Hebrews Lesson 162 June 4, 2009
NKJ Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
We have been studying in Hebrews 10
and we have come to the end of the section that deals with this 4th section
within the book of Hebrews dealing with the implications of the high priestly
ministry of Jesus Christ, His completed work on the cross, and His present
session. So what is happening in the time of His present session is He is
building for Himself through the Holy Spirit a body on earth (the body of
Christ), which is the church. He is at this time seated at the right hand of
the Father waiting for His body to be completed. Upon the completion of the
body, He will receive the kingdom from the Father. He’s in that position of
waiting.
The Old Testament picture of this is
the picture of David and Saul. When David was anointed to be king, that didn’t
mean he was king. Saul was still the king. Saul is a type of Satan in this
particular illustration from the Old Testament. Saul continues under divine
discipline to reign in Israel for approximately another ten to fifteen years
during which time David is out in the wilderness most of the time being chased
after by Saul, being abused, mistreated. Saul feels threatened by David because
David is the anointed future king and so David is out in the wilderness of
Judea most of the time forming for himself a body of his mighty men. That’s a
picture of the church so that when David then came into his kingdom and David
became the king, those whom he appointed to reign with him and his
administrators within his kingdom were taken from his group of mighty men. They
became his appointees in various positions.
That is a picture of the church,
that Jesus Christ is forming a body of believers. There are certain things that
are incumbent upon believers in the Church Age that are part of our spiritual
life, part of our spiritual growth that is part of the building up of the body
of Christ in preparation for that future role to rule and reign with Jesus
Christ in the kingdom.
So we have these three commands that
come at the end of this teaching section in verses 22, 23, and 24. You have
these three first person plural hortatory subjunctives: let us draw near, let
us hold fast, and let us consider.
It is verse 24 that we have been
looking at the last couple of weeks and drawing out various implications and
applications of the mandate that is here. This is indeed a command. It’s not in
the imperative; there is no first person imperative in Greek. What they would
use was a first person subjunctive called the hortatory subjunctive. It should
be translated with a little more force than “let us” which sounds like a nice
little invitation; but it has the force of a command. So we could translate it:
We must consider one another in order to or for the purpose of stirring
up or provoking love and good works.
The first word, katanoeo and stirring up is paroxysmos, which
has the idea of inciting action. That’s the idea. We are to think; we are to
meditate; we are to brainstorm how we can incite others to push on in the
Christian life. That is part of the function of the body of Christ. If you
think about it in terms of many analogies that we could think of (of a team in
action), this is not something that is foreign to any of us when we think about
a team. You think about a football team or a baseball team, any kind of sports
team: basketball, anything like that or a military team (a group of men that
train together and then they’re going into combat together. When they are in
training, they’re constantly encouraging each other, stimulating each other,
coming up with ideas, playing off of each other, learning how to push each
other to the limit to perform to their very best, to perform at a level of
excellence. You can apply this in just about anything. If you have a troop of
dancers or singers or any group of people where there is a group dynamic, there
is often this sense of esprit de corps and comradery that is built within that
team.
And it is not something that is
artificially generated. My biggest complaint the way this passage is applied in
a lot of different churches is you get various programs that churches come up
with to try to get people to do certain things. The most silly and superficial
that I’ve seen (is that you’ll often see in some churches) is they’ll have
visitors. They’ll have everybody stand up and then the visitors sit down. Or
they’ll just have everybody who’s a member of the church stand up so the
visitors are left sitting down.
Then everybody crowds around them
and says, “Now tell them you love them and give them a hug.”
It’s forced. It’s just artificial
whereas the commands that we are going to be looking at tonight are to flow out
of our relationship with God and the spiritual growth that we have and the
motivation that comes as a result of our own walk with the Spirit and our own
spiritual life. It comes out of this inner dynamic of the Holy Spirit and our
spiritual growth.
You can’t force that on people
through various artificial means and say, “Let’s go do this or let’s go do this
and try this program so we can be a friendlier of the church.”
