Loving One Another - Part 1

All of you here and a wonderful blessing to be able to worship God. Together through song and also through listening to him as he speaks his words of grace to us. And with that in mind, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12.

Is the PowerPoint on? Romans 12, this morning, we are going to be looking at verse 9. My intention initially was to look at verses 9 and 10, but we're gonna be doing well to complete verse 9, this morning. we have been, after studying Romans 5 through 8 and learning about the riches and the glory, the love, the mercy, the grace that belongs to us in Jesus Christ, we're asking the question, what then shall we do?

In response to these things, both by way of responding to these realities and by way of unleashing these realities in their full force upon our lives. The truth is the gospel's power is most visibly seen when it's moving through us. And changing us and expressing itself through our lives in various ways. You can have trillions of gallons of water behind the walls of a reservoir or a dam, but you don't really see the power that is there until the gateways are opened and water passes through those gateways and spins the turbines.

Providing power for hundreds of thousands of, of people. It's as that water moves that its power is seen and so, it's not enough to just look at this reservoir of gospel reality in Romans 5 through 8, we want it to move. And so what do we do in responding to these things and by way of unleashing and giving expression of these realities in our lives and In our relationships with one another. We're compiling a list that's providing answers for this question, and today we're gonna add to that list.

If you want to know what to do to unleash the power of the gospel in your life, then the answer this morning is love one another. Love one another. And so if you want to give a title. To the message this morning, we will give it the creative title of loving one another, loving one another.

we've already learned about the love of God for us in Romans 5 through 8, and Romans chapter 5 verse 8, we learned that God demonstrated his love towards us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So through the cross, we see The love of God displayed. But God does not stop there. We learned in Romans 5:5 that God gives us the Holy Spirit, whose job it is to pour out the love of God inside our hearts, to take the love of God and to pour it into the deepest recesses of our being so that we experience His love in an experiential and practical and deep way.

We also learned more about this love in the second half of Romans 8. where we learned that absolutely nothing can divorce us from this love or separate us from this love that God has for us in, in Jesus Christ. It's a wonderful comfort to know that God loves us today with the love that will be with us tomorrow and the next day and throughout all of eternity. If God said, I love you today, but I'm not sure about tomorrow, His love today would be of little comfort and strength.

To us. But in the second half of Romans 8, we learned God loves us, and there is nothing at all ever that will ever diminish his love for us, one iota, and there's also nothing that will ever come between us and His love to where God cannot carry out his full loving intentions upon us. So we are safe and secure. And this love of God.

And so we've learned about God's love for us, but what we're going to begin to learn in this section of Romans 12 is that we need to give expression to this agape, this love that God has lavished upon us. In fact, in the Greek text, you see how plentiful the words for love are in this section of Romans just in verses 9 and 10. Look at this, in, in verse 9, we have the word agape. in verse 10, we have the word pylos, which speaks of love or affection, and there's also the word torge.

In fact, Pylos and torge are attached together, and astorge is another Greek word for love. It speaks of family love and affection. In verse 10, we see Phylos again. And then in verse 13, we see Philos once again as a part of a compound word.

And in verse 19, we see agapetas where Paul is referring to us as beloved. So very clearly, beginning in verse 9 and following, Paul is going to be unpacking what it means for us to live a life wherein we are giving expression to this love that God has shown. To us. In fact, John Stott describes Romans 9 and following as Paul's recipe for love.

If you want to know what true love looks like, you can go to 1 Corinthians 13 and get a wonderful description there, but you can also go to Romans chapter 12 verse 9 and following and learn much, in fact, many of the same things, only even in a more practical way. About the love of God in our lives. All we're gonna focus on this morning is Romans 12, 9, and 10. Let me just read this from the New American Standard.

Paul says, let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, give preference to one another. In honor. Now, let me read you a literal translation of these two verses. Technically, there's no imperative or command in these verses.

These are just descriptions and I think the translators do well to translate them as instructions or commands because they carry that force as you read these verses. But there's another way of looking at these verses in addition to that, that Paul is simply describing what Agape looks like. In fact, literally, this is how this text can read. Agape.

