God and should be characteristic of his people. “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding [covenant] love and faithfulness” (Exod. 34:6). This covenant love grows out of God’s everlasting commitment to his covenant people. Yes, God may and will discipline us for our sins, but it is always discipline designed to foster repentance rather than a punishment designed to destroy. Now God calls us to that same kind of longsuffering love for each other. It means dying to yourself and dying to wanting an untroubled, hassle-free life.

Such love is kind (1 Cor. 13:4). This love is an action word. It suggests being helpful, doing good works. It means stepping forward to solve a problem or to share a burden or to meet a need. Kindness is the counterpart of patience. Just as patience is the ability to take anything from others, so kindness is the ability to show sympathy to others. It is not being harassing but instead being polite and courteous. It mourns with those who mourn.

Do you remember the perfect standard of kindness that Jesus set for those who would be his disciples? He said, “If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat also. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you” (Matt. 5:40–42). This is not a popular teaching in the church today. Our society does not see kindness as a quality to be desired. We make heroes of those who fight back. We admire the man who points his gun and says, “Make my day.” We look with admiration on those who take revenge.

Love does not envy (1 Cor. 13:4). The word for “envy” here is related to our word for zeal, which can be either negative or positive. In the context of this verse, it is an intense desire for something that belongs to someone else. Jealousy or covetousness is envy.

Love and jealousy are mutually exclusive. Love does not become upset over the success of another. It isn’t envious of what the other has received. It isn’t jealous of that which they have gained. Love causes you to rejoice with the blessings others have gained. You don’t desire those good things that the other person has. Instead, you rejoice in their blessings. You rejoice that their number was picked instead of yours. You rejoice that they received the promotion that you wanted. Love is not jealous

By contrast, the Christians in Corinth were characterized by petty jealousies. They were jealous of others who might have a better spiritual gift than they. They played games with spiritual one-upmanship. But love doesn’t boast or brag (1 Cor. 13:4). It is not proud or arrogant. Boasting is the counterpart of being jealous. Jealousy is wanting something someone else has. Bragging is trying to make others jealous of what you have or at least of what you claim to have. Bragging is arrogance on display. But love doesn’t make a spectacle of itself. It doesn’t try to draw attention to itself. Not boasting means dying to the desire to call attention to your own successes. Love acts in this way. Love does not parade its own accomplishments. (GJB) It does not seek to make others jealous. The person who is focused on the welfare of the other person cannot at the same time be self-centered and egotistical. Once again, love and boastfulness are like oil and vinegar. They cannot abide together.

Relatedly, love is not proud (1 Cor. 13:4). This word is sometimes translated “puffed up.” The person who loves another with agapē love will try to build that other person up rather than to puff up his or her own reputation. Love doesn’t have a superiority complex. It doesn’t look at itself as better than others. It doesn’t look down at others. It doesn’t create class distinctions or race distinctions or any kind of distinctions. It isn’t puffed up.

We are puffed up due to our own fallen sinful nature. It comes from deep within us because, since the fall of Adam, we are corrupt beings. But in Christ we have been regenerated, we have been made new. So we must now be other-oriented, other-directed and not self-consumed.

Love means death to yourself, to your own self-importance, and to your own self-glory. It means death to your own self-exaltation and your own attention-getting. This is why Jesus said in John 12:24 said, “Truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds,” the seeds of love.

Next, love is not rude (1 Cor. 13:5). It does not behave inappropriately or unseemingly. The Greek word has to do with behaving in an ugly, indecent, unseemly, unbecoming manner. Love is not tasteless and crude. Love does not act without tact and concern for the other person.

It can be noted that the Corinthians had terrible manners. This was on display when they came together for the Lord’s Supper. Some would begin eating without regard to his neighbor. Those who had plenty of food ate, while those who had little or no food went hungry. Some even became drunk. In doing these things, they showed their contempt for their brothers and sisters in Christ in the church, and humiliated the have-nots in their midst. During the church services, each would try to outdo the others in speaking in tongues. But their spirituality stopped when the service was over.

Love is not self-seeking. It does not insist on its own way. It defers to others and their needs. Love always seeks the best for the other. The person who loves another with godly love cannot be at the same time be selfish and demanding of his own prerogatives. Love and selfishness are mutually exclusive.

