John chapter 13 verses 34 through 35 his brother burn comes to give a public reading of the Word of God Amen, thank God for his word a New commandment I give to you that you love one another even as I have loved you that you also love one another By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have loved one for another Father, we read these words in the Bible, and we are staggered by their simplicity, but we're staggered by how profound they are, how deep and powerful and earth-moving they are, how they cause us to tremble. They cause us to look, Lord, deeply into your face, deeply into the Scriptures, deeply into the mirror to make sure, Lord, that we are measuring up to what you say. And Lord God, without you, we have no hope. Lord God, without you forgiving us and making us righteous, without the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we have no hope, we are doomed. But Lord God, with you, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And I pray God that you will help us to understand these two verses this morning as we are in a series of messages on the communion of the saints. Lord, God, teach us how to delight in God together in 2025. Lord, I pray, God, that you will cause us to love one another, even as you have loved us. In Jesus' holy name we pray, amen. You may be seated. To the glory of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, amen. Thirteen centuries after the resurrection, God the Holy Spirit gave to the Christian Church one of the most brilliant teachers who ever lived. His name was Thomas Aquinas. And during his life, Aquinas so influenced the visible church that they almost completely abandoned the Augustinian understanding of salvation and fully embraced Aquinian theory. And that was a tragic mistake that led to the Protestant Reformation some 300 years later. And so in the 16th century, the reformers issued their protests against what the Visible Church was teaching most notably about both final authority and how lost people are forgiven and made righteous. And after the hierarchy of the Visible Church refused to even discuss the issues and instead excommunicated the reformers, their teachings formed what is now called Protestantism or the Protestant Church. But what is seldom discussed today is that Protestantism, as a theological construct, did not invent a single new teaching concerning how lost people are born again, justified, and adopted. What the Reformers did was to simply lead the church away from the era of Aquinas and go back into the truth that God used Augustine to articulate 12 centuries earlier. So as it pertains to the miracle of the new birth, justification and adoption, those issues that pertain to salvation, we should categorically reject Aquinian teaching and eagerly embrace Augustinian teaching. But, as it pertains to almost every other subject, Aquinas was head and shoulders more biblical than practically every other leader of the Church before or since. And so we need to understand what Aquinas taught about a whole range of other subjects if we are to rightly and fully understand what the Bible says and what the Bible means by what it says about a whole lot of issues. And one of those issues that Aquinas taught about is just how we as believers are to obey Jesus's command to love. And that attaches to why in verse 34, Jesus said for his disciples to love one another, was a new commandment. See, way back in Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, just before the people of God entered the promised land, God, through Moses, articulated the foundational truth from which everything else flows. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might, which simply means that we are to love God perfectly. So our love for God must be the highest and the best expression of love, full and complete, without any reservation. And then in Leviticus 19.18, God added another layer to that issue of love when he said, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. So around 1,500 years before Jesus was born, God had already commanded his people to love in two ways, to love God and to love each other. So the command for us to love both God and our neighbor is not new. It is ancient and was given in the beginning. So why did Jesus say that our loving one another was new? Now, scripture teaches that the way we are to love God is totally and fully, while the standard as to how we are to love our neighbor is to be measured in that it must be the same as the way we love ourselves. But for our love to be both, for both God and others is to be constant. So for every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year, we are to love like this. In other words, there is never to be a single moment where we should not love like this. But the reality is that nobody loves like this. Nobody. Not a single person. And that is because nobody can love like this. We simply do not have that kind of ability. The only person who ever loved God perfectly and loved his neighbor as himself was Jesus. Our love for God is very shallow, very haphazard, very inconsistent, if it exists at all. And our love for our neighbor is generally manifested in the fact that we usually leave them alone, wish them no harm, and wave to them when we see them. And so the command for us to love was designed to prove two things to us. Number one, how sinful we really are. And number two, how desperately we need a savior. So our greatest sin, our greatest lack, and therefore our greatest need is that we do not love. And many times we simply don't know how to love. And so all the commandments found in the Bible are there to show us what loving God perfectly and loving our neighbor as ourselves look like. Some of you might remember this many several years ago we had a real sure enough prostitute in this church that was supposedly saved and. She was a streetwalker over on Division Street in Biloxi by Yankee Stadium. And she came and heard the gospel and got saved. And Ron and I were talking to her one day and we asked her I said. Why would you do what what you did. Why would any woman do that. And she said, you know, about 45% of the time, rich people would come down here from Chicago and New York to go gamble at the casinos. And they had a lot of money, and they would pick me up. And about 45% of the time, we wouldn't do anything like you think we're gonna do. We'd go out to eat and talk. And this man was so starving to death for respect and admiration that he was not getting from his wife at home. that he was willing to pay me to give him artificial respect and admiration. And I dressed up to the nines and I would sit at dinner with him and tell him how handsome he was and how smart he was, and just go over everything he said, which is great, and he'd pay me a bunch of money to do that, because he was starving to death for respect and admiration. Women, there's about, I don't know how many women are in the United States, but I know this, 57 million American women are on nerve pills. 