I was a pastor at a church in Irving
that was called Fellowship Bible Church. That was already in existence when I
went there. It was a group of churches that had been actually started by a
Dallas Seminary professor in the early 70’s. He had great success with a
certain format that he used at a church in Richardson. That church spun off or
spawned off several other churches and they all had that name of Fellowship
Bible Church. One of the things that made them a fellowship church was that
there was this emphasis on fellowship.
But I’ve been in churches that had a
reputation for not being very friendly and I’ve had a greater fellowship and
greater social life at churches like that than I had a church that was supposed
to be known for its fellowship because it ultimately boils down to the people.
It boils down their spiritual life and it boils down to those real spiritual
factors that are intangibles that can’t be manufactured and they can’t be
imposed on people from the outside. This has to come from people who are
serious about their own spiritual lives and they have their own internal
excitement and enthusiasm about the Word of God.
You see that if you think about some
of the analogies that we could use other than the body to portray that kind of
team operation. As we’ll see when we get into some of the passages in 1
Corinthians 12 and Romans that Paul uses this analogy of a body for a couple of
different reasons. I think one reason is that because it’s alive. You could
talk about some sort of inanimate object that has many different parts that all
work together. But he chooses an analogy that is living, that is dynamic, and
that is interactive because that’s the nature of the body of Christ and the
church. It’s a living organism. It is dynamic and it receives its real energy
from God the Holy Spirit and from the Word of God. It’s not just as it impacts
individuals but as that then plays itself out within this interconnected
relationship between believers.
Now that’s not saying that our
spiritual lives are dependent or even produced by those relationships. But man
was created in the image of God and God Himself is a social being. So we can’t
deny that social aspect of our nature. We’re created to be that way.
As I pointed out last time one of
the problems that I think we’ve seen that I’ve seen in reading a lot of
literature about the nature of the church is that too many people look at the
church as a social organism as opposed to an educational organism. If you look
at it as primarily social and emphasize fellowship, you don’t understand fellowship
in the first place. Fellowship in the Bible in the New Testament ultimately
almost always relates to fellowship with God and the fellowship that believers
have with one another is a by-product of that primary walk with God and
fellowship with God. But if you put your focus there on social activity in the
church then what happens as I’ve observed in churches that I’ve been associated
with is all of a sudden your leadership becomes focused on building the social
life of the congregation – how to somehow increase their social
interaction, their friendships in the congregation things like that; and the
education aspect of the local church gets somehow lost in the need for all
these warm fuzzies and social interaction.
But when you put the focus on education,
which is the focus, the objective as stated in Scripture that the focus is to
learn the Word of God to renew our thinking to be equipped for the ministry
through the teaching of the Word of God; you see these mandates listed over and
over again related to thinking, related to study, related to concentration.
Then the by-product of that is going to be in the social life.
When I went to college I think I had
a pretty good (probably too good) social life. But I don’t think that was at
all the concern of the trustees of the university except to maybe want to
figure out ways to restrain the social life of the college kids rather than
promote it because they are naturally going to get involved in social
activities. So if they did anything it was trying to curb all that energy into
productive areas. The primary focus was on education knowing that the
fellowship, the friendships would develop as a result of that.
That’s the idea that you have in the
Scriptures. The focus of the church is on education. It is a classroom, not
sort of stale sterile classroom; but it is a classroom related to learning
about life ultimately – how to live and think about everything that we
encounter in life from the framework of the Word of God. That is going to impact
relationships. There is a dynamic that takes place within the body of Christ
between believers that is something distinctive that will stand out, that is
going to be different from that you will encounter in the pagan world.
So the main command here to consider
or to think, to brainstorm, says:
NKJ Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up
love and good works,
Then there are going to be two
participles. The main verb is going to be modified or clarified by two
participles that come up in verse 25. The first one is a negative. The second
one is a positive. The first one is “not forsaking.” The second one is
exhorting. What we’ll see is these two words are participles that indicate they
are related in the category of means to the main verb.
