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Christian Questions Bible Podcast
What Does Christian Love Really Look Like? (Christian Character Series Part IX)
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A
Think about the Bible like you never have before. You're listening to Christian Questions. Access more audio videos and Bible Study resources@christianquestions.com Our topic is what does Christian Love really look like? Here's Rick and Julie.
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B
Welcome everyone. I'm Rick. I'm joined by Julie, a longtime contributor. Julie, what's our theme scripture for this episode?
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C
2nd Peter 1, 6, 7 and in your knowledge, self control and in your self control, perseverance and in your perseverance godliness and in your godliness, brotherly kindness and in your brotherly kindness, love.
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B
Well, we have arrived. This episode marks our consideration of the highest rung on the Apostle Peter's virtue ladder of Christian character. Each individual rung of this ladder is vital to our ability to be able to progress up to the next rung. Our progress up this ladder represents represents our step by step maturing process as we learn to develop our characters toward becoming as Christlike as possible. As we focused on one rung of this ladder at a time in this extended series, we've worked on making the connections between what our foundation is and how each steps makes us more like Jesus. Now comes the eighth and final rung. And this one powerfully reveals the height of of what our Christian characters aspire to.
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C
We finally made it. And each of these qualities is important to work on, but it's so much more powerful and attainable if we take them in the order that Peter gave them to us.
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B
So let's look at a quick recap of the first seven rungs of the Apostle Peter's virtue ladder of Christian character. First rung, the allegiance attribute of faith.
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C
And that's the allegiance of our life's direction.
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B
The second rung, the allegiance attribute of moral excellence, the allegiance of our heart. With faith in God's power and plan as our foundation, a godly standard of moral excellence will drive everything else. We strive to build upon our faith with the highest moral excellence and integrity. So that's what those two pieces do. Let's look at the third rung. The third rung is the allegiance attribute of knowledge.
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C
And of course that's the allegiance of our intellectual.
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B
And then the fourth rung, the allegiance attribute of self control, the allegiance of our passions. So knowing God is true knowledge. And this knowledge forms what the pivot point of Christian self control looks like. Here we begin to build a genuine Christ like character onto the fifth rung, the allegiance attribute of perseverance.
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C
And think about this. It's the allegiance of our energy.
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B
And the sixth rung, the allegiance attribute of Godliness, that's the allegiance of our character. So perseverance is staying the course and continually reapplying our discipleship decisions. Godliness is the result of this perseverance. It is a reverential, Christlike character that never stops seeking God. The seventh rung is the allegiance attribute of brotherly kindness, and this is the
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C
allegiance of our relationships.
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B
And brotherly kindness is the powerful application of practical love and caring for our fellow disciples. So, Julie, what's next?
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C
Well, we have a ladder, but this one is a big step up. 2 Peter 1:7. And in your brotherly kindness, we step up to love.
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B
Okay, so the eighth rung, the allegiance attribute of love. This is the allegiance of our purpose. It defines our very purpose. You put all of these other things together and it defines our purpose in this love. So what kind of love are we talking about?
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C
Well, we always say that this kind of love is the highest form of love. It's unselfish. It loves with no strings attached. It's the most comprehensive love that we can have. But I'll tell you, when I read the Strong's Concordance definition of agape and agapeo, I'm a little underwhelmed. It's a noun. As a noun, it means affection or benevolence. And as a verb, it simply means to love in a social or moral sense. So this doesn't sound very big and amazing until we see how the New Testament uses it. And that's where we start to see its depth.