57 million American women are on nerve pills. And one of the biggest reasons why they're on nerve pills is because they don't know if their husbands love them. They don't feel love, they don't think that he loves them, they're just faking about that. And so you have men who don't have respect and admiration from their wives, and you have women who are not being shown love by their husbands. This is why you have divorce. This is why you have terrible, horrible, ungodly marriages. And it doesn't matter how many hours you're spending sowing or how many hours you're spending tending to your garden or how many hours you're spending reading the Bible. If you're not loving your husband by showing him respect and admiration you're sinning and if you're not loving your wife so that she understands your love, you're sinning. And this is not uncommon anymore. This is why I'm teaching about biblical manhood and womanhood. It is an epidemic in our culture right now. It is getting worse. It's not getting better. Let me tell you how worse it's getting. Now the churches, if of any size at all, are filled with people who have been divorced and remarried. And nobody has got a problem with it. The pastor don't have a problem with it. The leaders of the church don't have a problem with it. It's like it doesn't matter anymore. And this is going on and on and on and on and on to the point where it's an epidemic as well. And my question is this. If the Church of Jesus Christ is not going to defend marriage, who will? If the people of God are going to so insult the institution of marriage, then who will ever show it respect? And that's why we need to be taught what God said about these things. And I'm just letting you know that it's amazing how serious this is. When you have a domineering mother at home, let me put it this way, 100%, this is not my statistics by the way, you get free stuff when you come to church here. 100% of all mass murderers that they have ever found come from a home with no father, no strong father, and a domineering mother. 90-something percent of all child molesters come from a home with a domineering mother and no father or no strong father. Almost everybody that's in a gang right now, we used to call them juvenile delinquents when I was growing up, now they call them gang members, come from a home with no father or no strong father and a domineering mother. A domineering mother destroys the nature of a young man and he despises her. And so he responds to that warpness of his soul by doing terrible, terrible things. So all of this is now on the shoulders of men. Where are the godly men that should stand up and love their wives and lead their homes and be strong enough to say to their children as well as their wife, that's not right, we're not doing that in this house. And I know, I've talked to men all over the place, and men won't do it because they're scared they'll have World War III. And it's just, it's getting worse and worse and worse. And this is why you have all these sexual perversions just seemingly popping out of the woodwork all of a sudden. It's not all of a sudden. It's the response of men not knowing what it means to be a man. And I'm gonna get into that more than deeply in our study, but I'm just let that's why I'm teaching what I'm teaching on Wednesday nights Because it's huge and as we get into it, you're gonna see just how huge it really is So our problem is we don't know how to love women don't know how to love their husbands men don't know how to love their wives and it's a mess it is a mess and So we've got to get a hold of the horns of the altar my friends and we've got to cry out to God and we've got to start doing things biblically and Amen? Now sadly, many times Christianity is portrayed as the end of pleasure. For some reason, we see delight as something that is contrary to or that actually fights against holiness. And so many times we cry out against pleasure and delight and even happiness and joy as though those things take away from our obedience to God. I disagree. As we have already seen, we do not love enough. And likewise, I would further suggest that God wants us to be more happy than we want to be. But I would suggest to you that us delighting ourselves in God is the very epitome of what spirit and truth worship is all about. Because us being happy in our worship of God glorifies Him more than anything else we do. Dear friends, the Bible declares that it is God's will for us to not merely be happy, but for us to experience the fullness of joy. And that is why Jesus said this in John 17, 13. But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, so that, there's that phrase, so that, what's the end goal here? That they may have my joy made full in themselves. Boom. Now that verse has been in the Bible for over 2,000 years, and yet I have never met the first person who could honestly tell me that they have reached the fullness of joy. I've met a lot of people who I would consider to be very happy people, even joyful people, but the fullness of joy? Not one. And when questioned, most would tell me that what brings them the most joy, the most pleasure, the most happiness, the most contentment, was something except God. And I wonder why that's true. And I was talking to a person about this recently. And he kept telling me, he said, well, I don't just enjoy reading the Bible. I don't just enjoy praying. I don't enjoy being with God's people. I said, well, you'll be miserable in heaven. He said he likes to go, you know, play ball and do climb a tree and do. I said, well, you ain't gonna do that in heaven. So you you're probably not going. Now some would argue and say, but Brother Blair, the Bible says that Jesus came to save his people from their sins, so God is not really interested in my happiness. What he's concerned about is my obedience. Okay. But Jesus said my obedience to him flows out from my love for him. So I do not obey God. In fact, I cannot obey God unless I love him first. So