So the verse reads:
NKJ Hebrews 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner
of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
Now the context of the “assembling
together” is not in just any format. It’s not assembling together down at
Starbucks. It’s not assembling together in an internet chat room. It’s not
assembling together to go on a shopping day. It’s not assembling together on
MySpace or Twitter any of these other social networking things that happen on
the internet. I’m not putting those things down; but there are some good things
that happen as a result of these as believers get together for various reasons;
but that is not the meeting of the church. That’s the context here of Hebrews
10. It’s the meeting of the body of Christ and the focal point of the meeting
of the body of Christ is the Word of God. It is the teaching of the Word of God
that is the dynamic under the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit that
then produces this as a by-product.
So the first participle that’s used
is “not forsaking.” It’s the Greek word enkataleipo, which means to leave something
behind or to forsake or to abandon something. It is something that is
intentional. It’s a present active participle and it modifies the command to
think or to concentrate or to reflect on or to meditate on ways to stimulate,
to excite one another to action. So you are not doing that by not meeting
together, by avoiding, by not being involved in a local church. Now a local
church can be anything from a family in some cases to two or three families
(house churches), which is frankly what you have in a lot of the history of the
church. You think about frontier circumstances. You think about people in
various third world countries that have had very little other believers around
where they may be very small.
In fact there is man who uses
material from the church here who has I think 40 or 50 house churches that he
works with in Indonesia. They have seen a number of Moslems convert, believe on
Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior including an Imam and they are teaching them
the Word. This is happening in Indonesia. They meet in these very small groups
because they can’t really call a lot of attention to themselves otherwise the
authorities may come down on them and they may come under persecution.
So when I talk about meeting in a
local church don’t get a sticks and bricks concept of a local church in your
head. It can be many different formats. If you’re not large enough to have your
own pastor, which is true in some cases; then thankfully we have electronic
means to accommodate that. But the negative of that is we’ve seen people and we
all know people like this who have gone to the extreme of saying, “Well, even
though there is a church 5 minutes from my house and I agree with everything
that they teach there, my pastor is 3,000 miles away so I’m going to live my
whole Christian life in front of my tape recorder.”
That is not the idea that we have in
Scripture. We have in Scripture that the normative pattern of believers meeting
together in real time, not virtually so that there is this framework for
interaction among members of the body of Christ. That circumstance is if you’re
truly in isolation, like you are in the outback in Australia or someplace like
that where there are no other—or even in some of the major cities of
Australia from what I understand—believers that you can have any kind of
meeting with; then of course the only thing you are left with is some kind of
interaction with; thankfully you have a computer and there can be some
interaction with other believers that way. But that is an exception. That is
not to be normative.
So when I get a little bit irritated about some of these
things. I’m not thinking about people who have legitimate reasons to be home. I
know there are always people who have a tender conscience and when I’m talking
about something like this and they are out there live streaming and they’re 6
blocks from here and they have a legitimate health reason for not being here;
they feel guilty because they’re not. I’m not talking to people like that. I’m
not trying to make them feel guilty. I’m really talking about people that I run
into every now and then. I know of one case where I know a man lives within a
mile of here and he doesn’t get involved with any other believers. It’s just
him and his tape recorder because that’s sufficient.
That’s not the normative pattern. It
doesn’t mean that by being involved with the local assembly that you can’t
listen to your favorite Bible teacher for ten or fifteen hours a week. Of
course you can. But you can’t replace being involved with a local church
because that’s where your spiritual gift functions. That’s where you can meet in the local church with other
believers for the Lord’s Table. The normative pattern in Scriptures is meeting
together physically. So we are:
NKJ Hebrews 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner
of some, but exhorting one another,
This Greek word is episunagoge
which is an intensified form of the noun sunagoge, which to a Jewish believer would
bring up the whole idea of the synagogue. That’s where the word synagogue comes
from, this Greek word meaning an assembly or a gathering together. So the use
of this word in Hebrews, as in James—the word church or ekklesia,
does not occur in the epistle of James either. In place of it you have the
assembly of believers in the use of the word sunagoge. The idea here in the use of the
word indicates the meeting of believers together. This would be the meeting of
the church.
