Living Out Genuine Love and Honor in Christ

Let love be without dissimulation love of God love of our neighbors love is the fulfilling of the law if we but loved as we should and without a simulation we should be keeping the law love is the food of the law and our Lord you remember in his teaching summed it up in the same way thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind and all thy strength than thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself if only we always remembered that and did it how different the church would be and though different the world would be [00:02:51]

As Christians we are not to be negative we're not just to be nice little people who don't do things we're to be filled with a positive hatred of evil we are to abhor it with the whole of our being it is to be as hateful to us in our measure as it is to God himself and on the contrary we are to cleave to that which is good hold on to it be glued to it be such that we cannot be separated from it now there you've got the two principles that govern the whole of this question of Christian comfort [00:02:48]

Our brotherly love as Christian people in our relationships as Christians with one another in the church and they will square he says that this brotherly love of ours is not to be something merely superficial or official it's not merely because we are associated together in the same church or something like that he says it must go beyond that he says your brotherly love should really take on something of the character of the love that you have to members of your natural families to which you belong [00:05:44]

The only way to be sure that you are can be affection to one another with brotherly love is this to pay attention to and to respond to the exhortation in the first verse of the chapter I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God you work that act that therefore and the mercies of God and you can't do it otherwise in other words you don't approach the question of feelings directly that is always fatal feelings are always the result of something else and feelings are the result ultimately of understanding and of thought [00:09:19]

You realize that as a Christian you are born again you've got a new nature and you realize that the same thing is true of all other Christians you have started in your life you've been born into a new life yes but you've also been born into a new family so does every other Christian so now you see that you and every other Christian are members of the same family that you really are related to them in this extraordinary manner [00:10:37]

We are always ready to do things with regard to our relatives that we won't do with other people we are ready to correct the other people's children for doing certain things which we don't correct our own children for doing that's human nature you defend your own you make excuses for your own you're always on the defensive for your own you can always understand what they're doing now what he's saying is that should be equally true of your relationship to one another as Christians [00:15:28]

It is important that we should draw the distinction between liking and loving even in the natural since you don't like each member of your family as much as you like others no I'm not prettier to justify this or to criticize it I'm just saying it is effect but though you may be in exactly the same relationship to do people you don't have necessity like them to the same extent you want to love them to the same extent but you're not ever commanded to like them to the same extent [00:17:41]

A Christian should feel a closer bond with another Christian then he feels with a relative who is not a Christian it's true of necessity the new nature is in us we are all children of God we belong to the family of God and it's a relationship that are not only going to last while we're in this world of time it will last throughout eternity there will be no end to it now then since the Apostle makes certain that this quality is being manifested in your brotherly love one to another more and more [00:19:46]

It is your evaluation and others it is what you think of others and this in turn becomes the respect that you show one to another as the result of your estimation of one another and of the gifts that others have that's what he means by our in honour preferring one another it carries the idea if you like of reverence and of respect it is your whole estimate and evaluation of others and there but of course in turn determines you are behavior with respect to them how you treat them and especially how you treat them in terms of yourself [00:21:58]

The Apostle you see is rarely inculcating here is this he is rarely saying that there is to be no room nor place for pride in the Christian life that's what he's concerned about that we must be never guilty of pride it's another way of putting what our Lord puts in one of his Beatitudes about meekness and poverty of spirit blessed are the meek know that's really what it is or take the way in which our mud has put it very plainly in in a bit of teaching that is regarded in the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according to st. Luke [00:31:04]

The Apostle clearly works it out in his own case he marvels of the fact that he's a Christian at all and we all not a marvel at the same thing if we ever lose our sense of wonder at the fact that we have ever become Christians we have already victims to this disease in the sense we must never lose this sense of one why are we different what does only one answer it is entirely the result of the grace of God furthermore the Apostle is amazed and astonished that here everybody should ever have been called to be an apostle [00:38:30]

You will find that inevitably you are Renault not preferring one another and there to it this third and last consideration if you like look at your service and all of us look at our service what a poor service it ends you see you can only boast of it when you're not rarely examining it you're looking somewhere else but examine your service realize exactly its character and its quality when you realize the gift of the Spirit to you when you realize the character of the work what is it you remember that our Lord again said he put this thing right once and forever [00:42:07]