my obedience to God does not come first. What comes first is me loving God. In fact, it is my love for God that fuels and empowers my obedience. So if I desire to obey God, I must first love God. But now I want to examine the word love for a minute. We can define love a lot of different ways, but one way in which we cannot define love is by using concepts like fear. our duty, our obligation. By definition, my love for God must be free. It cannot be coerced or forced. You cannot force me to love you. You can want me to love you, but you can't make me love you. Coerced love is not love at all. Yet all through the Bible, God has commanded us to love him. In fact, God has promised horrific punishment if we do not love him. So what goes here? If genuine love is free, then why does God command us to love him? Isn't that defeating the whole thing? The missing ingredient here is the fact that I'm a fallen and sinful being. And in that fallen and sinful state, I cannot love God. So unless I am saved, I cannot love God at all. And so God commanded us to love him so that we would look to him to supply us that great love for God. 500 years ago, the Protestant Reformers wrote down the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is a series of 196 questions and answers given from the Bible. And the first question is, what is the chief duty of man? And the answer is, the chief duty of man is to know God, love God, and to enjoy God forever. What is missing there? What do you not see there? You don't see a word about obedience, right? Because I will tell you that obedience flows out from love naturally and normally. So Christians 500 years ago did not believe that we should obey God out of duty or obligation or even fear. They taught what the scriptures teach and said that believers should strive to obey God out of delight and joy that flows from love. But sin is what stops us from realizing this joy. And sin prohibits God from being glorified. And sin is also what stops believers from loving God and loving each other the way that the New Covenant teaches. So in order to accomplish two things, God alone being glorified and our joy being made full because God alone is glorified, God had to take on flesh and become man. And then this God-man had to fulfill all of God's law by living a perfectly sinless life. And then God the Father imputed all of the sins of all of God's elect onto Jesus. And then God had to pour out the full fury of His wrath against our sins that were now on Jesus. And Jesus had to literally die in His flesh because of our sins. And then Jesus had to physically and literally rise from the dead in the same body in which he died, and then this resurrected God-man had to ascend to heaven and sit down at the right hand of the majesty on high, where he makes continual intercession for those God chose to save, so they will stay saved. And this God-man, Jesus Christ, will return to this earth to purify it from all evil, along with all the evil people as well as all the tares. And then he will gather the genuine believer together in a new earth where they will rule and reign with him as kings and priests forever. So salvation is actually the means by which wicked rebels are so radically changed that they may have the privilege, honor, and delight of loving God. We must remember, dear friends, that lost people do not love God at all. And they do not love God because they cannot love God, and they cannot love God because they do not want to. Ever since the fall, it is not normal or natural for anyone to love and enjoy God. It takes a supernatural, miraculous, sovereign miracle from God for any of us to normally and naturally love and enjoy God. I don't get up in the morning and say, I'm not going to commit adultery today. I'm not going to commit adultery today. I'm not going to commit adultery today, and try to psych myself up. That's not how I pray at all. I pray God calls me to love you and to delight myself in you. And then the strength and the determination to not fall into that particular sin is much easier than me saying, I'm not going to commit adultery. I'm not going to commit adultery. Obedience flows naturally and normally from love. That's how God designed it. And so our problem is not that we need to grit our teeth and close our eyes and put forth more human effort to obey. That's the old covenant. No, it didn't work for them. It's not going to work for you. If all the new covenant is, is a different set of rules, then we're no better off than they were under the old covenant. That's not the new covenant. The new covenant is love God. And I'm going to I'm going to cause you to love God. That's what he said in the Old Testament when he promised the new covenant. He said, I will cause them to walk in my statutes and keep my commandments. Well, how about that? It works. Yeah, it's amazing. If you didn't think if you didn't know anybody, you think God was sovereign. Here's how the Apostle John put it in 1 John 4, 19. We love God because he first loved us. I've got a whole sermon on just that one verse where I go into every word, every word, and talk about it. The word because means that's the origination or the source of our love for God. It's His love for us. And who moved first? Who moved first? God did, right? So I did not love God until God loved me, and then once He loved me, I start loving Him back, right? Okay, so my love for God is a gift from God. Huh? Human beings do not already possess a love for God in their lost condition. So to tell a lost person to love God is like telling a gorilla to swim. It's ridiculous. He's not going to do it. So you've got to, you've got to, you say, well, what do we do? What do we do? We can't make God, we can't make God save us. We can't even ask to be born again. What are we supposed to do? Good question. It ought to make you so desperate that you cry out to God for mercy. Yeah. That's the preaching of the gospel, thrills the heart of people who are already saved, but the preaching of the gospel is a death sentence to those that are not saved. The same gospel. It ruins them. It makes them miserable because they better hurry up and get saved. Hurry up and repent, right? Unregenerate people cannot work up or create or manufacture or initiate this kind of love for God. Loving God is the bottom line fruit that the individual has already experienced the miracle of the new birth and has a new nature that is both able and willing to love God. And the fruit or the unmistakable