Supernatural Love, Part 2
1 Peter 1:22‑25
Let me call your attention for our study of God's Word tonight to 1 Peter chapter 1...1 Peter chapter 1. We're looking at verses 22 through 25. The title of this section, "Supernatural love," and this is part 2 in our study. First Peter 1:22 says, "Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is through the living and abiding Word of God; for all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower falls off but the Word of the Lord abides forever and this is the word which was preached to you."
Now the emphasis of this particular passage is bound up in one statement in verse 22, "Love one another." Everything else in the passage surrounds that very basic Christian principle, love one another. That is a principle which is repeated often in the New Testament and I'm not going to belabor the point to take you through passage after passage but to point out a couple of things tonight that I think are of great interest with regard to that principle. Not only is it important for its own sake in order that we might show the love of Christ, and that we might therefore benefit and bless and encourage and strengthen and assist those in the body of Christ, but our loving one another just so happens to be probably the most important factor in our impact, not only on the church but on the world. In John 13:34 Jesus said, "I new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you that you also love one another." There's the same command. "By this all men will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another." A very significant statement, we are known as the disciples of Jesus Christ on the basis of loving one another.
In John 17 verse 21, Jesus, of course, praying that we all may be one even as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee that they also may be in us that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. Now that's pretty basic and what Jesus is saying is that not only does the world know that we belong to Christ, but the world knows that Christ belongs to God on the basis of our loving one another. We are thus identified with Christ who is thus identified as having been sent by God when we manifest love to one another. We are then to love one another for the sake of that love and its benefit to each other and for the sake of that love and its benefit to the watching world that is perceiving the kind of love that is foreign to them and thus attracted to the reality of Christianity.
Another illustration of this which is monumental in my mind and you might turn for a moment to the passage, 1 Corinthians 10 verses 27 and 28. And this is a very very overlooked portion of Scripture but one which is extremely significant. And it really stands on its own without necessarily digging way back into the context. Verse 27 says, "If one of the unbelievers invites you and you wish to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience's sake."
Now this is an evangelistic opportunity. Let's assume that you're a young Christian and you have been converted out of paganism. And when you were in paganism you were worshiping at an idol temple in the city of Corinth. And let's assume that in that idol worship you were involved in drunkenness and in debauchery of various kinds and let's assume that you were perhaps even involved in some of the sexual orgies that were characteristic of the Corinthian worship, so much so that to Corinthianize came to mean to commit fornication. Let's assume in your pagan worship there was gluttony and drunkenness and fornication and now you have come to Christ. And as a new Christian you want absolutely nothing to do with the former life. You want nothing to do with the paganism from which you have been redeemed.
One of the elements of your paganism was that when you worshiped your deity in the pagan temple where all the orgy and the feasting went on, you would bring food and give it to the God that you were worshiping. Obviously that god couldn't eat it, the priest would eat some of it, the rest they would take out into the marketplace and they would sell on the open market. So they would literally market what they didn't eat. And people then in the marketplace would buy meat offered to idols. That was never a problem for you until you became a Christian, now you're a Christian. And now for someone to offer you meat offered to an idol would conjure up in your mind all the idolatry and the fornication and the gluttony and the drunkenness and the orgy that was your former religion and because it was offered to an idol and now all the heinousness of that idolatry fills your mind, you would be unable to eat that meat, your conscience just wouldn't let you touch it because you had been delivered from that kind of thing.
That's the setting here. But notice verse 27 again, "If one of the unbelievers invites you and you wish to go for the purpose obviously of evangelism, eat anything that is set before without asking questions for conscience's sake. Don't even ask, just eat it for the sake of winning that unbeliever, for the sake of maintaining a good testimony and a kindness and a graciousness to him. Verse 28, "But if anyone should say to you, This is meat sacrificed to idols, do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for conscience's sake."
