Love without Hypocrisy – Part 1
Romans 12:9-10

INTRO:
Good morning. It looks like winter is settling in. We're going to return this morning to our study of Romans Chapter 12 in our quest for greater spirituality.
It's our focus through this quarter where we are looking at the apostle describing for us what it means to give ourselves as a living sacrifice to God. Our study this morning takes us to verse number nine.

Romans 12:9 – “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.” I think it's important for us to recognize, particularly as we look at the rest of the chapter, how all of the information, the admonitions, reflect back on what we read at the beginning of chapter 12 where Paul called upon them, and us to give our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice before God.

We learned that part of the process of being a living sacrifice was for us to recognize and use the gifts that God has given us as Christians. The person who exercises their spiritual gifts and offers themselves to God as a living or continual sacrifice is going to live differently. They are going to be evidence of a different lifestyle from those around them for their life will be Spirit filled and Spirit lead. We don't use that terminology in a mystical way or to promote a new denominational teaching. We are to recognize that the Bible does teach clearly, that the Christian needs to be led by the Spirit of God and their life is to be filled with the His spirit.

Roman chapter 12 verse 9 is the beginning of a series of short, concise admonitions that we might describe as a synopsis of spiritual living.

They don't give us a comprehensive picture of what it means to live spiritually. It's not exhaustive but certainly it gives us an overall picture of what the Christian does to make himself more spiritual before God. In our pursuit of the goal of spirituality these are directions that God gives to the church at Rome and us. In fact, if the Apostle Paul were to speak before us today in a personal way and give a series of lessons about what we need to do to be more spiritual people, I believe he could begin right here, in this particular passage. He gives us these very specific and precise admonitions and they will help us see how we are to present our life before God as a spiritual sacrifice.

Paul says in verse 9 let love be without hypocrisy and that is where we are going to begin. We will be looking this today and in some following lessons, Lord willing, at what love is without hypocrisy, what sincere love is. I think though it is good for us to begin by looking at what we might understand of the necessary implications of the very first part of the passage.

