Loving Your Friends

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Some people are hard to love, right? Hard to love somebody when you don't even really like them, right?

Because some people have flaws and they are annoying flaws. So how can your love be without hypocrisy when people annoy you, they hurt you, and some of them you don't even really like that much? The gospel is going to enable you to love people in a way that nothing else can because it teaches you that you will never have to love someone more annoying than you were to God. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, it's true that the only way to really love like Jesus is to fully understand how much He really loves us. In fact, Scripture even says that we love Him because He first loved us. Today on Summit Life, the Apostle Paul shows us six characteristics of gospel-shaped love and Pastor J.D. Greer will help us understand that when we become the kind of community that is known for its love, the world will be better persuaded to believe the gospel. We're talking about loving your friends, so let's jump right in. I've got your Bibles this weekend and I hope that you brought them if you'll open them to Romans chapter 12.

Romans chapter 12 is where we are in our March to the Book of Romans. We are going to talk today about one of everybody's favorite subjects and that is love. And many of you have already started streaming the Hallmark Christmas movies. Be honest, okay? Some of you dudes are even getting in on the action.

Don't try. You know who you are. You watch these things even though you know the plot is always, every time, completely and totally the same, okay?

Is she going to choose the slick guy from the big city or the unassuming guy wearing flannel shirts from the small town who has a penchant for witty banter and turns out in the final scene of the movie to be Santa Claus's nephew or something like that. That's how it all ends, okay? In our culture, we are love junkies. You might as well face it, as the great prophet said, you are addicted to love. Well, here we are, chapter 12, verse 9. Paul is going to give us a glimpse of what true love actually is. Now, it's not so much romantic love, although what you and I will learn today is certainly his implications for romantic love, but he's talking specifically about the kind of love that the gospel creates in a community. What is it that makes Christians love each other? What is it that attracts Christians toward each other? You know, Jesus said that the single most defining characteristic of his church would be our love for each other. It is your love for each other, he told his disciples, that is how the world will actually know that you belong to me. At the end of the day, what convinces the world of the truth of the gospel is not my eloquent defenses of the faith, not my explanation of the problem of evil. What convinces the world the truth of the Christian faith is our love for each other. It's like Francis Schaeffer, the famous Christian apologist says, he says, at the end of the day, God's final apologetic to a skeptical world is the love that exists in the church. And I will just go ahead and tell you, I really feel like if we were doing this as a congregation, if we would live out what Paul is going to tell us in Romans 12, we would not need to try so hard in outreach. We wouldn't need great music or special services to attract people to our church.

People would probably be beating the doors down to get in because they would see the reality of Jesus. So what does that love look like? What does that love look like and where does it actually come from? Verses 9 through 13, Paul's going to explain what love in the church looks like toward our friends. You might even think of this as love in friendship.

We're going to look at that today. The next verse is verses 14 to 21, which we'll look at next time. Paul is going to describe our love for the outsider, our love for, in some ways, our enemies. Six characteristics of gospel-shaped love today. Well, you might think of this as six principles even of gospel-shaped friendship. By the way, before we jump into these, it is crucial that you keep in mind that all of this, all of Romans 12 and pretty much everything from here on out in the book of Romans is Paul's explanation of what a life lived in response to the gospel looks like.

Remember he started this whole section, this whole last part of the book of Romans, he started in chapter 12 verse 1 with the word therefore. Therefore, in light of the mercies of God, in light of what God has done for you in the gospel, this is therefore how you ought to love one another because only the gospel can produce this kind of love and I'll try to show you that as we go through. Number one, number one, Paul says our love, our love in the church should be without hypocrisy. Verse 9 just says very straightforwardly, let love be without hypocrisy. Love should be sincere.

Love should be non-phony. Churches, particularly churches here in the south, can be places of phony love where everybody seems nice in the outside, they're warm, they are polite, they are helpful, but sometimes you press underneath that veneer and a lot of times you're going to find a heart that is full of backbiting and jealousy and gossiping and and even hatred. You've probably felt that in the church before or in southern society, have you not? Y'all one of the worst southern phrases is bless his heart because that means that what I just said was really mean but I'm going to cover it over and season it with some southern politeness with bless his heart. He is such an idiot, bless his heart. You can't just say with all due respect then say whatever you want, right?