That's just a noun that he puts almost as the heading of this section, Agape. And then by way of explaining what he means by that and what Agape looks like, he then says, no hypocrisy, hating the evil, clinging to the good, devotedness to one another and brotherly love, leading one another in honor. Paul announces his topic, agape. And then he breaks that open and says, let me show you what agape looks like.

And so what we're going to, observed today is 5 ways that we are to show true agape love toward one another in the Church of Jesus Christ. By the way, it's interesting that In 1 Corinthians, where we have the love chapter, we have Paul describing us as the body of Christ and how the members function. He then talks about spiritual gifts in that context, and then he talks about love. Paul does exactly the same thing here in Romans 12.

He talks about, in verse 4 and 5, how we are the body of Christ and members of one another. In verses 67, and 8, Paul then talks about spiritual gifts, and then following that, he begins to talk about love. So there's a pattern there. 5 ways though, we're going to observe that we can show true agape love to one another.

If you're a part of the cornerstone body, And you're like, I really wanna do my part in contributing to Cornerstone's culture, growing and maturing in the experience of agape. Then here's 5 things that you can do personally. That will contribute to our growth as a church in our experience of agape love. This is what all of us need to do.

Paul is inviting all of us into this and showing us the role that each of us is to play. If we say that we have agape love and we want to express that agape love, then here are some things that we absolutely must do. Number one, if you really wanna live a lifestyle of agape love in the context of the community of faith in the local church. Number one, let go of hypocrisy.

Let go of hypocrisy. Paul says, let love be without. Hypocrisy It's interesting that, Paul, could have said, let love be with courage, let love be with passion, let love be with generosity, but instead, he says, let me explain agape love. And the first thing out of his mouth is, no hypocrisy.

If I were to give all of you a piece of paper and a pencil, And ask you 10 minutes ago, describe love. I'm not sure how many of us would have written down, especially at the top of the list, no hypocrisy. Clearly in the mind of Paul, hypocrisy is one of the great obstacles to true loving community in the local church. And if we are going to love one another as we ought and grow in the development of our culture as a church and the experience of agape, then we all need to let go of hypocrisy.

And I say let go because I think we, we get the most out of this passage if we all understand that all of us have a hypocrisy problem. Amen. Can I get an amen?, we might read this and immediately think of people who, man, I'm really glad they're hearing this message because they need to hear it. But we all actually need to look at ourselves in the mirror and realize that we are hypocrites.

I can say to you this morning, my name is Milton Vincent and I I am a hypocrite by nature. Hypocrisy comes exceedingly natural to me, and it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve who hid themselves. Hypocrisy is as ancient as Adam and Eve after they sinned and partaking. Of the fruit, and I am a recovering hypocrite, and you are a recovering hypocrite in Christ.

And so if we're gonna really love one another, we need to acknowledge the, the hypocrisy that naturally resides in our flesh, and we need to let it go. And as the temptation and the inclinations towards hypocrisy emerge within us, we let it go and we say no to Hypocrisy. Well, what is hypocrisy? Well, first, let's think about what a hypocrite was in New Testament times.

the word, Hippocrates. is the term for a show actor and the ancient actors always wore a mask while they were on stage, as one commentator says, hence the, the prefix hopo in the compound, and that may not make a lot of sense to you, but as you see at the bottom of the screen, the, the word is a compound word. It's the word hupo that means, beneath or under, and then the, the root word that follows is reno that means to judge. So technically a hypocrite is someone who is doing something wherein they are hiding behind something.

They are underneath something and they want you to deem them or judge them to be something other than who they are. Now this is the term that was used to describe actors. And so some great actor would be described and people would call him a hypocrite. And if you went up to one of these actors after a fantastic play and said, you are an amazing hypocrite, why the hypocrisy that I witnessed was just astounding.

He would say, thank you very much. because it was the word for actor. On stage, that's what you want someone to do. To wear a mask or to take on a persona or a character that creates the illusion that they are something other than what they really are.

But offstage, this word was a criticism. Just like someone on stage may be a drama queen, and that may be a compliment, but offstage, if you describe someone as a drama queen, that's normally a criticism. Same thing here. In relationships with one another, hypocrisy is something that is a bad thing, universally amongst Christians and non-Christians.

virtually everyone is agreed that hypocrisy is a bad thing. It's a universally understood evil. Hypocrisy, let's, let's explain it more specifically. Hypocrisy itself essentially is idolizing a particular opinion that you want others to have of you.