I. Paul says; “Let love” and I wondered why Paul started that way? Some translations say “love must be without hypocrisy”. The New King James uses the term let which is a common word in the New Testament implying that love is going to be present. The NIV puts it as “Love must be sincere”. If you love one another it needs to be sincerely. The implication is that love is necessary, and that love is an integral part, an important part of the Christian life. I want to consider that a little bit more closely this morning and talk about the necessity and the importance of love for Christians.
A. It's also interesting to me that this particular passage, let love be without hypocrisy follows in the context of a call for the use of spiritual gifts. We have spent a few lessons looking at spiritual gifts. Paul talked about several, both miraculous and non-miraculous gifts that a Christian is to use for the promotion of spirituality.
1. This injunction about love in our lives follows the call for the use of spiritual gifts. When Paul wrote to the church at Corinth he also spoke about love in a passage we’re going look at as well, First Corinthians Chapter 13.
2. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says; “1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”
3. Paul in this particular passage is talking to the church at Corinth about the use of spiritual gifts of the miraculous kind. They were mistaken about the priority of those spiritual gifts and even the proper functioning of those gifts.
4. In the Corinthian letter Paul went in some detail from Chapter 12 all the way to chapter 14 to explain to them that spiritual gifts work for the edification of the church as a whole and that there was a diversity of gifts. We looked at that concept earlier, a diversity of gifts but they all came from the same spirit.
i. One particular spiritual gift was not more important or more prominent than another.
ii. In fact Paul's conclusion was in a church where speaking in tongues had a great deal of importance and prominence that it would be better to prophesy than to speak in tongues because prophecy was the content of the message.
iii. Speaking in tongues was simply the method of delivery it still has to be interpreted to have full meaning to the congregation. The purpose of the gift was to impart the revelation of God.
5. As Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 13 in a text that seems almost out of place to us, and talks about love. He is talking in the context of miraculous spiritual gifts and their proper use and then about love.
B. I have to wonder, why does Paul speak about love here? As we continue to read on in chapter 13 we see Paul clearly makes the point that none of those spiritual gifts mean anything if they're not done with love. That love is the proper motivation and the proper environment for the use all of those spiritual gifts, whether speaking in tongues, healings, or prophesy. Certainly that applies as well to the spiritual gifts in terms of Romans chapter 12 that are non-miraculous in nature. The things that God has given us to use to do His work. I find it interesting as well that to the same church in Corinth, Paul concluded his statements by saying “Let all that you do be done with love”. (1 Corinthians 16:14) That’s pretty comprehensive isn’t it? Let all things that you do be done with love.
II. What is love? What a question. Our society has its own set of definitions for love and I suppose that any society would. We do a lot of talking about it and certainly we recognize that a lot of our relationships are based upon what we perceive to be a definition of love. Most people and sometimes even including many Christians think that love is a nice feeling. They see love as being a warm affection or romance or desire. By that view love is what you feel.
A. We talk about falling into love and falling out of love as though love is some kind of emotion for which we are not in control. We are simply there or not there and that it is love that actually controlled us. We also know that sometimes when people say I love you, what they really mean is I love me and I want you. Our definition of love may focus on what we want. If somebody makes us happy, makes us laugh, if we have a good time when we’re around them, we enjoy ourselves when we're in their company, then we began to talk about love. I love that person because they make me feel good. That, of course, is the worst sort of selfishness, the very opposite of what the Bible defines as love.
B. We need to recognize in biblical terminology love is never for myself. It is never selfish by definition. It is always oriented toward the other person. We also recognize that the use of the term love in the scriptures varies depending on the context. In fact it varies so much that there are in the Greek language four different words that can be translated to our English word love. Each of these words describe a different concept about this aspect of love or attraction.
1. The Greek word Eros which is not used in scripture, means sensual or fleshly love, intimate love. It always points to this aspect of the physical desire of one person for another.
2. The Greek word Storge [sor-gay] means the love of kindred especially of parents to children. It that which is our concept of family love. Interestingly enough if you just jump ahead one verse in Romans 12 and verse 10 the apostle Paul and uses two of the words for love. Romans 12:10 – “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another;”. The word there for kindly affectionate, philostorgos [phil-os-tor-gos] is from the root storge [sor-gay] and it means the natural affection that you would have for another person.
3. Then he uses the word Philia [phi-le-ah] which means brotherly love. Meaning that you love someone because they have a relationship with you, because they share a similar or the same condition as you. You love as a one loves their brother.
i. Certainly we love our family in a different way than we would love other individuals that we don't know, that we're not acquainted with.
ii. It doesn't lessen the aspect of the admonition and the obligation to love someone that we don't know from a biblical perspective, but we certainly recognize that affection and the natural inclination to do good things for someone is promoted by the fact that we may be related to them.
iii. Do we have a same condition as them? Do we get along well with them or do we share the same ideas the same goals and aspirations? Of course we share a relationship with one another on a spiritual level.
iv. The Bible speaks of, and we're going to talk about this in our study of Romans chapter 12, the Bible talks about brotherly love and that we should love one another based on the fact that we share a spiritual relationship.
4. Then there is a word Agape. Paul uses the word we're going to talk about most this morning, the word agape, in verse 9 when he says let love be without hypocrisy. This word is used throughout the scriptures, which we translate as love, and oddly enough this particular word is not found much in classical Greek literature. In fact, it's almost nonexistent yet it permeates the Bible and the apostolic teaching concerning the relationship we are to have with one another, and more particularly the relationship that God has with us.
