Dr. Rodney Plunket

A Topical Sermon

Last week we felt the power of Jesus’ promise to give us real life/abun
dant life/eternal life.  I will not preach that sermon again this morning, but I want all of us to realize that the New Testament (NT) presents an exhilarating picture of God’s power flowing in and through us as a result of the work of Jesus.  And the NT declares that the power of God flowing through us gener­ates a quality of life that causes us to shine to the glory of God.

But what is the shape of this life from God?  What does it look like?  These are important questions to ask, because the NT makes clear that believers can sometimes be deceived into thinking they are living this new life from God when they’re not at all.  For example, the NT teaches that believers are to test the spirits that influence their lives, their beliefs, even their words (1 John 3:23-4:6 & 1 Corinthians 12:3).  That teaching and many other teachings in the NT reveal that there are evil forces opposed to the new life from God.  These evil forces set out with malicious intent to destroy abundant life.   And both Scripture and experience reveal that believers can fall victim to these evil forces.  We can be deceived into following them when we think we are follow­ing God.

Two weeks ago we completed a series of seven sermons from Paul’s let­ter to the churches of Galatia.  That letter makes very clear that some first cen­tury Christians in Galatia were having their abundant lives in Christ destroyed, destroyed by evil forces that Paul refers to as “the elemental spirits of this world” (Gal 4:9).  But that letter also reveals that those same Christians believed they were following Jesus Christ at the very time that they had in fact turned away from Him.  They believed they were making positive changes; they believed they were growing.  But, in fact, they were being led by forces that sought to enslave and destroy them.

So how do Christians know what they are doing and who they are fol­lowing?  How do they know what forces are really shaping their lives?

Remember.  Galatians was written to Christians who had been brought to the Lord by the apostle Paul himself.  Their conversions had occurred not very long after the ascension of Jesus.  I would think that these were advantages.  But they did not stop these Christians from having their abundant lives destroyed; destroyed at the very time that they thought they were increasing their level of obedience to the will of God.

I do not want to do the same.  I do not want this church to do the same.  I do not want any believers here to have their abundant lives destroyed by evil powers while assuming that everything is fine.

So how do we prevent that from happening?  How do we know that we are walking the path of abundant life that leads to God and not walking the road to destruction?

I think that the best way to determine if we are on the path of God is to make sure that we are growing relative to two commandments found first in the Old Testament.  Those two commandments were heard in our Scripture reading this morning.  The first one is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, while the second is found in Leviticus 19:18.

Please take your Bible and turn to Matthew 22:34-40 and follow along as I read a passage that reveals Jesus’ view of those same two commands.

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I believe these two commandments combine to ensure that we are, in fact, liv­ing the abundant life promised by Jesus.  Why do I believe that?   Because of the emphasis which the NT places on these love commandments.  Both the Gospels of Mark and Luke also report Jesus referring to these two command­ments as of central importance (Mark 12:30-33; Luke 10:27-28).

And please turn with me to the Book of 1 John.  Look first at 1 John (1 Jn) 4:20-21.

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, can­not love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this:  those who love God must love their brothers and sis­ters also.

Notice that here the commandment to love God is tied to the commandment to love all the other members of our church family; and they are tied together even more tightly than the words of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke tie them together.  Here they are tied together so tightly that the claim to love God is falsified if the claimant does not love a brother or sister.  They are tied together so tightly that you cannot just love God.  To love God is to love your brother and your sister.  You cannot keep the one commandment without also keeping the other.  Now please follow along as I read 1 Jn 5:2-3.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.  And his commandments are not burdensome.

Here again, love of God is connected to loving “the children of God.”

Before we leave 1 John, I should point out that this letter emphasizes love over and over again.  Look with me at 1 John 3:16-17 for just one final example:

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.  How does God’s love abide in any­one who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

The picture here seems to be of God’s love flowing through the believer and causing that believer to have a sacrificial love for others, a sacrificial love for others that looks like Jesus Christ’s sacrificial love for us.  But my main point is that this passage and many others in 1 John reveal that the kind of emphasis which Jesus’ places on the love commands in Matthew, Mark, and Luke––that same kind of emphasis is also found here.  The two foremost commandments are that we should love God and love one another.

