The same God who demands our love, commands us to love our brothers and sisters.

Good morning everybody. Thank you very much for being here. Those that don’t know me, my name is Steve Ansell, and I’m part of the preaching team through the summer this year. Now, if you’ve been coming in the last few weeks, you know that we’re going through the book of First John. And today we’ve gotten to chapter four and we have two verses, verse 20 and 21. And if you see, the title is You’ve Got to Love Both. So you might be sitting there and going, love, I think we’ve done love a few times already this summer. And you’d be right. I will say that as I was preparing for this, I was impressed and really challenged by the fact that John talks about love over and over and over again. And then as I was looking at some of the ways in which he had quoted, I saw that Jesus spoke about love over and over and over again. So I think as I was then challenging myself. If Jesus and John thought this was an important topic. Well, clearly it’s an important topic and we’re going to happily look into what he has to say, John has to say about it today. So here’s the scripture that we’re going to be looking at. It’s First John chapter four, verses 20 and 21, and it says, if anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

And this is the commandment we have from him. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. So I was thinking a little bit about this. The whole thing about loving both God and my brother, God and others around me, others in the church, others that I have intersection with. I thought of an illustration that I thought was very helpful to me. I hope it is to you too. When I was a kid I had, I guess it was a toy. Probably wasn’t really a toy, but I enjoyed it a lot. I had a set of magnets, not just kind of wimpy little magnets. I had really good magnets. These ones were super powerful and they would stick to each other. That if you, as a little kid, pulling them apart was actually quite hard. And putting them down, if I took the negative pole and put it with a negative pole, you know how those repel each other, I could push that magnet around the kitchen table. There was really clear evidence of a significant force that was going on. You couldn’t see it, but you definitely knew it was there. So if you wanted to see the power and the force, if you took some iron filings and you just sprinkled them around, you’d get that. You could see the magnetic field and the positive and negative poles.

You could see how, again, the magnetism was kind of moving between the poles. If you turned a positive pole and put it next to a positive pole, you could see what’s on the right, and that’s the forces repelling each other. So two things that I wanted us to take away from that. The first is that sometimes it isn’t clearly evident, but that magnetic field is definitely there. You can see evidence of it all around. So as we’re going to be challenging ourselves, people will know that we love God by the love we show to them, and it will be evident by the love field, if you like, that’s around us. But probably even more important is the fact that you cannot have a magnetic field without a positive and a negative pole. If you only have a positive pole, all you have is a block of iron. It’s nothing. Magnets have to have a positive and a negative charge. So John is going to tell us that if we want to be followers of Christ, we have to love God and we have to love others. A positive charge and a negative charge. Love for God. Love for others. Without the one, the other doesn’t exist. So here’s the proposition that we’re going to talk about today. The same God who we love commands us to love our brothers and sisters. You have to love both. Like two poles. Positive and negative of a magnet.

One without the other doesn’t exist. Let’s open with a word of prayer before we get into the Scripture. Heavenly Father, we want to thank you so much that you loved us so much that you sent Jesus. You gave up your son who died for us. Thank you Lord, by Your Holy Spirit that we can have that love of Jesus in our lives. And I pray that as I’ve been challenged, that others that are hearing this today will be challenged to have the love of Jesus emulate from us, ooze out from us because of the love that you, Father, are putting in our hearts and how this is demonstrated around us. May we be like a magnet. May we have both a positive and a negative pole. May we love God and may we love others. If you’ve been with us through the summer, you’ll know that John was writing this letter to a church that had some issues, and he was addressing some of the things that were lies or falsehoods in the church. And over the last number of weeks, you’ll know that Pastor Kyle and then Pastor John and others have been addressing some of these lies. So the first lie we wanted to just reflect on is the lie that says, I can walk with God, but live in disobedience. And this is a lie that Pastor Kyle actually preached about twice. It’s a moral lie, if you like. The first time he preached about it was First John, chapter one, verse six, and it says, if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

And then we had a second sermon on this Frst John, chapter two, verse four, which again says, whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. So the lie that he was being challenged there is, I can say, I’m following God. I can say I walk with God, I can say God is my Father, but I can still misbehave and live in disobedience. The second lie that we went, and this was actually, the lie that says, I can know the Father and deny the Son. So what does that mean? Well, I can say God is my Father. I can say I believe in God, but I allow myself to ignore the claims that Jesus has on my life. And this is a sermon that Pastor James Lowe preached about. It comes from First John chapter two, verses 22 to 23. It says, who is the liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. Saying that I follow God. God is someone that I want to be in a relationship with. But Jesus claims on my life I can ignore.