So we’re not to forsake or abandon
the meeting of the local church with other believers, as is the manner of some.
Instead we are to be able to fulfill this mandate by coming together and encouraging
one another. This is the Greek word parakaleo meaning to summon or to invite. It
has a range of meanings from the root is kaleo meaning to call and it has a
prepositional prefix para indicating an intensification of that. It means to encourage,
to implore. The noun form parakletos is what’s used of the Holy Spirit as a comforter,
assistant as one who comes along side to strengthen. This is the range of
meaning in this particular word, and then it has a certainly future orientation
because we are to do this:
and so much the
more as you see the Day approaching.
Meaning it’s preparation for the
future dynamic of the body of Christ ruling and reigning in the Millennial
Kingdom, not a bunch of individuals doing their own thing. Can you imagine what
it’d be like to take 9 men who don’t know each other and they’re not allowed to
talk to each other and they’re told to get out on the baseball diamond and they
are going to play against another team? When somebody does something good, they
can’t scream and shout for them and tell him how great he did. If he drops the
ball or messes up, commits an error they can’t say, “Well, that happened. Come
on. You can do better the next time,” and encourage him. They can’t talk like
that at all. They just have to stick and focus on their particular arena of
operation. That would be silly. But yet there are people who think that’s how
the local church can operate. That’s just not the team idea that we have in the
Scripture.
So I have expanded the translation
here to give us a little greater sense of what this text means.
You must thing about how to rouse one another to love and good deeds;
(which summarizes the spiritual
life)
but this is not accomplished by staying away from the assembly of the
church, as is the manner of some; but by encouraging each other when you come
together in the assembly of the local church as you see the Day drawing near.
So the focus here is on this command
to think about how to incite, to rouse, to encourage one another. This brings
us to a very important doctrine within the Scripture, the Doctrine of One
Another. The phrase is used many times in Scripture. I have around 20 points or
so related to the Doctrine of One Another.
Doctrine of One Another
It involves forgiveness because there are always going to be times
whenever we’re working with other people because other people are sinners just
like we are that whenever we’re dealing with other people there are going to be
times we get on each other’s nerves, when we irritate each other, when we make
each other angry. Yet we have to come back and recognize that none of us has
offended anyone else in life to the degree that we all offended the Lord’s
righteousness. Let me say that again. You have not offended anybody in life and
no one in life has offended you – that makes it a little more
personal—no matter how you’ve been hurt, no matter how you’ve been
betrayed, no matter how you’ve been mistreated or abused, no human being has
offended you to the degree that each of us as fallen sinners had offended the
righteousness of God. Yet God because of the payment that Christ made on the
cross for sin has forgiven us. That then becomes the basis for the fact that we
in turn can and are to forgive others. So this is part of what it means to love
one another.
It involves being kind. This is just an application of grace orientation
– good manners, being kind, being nice to other people, being gentle even
if they’re a customer service person on the phone, putting up with each other
in various situations because we know that we all face different challenges,
different problems, and different frustrations in life. So we are willing to
put up with each other because we understand the broader picture of our spiritual
lives.
Then in terms of negative commands we’re not to judge which means to
malign one another mentally based on assuming we know other people’s motives,
gossiping about one another, and these kinds of things. We are to have a certain
mentality towards one another because we’re all members of the royal family of
God. There is a certain behavior code that goes along with being a member of
God’s family in treating others who are in that family even if they’re like the
prodigal son and they’re out wallowing in a pig trough and throwing the garbage
at us. We have to handle them in a certain way.