Right? Or have you ever been around people who love to gossip in the form of prayer requests? I know something about Denise that we got to be praying about, right? That is what Paul is talking about. He talks about phony kind of love and maybe you've experienced that phony kind of love and maybe it really turns you off. Some of Jesus's strongest words in the gospels were about people like this.

In fact, he called them white washed tombs, beautiful in the outside but full of death and rottenness on the inside. Here's the thing, when you get closer to somebody's heart and you actually start getting to know them, the more you sense that. You may have a great personality but no amount of politeness, no pleasantness of personality is able to cover up what's rotten on the inside. A few years ago on a chilly November morning, I cranked up my car in the garage and when I cranked it up, I heard a weird kind of sound. It was sort of like a grinding sound but it went away. So I do what I always do when I hear weird sounds in my car, I ignore them and see if they go away. And sure enough, it went away and I thought, well, that worked itself out.

Praise God. And so I drove to church or work and I got in my car at the end of the day and when I got in the car, I was like, it just smelled weird. It's just a little weird in there.

Not terrible, just different. And I thought, well, that's strange. So I went home and I vacuumed the car and I sprayed some Febreze in it and the next morning got up, it smelled even worse. And so I went out that afternoon, I bought a couple of those little high-powered deodorizers and put them on every single vent. I thought, that'll take care of the problem. Well, next morning I get in the car, it had not taken care of the problem, the problem had gotten worse.

So I kid you not, I found the air take in valve in the car and I took a whole bottle of Febreze, turned the heater on and just sprayed it in the whole time until the bottle was empty thinking that would surely take care of the smell. Well, it did not. So eventually I had to take it into the mechanic and I paid him his $150 for him to tell me what was wrong. Never forget, look on his face, comes back into the little waiting area. He's got this little impish grin on and he's got a Ziploc bag with a dead mouse in it, kind of a chewed up mouse.

And he was like, this is your problem right here, right? There ain't no amount of Febreze that's going to cover up that kind of smell. When something's rotten on the inside, you got to get rid of what's rotten. And Paul says, that is what love with hypocrisy is like.

There is a dead mouse rotting on the inside and there's no amount of Febreze politeness that's going to cover it up. Your love ought to be different. It ought to be loved consistently all the way down. Now, that's an easy thing for me to stand up here and say, right?

It's the easy thing for you to sit out there and shake your head and be like, that's right, pastor, that's what it should be. But let's face it, right? Some people are hard to love, right? Hard to love somebody when you don't even really like them, right? Because some people have flaws and they are annoying flaws. Who are you thinking about right now?

Point at the person you're thinking, no, no, don't point at them, all right? But you got annoying flaws that hurt you. So, how can your love be without hypocrisy when people annoy you, they hurt you, and some of them you don't even really like that much. Well, see, that's where Romans 12-1 kicks in. Romans 12-1, in light of the mercies of God, the gospel is going to enable you to love people in a way that nothing else can because it teaches you that you will never have to love someone more annoying than you were to God. You're never going to have to forgive somebody of more than God's forgiven you of. And when you really embrace that, that changes your outlook on people and it will produce in you a certain kind of tenderness toward others. Recently in our family devotions, we were reading through a John Piper devotional and John Piper tells the story in Matthew 18 of the ban for giving 10,000 talents.

This really is my favorite parable, y'all, and it wrecked me, again, just in the middle of family devotions. The basic gist of it is this, there's a king who has a servant who owes him 10,000 talents. Sometimes the ginormous size of that debt is lost upon us because we don't think in terms of talents, but think of it this way.

King Herod, who was one of the richest kings in Israel of all time, the richest man in Israel at the time of Jesus, King Herod's annual income from all the taxes he collected was 900 talents. So when you say a guy's got a debt of 10,000 talents, we are talking about a nearly incalculable debt. So the king threatens to sell this man and his family into slavery to pay the debt, which is what happened in those days. Verse 26, Matthew 18, at this the servant fell face down before him and said, no, be patient with me, and I'll pay you everything. Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him, and forgave him the loan.