Now we get to the third lie. And this is the lie that says I can love God without loving other believers. And again, this is a relational lie. And we’re going to look at it in the context of written to other Christians, because John is writing this to the church. So this applies to the people sitting around us in the pew. It applies clearly more beyond that, but I think the challenge is often if we say we love God without loving other believers, that’s a lie. So let’s go back for a minute to the scripture. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. So three points I hope you’ll be able to take away from today. These are the things that I was challenged by. Loving God has to be authentic. We need to look into our hearts and to say, is it real? Number two, loving God needs to be visible just like that magnetic field. Other people around us need to know it’s there. Need to make sure it’s obvious. And then finally, number three, knowing God must be obedient. So let’s jump right in. Point number one, loving God must be authentic. Well, where do I get that? That’s right in the first part of the scripture here, it says, anyone who says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. So the obvious main point here is our claim to love God is a lie if we don’t love others. Now, I don’t know about you, but there are a few words in that sentence that really bother me. The first one is what does hate mean? I mean, that seems like a really strong word, right in the Bible. Well, Pastor Kyle, actually a number of weeks ago gave us some instruction about this. John has really used this word, and when he uses it, he’s talking about an ongoing attitude, a choice, a choice of rejection, of hostility, of refusal to love. It’s not just merely a moment of irritation or disagreement. It’s when I actually choose to say, I will hold something against you. I will disagree with you and so I won’t love you. Well, I was thinking, now that you put it that way, if I look at my own life, I can see that I do that too. I don’t know about you, but if you look at your heart and your life, do you see people where you kind of hold a spirit of disagreement and a spirit of unwillingness to really kind of want the best for them? As I was thinking back, I remember a time when I was a kid. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, sometimes exams and homework all seemed to collide on the same day when I was in high school, and it was a particularly busy time and there was exams coming up on Monday, there was homework that was not yet done. My brothers and I all felt like it was all coming together, and Sunday we seemed to be at church for a very long time. And I needed a little time to get my homework and studying done, So we asked my dad if it would be okay if we went to Sunday school, but during the church service, could we use one of the classrooms to do some of the homework and the studying that we needed to get done? And he relented and said that would be fine. So we were up in the classroom, my two brothers and myself. But we worked out that if you opened the window of the classroom, you could get out onto the roof of the church. So needless to say, not a lot of homework and studying was going on, but a lot of exploring was happening. The thing we didn’t realize, though, was that, you know, the sun was shining and so the sun shone right where we were and through the stained glass window that was in the church. And it became quite obvious that there were three people moving around on the roof of the church.

My father, who was sitting in the third row, he clearly recognized the silhouettes of those three people on the roof. So he went to where we were, and clearly we got into a lot of trouble. However, that’s not the point of the story. The thing that really bothered me was one of the elders of the church was equally bothered by the fact that we had been on the roof of the church, and we had to go and see the elders and apologize to the elders for the behavior. And in fact, come back and do a little community service at the church for a number of weeks afterwards to kind of pay penance for the misbehaving. I never looked that elder in the eye the same after that. Till he died I held that against him. I refused to love him because of what I felt he did to me. So when we start looking at verses that said, you know, do you hate somebody? Well, I can see that in my life. My challenge to you is that maybe you can see it in yours. And John is challenging us here to be very aware of the fact that hating somebody is the antithesis of what we’re being asked to do. The second word that comes up there that bothers me a lot is this word liar. You know, when I was a kid, liar, liar, pants on fire was kind of like not nice things to be saying to people.