Now the foundational command on this
is found in John 13:34-35. I’m not going to have you turn to look at every
verse that we look at, but I would like you to turn and look at this verse
because it is central to all the other commands that we have related to loving
one another. This is the starting point, the foundation. Now as we’ve done many
times as we’ve gone through John 13, we went through it not long ago in our
study of Hebrews as we talked about forgiveness and cleansing and washing and
all the imagery there. The context of these verses (John 13:34-35) is a context
of the Passover meal: Jesus' instruction to the disciples at the end of the
Passover meal after He has sent Judas away. This is when Jesus begins to teach
His disciples about the standards of behavior (the protocols if you will) of
the Christian life, just laying down the foundation. Now if you look at the
context here we are told in verse 1:
NKJ John 13:1 Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had
come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own
who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
Now that is really a summary
statement of this section that is going to extend through the end of the
gospel. It is showing that Jesus is going to teach and then demonstrate what He
means by love. That includes not only the crucifixion, but also His instruction
afterwards.
Hold your place here just a minute.
I want to connect a couple of dots for you. Love is one of the primary words
that you find at the end of John. You find it a number of times up through John
17, which is the high priestly prayer. Then in John 18 and John 19 you don’t
find the word. Hmm. How interesting! Why is that? Because when Jesus is
arrested and crucified, that’s when He is demonstrating what love is.
Then after the resurrection He
appears to the disciples. Look at John 21 down to verse 15. Jesus has this
little this interchange with Peter. He’s trying to teach Peter something about
forgiveness. There’s a connection here between forgiveness and love.
The last time Peter had spent time
talking or interacting with Jesus, Peter had said, “I’m not going to betray
you. Nobody cares more about you than I do.”
Then of course he betrayed the Lord
before the cock crowed the next morning. Peter is feeling guilty because he
betrayed his Lord despite his braggadocio that he would not do that. So the
Lord has to teach Peter a little lesson in humility. That is tied up with
understanding love and understanding forgiveness.
So the way the story unfolds after
the resurrection is that the disciples go back to Galilee and they’re out
fishing. They’re not having any luck. So Jesus appears on the shore and tells
them that they need to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they
will pull in as many fish as the net could possibly hold which is what they do.
At that point they suddenly recognize who this is on the beach. They come into
the beach and Jesus starts cooking breakfast for them. It must have been a good
breakfast. He has this little conversation then with Peter after breakfast.
He looks at Peter in verse 15 and
says:
NKJ John 21:15 So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon
Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?"
Meaning more than anyone
else—a little reminder of Peter’s braggadocio before the cross that he
loved the Lord so much he wouldn’t betray Him.
Peter responds and says:
He said to Him,
"Yes, Lord; You know that I love You."
So Jesus says:
He said to him,
"Feed My lambs."
He goes on in verse 16. He repeats it.
NKJ John 21:16 He said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you
love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You."
He said to him, "Tend My sheep."
There are a lot of things going on
in this passage that I’m not going to address because there’s all kinds of
synonyms used here to get across a number of different points. There are two
different points love both phileo as well as agapao. But Jesus is driving home the point to Peter that love
means to obey Him.
Now that comes out of this whole
discourse that begins in chapter 13. So from 13 when Jesus introduces this new
commandment that we’re to love one another all the way to the end of the
gospel, love is a major theme that everything relates to in terms of the
teaching as a core element in the Christian life.
In John 13 itself he starts off in
the Upper Room as we’ve studied so many times, washing their feet. A lot of
times people will hear sermons or Sunday school classes on the importance of
being a servant, taking care of each other. In fact there are some
denominations that take this very literally. Whenever they have the Lord’s
Table they literally wash each other’s feet. I’ve never been to one of those
services and I’m sort of glad that I haven’t. I can’t image that. I guess you
have to make sure you have clean socks on that morning. But they do that
literally. The focus here isn’t on washing people’s feet. The washing of the
feet as we’ve seen in our study is a picture of that partial washing that
occurs with confession of sin that comes after the complete washing that occurs
at salvation.