proof, that's what fruit is, unmistakable proof, that we are loving God is the degree to which we strive to obey God. So, here we go. Loving God is the proof that we have been born again, while obeying God is the proof that we love him. Jesus said this in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So yes, my love for God must be genuine and real and free, and that is why we need God to give us this amazing gift of love, because the gift of love that God gives to us is absolutely genuine, it is very real, and it's completely free. Now I had a guy listen to me on the radio when I was talking like this, and he called in and he said, look, God hasn't given me a love for him, so therefore I'm fine. I said, no, you're gonna go to hell. You're gonna go to hell. It's not, oh well, you love God and I don't, oh well, too bad, nanny nanny boo boo. No, people who don't love God are gonna go to hell. So he will damn you forever for not loving him. Now stop and think about this for a minute. I'm trying to give you the best example I can figure out. This is a good one. You probably heard this before, but I'll think of another one so I won't bore you. When we moved up to the place we live now, the 10 acres we live on now, first we lived in a trailer, and I was down here at the church recording and whatnot, and I came home, it's in the summertime, it's hot outside, and I walked in the front door, I was gone all day long, and my children and their friends were all on the floor and on the chairs and on the couches, had their feet on the coffee table and all that, and they were watching something, And I walked in, and I stood at the door for a minute, and nobody said a word. I said, OK. So I walked in the kitchen. You walk down this place, and there's this thing on the wall. And you open it up, and there's all kind of little switches on there. And there's this big thing at the top. And I grabbed that sucker, and I pulled it out. And what happened? And I took it. We live by the Soto National Forest. And I went outside and I threw it as far as I could into the woods. And everybody came, what's that? Something's terribly happened. You know, aliens have landed or something. And I said, I walked in this door. I own this. You've got your feet on my coffee table. You're enjoying my air conditioning that I'm paying for. You're eating my food that I bought. and you're not gonna acknowledge me in my own home? Now you'll be willing to acknowledge me, because it's gonna be hotter in the trailer than it is out of the trailer. My oldest son formed a search party and they tried to find that thing. And we went to the hardware store and they didn't have any. We'll order it, it'll be in Thursday. No refrigerator, no pump, no water. Yeah. Now, think of how, this is the most wicked, evil sin that any human could ever do. It's not adultery, it's not drugs, it's not homosexuality. Is it trying to live on this earth breathing this oxygen, having your heart beat several times a minute, sucking in the air, and you have the audacity, the unmitigated gall to try to be happy in this world while you're ignoring God, you can't be any more evil than that. That is the epitome of evil. How dare you? Go get your own universe. How dare you try to ignore God? He owns it. It's his, you are here at his permission. You breathe at his, he could stop your heart in a moment, huh? Right, so don't get all bent out of shape at somebody that has a, you come to church for a couple hours on Sunday morning and then you tip God a quarter Really? You owe him your life. Everything. Huh? So worship him. Yeah. Yeah. You feel led to worship now. Yeah. Worship him. And then enjoy it. Enjoy it. I see that's almost contradictory, isn't it? But that's what he said. So yes, my love for God must be genuine and real and free, and that is why we need God to give us this amazing gift of love, because the gift of love that God gave to us is absolutely genuine, it is very real, and it's completely free. And I would suggest to you that a genuine, real, and free love is also a happy love, a joyful love, a delightful love, a love that can be enjoyed. I've never seen anyone who is genuinely in love with somebody else who doesn't truly enjoy that other person. You can tell when two young people fall in love, because when you're behind them on the highway, it looks like there's one head. They're sitting like that, right? This is before seatbelts. The one's leaning on the other one, right? Right. Why? They want to be with each other. They don't care how much money they've got. They don't care what they're eating. Couldn't care less what condition the house is in. They're together. That's all that matters, right? That's how you were when you first got saved, remember? Nothing else mattered. Didn't matter about your clothes. Didn't matter about the car you're driving. Didn't matter about anything else. You had been forgiven. It was glorious. It was wonderful. Took years to get over that, but we managed to get over it. And now it's, what have you done for me lately, Jesus? Being in love causes us to delight to be with the other person, to celebrate them, to relish them, to desire to spend time with them, to talk to them and listen to them, to touch them and be touched by them. One of the greatest hymns about love that's ever been written is Percy Sledge, when a man loves a woman. Absolutely. He'll turn on his best friend if he puts her down. I guarantee you will. Why? That's his prize. That's his queen. That's his delight. Right? That's how God wants us to be with him. Nobody is better than God. Nothing is more beautiful than God. Nothing is more satisfying than God. Right? So we celebrate them, we relish them, we desire to spend time with them, to talk to them and listen to them, to touch them and be touched by them. And that is why Jesus said we must be born again because it is in the miracle of the new birth that God sovereignly gives us new eyes, new ears, a new heart and a new nature. So by giving us new spiritual life, we are given the gift of love for God that is both different and better than any other type of love found on this earth. That is why two things are true. We must be born again and the new birth must be a sovereign act of God alone. And many people would agree with that, but then we must go one step further and ask, to what end? To what end do we experience the miracle of the new birth? To what conclusion, for what goal, for what purpose did God the Holy Spirit come to us while we were