Parents told them to be more polite. So what is what is John talking about when he says you’re a liar? Well, I’m not a Greek scholar, but I looked up the Greek word. The Greek word here is piestus, and it means someone who speaks falsely, someone who is a deceiver, someone whose claim is not true. So when John says he is a liar, he means this is a person whose claim to love God is false. His life contradicts his words, and his actions reveal a true state of heart that is actually different to what he or she is saying. So we have to recognize here that John is being a pastor. He wants believers to examine the faith in their hearts and check that it’s genuine. And the clearest evidence of genuine faith is growing love for other people. Hear that again for a second. The clearest evidence of genuine faith is a growing love for other people. If there is not a growing love for other people in my heart and in my life, then there’s a real question around how genuine my faith might be. I then said to myself, well, why? Why does our lack of love for others make our claim to love God a lie? And I think there are a number of points. The first is that believers are God’s family. While you can apply what we’re going to talk about to everybody and God is calling us to love everyone.

This particular part here, John, is writing to the church, and so he’s instructing Christians to love brothers and sisters in Christ. So when someone becomes a Christian, they are part of God’s family. Loving God, loving the Father includes loving the children. So we’re going to talk about it next week because First John chapter five, verse one says, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and anyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. So simply rejecting God’s children while claiming to love their Father is inconsistent. The second thing I think I learned from this is just that Jesus made love for one another the defining mark of his disciples. He said, by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. Love for other believers is not just an optional virtue. It’s a defining characteristic of Christian discipleship. We value discipleship here. Part of what at Calvary is a focus is how to be disciples of Christ. And if we say we’re disciples of Christ, really important that the defining characteristic of that is how much we love each other and how much we love others around us. And then love fulfills God’s command. So when Jesus was asked, firstly, the Sadducees tried to trick him out. They failed. They sent the Pharisees to have a second try.

They were trying to catch Jesus out. And they said to him, summarize the law for us. What does the law say? And Jesus said to them, there are two inseparable commands Love God and love your neighbor. Pretty straightforward. And he got that from Deuteronomy chapter six, verse five, where God said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and your mind, and your soul and your strength. And then Jesus said, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind and all your strength. This is the great and first commandment. And then he adds, and the second is like it you will love your neighbor as yourself. And I think there’s a reason why Jesus said the second commandment was like the first. If we really love God with all our heart, we will love our neighbor as ourselves. Just like the magnet, positive and negative poles, they’re really inseparable, just like faith and works. If you got the first, you’re going to have the second. It naturally follows. If we don’t have love and God is not the love of our lives, there’s no way we’re going to truly love our neighbor as ourselves. Bottom line is, we’re not going to really love God. We’re certainly not going to love our neighbors. We really just going to love ourselves. Last thing I think is that lack of love reveals a spiritual problem.

We learned from First John chapter three, verse 14 that anyone who does not love remains in death. And then Pastor Kyle also preached about First John chapter two, verses 9 to 11, which says, and anyone who hates a brother or sister is in darkness. So I don’t think these verses mean that Christians never struggle with conflict and disappointment and but rather, they teach us that this settled refusal to love fellow believers totally contradicts the new life that God gives. So the point is not that Christians love other people perfectly. It’s that genuine love for God inevitably begins to shape and reshape how we relate to other people. Our persistent, unrepentant hatred and refusal to love fellow believers calls one’s profession of love for God into question. If you don’t see love in my life and I say I love God, there’s a question mark around whether I really do. I’m going to move then to the second thing that I felt I learned here, and that is loving God must be visible. And that’s right. In the second part of the scripture we read. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. Again, I’ll take you back to when I was a kid, there was a little bumper sticker around that said, if you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Well, you know, I think the same is true here.

If you say you love God, is there enough evidence for people to believe it? By the way you behave, by the things you say and the love you show. I think the other thing that I find very interesting, it says here, he cannot love God, whom he has not seen. It’s not that he doesn’t love God, it’s that he cannot love God. It’s not actually feasible. Again, just thinking of a magnet. If you only have a positive pole, you do not have a negative pole. It is not a magnet. So if we’re going to be someone that really says we love God, we have to love others. So I was thinking about an illustration of somebody for whom loving God was really visible. It took me back to this guy. Those of you who know me know I like history. This is a guy, his name was Desmond Doss, he was an Army combat medic in the Second World War. So again, back in those times, he actually worked in the shipyards. So when the US got into the Second World War, he actually didn’t need to join the Army because he was already contributing to the Army and to the war initiative by helping in the shipyards. But he wanted to be part and be an Army medic. He was a born again Christian, loved the Lord, was very committed to reading his Bible, always wanted to honor God on the Lord’s Day.