Remember the original picture of
this that lies behind these two words that are used for washing. One word means
a partial washing; another word means a complete washing or a bath. When Jesus
began to wash Peter’s feet using the word nipto meaning a partial washing, Peter said,
“No Lord. You’re not going to wash me.”
The Lord said, “Well Peter, you
don’t understand what I’m doing now; but you will understand this later on.
Then Peter said, “No. I’m not going
to let you wash my feet.”
The Lord said, “Peter if I don’t
wash you, (nipto,
partial washing) you will have no part with Me.”
Here the word for part is that Greek
word meros.
It’s also used for share of an inheritance, a portion of one’s inheritance. It
has to do with our inheritance in Christ, the rewards that we receive are
predicated on our spiritual growth. Spiritual growth occurs when we are in
fellowship with Christ, fellowship with God, walking by the Holy Spirit. When
we are walking by the Holy Spirit, we have been cleansed of our sin. When we
sin we’re out of fellowship. There has to be that partial cleansing again.
Total cleansing is what occurred at salvation when we are positionally
cleansed, washed by means of the Holy Spirit washing of regeneration
(Titus3:5). We are completely clean. But then we dirty our feet along the way
and we have to use 1 John 1:9 to confess our sins in order to have that
cleansing restored so that we can continue to grow and move forward. The
washing of the feet has to do with a picture of forgiveness.
So in verse 10 Jesus said:
NKJ John 13:10 Jesus said to him, "He who is bathed
That is he who is completely washed
referring to a believer, one who is totally cleansed.
needs only to
wash his feet,
but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."
See we recover that full cleansing
when we confess our sins. Then we are back in fellowship. The picture of the
cleansing, the foot washing, is a picture of forgiveness. It begins. Its
foundation is Jesus is cleansing us. We are cleansed at the time of confession
of sin; we’re cleansed by God.
Then Jesus says if you look down a
few verses to verse 15. He says:
NKJ John 13:15 "For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have
done to you.
Now that’s that other kind of
forgiveness. That’s the forgiveness toward one another. Jesus is modeling the
fact that what precedes forgiveness for one another is forgiveness from God.
That pictures for us how we are to forgive one another. Now that portrayal of
forgiveness is within the broader context of the concept of love. That’s why
the chapter begins reminding us that having loved his own who are in the world,
having loved him to the end. He talks about love all the way through the
chapters.
So then we come down to verse 34,
35. Jesus says:
NKJ John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you,
This is the Greek word akaine
indicating a change, a new kind of commandment that Jesus is giving to us.
that you love
one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
Now Leviticus 19:18, we have a
commandment in the Old Testament that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.
That is a command within the Mosaic Law – love your neighbor as yourself.
Who are you supposed to love in that example? Your neighbor. Well, your
neighbor may be a believer or an unbeliever, but it could be an unbeliever. The
pattern for loving the unbeliever is yourself, as you love yourself. Now there
are some people who will say that not everybody loves themselves.
“Some people have a bad self image
and they don’t love themselves.”
But that’s not what the Bible says.
The Bible says that every man loves himself, Ephesians 5. It’s presented as a
standard principle. Everybody loves himself. Even if you hate yourself or even
if you think you hate yourself, you really don’t hate yourself. You just
disappointed yourself because you love yourself so much. The reason you hate
yourself is because you haven’t lived up to the high standards that you think
you should be living up to because you love yourself. But the natural
orientation of the fallen human soul is to love itself. It is self-absorbed and
in love with itself.
