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

Deuteronomy 15:7

[7] “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother,

1 John 4:20

[20] 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.

James 2:15-16

[15] If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, [16] and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

1 John 3:17

[17] But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

Chicken Coops and God’s Creation

“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.”

ROMANS 2:14-15

 

PONDER THIS

Suppose my father is a master builder. He can build the most beautiful houses, buildings, and skyscrapers you’ve ever seen. Suppose I study his work, and I watch very carefully to observe everything he does. I see his methods and his techniques. Then I take my father’s materials, tools, and plan, but rather than building a magnificent skyscraper, I build a chicken coop. When I’m finished building with my father’s plans, materials, and tools, I step back and say, “You see that chicken coop? That proves my father doesn’t exist.”

That’s often what we do with the things we make. We take God’s tools, God’s materials, and God’s plans and make—compared to God’s creation—a chicken coop, then say, “Look what we have done!” All we have is from Him. What we make pales in comparison to His creation.

When you present the case of your faith, whether in a college philosophy class or talking to your neighbor, you don’t have to be intimidated. You don’t have to be nervous and hesitant about sharing the hope that is in you. Be bold! Creation says there is a God; design says there is a God; the moral law of the Universe says there is a God; and even the very things we make each day say there is a God!

What are some things you see every day that point to God?

What are the ways you can acknowledge God in daily conversation?

PRACTICE THIS

Seek to point to God and acknowledge who He is with someone who does not yet know Him.

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

Hebrews 1:2-3

[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,

Isaiah 53:3

    [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.

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.

Isaiah 53:11

    [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.

Forget the Math

“Then Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’” MATTHEW 18:21-22

 

PONDER THIS

When we hear the call to forgiveness, we often ask the same question Peter did. Where are the limits of forgiveness? When can I let go of the responsibility to forgive? Peter was asking when he could finally be done with forgiveness. But Jesus said, “This is not a matter of mathematics. When considering forgiveness, forget the arithmetic.” Jesus said, “Seventy times seven.” And this doesn’t mean precisely 490 times, either; it means forgiveness to the point of losing track of how many times it has been. If the person repents, you forgive him or her again.

If that is how you forgive, you’re not keeping a record, so every time you forgive seems like the first time. It’s not the seventh time or the eighth time because the other times don’t count. They’re gone. You’re not keeping score. Love does not keep a record of wrongs. So, you forgive freely before it becomes an infection. Forgive freely, forgive fully, and forgive finally.

When have you struggled with forgiveness? What makes forgiveness challenging? How does knowing Jesus change the way we view forgiveness?

What does it look like practically to forgive someone fully? Have you ever forgiven someone like that? If you have, what was that like? If not, what steps do you need to take toward full forgiveness?

PRACTICE THIS

Identify anyone you are harboring bitterness for. Ask God to help you forgive completely.

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