The Godliness that God Denies

Devotional

Day 1: Guarding against the tragedy of empty religion

It’s possible to get all the forms right and still miss the power that matters most. The danger isn’t just “out there”; it’s in hearts that slowly trade love for self-protection, cynicism, or pride. The call is to examine ourselves, not weaponize Scripture against others. Ask Jesus to restore tenderness where wounds have hardened you, and to replace defensiveness with mercy. Choose the costly way of love before the convenient way of appearance, and let your life carry the weight of heaven’s compassion [03:46]

2 Timothy 3:1–5
Know this: in the last days tough seasons will set in, because people will turn inward—fascinated with themselves and with money, proud, abusive, ungrateful, unholy, unwilling to reconcile, slanderous, out of control, and more in love with pleasure than with God. They will keep a religious look while shutting out the very power that makes faith real—so do not pattern your life after them.

Reflection: Where have you noticed yourself choosing reputation, ritual, or online outrage over tangible love, and what is one specific action you will take this week to walk in the opposite spirit?

Day 2: The new commandment that fulfills them all

Jesus did not add love to a list—He made it the list. This love is the evidence that you belong to Him, not your style, background, or schedule. It shows up when you honor someone who differs from you and bless someone who doesn’t benefit you. Love removes the need for defenses because it seeks the good of the other first. Let love be your truest credential, your clearest witness, and your daily practice [10:42]

John 13:34–35
I’m giving you a fresh command: love each other in the same way I have loved you. When you love like this, everyone will recognize that you are my followers.

Reflection: Who will you intentionally greet, serve, or sit with this week precisely because they don’t look, vote, or worship like you?

Day 3: Refusing indifference; inserting yourself in pain

In Scripture, hate often looks like walking by on the other side—staying uninvolved, unmoved, indifferent. Love crosses the street, notices the wound, and bears a burden. It’s not noisy promises but quiet presence, practical help, and steady care. Ask God to open your eyes to the person you’ve avoided and to give you courage to step toward them. Love is revealed in action, not intention [12:37]

1 John 4:20–21
If someone claims, “I love God,” yet withholds love from a brother or sister, that claim is false; if you won’t love the neighbor you can see, you can’t love the God you can’t see. And this is the command He gave us: whoever loves God must also love their brothers and sisters.

Reflection: What pain near you have you been walking past, and how will you insert yourself this week in one small, practical way?

Day 4: Love surpasses gifts, knowledge, and sacrifice

Gifts are beautiful, knowledge is useful, and sacrifice is impressive—but without love, it all adds up to emptiness. Love is patient when provoked and kind when ignored; it refuses jealousy, pride, pushiness, scorekeeping, and delight in someone else’s fall. It celebrates truth, carries weight, trusts God, looks forward, and holds fast. Miracles, messages, and methods fade; love outlasts them all. Make love your measure of maturity and your method of ministry [22:12]

1 Corinthians 13:1–8
If I speak with angelic eloquence, decode mysteries, move mountains with faith, or even give away everything—even my life—but I lack love, I end up with noise, nothing, and no gain. Love chooses patience and kindness; it doesn’t envy, parade itself, or demand its own way; it doesn’t keep a ledger of wrongs; it delights in what is true; it bears, believes, hopes, and endures through all. Prophecies, tongues, and knowledge will fade; love does not fail.

Reflection: Where have you leaned on your competencies or “rightness” instead of patient, kind love, and what would repentance look like in your very next conversation?

Day 5: Revival is love in motion, not machinery

Heaven’s power is not performance—it’s love poured out by the Spirit into ordinary hearts. This love makes you vulnerable, but in Jesus it also makes you unshakable, because love never fails. Withdraw from hypocrisy, not from people; keep your heart soft where culture keeps score. When love returns to the home, the church, and the neighborhood, renewal has already begun. Ask the Spirit to cascade God’s love through you until mercy becomes your reflex and service your joy [32:53]

Romans 5:5
We are not left disappointed in hope, because God’s own love keeps being poured into our hearts like a never-ending stream through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Reflection: What one deliberate practice will you adopt this week—blessing someone you usually resist, sending a quiet encouragement, or offering unseen service—to reopen your heart to the Spirit’s love?

Sermon Summary

I opened 2 Timothy 3:5 not to aim at “those people out there,” but to let the Spirit search us. Paul warns about a form of godliness that denies its power. In context, that power is not primarily miracles—it’s love. When love is stripped from our life together, all that remains is rule-keeping and performance. But where love is present, we don’t need a thousand rules; love refuses to trespass against a brother or sister. Jesus reduced the commandments to one new command: love one another as He has loved us. That is the badge of our discipleship, the engine of our faith, and the credibility of our witness.