So you've got it in your mind the way that you want people to think of you, an opinion that you want them to hold of you. and you idolize that opinion to such a degree that you put forward a pretense that is consistent with what you want others to think of you. And you hide your real self behind that pretense. So you're putting up a front.

That gives an impression of what you want them to think you are, and you are hiding behind that front. At the same time. And for different people, the opinion that they want others to have of them may be different. Maybe you want people to think you are intelligent.

Maybe you want people to think you are wealthy, and just really have your act together. Some people, the opinion that they want from other people is they want people to see them as the victim. The suffering victim. And so they're always fabricating these fronts.

Woe is me and look at this new problem that, that I have and, and they'll carry on in ways to nurture this opinion from other people while at the same time they're hiding their true selves behind that front. That's the insidious thing about hypocrisy is the real self gets hidden behind the mask. But boy, can we put on a front. That's what hypocrites do.

In Matthew 6, Christ talks at length about hypocrites. In verse two, he says that hypocrites when they give of their offerings, they sound a trumpet when they give, that they may be praised by others. They want to be seen, they're not, they're not content to just give, they want to cultivate a reputation for being a giver. So they sound the trumpet so that everyone will turn and look and see them give.

In verse 5, he says, hypocrites pray publicly that they may be seen by others. They want people to look at them as being godly. So I'm not gonna pray at home when no one can see me, that's a waste of my time. But I will go out in public and I will pray in front of people so that they will see me and think me godly.

In verse 16, He speaks of hypocrites who when they fast, they put on gloomy faces and they intentionally neglect their appearance and let their hair be disheveled and And powder their face, make it look white so that everyone sees how hungry they are. And he says they do this in order to be seen fasting by men. It's not enough for them to fast privately. It's like, how can I fast and make sure everyone knows that I'm fasting.

I know I'll put on a gloomy face, I'll, I'll look hungry, so that everyone knows I'm fasting. They're like, hey, what's wrong with you today? Oh, I'm just fasting for spiritual reasons. Fasting again.

That's what hypocrites do. In Matthew 15:8, Christ says rightly that the prophet Isaiah say of you that you're hypocrites. These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. So they're speaking great words of worship.

Their lyrics are wonderful, but they hide. The death inside of them and the fact that their hearts are far from me behind that mask of good lyrics. Man, you could spend a lot of time contemplating the masks that we wear, and I had a longer list and chopping things away cause like the list is actually endless. we can sum it up by saying we, we can hide often behind good words.

We can talk a great game. we can talk spiritual. But in reality, we're hiding our real selves behind those, those words. we can hide behind good deeds.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 envisions someone who gives their body to be burned and gives away all their possessions, but they're not really doing it out of a loving heart. They're doing it out of selfish motives, and they're nothing, Paul says, they're a hypocrite. but sometimes we can do that, we can perform good deeds that do not reflect the state of our hearts, but we're simply doing them to be seen by, by men. Sometimes we do good deeds in order to give off a certain impression, and we're OK that people get the wrong impression.

That's what Ananias and Sephira did in Acts 5, and they got killed for it. They sold some property. And then they came to give it and they held back a portion of the sale of that property and that was not wrong for them to do that at all, but they presented themselves as if they were giving all and just giving off that impression. And I don't know, maybe they told people, yeah, we sold this and we're just giving it all to the Lord and to the Lord's people, or maybe they were content to just leave people with that impression, but they were hiding their real motives and their greed behind.

What they were doing. Another mask we wear is the mask of excuses. We'll put on a mask and on the front of that mask is a whole list of excuses that we want people to see. Look at my circumstances, look what this person did to me.

Look what my spouse is doing to me, look at what my boss has done to me, look at what my parents did to me when I was young, and on the front of this mask is a whole list of excuses to where when people see this person, they see the excuses. But the person is hiding behind those excuses. Another mask we wear is the sins of other people. Some people put on a mask and on the front of that mask is the sins that a bunch of other people are committing.

And such a person is a hypercritical person. As they judge other people and run other people down behind their back, John Piper says this, he says, we hide our own flaws, sometimes even from ourselves by drawing attention to other people's flaws so that ours don't show up so clearly. Ever talk to somebody or maybe you're one of these, I would hope not, but someone in the church that you can't hardly talk to them for half an hour without hearing them running other people down.