- [04:24]
B
And I'm glad you brought that up, because you're right, it is underwhelming to just read the definition. But when you look at the application, where it comes from and how it's used, you go, oh, wow, that is something powerful. So, yeah, the definition's a good, good little step stool. But the Scriptures show us what is meant by agape love. We've been asking the question all through this series, why is love agape, the next quality after brotherly love? We're going to keep this question in mind. We're going to answer it as we go. There is no higher allegiance to God. There is no higher allegiance to God than the purpose of selfless love. This is what Jesus's human life taught us. He showed us step by step, by definition. To emulate Jesus's selfless example is to live and to give by putting God first. In a nutshell. That's what we're looking at. That's why this ends up being the highest level rung on this ladder. Agape, Christian love is to be intense, filled with pure intention, and to have the foundation of strong and godly brotherly love, which is that word Philadelphia that we talked about in our previous episode. Let's look at a scripture to help put these things in order and kind of put them together as a starting point. Let's look at 1 Peter, chapter 1,
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C
verse 22 from the New living translation. It says, you were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth. So now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. That's that Philadelphia love. Love each other deeply, with all your heart. So in other words, you have to have Philadelphia, the brotherly love we talked about. Now it's more intense. This fervently agape each other.
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B
So you have to have the brotherly love. And then it says because you have that, it opens the door to have this other love, which by definition sounded so benign and boring.
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C
So you can see that it's benevolent. It's just benevolent. No.
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B
Well, yeah. And when you recognize what benevolence really, truly is and how God and Jesus show it to us, it's really a mind blowing experience. To see how it builds upon this brotherly love. You have to have that before you can get there. That's what the apostle's telling us. So let's dive into this, our highest source and model of this agape, this brand of love, this allegiance of our purpose, our highest source and model comes from God himself. Let's look at one John, chapter four, and we're going to go through several verses in this chapter 4, verses 7
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C
through 8 in the English revised version says this beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone that loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God. For God is love. So remember we talked last week about the Lord's Prayer when Jesus taught his disciples to pray our Father. And this dramatic implication was that Jesus is our brother and therefore all the followers are siblings. So agape is that family resemblance of God's children. Everyone who actively loves God with this kind of love shows evidence of receiving a new spiritual life through his Holy Spirit. And with God as our source, then those given his spirit are going to inevitably look like him. It's going to bear his likeness.
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B
Well, yeah, for me, when I grew up, I wanted to be like my dad spiritually. That's the way we want to see this. We want to be like our Father. And it says God is love. So there is no boring sense of who God's character is. And that's why when you look at this in a scriptural perspective, it jumps out at you far beyond the definition, because you have to pay attention to, well, how does he express this? Oh, glad that came up. Why don't we talk about that next? God's benevolent love for us was demonstrated in a very extraordinary way. Let's continue. In First John, chapter 4, let's look at verses 9 through 11.
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C
By this, the love of God was manifested in us. That God has sent his only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation, meaning the satisfaction for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
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B
So this scripture is essentially saying the love of God is big. And it was proven. It was proven by his sending his only begotten Son into the world so the entire world can have salvation. But those who are called to Christ have that salvation first. Jesus coming is the satisfaction for our sins. So he paved God by sending him, paved the road for us to be able to walk towards Him. That is that utter benevolence that was so high and so lofty. And it's really important to recognize that God did this for a world that was completely out of harmony with him. Completely out of harmony with Him. You know, Julie, just side note, side story, I love words. And so every Christmas, my kids get me this word of the day calendar.
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Oh, no.
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And I love it. And I love it. It sits on my desk. They're always asking me, dad, you really want another one of those? And I say, y. I do. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready to do a Christian questions topical Bible study with several others. We're studying agape love. And the word for the day was disinterested. And it's like, that doesn't sound very happy and exciting. But the point of disinterested is one of the definitions in the word for the day is free from selfish motive or interest. And that's the key. There's an unbiased sense to that. God is free from selfish motive or interest, and his love for us, for the world, sent his son. That's free from selfishness. That's for the benefit of others. And it's a beautiful way for us to understand and maintain what the standard is for us.
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C
So you'd say God's love is disinterested in the classical sense. It doesn't arise from anything in us. It seeks no advantage. It's unprovoked, unearned, and unconditional.