Paul’s list of last-days troubles wasn’t written to condemn the world; he wrote to a pastor about the church. Difficult times come when we love only ourselves and what benefits us. That lovelessness breeds irreconcilability, gossip, and brutality. It makes church life hard and unsafe. But love makes the house light again. In Scripture, hate is often indifference—walking past pain and staying uninvolved. Love moves toward burdened people. It acts.

1 Corinthians 13 confronts us: eloquence, gifts, knowledge, and sacrifice without love amount to nothing. Human love can’t carry this standard; only Christ in us can. The Spirit pours God’s love into our hearts, enabling a different kind of life—one that chooses patience, kindness, forgiveness, endurance. Love is a divine paradox: it makes us vulnerable to being hurt, yet it makes us invincible because it never fails. This is the power the church cannot deny. It’s what compels missionaries to cross oceans and believers to cross aisles, cultures, and voting lines.

So we resist the pull toward empty religion. We avoid becoming people who want titles without sacrifice and platforms without compassion. We do not weaponize Paul’s words against others; we ask for transformation in ourselves. Real renewal is a revival of love—at the pulpit, at the table, in marriages, neighborhoods, and nations. In a culture discipled into contempt and division, we live by a different rule: faith working through love. Let’s be a people who are known, unmistakably, by how we love.

Key Takeaways

1. Godliness without love lacks power. If I hold the right doctrines, sing the right songs, and wear the right robes but refuse to love, I deny the very power that makes faith real. Love is not an accessory to godliness; it is its essence. Without love, religion becomes performance and people become props. With love, witness gains credibility and the church becomes safe again. [01:47]
2. Hate is indifference; love intervenes. Biblically, hate is often passive: seeing pain and walking by. Love moves toward the wound, inserts itself into burden, and becomes an agent of change. Refusing to get involved is not neutrality—it’s abdication. Inaction drains our faith; embodied compassion animates it. [12:07]
3. Gifts and zeal mean nothing loveless. Tongues, prophecy, bold faith, even radical generosity profit nothing without love. Power without love harms the very people it was meant to serve. Love is the only context in which gifts reflect Jesus and build His body. Our measure isn’t output but the Christ-shaped care behind it. [19:37]
4. Love risks vulnerability yet prevails. To love is to risk being hurt, misunderstood, even betrayed. Yet love’s endurance is its hidden strength: it outlasts offense, outlives slander, and outshines retaliation. Vulnerability opens the channel; grace supplies the resilience. This is how love “never fails.” [25:51]
5. Withdraw from hypocrisy; pursue love’s revival. Paul counsels avoiding those who wear devotion but refuse sacrifice—not to hate them, but to keep from becoming like them. Every time we choose love over retaliation, we show that our faith has power. Revival is not louder services but a deeper, wider love in motion. Let love return to our homes, altars, and streets. [32:27]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[00:37] - A hard topic: power denied
[01:47] - Denying power means denying love
[03:09] - The new commandment fulfills all
[04:16] - Difficult times in the church
[06:31] - Catalogue of loveless traits
[07:40] - What lovelessness does to us
[09:57] - Mercy over machinery
[10:42] - Loving beyond sameness
[11:40] - Hate as indifference; act
[19:01] - Without love we are noise
[24:05] - Love as the gospel’s power
[25:51] - Vulnerable and invincible love
[32:27] - Avoid the form without power

Bible Study Guide

Bible reading
- 2 Timothy 3:5

Observation questions

What does “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” look like in practice—what is being held and what power is being denied? [01:47]
Which specific attitudes and behaviors does Paul list as signs of lovelessness in the church, and how would those traits make church life “hard and unsafe”? [06:31]
How does Jesus’ “new commandment” (love one another as I have loved you) reframe the purpose of the commandments and the markers of true discipleship? [03:09]
In the Bible’s usage described, how is “hate” more often expressed as indifference, and which biblical example illustrates that form of hate? [12:07]

Interpretation questions

How should a church interpret Paul’s instruction to “avoid such men” (those who have a form of godliness but deny its power)? What pastoral boundaries and purposes does avoidance serve in a local congregation? [32:05]
If “love is the power of the gospel,” how does that conviction reorder the church’s priorities between programs, structures, and mercy-driven relationships? What does it imply about how ministry success should be measured? [24:05]
What does the phrase “love never fails” require in situations of repeated hurt—does it call for immediate forgiveness, patient endurance, truthful confrontation, or some combination? How is Christ‑enabled love different from human effort here? [25:51]
If Scripture says hate can be indifference (walking by the wounded), how should that shape a congregation’s expectations for practical care—who is responsible to notice and act, and when does inaction become sinful? [12:07]

