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Love One Another: Mandate, Mission & Message Ps. Danell Perkins, November 28, 2012 Join the Conversation! @gracecov | facebook.com/gracecov
John 13:34-‐35 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” In the passage, Christ gave a new commandment – to love one another. He gave his disciples, us, a commandment: a mandate we are to do. • God intends that this new mandate come from the inside & work its way out • It is to come out what has been worked into the human heart by God’s Spirit – 2Corinthians 3 speaks of God’s work to write in us the Spirit of what He is saying. • God wants us to want Him: He wants us to desire Him; to move from simply being in His presence to being in His pleasure. o To know that we stand before Him, doing all He desires, that our hearts are turned to the Lord’s will. • The power of God’s love in our hearts is a function of our will directed toward others to do them good because God wants us. o When we love ourselves more than God’s pleasure, we live in disobedience. This MISSION of love is impossible apart from our dying to ourselves and living for Christ.
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We are in need of owning the love of God, not to simply “rent” it. When we know the sacrifice made for us, we come into ownership and take personal responsibility to apply the commandment, to make it my own and apply it as something I own. God’s goodness calls us to repentance that in experiencing His love we are able to extend ourselves to do the same. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us…”. When we see that He took such initiative, we do the same when we experience as real in our lives. The standard that God has already set needs to be understood – He has established what He intends us to live in. o Luke 6:32-‐33 – Christ’s standard calls us to love, to lend, and to give expecting nothing in return. We are to give unconditionally, loving the unlovable. o Can you love those who are hard to love & who don’t love in return? Sacrificial love never fails – the Holy Spirit leads us to love in such a way that eventually, the resistance is overcome and the barriers come down. When we decide to love the way God has loved us, we are on a mission that is not impossible.
What is our MESSAGE? That we are disciples of Christ. • A disciple is a personal follower of Jesus that increasingly does what He calls us to be. • Being a disciple means becoming like Him so that the fruit of Christ’s Spirit draws us o Not our gift – but the fruit of the Spirit o How we present the gospel has everything to do with whether we are effective • We need to be willing to be corrected so that the in-‐working of God’s Spirit addresses us so that we can be better at loving others. o God not only diagnoses the problem but then ministers to the problem. o Such change brings acceptance by which others can find acceptance o The acceptance with which Christ has accepted us is the acceptance that the community of disciples ministers to others. • Matthew 20:19 – Christ’s commission is to go in love o We must direct people & correct people in love so that they can experience Christ. o We are to “make disciples” by the correction, ministry exercized in love. o Community starts at home – home is our “practice field” where we learn to love. • God loves us and wants us to love others. o 1Corinthians 13 speaks of the posture and motivation with which we are to move toward others. o “Love never fails…”