Now what's this? Well this means you've got another Christian with you and maybe you're not even going to ask the question, you're a little more mature but this other Christian is a brand new Christian and he says to you, "This is meat offered to idols," and he has first‑hand information. Now you've got a dilemma. You say to yourself, "If I don't eat the meat I offend...whom?...the host, the unbeliever. If I do eat the meat I offend...whom?...my brother, the Christian. The dilemma then in my evangelism is do I offend the unbeliever or do I offend the believer?" Initially common sense would tell you offend the believer, don't defend the unbeliever and that's exactly wrong. Paul says don't eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for his conscience's sake. In other words, offend the unbeliever before you offend the believer. Why? Because it is your love toward that believer that makes your faith attractive. If I offend the believer not to offend the unbeliever, then the unbeliever says it's better to be an unbeliever, right?, because Christians don't offend unbelievers they just offend their own. And again what it points up is that the demonstration of our love to one another is the significant element relationally in our evangelism. It is love that attracts. And when the watching world sees that we not only don't offend each other we love each other, then they know we're the disciples of Christ. And that's the substance of our testimony relationally.
In 1 John chapter 3 verses 10 and 11, "By the the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious, anyone who doesn't practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother; for this is the message which you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another." That's how we can be separated from the children of the devil, we are known by our love...we are known by our love. It is the substance of our witness relationally.
Now with that in mind let's go back to 1 Peter again. We understand perhaps a little more richly the phrase "love one another" in verse 22. We are loving one another, again I say not only for the sake of one another but for the sake of the watching world that is examining us to see who we belong to, to understand the character of Christianity and what it involves and what it brings to a relationship. So Peter calls on us here to love one another. That is what Jesus said and that is what John says and that is what Paul says and it is replete throughout Scripture that that is very basic to our Christian experience. The word "love" here comes from agapao which means basically the love of choice, the love of will, the highest level of love possible, not the love of feeling, not the love of uncontrolled emotion, not the love of physical attraction but the love of will, the love of choice, the highest level of love. Peter is calling us to love one another.
Now remember this is all in a section in which he is calling for a proper response to the gift of salvation. You remember, don't you, that in the first twelve verses of chapter 1 Peter describes salvation and then he says in response, starting in verse 13, there are some things that ought to be true of your life, toward God verses 13 through 18, you ought to honor Him, glorify Him, worship Him, hope in Him, and all those things. Toward one another, you ought to love one another. So this is a response to the gift of salvation, we are to love one another.
Now we asked some questions, let's go back to those questions, all right? Question number one which will unfold the text for us, when were we enabled to love supernaturally? Do you remember the answer, look at verse 22, "Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart." When were we enabled to love supernaturally? Do we have that ability? The answer is yes, the time is when we obeyed the truth and purified our souls. To put it in terms of verse 23, when we were born again. It was at the moment of salvation, we've already seen this so this is just review, it was at the moment of salvation that we were enabled to love. We can now respond to that command because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, Romans 5:5 says. Salvation was the moment that we purified our souls. It was the moment in which we obeyed the truth of the gospel. It was the moment in which we were born again, to use all the terminology that is used in verses 22 and 23. And in that moment of purging and obedience and new birth, we were given the capacity to love.
Now let me tell you something. To love then for a believer is natural, or maybe I ought to say supernaturally natural. It is natural to our new state. In fact, John says if we don't love one another we are not the children of God, 1 John. So we have received the truth, the gospel. We have obeyed it. Therefore our souls have been purged and we've been born again. And having been born again we have entered upon a new capacity to love, we now naturally love supernaturally. This then qualifies us to be responsible to respond to this command.
And many scriptures point this out. I don't want to take too much time, I'm thinking of 1 Thessalonians 4:9, "Now as to the love of the brethren you have no need for anyone to write you for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another." There is now within the believer the resident Holy Spirit who is teaching us to love one another with the very love of God which has been poured into our hearts. It is supernaturally natural. We have the love, we have the Spirit of God to teach us how to apply that love and that's why in 1 John as we said, John says it is characteristic of a believer so much so that not to love means you're not a Christian at all, to love is indicative of the new birth.
Now would you please notice back in to verse 22 that Peter notes that this love is a sincere love. Having been purified, having obeyed the truth, having been born again, we have entered upon a sincere love, an unhypocritical love, not a phony love, a genuine love, a real love, something that is not forced, that is not simply outward, it is love without hypocrisy...to take the term out of Romans 12:9. It is genuine love. There is much fake, false, shallow, superficial love but that's not the love of Christ, that's not the love of God. That true love is produced in us by the Spirit as the fruit of the Spirit indicates, Galatians 5, love then joy, peace and so forth.