And they're, they just frequently will, will go to other people and start criticizing them and pointing out their faults and running them down.

You can mark this about that person. They're a hypocrite. They do not understand their own sin. They are wearing a mask and on that mask is the list of all the failures of other people, and they are hiding from you.

They are hiding behind that mask. The list can go on and on. You contemplate what are those masks that I wear? What are those fronts that, that I can put up.

In order to give off impressions that I am something other than who I really am. Here's the problem with mask wearing, actually two problems. One of them is, and this is why it's a great hindrance to love. It is impossible to truly love while hiding behind a mask.

If I am wearing a mask in relationship with you to where you don't know the real me, how in the world will I ever be able to love you around that mask? Another problem with mask wearing and hypocrisy is that it's impossible to truly receive love while hiding behind a mask. If you're hiding the truth about yourself that you don't want anyone to know, because you're in fear of, of however you want people to think of you coming crashing down, and so you're hiding the real you behind that mask, and people in the church are coming to you and they like you and they love you, and they're speaking kind words, loving words, doing loving deeds to you.

As those deeds and words come your way, they're hollow, are they not?

Because now you're left haunted by the question, would they love me in this way? If they really saw me without my mask on? Would they love me? Would they think what they think of me, if they really knew who I was?

And so this is why I hope you're understanding why Paul says agape. And then the first thing out of his mouth is no hypocrisy. We need to declare war, make war against the sin of hypocrisy because it is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to true agape love in the community of believers. Having talked about this, you might be thinking, OK, so I need to take my mask off, and the thought of doing that terrifies you and your question may be, how can I ever find the nerve to remove the different masks that I wear?

And guys, now I think you can understand why Paul waited until Romans 12 to give us this instruction. It is not until Paul has loved on us with the gospel, that he can now say to us, you have permission to remove your mask. And live your life and relate to others without hypocrisy. In fact, what's interesting is, here's how Paul helps us with our mask removal.

In Romans chapter 1 verse 18 through chapter 3, verse 20, what Paul does in those verses? Essentially, he comes to us and says, I know what you look like behind that. mask you're wearing. I already know the truth about you, and he spends all those verses just laying out for us the reality of who we are as sinners.

And even those of us that tend to judge other people and think we're better than them, Paul speaks to us and says, no, you've got a sin problem also. Paul spends these verses in the early part of Romans, unmasking us. And here we are cowering behind the mask, afraid to be seen. And Paul looks right through our mask and says, I already know exactly the truth about you behind that mask.

Then, in chapter 3 verse 21 through the end of Romans 11, Paul says, and let me tell you something, I, God knows all of this about you. In fact, a way to sum up these two sections of Romans is this, Paul is letting us know you are far more sinful than you ever knew. And you are also more deeply and profoundly loved than you ever dared imagine. In chapter 3 through chapter 11, Paul says, let me tell you how loved you are.

If you come to Jesus by faith, this God who knows the worst about you, moves towards you and love and grace and forgiveness, and he brings you into a relationship, a face to face relationship with himself and gives you grace and gives you mercy. And gives you his love, and there's nothing that can ever separate you from the love of God, or diminish his love for you. He will love you today and forever. You are totally safe in the love of this God who knows everything that there is to know about you.

And it's only after having made that case of who we really are, so that we discover ourselves more truly, and then realize we're more loved by God than we ever dared to imagine that Paul, now in Romans 12:9, for the first time is able to say, OK, here we go. No hypocrisy. No hypocrisy. Nothing has the power to free us from our natural inclination to hypocrisy and mask wearing than the gospel.

And this is not so much a command from Paul, as much as it is a freedom. You can now take off your mask in Christ. In fact, what is Romans 7? What is the second half of Romans 7?

But Paul in the context of the gospel, taking off his mask and letting us see. The depth of confessions that Paul makes in those verses of chapter 7 is astounding. There's nothing like it anywhere in ancient literature. Nothing.

It is Paul taking his mask off. And saying, I don't, I don't care. You already know the worst thing that there is to know about me. Let me tell you about my struggle with sin and the good I want to do that I don't do and the evil I hate that I find myself doing and how sin is at work inside of me seeking to take me a prisoner.