This stands in contrast again to the situation in Corinth. The Corinthians seem to have been seeking what was best for themselves. They were dragging one another into court. They walked all over the consciences of the weaker brothers. They did not share their food at the Lord’s Table. They ignored sin in their midst and called it love, unconcerned for the spiritual welfare of the sinner in their midst. But love seeks its joy, its profit, in the good of others, not just in private gratification.

As we have already said in verse 5, love is not easily angered, it is not easily provoked. That means it does not have a quick temper. It also means it does not harbor resentment. It means getting right with your brother quickly. But who isn’t provoked from time to time? We notice in the NIV and most translations it says, “Love is not easily angered.” The problem with that is the word “easily” is not in the Greek. I like to think I am not easily angered, but I all too often am.

Are you a short-tempered person? You might protest, “I only lose my temper a little bit. But then it is over quickly.” But anger is always a bomb set to go off. It can do a tremendous amount of damage in God’s church. So do not return evil for evil. Have a testimony of a good conscience before God rather than maintaining your own supposed righteousness. First Peter 3:17 says, “For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” Love does not retaliate then. It means choosing to show kindness. Once again, this is a characteristic of God, who is longsuffering and who calls us to emulate God’s behavior.

Love keeps no record of wrongs, or you can say love does not take into account a wrong suffered (1 Cor. 13:5). This is bookkeeping terminology. To take something into account describes the action of entering it into a ledger. The purpose of such an entry is to make a permanent record so that it will not be forgotten. But love is a good forgetter. God has treated us in exactly the same way. He has forgotten our sins. He has cast them into the deepest ocean and put a “No Fishing” sign there. He no longer takes our sin into account. “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him” (Rom. 4:8). Our sins have been put into Jesus’ account. They were moved from our ledger and written into his account book, and he fully paid the penalty for all our sins on the cross. In parallel, when we come to Jesus by faith, his righteousness is put into our account and written into our ledger. So it should cause us then to love one another.

Love does not delight in evil. It doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness. Now, there is always something in us that enjoys seeing someone morally slip on a banana peel. There is something in us that loves to watch a powerful Wall Street investor take a perp walk after being arrested. There is something in us that is happy to see a proud person humbled or a powerful person defanged. There is something in us that loves to gossip. But none of these attitudes have been implanted into us by God. They are evidence of our sinful nature arising. But love thinks no evil. It is guileless and without suspicion. The person who loves with agapē love will rejoice with those who are rejoicing and grieve with those who grieve.

Love rejoices with the truth. The Greek word refers to a behavior that is true to God’s standard; in other words, upright behavior. Love stands with the morally strait-laced person while our society denigrates him. The one who loves with agapē love will not rejoice in another’s downfall but instead rejoices when the other person does what is right in God’s sight.

Love always protects. There are always two ways of viewing a situation. Love presumes the best of the other person. And if he has done something wrong, love doesn’t parade it all over for others to see in an attempt to cut that offender down to size.

Love always trusts. The person who always trusts is the opposite of a cynical skeptic whose basic approach to life is to doubt and disbelieve, someone who always expects and believes the worst. But the one who loves with agapē is optimistic and disposed to believe the best rather than the worst about the other.

Love always hopes. The person who loves with agapē love doesn’t give up easily on the other person. He or she can recognize that there is a problem but hopes to resolve the problem. He or she maintains an optimistic, positive attitude rather than a pessimistic, negative one.

Love always perseveres in doing right. It endures and perseveres in the face of hardship.

V. What Love Is Not

These verses raise a pastoral concern: Is there a point beyond which a loving person is not required to bear, believe, hope, and endure? What about a person who is married to a druggie or an alcoholic or an adulterer or a chronic gambler or a violent, abusive person? Is there a point beyond which God does not expect such people to bear, believe, hope, and endure?

First, let me say that the four qualities mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13:7 and the first part of verse 8 are “hyperbole and exaggerations to drive home a point. Paul has already made it clear that love rejects jealousy, bragging, arrogance, rudeness, selfishness, anger, resentment, and unrighteousness. It does not bear, believe, hope, or endure lies, false teaching, or anything else that is not of God. By all things, Paul is speaking of all things acceptable in light of God’s righteousness and will, of everything within the Lord’s divine tolerance.”[2]

Second, we need to be careful not to confuse bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring with passivity. Passivity in the face of evil solves nothing. It took military might, not forbearance, to stop Hitler. It takes a well-trained police force to stop violent criminals. And so also on a moral, personal level, it can take a well-planned confrontation to deal lovingly with a dysfunctional family member.