But because he was a Christian, he didn’t feel killing people was the right thing. So he was wanting to go into the army as a pacifist, as a noncombatant Army medic. So in the beginning, there was a lot of push and pull about whether he should even be allowed to go into the Army. But eventually that was approved. But when he was in training, he had an absolutely miserable time. People in his barracks really gave him all kinds of grief for reading his Bible. People that were training with him really despised the fact that he wanted to honor God on the Lord’s Day. And then when he said to them, I’m a pacifist, I don’t want to shoot people. I just want to be a medic. Even his commanding officers wanted him out, and some of the people that were actually part of the training with him said, if you ever get in the way and we’re in war, we’re going to just shoot you because you’re no value to us at all. So that battalion did go to war, and they ended up in the Battle of Okinawa, and the Japanese forces got them pinned down at the top of this escarpment that you can see here, 400ft up from down where the beach was. Many of them had been shot. A lot of them were wounded.

They were stuck. They were trapped and pinned down. One man climbed up that escarpment, up those rope ladders 75 times and saved and brought down 75 men, many of them wounded, many of them injured. Desmond Doss climbed up, and every time it was said as he went up, he said, God help me, please help me save one more. And he didn’t just do it again as he was in good shape. He was shot four times in this process of going up. This ended up being a movie. It’s called Hacksaw Ridge. He got a medal for this, but that’s not the point of the story. Here is a guy who showed the love of Christ to people who gave him all kinds of grief, who didn’t like him, who actually were antagonistic and nasty to him. He did that because the love of Christ compelled him. So as we go to actually looking at love for God being visible, God’s argument here, well John’s argument here in First John four, verse 20 is not simply that loving an invisible God is impossible. Rather, he’s exposing the inconsistency of claiming to love God while refusing to love the people that that God has placed in front of you. So here’s the logic behind it. Firstly, love is tested in the visible. It’s very easy to say I love God. God doesn’t irritate us with personality differences. He doesn’t offend us in conversations.

He doesn’t disappoint us the same way people do. People require patience, forgiveness, humility, sacrifice. Loving them demonstrates whether God’s love is actually reshaping our hearts. John’s point here is that the visible test reveals the invisible reality. Like that magnetic field, God’s work in our lives is changing us so that people around it can feel it. They need to feel the love we have because of the change that God is making in our hearts. Further, God identifies himself with his people. So believers are God’s children. We just mentioned a moment ago that First John chapter five next week we’re going to be talking about that. So you can imagine if I have a friend and we’re supposedly close friends and I say something to him or her like this, you know, I really respect you, but I can’t stand your kids and your children, so I’m not going to be nice to them. I mean, you would scratch your head and say, what kind of friendship is that? Most people would question whether that person really loves their friend. Their treatment of the family reveals something about their relationship with the parent. So similarly, when we say to those that God loves, that we reject them, or that we won’t be showing love to them, our claim to love God is entirely contradictory. And then love for God produces love for others. John consistently teaches all through this book, and it’s all through Scripture that God’s love changes people.

If you were here last time last Sunday, John Chaco was preaching and he used the verse we love because he first loved us. God’s love truly transforms a person, and that transformation needs to be evident in how we treat others, especially fellow believers. I don’t think this means that Christians love perfectly, but there needs to be a genuine desire and a growing practice of love, even when relationships are difficult. And Jesus taught the same principle. He said, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me. How we treat people reflects how we love and how we respond to Christ. So John’s making the same point. He says, love for God is authenticated by our love for those that belong to him. So when John says, you cannot love God whom you have not seen, he isn’t making some kind of philosophical claim that loving the invisible is impossible. He’s making a moral and spiritual claim. If you profess love for an invisible God with no visible expression toward the people he loves. Your profession is not genuine. The absence of love for others exposes that the claimed love for God is not the kind of love the gospel produces. So I challenged myself. You know, love is not an emotion. It’s not an idea. It’s an action. It’s a verb. It’s a working word. We need to choose to love in the very nature that God has instructed us to.