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B
And this disinterested is not I don't care. It's I don't have to gain anything. Here it is purely for you when it says we should love one another as God loves us. Now we begin to see what our responsibility is. And it's a big responsibility. Let's go a little further next. Let's see how Jesus himself explained and lived this agape as his human life was an expression of love. Let's look at John 15, 12, 14.
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C
Yeah, this love is getting a lot bigger. Jesus says, this is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this. That one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
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B
And look, Christians all over know these verses, and we're all inspired by these verses. Let's take a moment, though, and let them sink in. How deeply do we actually comprehend this example? Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Now remember this agape form of love. This is the allegiance of our purpose. Jesus in John 15, showed us the allegiance of his purpose was to fulfill God's will. And that was ultimately expressed through his agape, his agape kind of love. We must follow in his footsteps. And here's the question, is Jesus's conviction, my conviction? Do I have that same sense of giving that he did?
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C
So most of us probably won't be in a position to literally lay down our lives for our brethren, but some will. I remember being in Poland a few years ago and visiting Auschwitz, the World War II Nazi German concentration and extermination camp. It's as horrific and it's as awful as you would imagine with all the evil that was there. And as we toured the barracks, there was this large poster, large sign with a photo of a man named Maximilian Kolbe. He was a Polish friar. Colby, a prisoner, had escaped, and the officer in charge of the camp chose 10 random prisoners to die by starvation as punishment. Or one of the selected men at random, cried out, my wife. My children. And in that moment, Maximilian Colby stepped forward and quietly said, let me take his place. Now. He had nothing to gain. He wasn't related to the man. He didn't even know him. But his life had been shaped by a single purpose, to love as Christ loved. So he stepped into the underground starvation bunker underneath block 11. That was the camp's infamous death block. A block was a numbered brick wooden barracks building. And he spent his final days praying with the other condemned men. He comforted them, and he turned this place of terror into a place of peace. Two weeks later, the guards go, and he's still alive, but needing to clear out this dungeon. And by the way, you tour this dungeon, you see this cell. It's little, it's dank, it's cold, it's horrifying. The guards ended his life with an injection because they needed the space to torture other people. So the man that he saved ended up being 93 years old. And he. He had this quote, so long as I have breath in my lungs, I will consider it my duty to tell people about the heroic act of love by Maximilian Colby. And this is obviously an act that went well beyond brotherly kindness. This was a full expression of agape. This is love that sacrifices that gave without return. And it's the love that reflects the heart of God. So I'll never forget that story.
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B
It reflects the heart of God, and it reflects the life of Jesus in his human existence. His entire life was built around that. And that friar learned from Jesus because he had faith in him. So he knew what the example was. And he used that to step up in a way that is really incomprehensible and just. It's an amazing story in the midst of the darkest, most diabolical evil that any of us can even begin to imagine. It's a great example of agape love in a very, very high form. Let's go further. This Agape is built upon Philadelphia. Remember, that's brotherly love. So agape is built upon Philadelphia as we now learn to love selflessly, just like with your story, even when we may come from different backgrounds and perspectives or be at odds in some ways. So it comes down to none of that matters. That's the selflessness. That's the free from selfish motive and selfish interest. Let's look at first John, chapter 3, verse 14.
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C
We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. And while Colby was a case of dramatic heroism, John here is describing a recognizable lifestyle, and it's consistent evidence of our spiritual life. Two verses earlier, he was referencing Cain, Cain and Abel. And he was saying that because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous, Cain is the example of who not to be. Someone whose inner condition of hatred and jealousy went outward and produced outward hatred and violence. Thoughts of hatred and Murder on the inside led to it in action. So John's basically saying, don't be like Cain. Don't let resentment and comparison or wounded pride take root, because we're not going to achieve agape that way. So for me, the practical takeaway of this is we don't let jealousy or comparison fester. Don't resent somebody else's righteousness. Don't isolate yourself from the brotherhood. Don't nurse this quiet bitterness because all it does is grow. And don't assume that hatred is harmless just because it's internal. Cain shows us where that sad road leads, and it does not lead to agape.