To the law of sin and death. I don't mind you knowing this about me. And now in Romans 12:9, Paul says, join me in taking off the mask and living free. Of hypocrisy.

Let hypocrisy go. Agape. No hypocrisy. That's the first thing that we are to do if we are to truly love one another and experience love in the community of faith.

I'm gonna tell you guys right now, we're only gonna get to, like I said, we're not gonna get out of verse 9 to look at points 4 and 5, but we will, I think, have time to at least look at the second and the third way that we are to Express agape love towards one another. And the second way is to hate evil vehemently, to hate evil vehemently. Paul says, let love be without hypocrisy. And then he says, literally, be abhorring what is evil.

This word abhor. Means to hate bitterly, to despise with vehemence. Paul doesn't just say reject evil. He doesn't just say don't like or don't love evil.

He doesn't even just say, dislike or hate. This is like the strongest word for hate. That there is, it means to hate bitterly. To despise with a spirit of vehemence against evil.

If you're really interested in living a life of agape love in the community of brothers and sisters in Christ, then You will be a hater of evil. What we begin to observe here, guys, is that true agape love contains inside of itself, a passionate, vehement hatred of evil. True love embodies within itself hate. Does that surprise you?

it really shouldn't if we think about it because that's true of everybody. Everybody, what they hate is determined by what they love. Everyone's version of love contains within itself hatred. Someone who loves tolerance will hate intolerance.

Someone who loves pluralism, where my truth is my truth and your truth is your truth, and truth is something we produce and create, and, and even though we believe opposite things, that's OK. I'm OK, you're OK, and both of our viewpoints are equally valid. Someone who loves pluralism will despise exclusivism and religions like Christianity, that say there's only one way. That there is a right and wrong that is external to ourselves.

They would hate exclusivism. Someone who, whether they're Christian or not, someone who really loves another person will in direct proportion to their love for that person, despise and hate anything that would seek to injure or that would do harm to To that, that person. So everyone's version of love, whether they're a Christian or not, contains within itself, hatred of certain things that are opposed to the best interest of those who are loved. And so it should not surprise us that true agape love contains within itself a passionate hatred of evil.

People don't normally like to think about this in connection with love, but I love what John Stott says. He says love is not the blind sentiment, it is traditionally said to be. On the contrary, it is discerning. And it is so passionately devoted to the beloved object that it hates every evil which is incompatible with his or her highest welfare.

If you really love your children, for example, you will hate any evil that would seek to ruin and destroy them. And if there are evils that are out there that are seeking to destroy those that you say you love, and you're not bothered by those things, you don't hate those things, then that calls the reality and the depth of your love into question. True love hates evil, despises evil, and, and Paul is saying that we need to, we need to realize that there is good and there is evil in our universe outside of ourselves and true love is discriminating.

It is able to observe, this is good, and this is evil.

And I love this good and I despise this evil. I hate it with a passion, because this is seeking to ruin me and those that I love. And I say this in a way that I think you understand at this point, but there needs to be a whole lot more hate. than is often evidenced in the local church, a hatred of evil.

We're not talking about a hatred of people, but a hatred of evil that destroys people. It's because we love people that we hate evil, that would seek to do them harm. In the Corinthian church, there was a man who was sleeping with his father's wife, and the Corinthian church, Paul says, rather than mourning and grieving, And confronting this guy, you're celebrating, you're OK with it. Evil was in their midst, and they didn't hate the evil.

And Paul is basically saying, you're not being loving towards this man, and you're not being loving towards the rest of the body, because you're tolerating evil, and celebrating it rather than despising it. We need to be haters of evil. There is a world in the flesh and the devil that are always making war against God and his interests, and we need to passionately hate those things and their efforts to bring ruin and devastation. As a pastor, sometimes I have a front row seat, a seat that I Sometimes absolutely do not want to be in.

I see the damage. I see the complication that sin brings in the lives of people. I've had people sitting in my office on one occasion, a guy hitting his head against the wall with regret and pulling his hair as hard as he could with profound regret over sins that he had given way to. I've seen the pain that sin causes other people.