Final point is loving God must be obedient. And again, this comes right out of the final part of the Scripture which says, and this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. Well, it’s pretty straightforward. The point here is we need to love one another. And this is not a suggestion. This is a command. And in fact, as I’ll talk about in a minute, there’s a newness to this command, too. The word for love, everybody knows is agape or agape love. And this is selfless, sacrificial love. It’s God’s love. It’s not based on feelings or circumstances, but it’s actually based on the character of God. So as recipients of agape love, we are called to reflect it to others. And why are we called to reflect it to others? Well, it’s a command. It’s instructed. But as I mentioned before, it’s also evidence. I find this really hard. I find it hard to love people, particularly people who hurt me or hurt people that matter to me. You know, that person that said nasty things to your daughter about what she wears or the way in which she behaves? Can you love them? The guy that always minimizes your ideas. You bring things up in meetings or whatever, he always kind of has a better idea, demeans what you said, kind of talks you down. Can you love him? The person who seems just prejudiced about things. Always has a kind of an attitude that kind of is demeaning of where people came from or what they do or how they speak or something.

Can you love that person? It’s interesting. The Bible doesn’t say those people need to get their act together and sort their lives out. It’s not about them. It’s about you. We need to love them. This command is not about them. It’s about us. The third, the second thing that I think is important here is that this is the set of last instructions from Jesus. I thought it was very interesting, you know, Jesus was about to go to the cross, brings together all of his disciples. He’s going to give them final instructions. What kind of instructions should he give? Should we talk strategy? Should we work out how we’re going to go? Europe? India? No, none of that. Well, should we talk about theology? We’ve got to make sure that people understand this, this, this. No, none of that. What does he want them to do? What’s the instruction? What’s the thing that he wants? He says, a new commandment I give you, love one another, just as I have loved you. You are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. That’s it. That’s the final word. Jesus says, love others. It’s a new command.

I kind of find this interesting. I mentioned a moment ago Deuteronomy chapter six, verse five. God says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. Jesus, when said, can you summarize that? He takes it a step further. He goes, love the Lord your God with all your heart and your, all your mind and your soul and your strength. That’s the first commandment and greatest commandment. The second one that I’m giving you is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. But then he takes it up a level because then he says, a new commandment I give you, love one another, and now he adds, as I have loved you, you must love one another. And by this people will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. Well, that’s new in my mind in two ways. It’s a new standard. The standard is not just love other people like you love yourself, it’s love other people like Jesus loved you. And secondly, the extent of that is at another level because Jesus gave his life for us. He died on the cross for us. So when we’re called to love others like he loved us, that’s the kind of love he wants us to show. As I was looking at the scripture, I said, well, it says, by this you will know. What’s the will know part? And that comes from a Greek word that’s genesco.

And it implies knowing through experience. This is knowing through lived out love. It’s different to the other Greek word that is more commonly used, and that’s iota. That word is knowing facts, head knowledge, factual information. So what John is saying and what Jesus is saying, this is a knowledge that is gained through observation and action and relationship. People will know because we demonstrate it, not because we just said it. It’s not a wah wah wah thing. It’s a live it out thing. I don’t think this is going to be easy. I think loving others is really hard. Bottom line is it isn’t optional. It’s a command. And Jesus gave us this commandment. And he didn’t attach a list of exceptions that give us an out for difficult cases. I can point to a lot of difficult cases in my life. Unfortunately, none of them is an exception that the Bible gives me an out. So what do I think are the takeaways from this? What’s my conclusion? How am I challenging myself? Well, I think the first thing is to be careful of the trap. The trap is that if you think about what the world thinks, the world equates love with agreement: I love those who hold my views. I love the people who see things the way I see them. I like and love people who agree with me. The other ones, I cancel them. The problem is the Bible doesn’t give us that.