That forgiveness, said John Piper, is as spectacular as the size of the debt, and that is the point. Jesus, in telling the story, wants us to realize that sin is an incalculable debt we can never pay back, never. No amount of contrition or good works could repay the debt of dishonor. We have heaped upon God through our sin. Yet in this story, the servant in Jesus' story did not recognize the forgiveness for what it was.

He did not see it as stunning, breathtaking, and undeserved. In fact, Jesus never even records the man saying a single word of thanks. Even more incredibly, when this man walks out of the courtroom, he encounters another man who owes him a single denarius, which was the one-day wage of a poor man, of a day laborer back then. This servant seizes that man, begins to choke him, and says, pay me what you owe. The man pleads for patience, but the servant will show none, and he throws him in prison until he can pay the debt.

Well, the king, the original king, hears about this and is legitimately angry. He brings the man, the servant, back in and says, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?

Because he was angry, he handed him over to the jailers until he could pay everything that was owed. Jesus' conclusion goes right to the heart, and is the key to unlocking Romans chapter 12. So also will my heavenly father do to you, unless any one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart. John Piper says, the point of this parable is that God has no obligation to save a person who claims to be his disciple if they have not received the gift of forgiveness for what it really is. Infinitely precious, amazing, undeserved, heart humbling, mercy awakening. If we claim to be forgiven by Jesus, but there is no sweetness of forgiveness or patience or love in our hearts for others, God's forgiveness is simply not there in our heart. People who have really been impacted by the gospel first have a sweetness and a gratitude in worship.

When they walk in, they don't need to wait and see what songs we're singing or if they like the worship singers that are on the docket this week. Their hearts are just ready to overflow in gratitude and say, thank you. Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.

Were the whole realm of nature mine, that would still be a present far too small. Love, so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. And that sense of gratitude and that overwhelming sense of all then leads to a tenderness and a compassion toward other people because you recognize that you're never going to be called to love or forgive somebody more than God has loved and forgiven you. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. For more information about this ministry, visit us at jdgreer.com. Before we dive back into today's teaching, I wanted to take a minute to remind you about our latest featured resource. It's a Bible study on the second half of Romans by the late Pastor Tim Keller. This study, called In View of God's Mercy, will help you experience and learn from the deep, rich teaching in the book of Romans in a whole new way. Each of the seven lessons includes key verses, practical application questions, and prayer prompts, which are designed for your own individual reflection or for facilitating group discussions. And we'll send you a copy with your gift of $35 or more to this ministry.

And you can give right now by calling 866-335-5220 or by visiting us online at jdgreer.com. As always, we want to express how grateful we are for all of our generous donors and gospel partners. You truly do make Summit Life possible. Now, let's get back to today's teaching on Summit Life.

Here's Pastor J.D. Here's a question. What do you do when you feel like your love has hypocrisy in it? What do you do when you realize this is not really true of your heart? You're just supposed to throw away politeness and act out whatever feeling is in your hearts.

No, here's what you do. You still choose to act in love. You still choose to be kind and polite, even when you don't feel like it.

Here's the thing. The whole time, though, you're repenting of your hateful, unkind heart. The whole time, you're asking God to change it, and you are pressing more deeply into the mercies of God for you. And you're saying, God, I know I should love this way. God changed me.

God, overwhelm me with the beauty of the gospel so that I can love people like this. Early on in my Christian journey, I remember really being discouraged because I knew, I knew, I knew that my heart was not what everybody else thought it was. And I remember one afternoon, in anguish, telling God, God, I am a failure at the Christian life because I know how to be polite. I know how to act, but I know that in my heart, I'm still jealous of people. I'm still uber competitive with people.

I'm still hateful toward people. God, I'm a failure at it. It was one of those times where God speaks to me in a voice that is more clear than if it's audible. God said, finally, you're now ready to begin the Christian life because the Christian life is not about you becoming loving for me. It's about me producing my love in you. So you're all, here I am 20 years later, 20 some years later, and here I am still feeling like I am a failure at the Christian life, still in a posture of repentance before God, constantly confessing the hypocrisy of my heart, asking God to change me, constantly pressing in on how much God has loved me, constantly asking God to reawaken me and renew me in the gospel so that I can see myself and therefore other people the way that I'm supposed to.