The Old Testament pattern is to love
everyone, believer and unbeliever, like you love yourself. But Jesus changes
that. He says you are to love one another. The “one another” does not include
unbelievers. It doesn’t mean we are to be nasty to unbelievers. But He’s
focusing on the dynamic within the body of Christ. You are to love one another
(That is other believers.) “as I have loved you.” Not as you love yourself; but
as Jesus loved you. Now that ratchets the standard up extremely high, and the
only way that we can do that is if God the Holy Spirit is producing that kind
of love in us. That’s why love is the first fruit of the Spirit mentioned in
Galatians 5. In broader context Galatians 5:13 all the way down to the end of
the chapter grows out of a command to love. So Jesus gives a new commandment
that you love one another “as I have loved you.”
Then He repeats it,
NKJ John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I
have loved you, that you also love one another.
That is by this love for one another.
It’s not by the doctrine that you know. It’s not by how many doctrinal
notebooks you have. I’m not putting that down. That’s the means to the end; but it’s not the end. It’s not
how much you know. It’s not the extent of your theological vocabulary. It’s not
any of the other things that people want to emphasize that somehow are
barometers for their spiritual life. It has to do with character. It is love
for one another because that is the ultimate sign and indication of spiritual
growth and spiritual maturity. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens only
because we have spent a tremendous amount of time studying the Word under the
filling of the Holy Spirit and applying it consistently in how we think, how we
act, what we do, just applying the principles of Scripture.
As we go through that process of
spiritual growth, failure, recovery again and again down through time, then a
capacity for love develops within our souls that is unique and distinct. It
can’t be manufactured. Unbelievers can’t do this. Maybe here and there they
might rise to an occasion and have a semblance of unselfish love, but this
cannot be produced by energy of the flesh. This kind of love can only be
produced by God the Holy Spirit.
So it becomes the sign Jesus says:
NKJ John 13:35 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love
for one another."
Not just believers, but disciples. A
disciple is a distinct category of believer that has decided to push on beyond
simply being justified so they have eternity in heaven; but someone who wants
to grow and mature to the fullest extent that they can. This indicates that
someone has grown and matured if they have love for one another.
So how many times are we told to
love one another in these two verses? Three times, as if it’s important.
Then in John 15:12 just two chapters
later within the context again of the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus says:
NKJ John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved
you.
So again the commandment is reiterated.
He is the standard so we have to understand how Jesus loves us. That takes a
lot of time. That takes a lot of investigation and study of the Word of God to
understand how Jesus loved us, how the God the Father loved us and all that’s
involved in that love. At the very core of that is understanding the whole
concept of grace; that that love is unmerited. It’s unearned. It is based
totally and exclusively on the character of God and who He is and what Christ
did on the cross. It means that we have to fully investigate and understand all
the dynamics that went into salvation.
So Jesus said:
NKJ John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved
you.
Again just 5 verses later:
NKJ John 15:17 "These things I command you, that you love one another.
So all through John 13, 14, 15, 16,
and 17 there are various other mandates, statements made by the Lord related to
love. For example, in John 15:13 Jesus said:
NKJ John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life
for his friends.
…which is what He is going to do on
the cross.
The next time we have this mentioned
as we go through the Scripture is in Romans 13:8. Paul says:
NKJ Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves
another has fulfilled the law.
Here he’s not talking about the
Mosaic Law as this is the plan of God. This is going back to Jesus’ command as
this new commandment to love one another. He’s not talking about how to get
saved. He’s talking about the outworking of a justified person’s spiritual
life. The concept there of owe no one anything is an imperative. In these
slides I put a little exclamation point by the main verb, which expresses that
this is a command, a mandate for the spiritual life.
Now I’ve heard a lot of people teach
using this verse as an economics verse that we’re not supposed to get in debt.
That’s not really the idea here. I don’t think that’s a legitimate application.
What Paul is talking about here is that we should not be indebted to anyone
else, which means that we owe them something. We are indebted to them not
financially, but in terms of behavior. Maybe we have not forgiven them,
something along those lines. Or we have sinned against them. In contrast we are
not to be beholden to any one in any way. But we are to love one another. That
is the primary command for the spiritual life.
Then as I mentioned earlier in
Galatians 5, Paul states:
NKJ Galatians 5:13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty
as an opportunity for the flesh,.