The Bible says you need to love your enemies. I don’t think too many of my enemies agree with me or think like I do. That’s who God calls us to love. Well, does that mean I have to like everybody? Well, I don’t think the Bible says you have to like everybody. It says you have to love them. And I think love and affection and agreement are actually distinguished in the Bible. Loving people and loving other believers involves seeking their good, forgiving like Jesus forgave, seeking patience, showing patience, speaking the truth with grace, serving other people, praying for other people. And you may not naturally enjoy every believer’s personality. You may even need to put some healthy boundaries around people that are more abusive and unrepentant. Biblical love doesn’t require us to ignore sin or stay around in harmful situations. But biblical love requires us to seek their good, to forgive like Jesus forgave, to show patience, to speak the truth with love. To serve them. To pray for them. So how do I choose love? Well, and I speak to myself as much as I speak to anybody, I was just thinking about we have to stop relying on our feelings. Love isn’t something we feel. Love is something we choose and something we do. If we choose to love God based on our mood that day. If I do that, my love will always be inconsistent. If I choose only to love people when it’s convenient to me, I’m never actually going to get around to it.

If I only love the brothers and sisters and other people that think and love, really think like me and love me back, I’m not doing what we just learned about in Scripture today. I think we need to love like Jesus. Jesus love is not contingent on our works or how he’s feeling that day. Jesus love doesn’t waver because he’s too busy or not in the mood. Jesus love is constant, And when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we can never unearn his love. Take a minute to let that sink in. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, we can never unearn his love. We’re very quick to let other people unearn our love when they don’t do what we want, when they’re mean to us, when they say things that irritate us, we quickly just scratch them off the list. Jesus never did that. Bottom line is, I think this is very hard. And if I look at my life, I can’t do this by myself. I need the Holy Spirit. So this to me is the beauty of it is that when we give our lives to Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit in us, and the Holy Spirit is the person that will allow us. The Holy Spirit is the magnetic field. The Holy Spirit is what is going to let people around us see the love of Christ.

And the thing that to me is the greatest blessing, the Holy Spirit can help people see the love of Christ in us, even when we’re doing a pretty shoddy job ourselves. And here’s why. Most of you will know that I’m in healthcare. A number of years ago, well, I treat patients that have blood related cancer. So this young guy, a 20 year old, came in to see me, and he was probably the most unpleasant guy, most unpleasant patient I’ve ever had any interactions with. Firstly, he was beating up on his wife, then he was belligerent and nasty to all of the staff. Every time we try to give him advice, he really wouldn’t take it. He had a lot of very nasty and aggressive things to say back. We gave him some transfusions. He got a little better, so he signed himself out of medical care against advice. He was irritating the living daylights out of me. Then he came back because now he was getting sick again. And we agreed to continue treatment. And we tried some treatment, and the first treatment wasn’t successful. Again, he had a lot of very aggressive things to say. We switched treatment to a different treatment. Also didn’t work. All the way through this guy is so difficult, every day is a complete battle. Third treatment didn’t work. Eventually we ran out of treatment and I had to go into his into his room and say to him, we have nothing more to offer.

All we are going to be able to do now is palliative measures, and we’re going to send you to hospice. What happened next was the thing that is probably the most humbling moment in my entire career. He said to me, Doctor Ansel, I know you’re a Christian. Would you pray for me? To this day, that, to me, was the most humbling moment. I had been at best civil to this guy. I had shown him none of the love of Jesus Christ. Nothing about me spoke of how much of a difference Jesus is making in my life. And somehow the Holy Spirit had done it despite me. So that to me is the encouragement. As we let the Holy Spirit have more control in our lives, as we say, Lord, change me. Even when we do a rubbish job, he, the Holy Spirit, will do it through us, despite us. John Stott was an English preacher from many decades ago. He said this. He said every claim to love God is delusional, if it is not accompanied by unselfish and practical love for our brethren. I really love this particular scripture that we read. If you look it up in the message, the paraphrase, it ends like this. It says, the message we have from Christ is blunt. Loving God involves loving people. You have got to do both. Let’s close in prayer.

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