Here's what you need to take away from this. A bunch of y'all need to stop pretending and you need to start repenting because Jesus cannot help you until you expose the awakeness of your heart to him. That's where he begins. That's like Pastor Joby said a few weeks ago. Jesus can't help the fake you. Jesus didn't die for the fake you.

A real Jesus died on a real cross for the real you. And the only way he can help the real you is when you expose the real you to him. And when you expose your heart to him and say it's full of hypocrisy, right?

It's got a dead mouse in there and it's rotten and it smells terrible. At that point, the healing power of God can begin to work and you can begin to embrace more the love of God for you. Paul says, let your love be without hypocrisy. Number two, our love should be grounded in God's truth.

Also verse nine, right? Detest what is evil. Cling to what is good. Love has to be grounded in God's truth because we recognize that love that is not grounded in God's truth is ultimately not really love at all.

Here's why that's important. When you care about somebody, your sense of right and wrong can get thrown off because you have united your heart to theirs. And so you want to see them happy. And what makes them happy makes you happy, what makes them sad makes you sad, what makes them miserable makes you miserable. And when you see them doing something that you know is wrong but it seems to be making them happy at the moment, a lot of times you don't really want to say anything because you don't want to make them upset. But you know that's not really a sign of love. If anything, that is a lack of love.

I mean, think about it. Have you ever seen a parent who is too weak to discipline their children even when it's necessary? They just can't bear the tears and the anger and the you don't understand and you're too strict and I hate you and all that kind of stuff. And so what do they do?

They cave. They give the kid what they want even though if you ask them, they would know that's not really good for the child in the long run. In that moment, it's not that they love their kid too much, it's that they love their kid too little. They love being liked by their child. They love being in harmony with the child.

They love the child not being upset at them more than they actually love their child. I think one of the first times I experienced this and it's just the worst way was when my oldest daughter turned one year old. She was one year old and you took her in for the round of vaccine shots that they get at one.

Which by the way, any pediatricians here, you need to give a class to the parents that are about to do that. Because as traumatic as it was for her, it was more so for me. Because here I am, sitting there holding my daughter and she's holding daughter in her lap so I'm holding her and she takes that first of four needles, sticks her in her arm.

My carer let out a cry that could have woken the dead and her eyes are darting about the room like, who is doing this to me? And she locks onto that doctor and she looked at him like, you murderer. And then the worst is then she turns around and looks at me because she's like, surely you can take care of this.

Look what this man is doing to me. She looks at me and what do I do? I look at the doctor and the doctor says, you got to hold her down even tighter because we got three more shots. So I cling more tightly to her and I will to this day and to the day of my death will never forget the look on her face as I held that girl down for three more shots. I'm going to go see counseling. I'm sure at some point and just get that resolved because the look of betrayal, the look of dismay in her face and dad, you are supposed to protect me.

You should be doing something about this. What are you doing to me? You and I both know that I'm not doing that because I don't love her. I'm doing that because I do love her and I love her so much that I'm willing to put up with the temporary anguish and the confusion and all the things that she's going to want to say to me at that moment if she can save them at one year's old because I know what's actually best for her. A parent who's not going to do that and not go through the pains of discipline, doesn't love their kid too much, they love them too little, you see the same thing applies in our relationships in the church. Obviously we're not disciplining one another, I get that, but when you don't love somebody enough to tell them the truth because you think it's going to upset them, then your love for them is not actually love at all. It's actually love for yourself.

You love your own comfort. You love them not being upset with you. You like them liking you more than you actually love them. That word detest in Greek literally means be horrified like you would a disease or something that was killing one of your friends.

The word cling literally means glue yourself inseparably to as if you're clinging onto something for dear life. Paul says your love has to be grounded there and a love that won't warn against the dangers of evil because you're afraid of upsetting the person or you don't want to live in a strained relationship with them is not really love. What's motivating you in that moment is not love for them, it's love for you. It's love for your own comfort. Make sure your love is grounded in God's truth and make sure it's willing to suffer the abuse from that person, the emotional, just the invectives that are going to come when you try to tell them the truth. Jesus loved us so much that he told us the truth even when it made us so mad that we killed him for it. Paul said that's how you should love each other.