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B
And it's interesting that, you know, we're looking at these examples and the thought is, this is hard, this is hot, this is lofty. How do you even begin to get there? And here's the good news. If you look back at the previous nine segments of this series, the apostle Peter lays out, here's how you get there. Here's what you do with faith. That's right. You build on your faith moral excellence, and on your moral excellence, knowledge. And on your knowledge, you build self control. And that gives the ability for perseverance and for brotherly love. And then for this agape, so you build your way up. It's not something we have to master in a moment. It's something we are continually walking towards. That's the whole point of these lessons. With all of that in place, let's now take a look at this agape in a different perspective. This agape also applies to learning to love our enemies. And that's what Jesus did. Okay, so we've been talking about loving those that we can kind of like, but now it's loving our enemies. Matthew 5, 43, 45.
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Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father, which is in heaven. For he maketh his Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and. And sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
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B
So love your enemies, do good to those that persecute you. Why? So you can be the children of your Father? Because that's what he does. And it's this example. And that's why agape in scripture is so much more dramatic than agape in the dictionary. You can be like God The Creator, the one with the plan for all time, because he makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good and. And sends the rain on the just and the unjust. So whether somebody is your friend or enemy is irrelevant. It's irrelevant when you have agape love. God is ultimately good and just to all. This allegiance of our purpose therefore needs to reflect his goodness. Love your enemies.
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C
And if any listener out there struggles with this, and who doesn't, we recommend listening to episode 1376, do I really have to Love My Enemies? And also episode 1387, can I really love someone I don't like? Yes, we have to love them too. So agape isn't this feeling like falling in love? You don't wait for this feeling to happen. We don't naturally produce agape on our own, and the New Testament thankfully never assumes that we can. If you look at this John, Paul, Jesus, they all treat agape as something that God generates in us, not something that we have the willpower to create. So the question becomes, what do we actually do when we don't have agape?
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B
And that's an important question. Well, and the point is, look for ways to let it grow and develop now. Okay, great. How do you do that? Well, we just happen to have scriptures that show us that. The APostle Paul in First Corinthians 13, begins defining this unbiased love, this agape, in a practical way for us to learn it and to apply it. And he starts First Corinthians, chapter 13 by identifying how the three public parts of our Christianity need agape to be of a foundational value. Let me say it again. The three public parts of our Christian lives need this agape to be have foundational value. Remember, you said it. Love is not a feeling. This agape is not a feeling. It's an action. It's not how I feel. It's what I do. And it's what I do that comes from my heart. That's what we're talking about, the three public areas. The first is what we say. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 13. 1.
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If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
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B
I can speak with the language of men and angels, I can be eloquent. But if I don't have agape, I'm just making noise. That's powerful. That's a big, big piece. Maturity. This is what maturity in Christ is. Maturity in Christ means growing up and Focusing on what brings growth, not attention. It's so easy to sound eloquent and to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and be able to expound on something. But if it's not from within, if it's not from that appropriate motivation, it's emptiness. We can say the right thing for all the wrong reasons. And it's nice to say the right thing, but it needs to be genuine.
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C
Yes. And from a practical standpoint, what can we do? We can slow down before speaking, then choose words that reflect humility and patience. And I think what's very helpful for me is if you visualize the emotional gap from where we feel now. Maybe we're tired, irritated, defensive, indifferent, and between us and that agape that God seeks, the be patient kind, not self seeking. Maybe we tell the person we're talking to, I need a moment so that I can respond with a better spirit, or my heart isn't in the right place right now. Can we pause? I think that's how we can obey 1 Corinthians 13:1 even when we're not feeling very agape.