i. If there is a single word that describes what our relationship to God is, it is the word agape. Agape is by definition an act of goodwill towards another individual without reference to attraction. It is a decision to do something for the welfare of someone else.
ii. Romans chapter 12 verse nine let love be without hypocrisy. Remember this verse - for God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in him to not perish but have everlasting life.
5. There are a series of passages where the word agape is used particularly in the writings of the Apostle John, where love is connected to the aspect of giving. This is probably the most familiar one to us that God loves us and therefore He gave to us. He gave us His Son.
i. He gives us things in a providential way because He loves us, He gives us things in a spiritual way because He loves us. God is always giving us something because God loves us.
ii. His giving is always based on love because He's doing it as a conscious decision to provide something for our own welfare. If there are degrees of love, and certainly this list of Greek words might give us that indication, then agape is the highest degree of love, not because it is more emotional, not because it is more feeling, but because it is more conscious. It transcends the aspect of attractiveness, and outward appearance, and deals with the nature of the one who’s doing the loving.
6. Why then does God love us? There may be a couple answers to that. God loves us solely because God is love. The other answer to that is that God loves us because God could do nothing other than love us. God's nature is that He would love everyone, that He would love every individual despite their transgression, despite their condition, despite decisions that they make, God’s nature is that He would love all of us and certainly that's what the Bible points out. God's love for us is not out of obligation. It is an undeserved act of will to benefit us. Agape then, is not reciprocal.
7. It is acted by choice. Vine says that God's love for us is an exercise of the divine will and a deliberate choice made without assignable cause save that which lies in the nature of God himself.
i. God loves us because it is the nature of God to love us and God loving us says more about Him than it does about us. It tells us who God really is.
ii. That helps me to recognize that love as biblically defined is a choice, a deliberate choice, without assignable cause. When I look at those difficult things like when Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5:44 “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,” I come to understand what He's talking about.
iii. I can only come to understand what He's talking about when I look at Him. There is no fleshly rational reason, nor motivation, nor promise, in loving my enemies and doing good for them; other than the fact that when I do that, I'm like God, and that God has told me to do so. God loves me even though I have at times have become His enemy by doing what’s wrong.
C. With that understanding then, what is the opposite of love? Some say the opposite of love obviously is hate, right? Let’s think about that. When we're confronted with the biblical definition of love, the opposite of biblical love is not hate, despicable as hate might be, but I believe the opposite of biblical love is selfishness. Let’s think about that.
1. What the definition of love points out to us in the Bible is that God is calling us away from looking at ourselves to looking at the other person. It has to do less with the aspect of the emotion or of what we're attracted to and more with the decisions we will make to benefit those who ultimately don't even care for us. It has to do with the aspect of whether or not I will serve myself or whether or not I will serve another. There are so many places in the Bible where we go and look at how God displays for us what love really is.
2. One place where I really see this is John 13. It is the last time that Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples, Jesus, if you remember John Chapter 13, took off His outer garment and began to wash the disciples’ feet. This was a supreme act of humility. Jesus was not their servant. He was not in any way supposed to be down on the floor washing their feet. There were others maybe who, in the terms of the social arena, who could be called to do that but certainly not Jesus their Lord, their teacher.
3. Everything was mixed up socially in John Chapter 13 when Jesus got down on the floor and began to wash their feet. It was the supreme act of humility. Not only was it an act of humility it was also an act of love.
4. The context bears that out. During this particular time when Jesus does this the disciples according to Luke chapter 22:24 had been arguing. Arguing over position, having to do with a discussion that they had before, which one of them should be considered the greatest. Who was Jesus going to appoint to the highest position?
5. They haggled and argued over who is the greatest, and while they were doing that, the greatest among them became the lowest and He met their needs. No matter how despicable they were being in their arguing or how selfish they were in their desire to be above other people, Jesus loves them still. He loved them when they were most unlovely.
6. Another thing I find interesting, twice in this chapter in the conversation at the Passover meal, is Jesus told them or commanded them; “you should do as I have done to you.”
i. One here is of course in this context in John 13:14-17 – “14. "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15. "For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. 16. "Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. 17. "If you know these things, happy are you if you do them.”.
ii. It’s pretty obvious isn't it? Jesus washed the disciples’ feet not just to get them clean, not just to show them what He was going to do, but to show them what they were to do to one another. He says here you do as I have done to you.
iii. There is a second time in John 13 where Jesus makes a similar statement to the same group of disciples is in verses 34 and 35. “34. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35. "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.''” I want you to notice the similarity between these two and admonitions and Jesus’ remarks to them.
iv. He gives them the example of washing the feet, of becoming a servant and He says you must serve others because I have served you and then concludes those remarks preferenced on the aspect that they had been auguring on about who’s the greatest, by saying; there's another thing that you need to do as I have done to you, and that is you need to love one another. These two admonitions are not disconnected; serving one another is the activity of love.
7. When people are able to look and see how we treat the other person, how we treat one another, it becomes the true mark of discipleship of whether or not Christians love one another. This is what Jesus is saying. Why is that so?