yet lost and opened our eyes and unstopped our ears and took the stony heart out of us and gave us a heart of flesh, gave us a new nature, gave us the gift of saving faith, gave us the gift of this love for God and sadly many will reply, so we can go to heaven. to which I would say, no, no, no. That is not what the Bible teaches at all. The goal of salvation is not simply that we get to go to heaven. Now listen, I'll say people will go to heaven. I'm not denying that at all, but that is not the ultimate goal of salvation. The ultimate goal of salvation is two things, that God alone is glorified and our joy is made full because God alone is glorified. You see, God has decreed that nothing brings him more glory than when sinful people are so utterly transformed that we realize the fullness of our own joy when God alone is glorified. Another way of looking at this is to say that the goal of salvation is righteousness. And right now, I'm not talking about the righteousness of Jesus Christ that is imputed to us by faith alone. In the New Testament, there's four kinds of righteousness. There's the righteousness of God. He's righteous all by himself. Then there's the false righteousness that the Pharisees, and sadly, many people today, are trying to earn through their works. That righteousness does not exist. But to them, it's the most important thing, because that's why they're doing all what they're doing. The third righteousness is the righteousness of Jesus Christ that he earned by living a sinless life that is imputed to God's people by faith alone. But then there's a fourth kind of righteousness, and that is our own personal intrinsic righteousness. Now, our own personal intrinsic righteousness will never be perfect, but it can be better. It can be a lot better. It can be more righteous than it is now. And that is part of why you are not taken to heaven as soon as you die, and you're left here on the earth because of sanctification. You are made more holy, which is more righteous. The righteousness that Jesus imputed to us by faith alone is what gives us an entrance into heaven, and that righteousness cannot be improved. It is already perfect and sinless. Right now I'm talking about our own personal intrinsic righteousness that is developed and made better through the lifelong process of sanctification. Now our own righteousness will never be developed to the point where we can earn or deserve heaven. That false teaching came from Rome and is not taught anywhere in the Bible. The righteousness I'm talking about right now is the result of our obedience. Righteousness comes from obedience. So as we are born again, justified, and adopted, we now love God. And that love for God compels us to strive to obey God. So our obedience is the byproduct of this gift of love for God that has been given to us in the new birth. And by default, that obedience is a glad obedience, a joyful obedience, and precisely because it flows out from that gift of love for God, which is also a glad and joyful and happy love. So while both fearful and dutiful obedience is better than disobedience, only a glad and joyful obedience, an obedience that is birthed and carried out through the gift of love that God gave us, brings the highest and the best degree of glory to God. Here's why this matters. We are told to obey after we have been born again true, but even then our obedience is not perfect. It is not without flaw and even sin. And we don't always obey. Sometimes we disobey, even though we have a new nature. So at best, our obedience is haphazard and flawed and filled with sin. And that means that the righteousness that flows out from this type of flawed obedience is also flawed. And that is why our own personal intrinsic righteousness will never cause us to earn heaven. OK, but if that's true, why does God command us to obey? Because our obedience flows out from love and not duty or fear, God is glorified even when our obedience is not perfect. If our effort to obey flowed out from anything other than love, our obedience would have to be perfect for God to be glorified. But because our effort to obey flows out from love and not duty or fear, the fact that we are willing to strive to obey brings glory to God. So the reason we strive to obey is not so that we can earn any favor with God. It is not so we can deserve God's mercy or grace. We do not obey so that God will heal us or bless us or give us stuff. We obey because we love God and we desire to please Him so that He alone is glorified and our joy is made full. A thousand years ago they measured a person's salvation by how much joy and peace they have. Today they measure somebody's salvation by how healthy they are and how prosperous they are. We're completely upside down on this. People who have genuinely experienced the miracle of the new birth have judged God to be worthy and deserving of whatever we can do to bring Him glory. And that is what we live for, and that is what brings to us the greatest degree of joy. You see, God has sovereignly unveiled our eyes and minds and hearts, and we have been blessed with being able to behold the glory of God in the face or the person of Jesus Christ. And the first response to that is that we are able to see the great contrast between ourselves and God and His glory, and we are devastated by our sin. That is what brings about our desperate plea for God to forgive us. The second response is that we then begin to love what we see. And the third response is that we begin to be changed into what we see. Our personal righteousness flows out from that. And that is what the Bible means when it says we are transformed into the image and likeness of Jesus. Now the reason I'm emphasizing how our desire to obey God flows out from the gift of love that God gave to us in a sermon about loving each other is because our failure to love each other is a direct result of either not understanding these things, or of us refusing to do these things, or of us being lost and deceived about having already experienced the miracle of new birth. One of those three. Loving those whom God has chosen to save is nothing more nor less than taking this amazing gift of love for God that God gave to us in the new birth and bending it outward to all of the others to whom God has chosen to give this love. So we take the vertical gift of love for God that God has graced to us and we turn it outward and display it horizontally to our brothers and sisters. We must understand that we don't always