So when did we receive the ability to love in a supernatural way? At the time of salvation. Question number two, and we looked briefly at this last time, very briefly: who are we to love? We now have the capacity since we were saved, so much so that it is supernaturally natural to us, we have the love, we have the Spirit within us to move that love through us, we have opportunity to love, but who are we to love? Well let's go back to verse 22, it says to love one another. Well to whom does the one another refer? Backing in to the verse a little further, "Sincere love of the brothers," other Christians, other Christians. We not only have been given, mark this, the ability to love but we have been given a new family in which to exercise that love. The one anothers are the brothers, that is brotherly love. In fact, the word philadelphia is used here, it's really a noun instead of a verb, it says since you've purified your souls for sincere brother love, for sincere brother love, we have been given the capacity to love one another in a very unique way. God's quickening work, the new birth, the tremendous gift of God's love poured into us energized by the Spirit of God now is expressed toward a new family. And we're right back to John 13:34, we're to love one another so that men will know that we belong to Christ, that we're the family of God. And again in 1 John 3 it's so very frequent in 1 John, but in 1 John 3:16, "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." And again, as Christ loved us by giving His life, then we're to love the brethren by giving our lives to them.
You say, "What does that mean? I'm supposed to die?" No, verse 17 says here's what it means, "Whoever has this world's goods beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?" How is that consistent with His capacity to love supernaturally when he has the goods and somebody else has the need and he's indifferent? "Little children, let us not love with word or tongue but let us love in...what?...in deed and in truth. We shall know by this that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him."
One of the great evidences that we have to show ourselves that we're the children of God is the love that we share with others in need. If you have the goods and somebody else has the need and you hold back the goods, then you are not demonstrating the kind of love that is characteristic of your very very refined redeemed and regenerated nature. And so we have a new ground of affection, oneness in Christ. And it exceeds all earthly relationships, it exceeds all earthly limitations. Beloved, I want you to understand this principle, it is much more important that we demonstrate love to one another than even that we demonstrate love to the outside world because it is the attraction and the love within the church that draws them to us, that affirms that we are Christ's.
John 15:12, Jesus put it this way, "This is My commandment, that you love one another," and then He added this, "just as I have loved you." How is that? "Greater love hath no man than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." Sacrificial love, sacrificial love. You know, we believe, I think, falsely that the attraction of the church is its ability to develop evangelistic technique, clever methods, clever gimmicks to generate exciting events to attract the unbeliever and the real heart of it all is that they see the love of the church.
I think about that even with reference to our coming Christmas concerts. What they will experience here in the communion of the saints and what they see in the love of Christ in the lives of those who bring them is the most powerful testimony of all. And when we love, we do that which is most characteristic of redeemed nature. It might be good for all of us to go back and get our Bibles and read John...1 John 3, 1 John 4 and right through chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 and remind ourselves of how essential this is.
So when were we given the capacity to love like this? At salvation. Who are we to love? Each other. And I don't want to belabor that point anymore. Let's go to the next question. How are we to love? How are we to love? Back to verse 22, one word and then another at the end, "Fervently...that's the first word...fervently." That's a very important word to Peter, he uses it again in chapter 4, would you notice it in verse 8? "Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another." Why? Because love covers a multitude of...what?...sins. Love floods over all transgression. So many people hold grudges. So many people become bitter and unforgiving. Love covers a multitude of sins. God wants us to love in a covering way so that our love is dominant. He wants to love fervently, twice Peter says it, fervently.
Now what does it mean? It's the Greek word ektenes. It's really a physiological word, it speaks of the anatomy, it is used to speak of a horse, it is used to speak of a man. And it means to stretch to the limit of a muscle's capacity, to literally stretch to the very furthest point until that muscle reaches its maximum limit...a very graphic term. It means metaphorically to go all out, to reach the very limit of love as far as you can reach which in terms of 1 Peter 4:8 would mean to cover whatever sins exist. Very much like what Jesus said when Peter said, "Shall I forgive seven times? And He said, Forgive seventy times seven times." And He was talking about within the household of faith, within the church among believers, the children of God, we are to love so that our love reaches very far, stretches to the limit and covers any iniquity and any transgression with loving, gracious forgiveness.