I've seen that in my own life as well. And the older you get and the more you see of these things, the more you, you find yourself really hating evil. It's not OK and it's not something to tolerate or to compromise with. Evil will not settle for any compromise.

The devil seeks to destroy and is content. With nothing short of that goal of your total destruction and the total spiritual destruction of everyone you care about. True agape love hates evil. You say, Pastor Milton, I'm so glad you're saying this.

I hate evil. That's why, I hate the evils that we see in society and that's why, I'm, I'm, I'm speaking out against the evils that we see in, in the world of our day and in American culture. People know me as someone who's public in my denunciations of such evils. Well, that's great, and I'm not gonna dissuade you from, from that, but I honestly believe that Paul would say, we absolutely must hate evil in society, and in our culture, and in the lives of other people.

But Paul would say, true agape love first, hates evil in oneself. Then, evil in others and in society. As a whole, as Jesus' point in Matthew 7. He rebukes people who are looking at the evil and others saying, hey, you've got evil, you've got a speck in your eye.

Let me help you with that. I'm pointing it out. I'm announcing that there's evil in you. And Jesus says, there's evil in you, and you're not even seeing that evil.

We need to be haters of the evil that is in us. We need to despise the pride that is inside of us and the anger and the bitterness that is in us and the unforgiveness that is in us. We need to make war against it. We need to despise those sins in us.

We need to hate the lies, the spiral of lies that oftentimes we find ourselves believing, being seduced by. We need to hate the lust that is in us, and hate the greed and the selfishness and, and the laziness. We need to be able to look at our culture today and begin to ask what's wrong with our culture. And we need to be willing to say, what's wrong with this culture?

I am. The problem starts with me. Let me speak to you about my evil, the evil, the sin that is in me. I emphasize this guys, because we are in The election season here in America and there's a lot of hatred of evil that you're going to hear about and a lot of denunciations of evil and Democrats are denouncing the evil that they so visibly see in Republicans and Republicans are denouncing the evils that they so visibly see.

And Democrats and everyone's hating the evil that they see in somebody else. And one thing that I don't think we're gonna hear an awful lot of over the next few months is any candidate. Or anyone on MSNBC or Fox News or any other station, getting on camera and saying, what God's been showing me about the sin in my own life? The ignorance that is in me, the pride and the arrogance and the lust.

Here's what God has been showing me, and I hate these sins that are in me. We're not gonna hear that. And we have to be careful to not get caught up in, in denouncing all these evils external to ourselves and we're not being equal haters of the evil that is in us. What if our religion, Made us radicals, fundamentalist radicals who are radically humble, radically self-searching, soul searching, radically repentant, radically hating the evil that is in us, and confessing those things and asking God to transform us.

What if? The gospel turned us into that radical. To where we're looking at the log in our own eye and we hate that. We want it removed.

Before we're obsessing on and sometimes with pleasure, you just get the sense sometimes people with pleasure are denouncing. Some sin or failure or evil in someone else and they're caught, in some statement and there's this delight on both sides and just catching people. In some supposed or even real evil. We need to be haters of the evil that is in us and do business with God.

We need to realize that if I'm really gonna live a life of agape, if I really love you guys, if we really love one another, then we're going to hate the evil that's in us, as well as hating the evil that's in one. One another. If there's evil in someone's life, and I wanna hate that evil. I want to go to them, I wanna love them and hate the evil and help them to escape from that sin.

But if I also love other people, I'm gonna hate evil in my own life because evil diminishes me and keeps me from being everything that God wants me to be towards other people. I think that's part of why Paul says hate, evil. You want to live a life of agape, despise evil. Look at what he says here.

He says and or, or listen to what John Piper says. He says, don't make the mistake of saying, the evil I cherish only hurts me. And so it is not unloving to others. Think about those private moments when you are being faced with the temptation that no one knows you're even being tempted, and you can do the deed and no one knows.

You can hide the evidence, you can delete your internet history, no one will know. And it just seems in that moment that it's just you. It's just you, this won't affect anyone else. Don't make the mistake of saying the evil I cherish only hurts me.

And so it's not unloving to others. That's absolutely false. You were made to display the worth of Christ to others. That is what is good for them.