8. Why is love the mark of discipleship that Jesus would choose at this time to make clear to his disciples? Because He loved them. If there is any characteristic that He wanted them to recognize about their God and about their savior, it was the fact that He loved them and that He had never stopped loving them and that He would always love them. He would always put their welfare above anything else.
9. All the decisions that God would make and that God was making in terms of the Cross and the resurrection and the plan of redemption, all of that was motivated by love. This was to be reflected in the life and decisions that the disciples would make as well.
D. Another aspect about biblical love that we must recognize is that the love always acts. It is not merely a feeling, it may contain feelings. It may very well bolster and emphasize feelings but it is always defined in the context of activity. Love is never without a willingness to sacrifice on the part of another. It's always ready to give up, to walk away, and to make a change. Love is always giving as we said before.
1. John made it clear that we cannot create love simply by saying I love you. In 1 John 3:16-19 – “16. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18. My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. 19. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.”
2. This should sound familiar to us for John is teaching us, based on what the Lord has taught him, about the primary aspect of love and the fact that God's love is the condition, the motivation for us to love one another. He takes it further here and says it can't just be in what we say. It must always be in what we do. He says, in deed and in truth. If a person is going to say that they love you then they need to be able to back that up.
i. Certainly we see that’s true in personal relationships isn’t it? It’s not going to work in your marriage if you just keep saying I love you and do nothing to show or exhibit that love. Somewhere along the line you’re going to have to show, to demonstrate that love.
ii. This coming January Nina and I will have been married 24 years. There’s a lot of times in that 24 years when she said “I love you”. I can remember times way back when she said “I love you” and she tells me that she loves me today. I believed it way back then and I believe it more now. The aspect of love is not based on what we say it’s based on what we do.
iii. If for year after year after year we do what's best for the other person and we put the other person first and exhibit through activity the words “I love you” as Nina does to me, those words have more meaning, they have more foundation, and they become more than just the words that you say. You need to show it by what you do.
3. We should also understand that included in the context of love there's possible action in the negative sense. By negative I mean this aspect of loving someone who doesn't love you back. It’s interesting that Jesus in Matthew 5:43-44 said; “43. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' God didn’t tell them that. They didn’t hear that from God. That was an interpretation of the concept of what loving your neighbor meant. An interpretation of the Ten Commandments, the law of Moses. But I say to you love your enemies and bless those that curse you do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your father and heaven for He makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.
4. Interesting. In just this short time that we have been looking at love, how often we see the admonition and the importance of loving the other person. Jesus takes us back and talks to us about what God has already done and who God loves. The apostolic writers do the same. The basis for us being able to understand any of this then is to recognize what God has done and what God continues to do. Jesus gives them the proper interpretation of what God has said all along about loving your neighbor and what it really meant—to do good, even to those that hate you. He says if you pray for those who spitefully use you that you may be sons of your father in Heaven who does...what(?) who sends the rain on the people that are good and the rain on the people that are bad.
5. Everything that He does is for the benefit of people, even those things we might interpret as being negative in terms of discipline are done for the good of the person. Hebrews chapter twelve certainly points that out. God disciplines us and trains us in righteousness that we might be better people. Though it may be difficult for us for a period of time and may not bring us joy at the moment, we recognize it is all done because God loves us. If a father loves his child he disciplines the child, love demands that activity. You can't simply say I love you and then let a child do whatever they want. You prove by that you don’t really love the child, because love always demands activity.
6. Love demands, in a more specific sense, obedience. Jesus made that point Himself. If you love me keep my commandments. I don’t know if there is any more explicit way that Jesus could define love for us in the context of our lives, than this passage, “If you love me keep my commands”. When I think about it there is simply no other way for us to exhibit our love to God except through obedience. If you're not going to do it by obeying God how are you going to do it? You say you love God. If you want to show God that you love Him, how are you going to do it? If it's not by doing what He says there's simply no other possible arena in which you can prove that you love or exhibit that you love God. Love and obedience are not contrary to one another and are not mutually exclusive. They hinge so well on one other that one cannot be defined apart from the other. If you love me keep my commandments.
III. Back to where we started. In the context of all this we might wonder; how important is love? Go back to First Corinthians13. These are the very verses we read in the beginning. What did Paul say there? Paul says three things about a person who would do something without love. The loveless person is of no value, He says I am nothing. He produces nothing of value, he is a clanging brass, he’s just a noise. He received nothing of value, it profits him nothing. You see no matter which way I look at it, I walk all the way around and look at everything that a person can do even something that would be defined as spiritual and good, if it's not motivated by love it’s worthless. How important is love? Jesus said the command to love is the basis of all the law and the prophets. What Paul says in first Corinthians 13 coincides well and is based upon what Jesus taught personally about love in Matthew 22:36-40.
A. “36. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?'' 37. Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38. "This is the first and great commandment. 39. "And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40. "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.''”
1. When I first read that question given to Jesus I want to answer it for Him. What's the greatest commandment? I want to say no one commandment is any greater than another. You can't just go around and prioritize commandments, picking out what you consider important and what's not important. There's no greater commandment. Is that what Jesus said? We know we can't go around picking out what we want do to obey God and we can't rationalize away the importance of any particular commandment. But Jesus did not say all the commandments are like, did he? He said; this is the first and greatest commandment you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and all your might. And a second closely linked to that is you love your neighbor as yourself.