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B
That's so important to ask for a moment. You want to be able to collect your thoughts. One thing that I work on incessantly, and it's difficult. That's why I work on it incessantly. And I fall down a lot when somebody else is speaking, to actually listen. I mean, to really listen, to not be working on my response, something clever or whatever, but to just listen. And then when my mind wanders, I yell at myself. It's like, Richard, you're this, you're listening. The answer is in what they're saying. The answer is not in you. The answer's in them. Let them speak. And so the, the sense of being engaged, like you're saying, give me a moment so I can collect my thoughts, or just let me just listen so that I can respond to where you are that shows this kind of love. So we need it in what we say. Eloquence is not the key. Genuineness and godliness are the keys in what we say. Let's go a little further. The second foundational point in our public lives is what we know. Let's look at First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 2.
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C
If I have the gift of prophecy and know all the mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
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So I got the gift of prophecy. I know the mysteries. I can quote you the scriptures. I'm A person of great faith. But if it's not driven by that selflessness, by that unbiased giving, the apostle says, I'm nothing. Cancel everything out because you're not applying it in the highest form and the way that it's supposed to be. Knowledge, even by miraculous means, the apostle Paul is saying, is meaningless unless God's love drives that knowledge. And we have to be imitating our Father. That's the point. God is love. We need to be his children with whatever it is that we know.
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C
And here Paul exposes a second gap. That's the distance between what we know versus what we live, how we treat people. So you can know the Bible inside and out. You can have all the right answers on the Bible trivia app. You can win every theological argument, but you can still miss the heart of Christ. So here's where we might pray. Lord, help me apply what I know instead of using it to win. Take that competitive out of it. I want my knowledge to make me gentle, not proud. Or Lord, bring my heart in line with what my head knows, because this is really important. We want to bring people to God into Jesus. We don't want to bring attention to how smart and special we are.
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B
And by doing so, it comes down to that real fundamental humility that says, your will, not my will, your glory, not mine. Just let me be a small tool, just let me be an instrument, whatever it takes. And if being silent is the best way, Lord, let me be silent to your glory. It comes down to what we know to do, to honor him, because we are his children. So we've got what we say and what we know. Let's go to the third point. And that is what we do. And First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 3.
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C
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
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B
I can do all of the outward acts I can do, I can do, I can do, I can do. But if I am not in heart accord with the will of God, then it doesn't. It's not going to help anything. Yes, you're. You're doing some nice things for other people. Great, wonderful. But the idea here is to be crystallized. Like Christ Jesus willingly gave himself because it was his Father's will. And he went through things he didn't want to go through because it was his Father's will. How do I handle what I do? The doing of righteous acts is meaningless before God if they're not driven by God's love in us, using Jesus as our example.
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C
And this really exposes a third gap. That's the distance between our actions and our actual inward heart. And we've talked before about having the root and the fruit. The fruit is going to show you eventually what the root is all about. And we can do all these amazing acts of devotion. But again, like you've been saying, without the right motives, they're just meaningless gestures and they really become sound bites. I really appreciate my sister in this because before she commits to an act of service, she workshops it in her head to make sure that her motives are properly aligned and that she's able to act with love and kindness and not a little bit of bitterness or feeling annoyed because it's out of obligation. And so one question we have to ask ourselves is, with today's social media, do we curate our goodness? Are we showing the best angles of our generosity or our service? Are we keeping score by looking to see what others are doing? And here's a good question to ask. Would I still do this if no one knew about it? You want to practice anonymous generosity? And maybe, we pray, lord, use this to make me more like Christ. Or maybe, Lord, make my heart love what my hands are doing.
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B
And it really comes down to let not one hand know what the other hand is doing. That scriptural concept of you're right, sometimes the best possible giving is something that's done with complete anonymity. And I've told this story before, but I've had the beautiful privilege of somebody seeing a need in somebody else, a financial need. And one of these individuals comes up to me and has a check written out to the other, or not a check, but cash. They give me the envelope and say, I need you to give this to so and so because they have a need. Do not tell them where it came from. It's the greatest thing ever to walk up to somebody and say, how you doing? And have a conversation. By the way, I have something for you from one of the brethren who loves you. And they saw a need and they. They wanted you to have. Who? Well, they told me that they just want you to be blessed. Yeah, but who is it? It's somebody who loves you. Yeah, but who? I told you, it's somebody who loves you. They want to remain anonymous, but please be blessed by their gift. It's a beautiful thing because there's such. That's agape. It's showing. It's not about me. It's about what I'm able to give. This is really showing us the beauty and the magnitude of all this. We can only achieve the completeness of love by first acknowledging the power of God's influence and allowing the power to override our own strength. And that's what you were saying before. Let me override my own strength, my own thinking, my own prejudices, my own wishes, my own wannabes, so that I can put things in order. One more scripture, First John, chapter 4, verse 18.