act in a godly way. You may have noticed that about me. Sometimes we act in a carnal and earthly and sinful way. And that isn't because we're lost, it's because we're human. And so we may find it difficult or even impossible to love each other as the Bible commands. So what do we do when this happens? Like all sin, when we fail in any area of our Christian life, we must first rehearse the gospel. Always, always, always rehearse the elements of the gospel as the first thing you do after you sin against God. That will remind you of all that God has done for you in saving you and forgiving you of all of your sins, and that will empower you to repent and turn away from your sin. But the freshly rehearsed gospel will also empower you to forgive those who have wronged you. So two things will be true, your union with Jesus Christ is renewed and strengthened, and your union with one another is also renewed and strengthened. Now, here's the kicker, and John used the word love, and I'm gonna use the word union. John said, if you love God whom you have not seen, if you don't love your brother whom you have seen, you're really not loving God whom you have not seen. Same thing's true with the union. You say, I have a union with Christ, I'm saved. Okay, fine, you will have a union with your brothers and sisters. And if you don't have that union with your brothers and sisters, your union with God is not good at all. It may not even exist. It may be a figment of your own imagination. You can't will yourself into this. It's got to be true. And it's true because God made it true, not because you're making it true. So our union with Jesus Christ is what creates and sustains our union with one another. So in the case of having a hard time loving each other because someone offends you or disappoints you or fails you in some way or sins against you, the lost and pagan world teaches to get away from that person who is irritating you. Ignore them, write them off, tell them off, get angry with them, and by all means hold a grudge against them. But that doesn't require any courage or strength or the power of the Holy Spirit. Every lost person on earth can do that many times during their lifetime, and they do. And that is because lost people do not have God the Holy Spirit living inside of them, they have not had their many sins forgiven them, and they have not experienced the miracle of the new birth. The Bible teaches us to take the grace of God that God has been extended to every one of us in salvation and bend it outward to the one who has offended us, or hurt us, or sinned against us, or failed us, even our enemies. There are people on the Gulf Coast here that want me to fail. They are praying for my failure. They are really hoping that I will fail. I'm so thankful that God doesn't answer prayers like that. But they're really serious about this, because they don't like me a little bit. And so they want me to follow my face. And as far as they're concerned, if I stood in the road and got hit with a truck, they would criticize me for getting blood on the car. So that's how bad it is. And so all I'm saying is, I'm not saying woe is me, woe is me, because Jesus had that 10,000 times worse than I'll ever have it. So how can they love me if they don't love Jesus? But the point is, they'll all tell you they're saved. And every one of them will tell you that they have a union with Christ. Every one of those people will tell you that. So do you see how deeply people can be deceived? I don't have the right to hate another human being. I can hate their sin. I can hate what they do, but I can't hate them. I don't have that leeway. God can hate them, I can't. He hasn't given me any authority to hate other people. So even people who want me to die, even people who pray for my destruction, even people who are eager for me to fail, I have to love. I can't just not respond in a negative way to them. That's not good enough. I have to genuinely, from my heart, love them. So that precipitates me to get on my face before God and figure out what I can do to show my love for them, like mow their yard, or bake them a cake, or celebrate their birthday, or call them and tell them how much I love them, see them in the store, even when they're trying to run away from me, I'll grab them and hug them. Now that may not be the best ways in the world to do that, But I'm just trying to show my love. And I can't afford to walk in unforgiveness because I desperately need God to forgive me. So I can't live 10 minutes in unforgiveness. You say, what about if you hug them and you do all that, then you're saying what they did didn't matter. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying I believe God is sovereign, and God is the great adjudicator of all things, and vengeance is God's, not mine, and so God will take care of them. And I hope God takes care of them by saving them. Because if they were saved, they'd be my brothers and sisters. They wouldn't hate me. So as we rehearse the majesty of the gospel of grace and remind ourselves of the many sins God has forgiven us for, it is then much easier to forgive those who have wronged us or who have sinned against us. The reality is that the sins we committed against God are infinitely worse than any sin anyone could ever commit against us. And yet God forgave us. And so grace, not judgment, grace, not vengeance, grace, not retribution, demands that we love and not hate, that we forgive and not hold a grudge, that we pardon and not simply get away from them. Let me say this another way. No believer has the right to separate from another believer because of unforgiveness. That is simply not allowed in the body of Christ. We are never more spiritual, never more holy, and never more biblical, and never more like God than when we forgive others, especially those within the body. Listen to what Jesus, listen to Jesus when he said this in John 13, 35. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. And this kind of love will forgive another brother or sister over and over and over again. Please look at Matthew 18, 21 through 35. Then Peter came and said to him, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. That's 490 times a day. Now, that's not literal. If they sin against you 491 times, you still have to forgive them. But I've never had anybody come to me 490 times in a day, even at that, right? That's not the end of what he said. Heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. He said, for this reason. When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, his Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children, and all that he had in repayment to be made. So the slaves fell to the ground, prostrated himself before him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything. And the Lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But That slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii. And he seized him and began to choke him, saying, pay back what you owe. So his fellow slaves fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, have patience with me and I will repay you. But he was unwilling and went through him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord said, you wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave in the same way that I had mercy on you? His Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My Heavenly Father will also do the same to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart." That means no plastic politician smile. It's got to be real. Now I would suggest to you it's not always real. Sometimes there's deep-seated hostility. You gotta go back and get with God. And you might need to fast, and you might need to stop eating for a week, or two, or three, or four. Whatever it takes. And then go to your brother and say you're forgiving. Because then it'll be from your heart. Because God's gotta change you. But if you don't do this, and now he's talking about forgiveness, the dead is forgiveness, right? That is the sin, the transgression they committed against you. If you don't forget them, Jesus promised you the torturers. He will turn you over to the torturers. And this kind of ongoing forgiveness must be bathed in the love of God. The apostle John taught this in 1 John 4, 20 and 21. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot, cannot, cannot love God whom he has not seen. In this commandment we have from him that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Now 1 John is a series of ten tests. That's what the book is about. 1 John is a book of ten separate tests to determine whether you're truly saved or not. And this is one of them. Aquinas taught something. People say, I don't want to go to Brother Blair's church, because every time I go there, I feel guilty, and I don't like feeling guilty. Maybe you should repent. Aquinas taught something called the ordo amoris, or amoris. It's Latin for the order of love. It's just the hierarchy of love. And in this hierarchy, the highest and the best love is a love for God. Please listen to what Jesus taught about this from Luke 14, 26 and 27. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. And look at Matthew 22, 34 through 38. But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, They gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. Now, it is true that Jesus went on to say, the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. Jesus said that the great and foremost commandment was to love God. We are to love God to such an extent that all other loves look like hate by comparison. So our priority must be to love God first and foremost. So right after we were married, I think it was the night we got married, I'm down on my knees with Rhonda, we had this couch in our living room that was our place where we prayed, and the middle leg was longer than the two side legs, so the couch was like this. And that was where we prayed. And so we were on our knees and she still had her wedding dress on and I grabbed her hand and stuck it up in the air and we dedicated our marriage to God. And then I looked her right in the face and I said, I will never love you as much as I love Jesus. And she said, I'll never love you as much as I love Jesus. I said, thank you, Jesus. We got no problems. And I do not love my wife more than I love God. If I love Rhonda more than I love God, then Rhonda would be an idol to me. When you have idols, whether they're other people or other things, sooner or later your idol is going to disappoint you, because your idol is not God. And when your idol disappoints you, you will despise it. You will hate it. And so don't make another person an idol, because sooner or later you will despise them, because they're going to fail you. I never will forget when I first saw Johnny Unitas smoking a cigarette. He was my hero growing up, quarterback, number 19, Baltimore Colts. I thought he was the cream of the crop. And I saw him smoke a cigarette and I went, I couldn't believe it, hero. And then I heard Bart Starr use a bad word. And I went, golly, who is saved? And I was like 15 or something. I said, golly, nobody loves God. But in order to truly love God, we must also love what God loves and hate what God hates. And so loving God requires that we love what God has said and what God has done. We cannot separate between God and his word and will. They are the same. But loving God also requires that we must learn what God hates and hate that too. So we must hate sin. We must hate hypocrisy. We must hate all forms of false teaching. Look at what God himself said in Proverbs 6, 16 through 19. There are six things which the Lord hates, yea, seven which are an abomination to him. The first one is not homosexuality. The first one is not drug abuse. The first one is not any of the things we might think are at the top of the list, not even being a liberal Democrat. The first thing is haughty eyes. arrogance, pride, self-righteousness, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers. The way to be able to forgive and love each other is for us to remind ourselves of how it is that we came to start loving God in the first place, of how wonderful it was to be forgiven, to have the blood of Jesus wash us whiter than snow, of how miraculous it was for God to take us out of darkness and bring us into his marvelous light. of how undeserving we are of His great grace and mercy, how amazing it is that we can love God and that will make it much easier for us to bend the grace outward toward others who have wronged us, and we can be the people who are both willing and able to forgive. But why did Jesus say this was a new commandment? There are commands after commands in the Old Testament under the inferior Old Covenant for God's people to love. So what was new about what Jesus said? If you are a follower of Jesus, a Christian, a child of God through faith in the Lord Christ, you are a person under authority. You are not your own. You do not call the shots anymore. Jesus