2. Then Jesus explained in a simple phrase why that was the right answer. He says; on this hangs all the law and the prophets. Every commandment, every admonition, every word, of the spirit of grace to men, to mold and make them better and to correct them to get them to avoid the punishment of God... All of that is based upon love.
3. If a person learns to love he fulfills the requirements of the law in a practical way. That is, if they need to know what to do, that is best for their neighbor, or how to treat someone who's been ugly to them, or how to raise their children in a very culturally diverse world or how to be happy and fulfilled in a marriage relationship or how to get along in a congregation where people have different cultural backgrounds or what they should teach someone who is involved in sin. The answer to all those questions about what Christians should do, is do what love demands.
i. If you love God, you love your neighbor. Do what's best for the other person. In every one of those instances the proper answer to that question is I do what's best for the other person.
ii. Sometimes it might mean rebuking them in discipline and sometimes it might be giving them something to eat or getting along or giving in to their opinion over our own.
iii. Whatever the situation demands, love is always the right answer. We've got to be clear about this. God doesn’t leave it up to us to determine what the loving thing is. He's given us His law to define the parameters of love and what the loving thing is. He’s given us His Spirit to reflect in our own life. We can look at what God says, we can look at who God is and we can look at what God has done and we will know what God demands. Because everything that He has done, everything that He is, and everything that He commands, is motivated by love.
4. Jesus can say to us clearly that all the law and all prophets hang on this one command, you love God and you love one another. How important then is love?
5. Later on in Romans Chapter 13 Paul said; “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.” The commandments are: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet. And if there is any other commandments, all are summed up in this saying namely you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
6. Love does no harm to a neighbor therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. That's the reason why you see it's not up to me to determine what love demands in a personal context with other people because I can't always see what would be harmful to the person, but God can. I look to His law to know what it means to love the other person.
i. I might think as a doting grandfather it might be better not to discipline my grandchildren if they need it because they’ll like me more. God doesn’t give me that choice, does He?
ii. He doesn't give me the prerogative to determine, even as a grandfather,r whether or not children ought to be disciplined. He said clearly spare the rod and spoil the child, that discipline is what's best for a child. He tells me right up front this is what you should do.
iii. What about that? Isn’t disciplining your child unloving? No. You might think it’s unloving but the fact that God commands it, is clear evidence that it is the loving thing to do.
iv. He’s not giving me the opportunity to make that choice because I am not love, He is. He knows what the loving thing is to do. It's His nature to know the loving thing to do. Love and law are not diametrically opposed to one another. We can't possibly know what it means to do the loving thing if we ignore the law of God.
7. 1 Peter 4:8 – “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for "love will cover a multitude of sins.''”
8. 1 John 4:8 – “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
9. Then in chapter four verse 16 “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” Clearly all these passages point to the importance of love.
10. One more point I would like us to consider. Love is important because to learn to love is to be filled with all fullness of God. To learn to love is to be like God. I think that the clearest perception of that is in forgiveness. We really learn to be like God and portray the nature of God more when we forgive than at any other time. Natural thinking is not to forgive but hold a grudge.
B. God's inclination is to forgive because he loves us. To learn to love is to be like God. Ephesians 3:16-19 – “16. that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17. that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18. may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height 19. to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
1. How unbelievable that sounds for us to think that we could be filled with the fullest of God! He is not talking about being deity. He's talking about us, in our lives being able to have the character of God, born out of what we do and who we are, to be like God inwardly in the heart.
2. He says that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that by you being able to do the things that are loving, you can comprehend the love of Christ for you, and be filled with all the fullness of God.
3. To know love, to know Christ and to obey Christ by doing the loving thing is what it means for Christ to live in us.
C. Ephesians 5:1 says; “1. Therefore be followers of God as dear children.” Some translations say; “Therefore be imitators of God.” How can I possibly imitate God? The next verse tells us; “2. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”
1. Do we see the connection between what Paul said in Ephesians chapter five and what he said in Romans chapter 12? Paul starts out by saying, offer yourselves a sacrifice to God. Put first in your life a desire to be pleasing to God. Whatever he wants that's what you’ll do. Then he tells us what that is. Let love be without hypocrisy.
2. If you can just learn to love one another and to love God it’ll smell so sweet. It'll be just exactly what he wants as a sacrifice, an offering that pleases Him. I believe that's absolutely true.
3. I know people who have risked their reputations, given up their self-esteem, overcome their pride to forgive another person. Some folks thought they were crazy, that they’re out of their minds, that they were being ridiculous. I look at that kind of situation and I say that's exactly what God wants. Might not have been what we wanted to do, not what we thought was right. This person gave up something that belonged to him for the benefit of somebody else and God is always pleased with that.
4. I overcome myself to serve someone else, that’s love. Because that's what Jesus did on the cross. I know that pleases God. Isaiah chapter 53 tells me that. God was pleased with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Why? Because it is the greatest exhibition of love we will every see. It was love personified in the human experience, a true sacrifice when He gave Himself for us.

