The Powerful Root of Practical Love

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. (1 John 3:14)

So, love is the evidence that we are born again — that we are Christians, that we are saved.

Sometimes the Bible makes our holiness and our love for people the condition of our final salvation. In other words, if we are not holy and not loving, we will not be saved at the judgment day (e.g., Hebrews 12:14; Galatians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:10). This doesn’t mean that acts of love are how we get right with God. No, the Bible is clear again and again as Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.” No, when the Bible says that we are saved by faith but that we must love people in order to finally be saved, it means that faith in God’s promises must be so real that the love it produces proves the reality of the faith.

So, love for others is a condition of future grace in the sense that it confirms that the primary condition, faith, is genuine. We could call love for others a secondary condition, which confirms the authenticity of the primary and essential condition of faith which alone unites us to Christ, and receives his power.

Faith perceives the glory of God in the promises of future grace and embraces all that the promises reveal of what God is for us in Jesus. That spiritual sight of God’s glory, and our delight in it, is the self-authenticating evidence that God has called us to be a beneficiary of his grace. This evidence frees us to bank on God’s promise as our own. And this banking on the promise empowers us to love. Which in turn confirms that our faith is real.

The world is desperate for a faith that combines two things: awestruck sight of unshakable divine Truth, and utterly practical, round-the-clock power to make a liberating difference in life. That’s what I want too. Which is why I am a Christian.

There is a great God of grace who magnifies his own infinite beauty and self-sufficiency by fulfilling promises to helpless people who trust him. And there is a power that comes from prizing this God that leaves no nook or cranny of life untouched. It empowers us to love in the most practical ways.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Hebrews 2:1-4

Warning Against Neglecting Salvation

[1] Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. [2] For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, [3] how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, [4] while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

Luke 1:1-4

Dedication to Theophilus

[1] Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, [2] just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, [3] it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, [4] that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Acts 5:32

[32] And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

Hebrews 12:25

[25] See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven.

Have You Seen Satan’s Strategies?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Ephesians 6:11

 

PONDER THIS

The Greek word for “wiles” is methodeia. It’s the word we get “methodical” and “methods” from. Satan is methodical. In warfare, he is strategic. He may even step back two steps to go forward three steps. He may let you think you’re getting away with your sin. He may even seem to bless you and help you along your way. But don’t be fooled. He has made a plan to sabotage your life and your home; the dynamite is in place, the fuse is laid, the match is struck, and Satan is working on you. He is wily, and he is subtle. Apart from the leadership of the Holy Spirit of God, Satan would deceive even the children of God.

When have you experienced the strategy of Satan working in your life?

How have you sought to stand guard against these methods of the devil?

PRACTICE THIS

Make a list of ways you’ve seen the schemes of the devil in your life. Write out a few times you relied on God and were enabled to stand firm. Note also any times you relied on another source of strength, or did little to resist, and were deceived by Satan.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Enduring When Obeying Hurts

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. (Hebrews 12:2)

What faith performs is sometimes unspeakably hard.

In his book Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest Gordon tells the true story of a group of POWs working on the Burma Railway during World War II.

At the end of each day the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. “All die! All die!” he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently to attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing.

What can sustain the will to die for others, when you are innocent? Jesus was carried and sustained in his love for us by “the joy that was set before him.” He banked on a glorious future blessing and joy, and that carried and sustained him in love through his suffering.

Woe to us if we think we should or can be motivated and strengthened for radical, costly obedience by some higher motive than the joy that is set before us. When Jesus called for costly obedience that would require sacrifice in this life, he said in Luke 14:14, “You will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” In other words, be strengthened now in all your losses for Christ’s sake, because of the joy set before you.

Peter said that, when Jesus suffered without retaliating, he was leaving us an example to follow — and that includes Jesus’s confidence in the joy set before him. He handed his cause over to God (1 Peter 2:21) and did not try to settle accounts with retaliation. He banked his hope on the resurrection and all the joys of reunion with his Father and the redemption of his people. So should we.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Isaiah 53:11-12

    [11] 

    Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

    by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

        make many to be accounted righteous,

        and he shall bear their iniquities. 

    [12] 

    Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

        and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

    because he poured out his soul to death

        and was numbered with the transgressors;

    yet he bore the sin of many,

        and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53:3-5

    [3] 

    He was despised and rejected by men,

        a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

    and as one from whom men hide their faces

        he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

    [4] 

    Surely he has borne our griefs

        and carried our sorrows;

    yet we esteemed him stricken,

        smitten by God, and afflicted. 

    [5] 

    But he was pierced for our transgressions;

        he was crushed for our iniquities;

    upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

        and with his wounds we are healed.

Philippians 2:8-11

[8] And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. [9] Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, [10] so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Hebrews 1:1-8

The Supremacy of God’s Son

[1] Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, [2] but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. [3] He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, [4] having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

[5] For to which of the angels did God ever say, 

    “You are my Son,

        today I have begotten you”?

    Or again, 

    “I will be to him a father,

        and he shall be to me a son”?

    [6] And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, 

    “Let all God’s angels worship him.”

    [7] Of the angels he says, 

    “He makes his angels winds,

        and his ministers a flame of fire.”

    [8] But of the Son he says, 

    “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

        the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

Jesus is Praying for You

PRAY OVER THIS

“Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

Hebrews 7:25

 

PONDER THIS

You want a blessed thought? You are on Jesus’ prayer list. There’s nothing much more comforting than for somebody to tell me he is praying for me. How immeasurably more comforting is it to know Jesus prays for us?

There are almost eight billion people on Earth. Some people have never been prayed for one time. If you’re on anybody’s prayer list, you’re blessed. I can tell you for sure that you’re on Jesus’ prayer list. The Lord Jesus knows you by name and He calls you by name. Did you come to God by Jesus? Then you’re on His prayer list. And what is He doing? The finished work of Jesus is Calvary. The unfinished work of Jesus is His prayer ministry.

How does it encourage you to know Jesus is interceding for you before the Father?

How does this free you in your own prayers?

PRACTICE THIS

Spend time today in prayer, thanking God that Jesus continually intercedes for you even when you don’t know how to pray.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

A Hiding Place for the Helpless

How abundant is your goodness, which you have . . . worked for those who take refuge in you. (Psalm 31:19)

The experience of future grace often hangs on whether we will take refuge in God, or whether we doubt his care and run for cover to other shelters.

For those who take refuge in God, the promises of future grace are many and rich.

None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. (Psalm 34:22)

He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. (2 Samuel 22:31)

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:12)

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. (Nahum 1:7)

We do not earn or merit anything by taking refuge in God. Hiding, because we are weak and need protection, is not a work to commend our self-sufficiency. All it does is show that we regard ourselves as helpless and the hiding place as a place of rescue.

In all those promises I just quoted, the condition of great blessing from God is that we take refuge in him. That condition is not a meritorious one; it is the condition of desperation and acknowledged weakness and need and trust.

Desperation does not demand or deserve; it pleads for mercy and looks for grace.

John Piper