What I find interesting is that––outside of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 John––the NT nowhere states these two love commandments together.  What you find is that the kind of emphasis that these four books place on both com­mandments is placed exclusively on the second commandment––the command­ment to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  Please do not mishear me.  There is a great deal of emphasis in the NT on loving God.  But the need to love God is not expressed in these other books in a way that connects that need to the com­mandment found in Deut 6:5.  It is not expressed in the way that Jesus expresses it in the first three Gospels.

I think there is a good reason for that.  I think that these other NT writ­ings were all written to people who claimed to love God and who were certain that they did love God.  The way to wake them up or stir them up was not to repeat the commandment which they confidently believed they were following already.  The way to wake them up was to confront them with the second com­mandment because it could be used more readily to provoke repentance and change.

Now please turn to the Gospel of John where we will look at two pas­sages which contain both a strong commandment about loving one another and a strong statement of how central that love is to the essence of Christian faith.  Both of these passages preserve words that Jesus spoke to His disciples a very short time before His death.  Turn first to John (Jn) 13:34-35 and follow along as I read:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

How will people see, observe, “know” that we really are his disciples?  How will they know that the new life given by Jesus is really alive within us?  They will know that when we love one another as Jesus has loved us.  Now turn to a second passage in John’s Gospel.  Please turn and follow along as I read Jn 15:12-13:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

This “love one another” commandment here in John is unique in the Gospels.  There is nothing else in the Gospels like it.  You see it is the only command­ment that Jesus both actually calls a commandment and directs His fol­lowers to keep.  The centrality of loving others is again made clear.  This is His com­mandment.

Now listen as I read James 2:8.  There we read, “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Bo Reicke, in his commentary on James, says that the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” “is called ‘the royal law,’ or rather ‘the imperial law,’ inasmuch as its promulgator is Christ, regarded as the true king, superior to the Roman emperor” (p 29).  Again we see a founda­tional emphasis placed on this love commandment.

Now I want us to look at a couple of passages in the writings of Paul.  Please go with me to the Book of Galatians.  We noticed at the beginning of this lesson that Galatians was written to believers who had left the power of God and had returned to the power of “the elemental spirits of this world.”  Galatians refers to this change as a turning from freedom to slavery.  But in one freedom passage Paul refers to a slavery that those who are free should still experience.  And in this passage Paul also uses the same kind of language we heard Jesus using at the beginning of our lesson.  Turn with me to Galatians 5:13-14 and follow along as I read:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love become slaves to one another.  For the whole law is summed up in a sin­gle commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Some believers in Galatia had lost their way.  Paul uses the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” as a means of helping them return to the life of freedom which they were leaving behind.  So here is another passage that focuses upon a love commandment and reveals that commandment to be a spe­cial indicator to help believers determe if they are indeed living the life to which Jesus has called them.

Now turn to one final NT passage.  Please turn to Rom 13:8-10 and fol­low along as I read:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.  The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Here again we are reminded of the language used by Jesus.  Here the com­mandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” is said to sum up all of the rest of the commandments.  It is is central.

But Paul adds a statement here that I find especially powerful.  He begins this section by saying, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.”  He refers to the need for us to owe a debt a love.  The great preacher of the third and fourth centuries, John Chrysostom, was surely right when he said that Paul with these words is telling us that “he does not wish [the debt of love] ever to be paid off, or rather he would have it always owing.”

John Chrysostom knew about love.  Some say that he was the greatest who has ever lived.  The name “Chrysostom” was not his given name.  It is a Greek word that means “the Golden Mouth.”  That name was given him because of the gift of preaching with which the Holy Spirit blessed him.  But John was also remembered for his sacrificial love.  John truly loved God, so he also loved people, and he loved them sacrificially.  John in A.D. 398 was forcibly consecrated as the archbishop of Constantinople.  As a result, he was given control over a vast amount of wealth, but he continued an ascetic life­style; that is, he continued to live as if poor.  He used his considerable budget to care for the poor and to build hospitals.  But church politics were not his forté.  That proved to be his undoing.  He was focibly removed from Constantinople and transported across Asia Minor in the heat of summer finally being allowed to rest in Caesarea because of his failing health.  Then “[o]rders were given for him to be moved again, this time to a remote village on the eastern shore of the Black Sea.  But with his health failing, he collapsed on the way, on Spetember 14, 407, and was taken to a small chapel outside of Comana.”  Listen to what he did just before he died there.  He had them dress him in a simple baptismal robe.  His clothes were given to local villagers.  He received the Lord’s Supper for the last time.  He offered a final prayer that ended with a his usual closing words, “Glory be to God in all things.  Amen.”

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