CONCLUSION:
Let’s look again at 1 Corinthians 13. Paul says without love he is of no value, he produces nothing of value, he received nothing of value. Then he goes on to say; “4. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5. does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6. does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7. bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8. Love never fails.”
Look at that particular description of love to have a better idea of what love is. We’re going to get to what it means to have love without hypocrisy. We’ve spent this morning looking at love in a general way. We’ve laid the foundation of what it means to talk about sincere love as Paul admonishes us. Next week we will continue to look at Love Without Hypocrisy.

The cross is the symbol of the love of God. Jesus in Romans chapter five says God loves us even when we are enemies. Jesus loves us and continues to love us even in our sin. He calls us out of that love to obedience; He calls us, through His death, His burial, His resurrection, in belief, in repentance, in confession and in baptism.

Maybe somebody here this morning is not a member of the body of Christ. If you believe Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God and you are willing to openly confess your faith and repent of your sins, we'll be glad to assist you and baptize you into the body of Christ for the remission of your sins. If you are a child of God and your relationship with God has grown weak and as a consequence of your faith and your love being weak, you found that you’re back in the world of sin. I would like to encourage you to come home.

The Father loves you, come back to Him. We will pray for you. We will pray with you. We really will try to do the best we can to encourage you as your brothers and sisters in Christ. If you are subject to the Gospel call in any way we invite you to come while we stand and sing.

Invitation song: ???

Reference sermon: David Schmidt