That is, opportunity to fulfill the
sin nature.
but through
love serve one another
There’s a command. This really comes
up a couple of different ways in the “one another” lessons. We are to love, but
that love is exemplified through serving one another.
Then 1 Thessalonians 3:12 states:
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 3:12 And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another
and to all, just as we do to you,
Here the verbs are infinitives, but
they are imperatival infinitives. Again the emphasis is on the mandate to
increase in love and abound in love. May the Lord make you increase and abound
in love through spiritual growth, spiritual maturity.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 4:9 But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to
you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another;
Again you have an imperatival sense
there to the syntax of the passage. This is not an option.
2 Thessalonians 1:3 Paul says:
NKJ 2 Thessalonians 1:3 We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting,
because your faith grows exceedingly,
Now faith grows exceedingly because
you study the Word and you apply the Word.
and the love of
every one of you all abounds toward each other,
It continues to grow. There is this
genuine care and concern for each other because of the spiritual growth that
precedes that.
Peter writes:
NKJ 1 Peter 1:22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the
Spirit
That should be understood in the
instrumental sense. The idea again is cleansing, being in fellowship.
in sincere love
of the brethren,
Then we have the command again.
love one
another fervently with a pure heart,
Then we have several passages in 1
John and then 2 John.
NKJ 1 John 3:11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we
should love one another,
Again with an imperatival sense.
NKJ 1 John 3:23 And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His
Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.
NKJ 1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who
loves is born of God and knows God.
It’s a result of spiritual growth.
You only know God as you grow spiritually after salvation.
NKJ 1 John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love
one another.
Again with an imperatival infinitive
there.
NKJ 1 John 4:12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in
us, and His love has been perfected in us.
Then:
NKJ 2 John 1:5 And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment
to you, but that which we have had from the beginning: that we love one
another.
So those are the fifteen different
uses of this command to love one another. The reason I wanted to go through all
of that is because this isn’t something that is just stated one time or two
times. It’s again and again and again. Even when it’s not stated precisely as
“love one another”, it is stated in other ways.
In Romans 1:12 Paul says:
NKJ Romans 1:12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith
both of you and me.
It doesn’t translate well in
English; but you don’t have the “one another” come across in most English
translations so I’ve put it in there to give you a sense of where that word is.
Paul is saying that he wants to be encouraged. Here is the Apostle Paul; and he
is encouraged and strengthened by being with other believers and this mutual
ministry that we have in one another’s lives by being together with them by the
other’s faith, by their positive volition, by their encouragement in the Word
that we gain great encouragement when we understand that there are other
believers that are positive. It’s not just you and I and a few others; but that
there are many others who believe the same way we believe and are studying the
Word and the Word is a priority. That is encouraging us to meet with a group of
believers just by the virtue of numbers.
That’s not a sign of weakness. That
is normal in life. When you go to a class and there’s only one person there and
you never see more than maybe two or three others, you may be a little
concerned that things aren’t going very well. When there’s a large number, the
numbers do encourage you. It’s not that you are putting the emphasis on numbers
or using those as a barometer. It’s just that we become encouraged when we see
others responding to the Truth.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:18 Paul uses
the word parakaleo.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 4:18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.
So the comfort comes from doctrine.
The priority is always on doctrine. It is not on social relationships or
dependence on people that there’s no sense of that anywhere in Scripture. But
we are to comfort one another with the words of Scripture.
Same thing in 1 Thessalonians 5:11.
This is also in the context of grief.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Therefore comfort each other and edify one another,
So there are two different words
here used for the “one another” activity – comfort and edify or build up
one another.
just as you
also are doing.
So we have these two different Greek
words that used in these passages – sumparakaleo and parakaleo emphasizing that d imension of
our “one another” ministry.
Now that’s the first three
points. We’ve go 17 more to go. A
lot to this so we’ll come back next time to start on point #4.