What Paul is commending in these verses is not passivity but love. Note that Paul, in much of this letter to the Corinthians, is actually confrontive. The Corinthians Christians were engaged in several practices that are not in keeping with God’s will, and Paul is doing everything he can to dissuade them from that action and to persuade them to do what is right.

This kind of active confrontational love should also serve as a model for us when dealing with dysfunctional others. Most professionals working in the addiction treatment field don’t advise family members to sit back and take it. Instead, they advise intervention and that can often help family members plan an intervention. For example, they advise confronting an alcoholic with choices: quit drinking or lose your job, or quit drinking or lose your family.

They don’t do this in anger but in love. The confrontation is intended to be redemptive. It is designed to help the other person and that is loving. So bearing with, protecting, trusting, hoping, and enduring need not be passive, and they can even be confronting. The loving thing may very well be to get into the other person’s face and tell them they need to change.

Still, at the same time, Paul says, “Love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:8a). Captain and Tennille were an American husband-and-wife recording duo who made the famous song, “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Sadly, this proved not to be the case when, after 39 years of marriage, the couple divorced. The concept of love in and of itself will not keep us together. It is the love of the Lord put into ongoing practice that will keep us together. Love keeps its covenant commitments and that binds us together.

Paul now contrasts love with three of the spiritual gifts: prophecy, speaking in tongues, and knowledge. Love will never come to an end, but the need for spiritual gifts is temporary. Paul is thinking of the end times, of Christ’s coming again. In this verse, he contrasts what we experience int his world with what we can expect to experience once the kingdom of God has been fully recognized. God models the unending nature of agapē love in his covenant relationship with his redeemed people. He who began his good work in us will bring it to full completion when he will completely sanctify us on the great day when the kingdom of God is fully revealed and we see our Lord face to face.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). Regardless of what we claim about Christianity, if we lack love, we are nothing but white noise.

Conclusion

In his 2018 sermon, Rev. Perry quoted Pastor P. G. Mathew’s commentary on 1 John. Pastor Mathew said, “Solo Christianity is a violation of God’s word.” Rev. Perry explained, “Solo Christianity is a ‘just me and Jesus’ mentality.” So Pastor Mathew writes, “Solo Christianity is a violation of God’s word. Love requires that we be interested and involved in the lives of others. God wants his people to live in such close relationship that we know each other’s needs.” And Rev. Perry added, “And not only do we know each other’s needs, but we also know each other’s problems and sins so that we can help each other.”[3]

So how can we grow in love towards one another? We should let the gospel grip us. Unless we ourselves are spiritually transformed by the gospel and absolutely floored by God’s amazing love for sinners such as us, we will not love others. Self-will by itself won’t drive us to love. It cannot. God the Holy Spirit must work before we can marvel at God who “shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Examine your heart for signs of pride and self-interest. This is as fun as pulling a piece of glass out of your bare foot. However, it is vitally important. Are you crestfallen if you are not recognized? Are you bitter when things don’t go your own way? Are you quick to anger when you think you have been offended? Do you look down on others? If the answer to such questions is yes, you may not be born again. If you refuse to love someone in the church, it calls into question whether you are truly transformed by the love of Christ.

If that is the case, then you are not Christ’s friend. Confess your sin to God, repent, and entrust your life to Jesus as your Savior and Lord. And he will give you a new heart, a heart filled with love for God and his people. “Little children, let us love one another,” for our own and the church’s good, and for the glory of God. Amen.

 

[1] Rev. Gregory Perry, “Admonish One Another,” https://gracevalley.org/sermon/admonish-one-another/

[2] John MacArthur, Jr., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 1 Corinthians (Chicago: The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, 1984). This and other points are made by Richard Niell Donovan in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 13 at his Sermon Writer site, https://sermonwriter.com/biblical-commentary-old/1-corinthians-131-13/

[3] Rev. Gregory Perry, “Admonish One Another,” quoting Rev. P. G. Mathew, The Normal Church Life: An Exposition of the First Epistle of John (Secunderabad, India: OM Books, 2006), 279–280.