That's what it means to love them. But if you do things to yourself that damage your delight in Christ and your display of Christ, you sin against others and not just yourself. You rob them of what God made you to give them. That's why you need to hate evil in your own life, because it, it destroys, and it eats away and diminishes your ability to be everything that other people need for you to be as you live a lifestyle of agape before them.

And in relationship with them. Imagine in our private moments of temptation. That we're not just thinking about ourselves, we're thinking about God, but we're also thinking about other people. It's like I, I, I am not going to do this.

I am not going to do this because this will diminish me from being able to give to others, the love to others that God has created me in Christ to give to them. This hinders my ability to love. And so I will love my brothers and sisters by hating this evil. And by saying no to it.

We're just about out of time. Let's look at the 3rd, just very quickly and we'll pick up here next week, but a 3rd way that we are to show Agape. Love to one another is that we're each clinging to the good. Paul says, despise evil and cling to what is good.

This word cling, it's the word that's used like in Matthew 19, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. It's what a, it's what a husband and wife do with one another in relationship with, with one another. And Paul is saying that's the way we need to be towards that which is good. There is such a thing as evil, and there is such a thing as good.

We abhor the evil, and we latch onto and cling to and glue ourselves to that which is good. True agape love contains within itself a hatred of evil, but it also contains within itself a clinginess, a clinging to that which is good and the greatest and ultimate good is Jesus Christ. If I really want to be loving towards you all, the best thing I can do is passionately, continuously cling to Jesus, to lay hold of him. And the verb here is present tense.

So to lay hold of him and to maintain that hold, to cling to him today, this morning, this afternoon, and tonight, to cling to him when I get up in the morning and throughout the afternoon tomorrow, to cling to him day after day after day and to never release. my hold upon him to cleave to Jesus. That's the most loving thing I can do for you. That's the most loving thing that we as husbands can do for our wives is cleave to Jesus.

It's the best thing we can do for our children, and wives for their husbands, and us as brothers and sisters for one another. We're all clinging to Jesus, clinging to his word. This, this book right here, we cleave to this book, clinging to the gospel, the truths and the glories and the promises of the gospel, the comforts, the consolations of the gospel. And even when we fail, we cling to the promise and the grace.

And the forgiveness that is in Christ. And obviously, anything that is virtuous, that is praiseworthy in the eyes of God, we're pumped about that. We love that. We are passionate lovers of anything that is praiseworthy.

From, from God. I just wanna close by asking you, are you a hater of evil and a passionate lover of good? just, just look at your iPod and look at everything you have on your iPod. And does that give evidence that you despise evil?

And you passionately are clinging to Christ, to his word, to gospel truths and promises and consolations, and to those things that are morally virtuous and praiseworthy from God? The most loving thing that you and I can do, if we really wanna love others, love our spouses, love our children, love our parents, love our brothers and sisters in the Lord, the most loving thing we can do is let go of our mask, let go of our hypocrisy, to hate evil in our own lives and to hate evil in the lives of other people.

And to cling to that which is good and noble and virtuous, namely Jesus Christ and His word and as his, and his word as it is expressed in the gospel. And even guys, when we see good in other people, when we're in relationship with our brothers and sisters, and we see good in them.

It may be a large good, it may be a small good, it may be a small evidence of God's grace at work in their life. We cling to that, we make a big deal out of the good that we see in other people. Well, Paul, beginning in verse 9, is giving us the recipe for love and we have had a chance to look at The 1st 3 ingredients of that recipe, may God give us the grace to live this out, being motivated to do so by the glories of the gospel. Let's bow our heads together and ask God to help us to To live this way.

Lord, we, we thank you for your love for us. An amazing love that you have given to us in Christ. Help us, God, to truly walk in this love. That we would learn to love as you love, which means that we, we cling to those things that your heart clings to and we hate those things that you hate.

Both in ourselves and in our society. And in the church, and that we also live freely in relationship with each other, Lord, a life, a community without masks, because we're freed up to be real by the love and the acceptance that You have given to us in Jesus. We're more sinful than we knew, and we are far more abundantly and deeply loved than we ever dared to imagine. And now we can take those tired old masks off and, and walk in freedom.

With one another. Lord, we have so much to learn. We're just scratching the surface. Keep our hearts open to you and keep teaching us of your ways.

Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you, receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. We ask these things in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Amen.