is more to you than master of your life, but he is certainly not less. He comes to you with more than commandments, but not less. You are a person whose life is defined by the will of Jesus. What he wills, you want. And what he wills and commands in this verse is that we love each other. And the newness of this command is found in the phrase at the end of verse 34, even as I have loved you. So we're to first live on the love of Jesus, and then we are to live out the love of Jesus. The phrase, even as I have loved you, contain an example for our love for each other. But they also contain a power for our love for each other as well. So while to love is not new, what is new is that Jesus is now the pattern we live by as well as the power we live on. And the basis for the first kind of newness is found earlier in John 13, 1 through 15. Now, before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that His hour had come, that He would depart out of this world to the Father, look, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon to betray him, Jesus knowing that the father had given all things into his hands and that he had come forth from God and was going back to God. So don't ever think Jesus was afraid of dying. He was not. He was not praying in the garden to escape crucifixion because he was scared to die. That's not true. He had come from God and was going back to God. He knew what heaven was like. He knew what being in the presence of God was like. He had been there. He wasn't afraid of dying at all. No true saint of God is afraid to die. He got up from supper and laid aside his garments, taking a towel. He girded himself. Then he poured water into the basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. So he came to Simon Peter. He said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered him, what I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter. Peter said to him, you never shall you wash my feet. I don't believe it. I really don't. I'd have done that. You're not getting on your knees in front of me and wash my feet, Jesus. That ain't gonna happen. Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me. Simon Peter said, Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head. Jesus said to him, he who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is clean, completely clean. You are clean, but not all of you. For he knew the one who was betraying him, for this reason he said, not all of you are clean. So when he had washed their feet and taken his garments and reclined at the table, he said to them, do you know what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord and you're right, for so I am. If I then your Lord and teacher washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you should do as I did to you. So God is taking the sword out of our hands and he's replacing the sword with a bowl and a towel so we don't cut each other anymore, but we wash each other's feet. That's Christianity. So here we have Jesus giving us an acted out example of this love. So when we get to verse 34, he said, even as I have loved you, so we don't have to go on guessing what he means. And that is why he said this in verse 15, for I gave you an example that you should do as I have done to you. And this will involve at least two things. One is that we lay aside status and rank and prestige and privilege and take the form of a servant. That's what Philippians 2 and 7 says, and that's what Jesus does here. The first part of Jesus' example is that he causes us to lay aside rank and privilege to serve others. The second part of the example is that this love involves practical deeds of helpfulness. Back then, almost everybody walked. The roads and paths were dirt. There was probably no socks and no sidewalks. Everyone's feet were more or less caked with dirt. So Jesus laid down a sense of entitlement and he washed their feet. So this new commandment to love is that we look at this example, that we watch our Lord and teacher and savior do this and follow him in it. We live out the love that we see in Jesus. When Jesus said that the new commandment to love each other is a commandment to love as he loved, Jesus draws attention to not only the example of love we are to follow, but the power of love that we need. And that's why he said this in John 15, 9 through 11. Just as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full, which is what I was preaching at the beginning of this sermon. We must first have a real, genuine, vibrant love for God that He gave us, or we will simply not be able or willing to continue to love others the way Jesus did. Jesus said the key to his love was his own relationship with God the Father. I abide in his love. Jesus lives in constant and perfect union with the Father. And the effect of this is that the Father's love moves into Jesus and lives there as a divine power to love others. Then Jesus said at the end of verse 9, abide in my love. So he abides in his Father's love so that we will be able to abide in his love. And that's how we are able to love each other, is He loves us. He loves us by abiding in the love of the Father, and we love each other by abiding in the love of the Son, which is the love of the Father. So the newness of Jesus' commandment is not only that Jesus has become our example for love by taking the role of a servant, but also that Jesus has become our power for love by Himself abiding in the Father. So that as we abide in Him, We are given the very love of the Father with which to love each other. Dear friends, our problem is not mainly that we don't love like we should. Our problem is mainly that because of our sin, God's wrath remains on us. How is it removed? Why does God cease to be angry with us and instead pours love into our lives through Jesus and empower us to love Him as well as others? The answer is John 15, 13. Jesus laid down his life for his friends. Jesus died in our place. Jesus endured the wrath of God that we deserved so that God's justice would be satisfied. And that is what allows us, what allows his love to flow unhindered through Christ to us and through us to each other. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. Help us to understand this dynamic that we must have a real and powerful union with Jesus Christ. And Lord, then that union will empower us to have a real and powerful and godly union with each other. And as we abide in his love, we will be able to love others. Help us to do that, Father, in Jesus' name.