The same word, by the way, is used in Luke 22:44 where it says that Jesus was praying in the garden, He was in agony, He was praying very fervently and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down on the ground. That means He was extremely extended in the matter of prayer, extended to the point where He literally began to ooze from His flesh, as it were, great drops of blood, that kind of love that stretched fervent love that goes beyond the casual level which is what most of us experience and little else.
That same word is also used, by the way, as I'm thinking about it, in Acts 12:5 where it says Peter was kept in prison but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church of God. They were literally praying to the limits that their faith could stretch them.
Commentator Hort(?) who has done so much in the past to help us in understanding the Word of God writes and I quote, "All genuine love is a principle and is founded on the perception of a permanent relation as opposed to the self‑pleasing casual and short‑lived impulses which have but an imperfect right to the name of love." That's good. All genuine love is a principle founded on a permanent relation. Then he says this, "Our word ektenes or ektenos, either form, expresses the manifested character of a genuine love, it is steady and unremitting. The birth from above is the only consistent and rational justification of such a love and the ever‑flowing stream of life from above from the living and abiding God at once demands this character in love and renders it possible. It is the life of God in man which raises the love of man for man to its highest power," end quote. It's loving at the limit. It's loving at the extremity. It is a love that stretches as far as it can possibly reach.
In Luke chapter 10 and verse 27 we read this, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself." You are to stretch your love to love God with all the loving capacity you have, heart, soul, mind and strength, and you're to stretch to love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself. What does that mean? That you care for your neighbor, that you look on your neighbor's needs in the same way you meet your own.
And then Jesus said, "If you want to understand that, let me tell you a story. A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, he fell among robbers, they stripped him, beat him, and went off leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down on that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. The priest didn't have any love, he didn't want to help that man. And then a Levite who served the priesthood also came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side, went the very opposite way, walked on the other side of the road. And a certain Samaritan who was an outcast was on a journey came upon him and when he saw him he felt compassion, came to him, bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them and he put him in his own beast, brought him to an inn, took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, Take care of him and whatever more you spend when I return I will repay you." That's loving to the limit. You come across a perfect stranger, you're an outcast, you have compassion, you pick him up, you put him on your own beast of burden, you take him to an inn, you nurse him back, you pay the bill and you say whatever else he needs I'll cover that when I come back this way. That's stretching to love the unlovely, the unloved.
That was the whole point. Who is my neighbor? Anybody in your path with a need, we are to love one another. How are we to love? We are to love to the limit of our capacity. How does this apply to you? You say, "How am I going to love somebody? I don't see anybody lying in the road like that?" Well maybe you do sometimes. I know there have been times when I've castigated my own soul at my indifference having passed by someone in need, even in physical need. But we're talking here about loving the brethren with a fervent love. How does that apply to me? Well I don't want you to trivialize it. I don't want you to fuss with sentiment. I don't want you to fuss in your mind with the emotion and your own little world and how you can show affection to the folks in your little world. That's not the idea here at all.
I want you to ask yourself the question...how do you know that has real need? Who do you know that has real need? Who do you know that's struggling financially? Who do you know that's struggling emotionally? Who do you know that's struggling spiritually? Who do you know that's struggling maritally? Who do you know that's struggling in any number of ways or in many ways? Who do you know that's a widow in need? Who do you know that's a single parent trying to raise children all alone? Who do you know that's an orphan, a foster child that needs somebody to care for him or her? Who do you know that's struggling in tragedy? Who do you know that's facing the death of a spouse? Who do you know that's in illness, in a hospital or a resthome? Who do you know that's in sin? Who do you know that's lonely? And maybe I've said too many things and I've covered up the ones you were thinking about.