Number three. Our love should feel like family. Paul says our love should feel like family. Look at verse 10.

Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Two very interesting Greek words in that verse. The verse love one another deeply is one Greek word one Greek word.

Philo storge. Philo is the word for friendship love. Storge is the word for affection. It's like two words for love put together. It's like a love sandwich. Love love.

Both I love love. Love one another deeply. That's how we translate it. As brothers and sisters is the word Philadelphia where we get the name of our city means brotherly love. So love one another deeply. Love love love brothers and sisters.

This is how you would literally read it in Greek. Paul's like your love between each other ought to feel like family. It should resemble the love at work in a nuclear family. Now let me just say I know that some of us have jacked up families.

I get that. So I need you to hear this to read this to the lens of a healthy family. In a healthy family if your siblings develop a problem you don't give up on them. You don't trade them in for a new model. If your parents become needy in their old age you don't say well I'm sorry mom and dad this is not working out for me anymore.

Right? No no you take care of them. You rearrange your life even if that means they move in with you. You parents if one of your children's causes a problem at school or they start to develop an annoying character trait you don't call them into a family meeting and say this is not working for your mom and I anymore. It's not you it's us but you know we're just going to need you to find another family somewhere.

Security's here to help you pack up your stuff and move out. You might feel like that every once in a while but that's not what you should do. You are devoted to them even with their faults their family. In a family the problems experienced by one family member become the problems of every other family member and when one member of the family is hurting their other members of the family can't really be happy.

I will tell you there is a group of people at this church that are committed to walk through life with me as if they're my family. That means they take on my problems as if they were their own problems. In fact they're close enough to me to know when there is a problem. They know when there's a relational problem or when there's a strain problem or even if there's a financial problem. I don't usually need to use the tell them they just know it and then they bear it with me they walk with me through it so that I don't walk alone and I know they're not going to give up on me and that means if I'm rude at this around the table this year's Thanksgiving dinner proverbially speaking you know what I still get invited back to next year's Thanksgiving dinner because I'm not there because I'm good company I'm there because I'm family. Love in the family doesn't even need to be reciprocal right if you love your child and your child doesn't love you back you don't stop loving them.

I love how C.S. Lewis describes this he's like love is never wasted true love is never wasted if it's not true love then you feel like it's wasted like I love that person and it let me back what a waste but true love is never wasted the kind of love you have for your kid is not wasted because its value does not rest upon reciprocity it's constant it just never changes Paul said that's what the body of Christ should be like. Is your relationship with your church like a family or are you just casual acquaintances? It's an important distinction to wrestle with you're listening to Summit Life with pastor and author JD Greer. Now JD we talk about this fairly regularly but one of the best resources we offer in my opinion is our free daily devotional can you tell us a little bit about it? Yeah I agree with that Molly it's one of the things I'm most excited about us offering these little daily email devotional prompts are a resource that can help you stay connected to God's word throughout the week any thriving Christian I know will tell you that that daily time with God is an important part of their walk with him. Each day's devotional corresponds to whatever we're teaching right now here on Summit Life and so you can stay plugged into the themes and the ideas that we're talking about daily on this program it's a great way to stay connected by having it show up right in your inbox best of all it is completely and totally free you can sign up right now just go to jdgreer.com slash resources and while we're talking about this let me just say thank you to those of you who support us financially because it's your financial support that makes resources like this and the rest of Summit Life possible our goal is to take the gospel to a lost and dying world and it's people like you who invest with us financially and pray for us and partner with us you're the ones who make that possible so thank you. You can sign up now at jdgreer.com slash resources and while you're there be sure to check out our library of other resources including Pastor J.D. 's entire preaching catalog sermon transcripts and his blog all available for free. I'm Molly Vidovitch be sure to join us again tomorrow as we learn more of what it means to love our friends with the love shown to us. We'll see you Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.