- [29:21]
C
And we last left off at First John 4, verse 11, where John said that because God loved us enough to send Jesus, we ought to love one another. In the intervening verses between verse 12 and 17, he shows how that love grows in us through the Spirit, through faith in Christ, and through loving others until it matures into confidence for the day of judgment. So instead of fearing God's evaluation, we can stand boldly because his love has already united us with Christ. Mature love drives out fear because we've already been changed from the inside out. So let's read First John 4. We pick it up at verse 18. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment. And the one who fears is not perfected in love.
- [30:12]
B
So when we go to grow agape love in our lives, one of the checkpoints is, how much do I have fear in the application of these things? And if we do, we have to say, okay, I've got to do some more work here. I've got to go back to the building blocks. And what are the building blocks? Well, there's moral excellence, there's knowledge, there's self control, there's perseverance and there's brotherly kindness, to name a few, that the apostle put in front of us. That's how we get there. There's no fear. There's no timidity, there's no cowardice, there's no alarm or fright if that love is perfected. You notice that Jesus, when he faced the most difficult times before his crucifixion, that whole night of trial and all that, he wasn't afraid of anybody or anything. He was calm, he received, he responded, and he was faithful. Why? Because his love for his Father was so overwhelming. That this is your will and I'm doing it, and there is nothing, literally nothing in the world that will stop me. That's our example. Putting all this together is really a dramatic, dramatic piece to just understand what this agape really is. As we begin to wrap this up. Why is agape the next quality after Philadelphia? Agape form of love. After Philadelphia form of love. Well, when we keep the allegiance of our relationships in order, that's the brotherly love. They forge a powerful and constructive connection between us as the brotherhood. With this connection, we're then in a position to have the allegiance of our purpose of agape grow to new heights of selflessness. New heights of selflessness. And then to be able to shine brightly as the focal point of our Christian character. That's where we want to get to. That's the mission. That's why this is the top rung on this virtue ladder. So when we look at the allegiance attribute of our purpose, let's put this in order.
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C
Well, it's one thing to desire to have God first in our lives, and as we all know, it's another to live it day to day. So to get there, we have to focus daily on developing our purpose.
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B
Now look, this development can only happen by living our faith with moral excellence and knowledge. We need self control, perseverance and godliness to fend off our natural propensities toward our broken humanness so that the brotherly love we express toward our natural family can grow into a spiritually driven brotherly love expressed toward our Christian family and from there to love our enemies. All of these allegiance attributes create a life changing appreciation of God's love and his call and provide the core determination to love selflessly as God and our Lord Jesus do.
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C
God's love is unbiased, it's unearned and it's unstoppable. And he calls us to reflect that, that same love in a world that desperately needs it. It's such a big love. And as we climb Peter's ladder, may our lives show that family resemblance that we have of our Father.
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B
That's the key. The key is to have that resemblance. Because God is love. And that's where we draw this all from. That's where we put all of these pieces together and, and that is what we need to be really, really focusing on as we are putting this love in place. It's important to recognize this and it's a really simple way to conclude it. We pass from death to life through the allegiance of our purpose of sacrificial living. That's the way it works. That's agape. That's the top rung of Peter's virtue ladder. Think about it, folks. We love hearing from our listeners. We welcome your feedback and questions on this episode and other episodes@christianquestions.com coming up in our next episode, putting it all together. What does a fully supplied Christian character look like?