Application questions

Godliness without love lacks power. When have you noticed yourself doing the right religious things but feeling hollow toward others? What specific, practical step will you take this week to move from performance to loving action? [01:47]
Hate is often indifference; love intervenes. Who in your circle is carrying a burden you have ignored? Name one concrete action (call, visit, deliver a meal, pray with them) you will commit to in the next 48 hours. [12:07]
Gifts and zeal mean nothing without love. Think of one ministry or service you regularly offer—how would you know if you are serving from love rather than duty or status? What is one adjustment you can make to ensure your motive is Christ‑shaped care? [19:37]
Love risks vulnerability yet prevails. Which strained relationship in church, family, or neighborhood requires you to risk vulnerability now? What is one small, sacrificial step you can take toward reconciliation or deeper care? [25:51]
Withdraw from hypocrisy; pursue love’s revival. Are there patterns, places, or friendships that are shaping you into a “form without power”? What healthy boundary will you set this month to protect your ability to love, and how will you stay open to restoration rather than judgment? [32:05]
Love crosses differences. What practical change can this group adopt (hospitality, listening exercises, cross‑table conversation rules, intentional invitations) to become noticeably more loving toward people who differ politically, culturally, or generationally? What will each person try this month? [31:10]

Sermon Clips

Anyone who celebrates death and destruction, they're devoid of the love of God. It doesn't matter how many degrees they have. It doesn't matter what kind of robe they wear. It doesn't matter how big the platform. And hear me when I say this. It doesn't matter how many people are sitting in the seats. The only thing that keeps the church relevant in any age is the way we love one another. [00:09:35] (22 seconds) #LoveKeepsUsRelevant

The church does not need more machinery. It doesn't need more mechanisms. What it needs is more mercy. Get back to the love. If you can't love God, or no, you can't love God without loving people. And if you don't love people, the Bible says you don't love God. But the more you love God, the more you will fall in love with His people. [00:09:59] (25 seconds) #MercyNotMachinery

Now, if we only love those who are just like us, that's no proof of divine love. Right? Did not Jesus say this? If you love those who love you, if you love those who do good to you, if you love those who only celebrate you, what credit is it to you? Even sinners will do that. But when you can love people who don't look like you, when you can love people who don't act like you, when you can love people who might even disagree with you, and let me touch a subject, you can love people who didn't vote the way you voted, and you can love them authentically. [00:10:25] (39 seconds) #LoveAcrossDifferences

The one who came along was the one who had every reason in the world to hate, and he inserted himself, and that was the Samaritan. So what Jesus is teaching us is this, if you see somebody in pain, insert yourself. If you see somebody under a burden, help them lift it. That's proof. In the Bible, love is not found in word and a word alone. It's found in deed, in action. So hate being the opposite of love means there's no action. There's inaction. [00:12:25] (35 seconds) #LoveInDeed

Jesus Christ did not die and give his life to give birth to a religious institution filled with hypocrites and self-righteous people. He didn't die to give birth to religion. He gave his life so that he could birth a new species of people that loved each other, that loved God even as Christ loved God and loved each other even as Christ has loved us. So that when we go through life, we go through life empowered by the love of God that makes no sense and recognizes no boundaries. [00:15:30] (32 seconds) #BornToLoveLikeChrist

This power is that, listen, it's not loudness. It's not charisma. It's not even miracles. It's love in motion. The power of godliness is the supernatural ability to love as Christ loves. To forgive, to serve, to bless, to endure. And love is not weakness. Love is a divine paradox. It really is. Because if you don't love someone, they can't hurt you. And we've all learned that lesson. But if you don't love, then faith ain't working. So you gotta risk loving again even though you've been hurt. [00:24:47] (61 seconds) #LoveInMotion

And this is where the paradox of love comes into play. It makes you vulnerable. You gotta be willing to be vulnerable. But love also makes you invincible. Because it never fails. It may be assaulted, but it doesn't fail. It might be attacked, but it doesn't fail. It's enduring. It keeps going. And this is what tells even your attackers there's something different about them. Because I strike the one cheek and they turn the other. I took their coat and they offered me their cloak. I insulted them and they said, God bless you. I don't understand this. [00:25:48] (41 seconds) #VulnerableYetInvincibleLove

Because love requires everything of us. It does. If we're gonna love the way Christ loved, then we can't love our own lives. This is where Christianity becomes real. I've gotta love you enough that I'd lay down my life for you. And if I love you to that capacity, then Sean, it's gonna cost me everything. But if I'm willing to love you to that capacity, I tap into the resources of God and they're inexhaustible. [00:26:40] (27 seconds) #LoveCostsEverything

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