I went to the hospital the other night late because a man called me and he said, "I think I'm dying and you promised me that when it was time to go to heaven you would tuck me in." I said, "I will." And so it was in the middle of the traffic in the middle of the five o'clock traffic, I went into Los Angeles to the Good Samaritan Hospital and we had a marvelous time of fellowship. And it wasn't until his wife came into the room as he is there really dying of heart disease and they're going to try to do surgery tomorrow, but it wasn't until his wife came in that I began to realize that maybe the real tragedy here was going to be what she would do with her life all alone after the loss of her husband. And so we began to talk about ways in which I might be able to minister to her personally so that her needs would be met and he wanted to be sure that that was the case because all he could think about was heaven, frankly, and he was happy to go except for the fact of leaving the wife whom he cherished so deeply.
And as I left the place and drove home I thought to myself, "How many people are there in my world that are at a desperate level such as that? How many people are there in my world that are hanging by a thread in one way or another, desperately needing somebody to touch their life and I'm so busy with my own little world I can't do it?" I told you a few weeks ago that we were going to establish an office of pastoral care to meet the needs of people. We've already taken some steps to do that, to have pastoral availability 24 hours a day and we'll be letting you know about that. But it's more than just what we do as pastors, we only do it to set a standard and set an example for you, to set a pattern and a pace that you might follow. So ask yourself the question, who do I know has a real need and what am I doing about it? Who do I know that has a real spiritual need, they're just not victorious in their spiritual life? Who do I know that has a financial need? Who do I know that is struggling emotionally because of a wayward teenager? Who do I know that's married to an alcoholic struggling in loneliness? Who do I know that's ill? Who do I know that has a spouse facing death? Lord, direct me toward those people and help me to stretch my love.
Peter says the kind of love is a stretching intense unrelenting sacrificial love that reaches out, it's not so much from a requirement. No, look what he says, "It is fervent love toward one another from the...what?...from the heart." It's not external. It's not something compelled legalistically, it's something compelled from within. God, help us to have that kind of compassion who are so easily distracted.
It must be what Paul had in mind when he wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:5 that we're to have love from a pure heart...love from a pure heart. It must come from the fruit of the Spirit; love, joy, peace. It must be the kind of love the Spirit produces from within.
So Peter...we ask the question, how are we to love and Peter says, "Oh, you're to love to the limit, to the limit of your own sacrifice. Whatever it costs you in time, whatever it costs you in energy, whatever it costs you in money, whatever it costs you in weariness, whatever it costs you period, you're to love to the limit and it's to come from the heart...it's to come from the heart." And, you see, that's so very important otherwise we would say, "All right, I'm going to grit my teeth and I'm going to love that way if it kills me. I'm going to do my duty." Peter says don't do that, it has to come from inside.
You say, "How can it come from inside?" It's the fruit of the Spirit. How do you...how do you know and experience the fruit of the Spirit? Galatians chapter 5, "If we walk in the Spirit He'll produce the fruit," right? So you need to get your life under the control of the Holy Spirit. That's a moment by moment thing. As I long for the Spirit of God to control my life moment by moment, then the Spirit produces the love from my heart that reaches out to touch these people. And, you know, it's a wonderful thing to experience that. As I sat by the bed the other night with Robert in the hospital and began to hold his hand and at first fighting all the traffic down and realizing I would have to fight it all the way back, I was a little hurried in my spirit, but as I held his hand and we sat together and I read him from a Bible, he asked me if he could have one of my own Bibles to keep. And I think I mentioned to some folks that I said..."Well, I'll bring the Bible down and I'll give it to you." He said, "I just would...I want to have in my last days one of your Bibles in my hand." So I gave him one and he said to his wife before I left, "Put this in my will and will it back to John." So I'm going to get it back. But as we sat there and read together out of his Bible that was my Bible, I began to experience in an hour and a half the tremendous peace and calm and richness of the sharing of that kind of experience. Sometimes we cheat ourselves out of the richest and the best, don't we? Because we're not willing to love from the heart. That's the work of the Spirit and sometimes the Spirit has to pull us into the situation in order to get us to yield to that compelling love.
This is a good place maybe to say this that we have the capacity to love, every believer does. That's very clear. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, it's part of our nature to love supernaturally. But we also, and I must say it, have the capacity not to love, don't we? Sure we do. We have the capacity to sin, don't we? And we can sin in not loving. That's why there are