Be The Church: Be An Authentic Church

Gandhi was asked by a close friend, “If you admire Christ so much, why don’t you become a Christian?” Gandhi reportedly replied, “When I meet a Christian who is a genuine follower of Christ, I may consider it.”

Mao-Tse-tug came to America as a university student, intrigued by Christianity and Western culture. But after encountering several Christians and our brand of Christianity, he became disillusioned and turned his heart toward Marxism.

What kept these men and what keeps countless others from following Jesus?  Hypocrisy.  Seeing Christians play acting the part.  Seeing Christians say one thing, then do another. What people are looking for now more than ever is genuine Christianity.  What they are looking for is to see if Christianity is true – by looking at our lives.  And what they are looking for is the very same thing God is looking for in His Church:  to see if we genuinely love one another!  Not with a “warm fuzzy kind of love,” and not with a “when it’s convenient for me” kind of love, but with a “I will lay my life down for you” kind of love.  For this is the kind of love Jesus described for his disciples in the upper room when he said,  “A new command I give you; Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  John 13:24-25

You see, loving one another in the way Jesus loved us is something we cannot fake. No, it must be real, our love for one another must ring true, or our world will continue to reject our Jesus. And so today, as we continue our in depth look at what God is looking for in His Church:  We see that God is looking for the same thing from us. , God Wants Us to Be An Authentic Church!  God wants us to have the same kind of love as Jesus in our relationships with one another.  So if you brought your Bible with you today, I want to encourage you to find Romans 12:9-10, where the Apostle Paul spells shows us how we can cultivate a love that is real!  A love that is authentic.  A love that rings true.  So if you’ve found Romans 12, please stand with me and let’s read this together: Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.  Romans 12:9-10

These few verses begin with this simple exhortation Love must be sincere.  Literally, it reads: “love without hypocrisy.” So this is where we need to begin, by looking at,

What Love Is Not:  Love Is Not Theatre In other words, we cannot “act” loving.  We either love others the way God loves us, or we don’t love at all.  So how does God love us?  God loves us by seeking the best for us regardless of the cost to himself.  God loves us with an unconditional love.  That’s the kind of love Jesus displayed for us on the cross.  He literally laid down His life for us, while we were in rebellion to Him, while we were at our worst in our sinfulness. And even though He was innocent, even though he was sinless, He took upon His flesh the consequences of our sinfulness.  He offered Himself to die in our place.  That’s love.

So when you think about the love Jesus had for you, there was no self-interest in this kind of love.  He gave up His life for you.  So if you and I are to get real about loving, we need to be honest with ourselves.  We simply do not have the capacity to love like Jesus on our own. We need God to change us and make us like Jesus.

I like how Eugene Peterson says it.  He says, “Men and women are not admitted to the community of faith by presenting credentials of love skills, not do we maintain our place in the community by passing periodic peer reviews on love.  We are here to be formed over our lifetimes into a community of the beloved.  We are God’s beloved who are being formed into a people who love God and one another in the way and on the terms in which God loves us.  It’s slow work.”  It’s slow work.  We’ve got to be transformed by God’s love within the core of who we are before we can be authentic in our love for others.

But here’s the good news.  God wants to cultivate His love in your heart, so you will love like Him.  So others will see that your love for them comes from the Christ in you.  So the question for us is this: How can we help grow God’s kind of love in us?  How can we cultivate an authentic love? Well, in the verses that follow God gives us four attitudes that will help us cultivate His love in us.  And the first way we can cultivate an authentic love is

By Hating What is Evil God’s Word says, Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

What is this evil:  That which is destructive and tears down.  It is the kind of attitude that dehumanizes others: the attitude in someone that makes them want to inflict pain and sorrow.  Evil is a blatant disregard for what is good.

We’ve all seen this evil haven’t we? It’s an evil arrogance where one person plays god in a relationship and has absolute disregard for the dignity or well being of another. That’s what the Bible shows us in 1 John.   If we are to truly love one another, the author tells us “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.” 1 John 3:12

Cain couldn’t stand the fact that his brother’s actions pleased God, so he murdered him.  He had no regard for his well being. He didn’t have his brother’s best interests in mind, only his own… And God’s Word tells us that we need to hate this kind of mindset in us.

What God’s Word is telling us here is that we are to have an intense revulsion to such ugliness when it arises in us.  That’s what it means to hate what is evil.  We are to see our own sin the way God does and be repulsed by it, horrified by it.  And if you are repulsed by it, then YOU WILL turn away from it.  You’ll want nothing to do with it.  And so when you turn away from the evil in you, then you need to replace it with something.  And God’s Word says we are to replace this evil with His goodness…

By Clinging to what is Good  And so you may ask, “what is this goodness?”  It is all who God is.  As Jesus once said, “No one is good – except God alone” Mark 10:18

So here’s the deal: If you want God to transform the evil in you to the good that’s in Him, you need to cling to God, for He alone is good. So let’s take a moment to get our heads around God’s goodness.  One of the best explanations of God’s goodness comes from Exodus 34:6, where Moses first came face to face with God, and God passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abundant in goodness and truth.” Renowned Theologian J.I. Packer equates the goodness of God with His generosity: “Generosity means a disposition to give to others in a way which has no mercenary motive and it not limited by what the recipients deserve, but consistently goes beyond it.”

In other words, God is predisposed to do you good regardless of what you may have done or not done.  And He has an unlimited fountain of goodness that He wants to pour out upon you. Next, Packer writes:  “Generosity is, so to speak, the focal point of God’s moral perfection; it is the quality which determines how all God’s other excellences are to be displayed.  God is spontaneously good, overflowing with generosity.” Goodness then, is the core of God’s nature.  Goodness is who He is.  This is who we are to cling too.  And finally he writes:  “Generosity expresses the simple wish that others should have what they need to make them happy.”

The Psalmist understood this about God when he wrote: The Lord is good to all; He has compassion on all He has made.  The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. Psalm 145:9, 15-16  This is who we are to cling to you, this is the God who is for you.  He exists to do good to you.  And as we cling to Him, as we cultivate His goodness in our hearts, we will begin to want what is good for others, and we will love them with an authentic love.  This is what Jesus meant when he said,  “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” Luke 6:45  So then, when we turn away from the evil in us and cling to goodness  that is in God, a sincere love will be the by-product.  We will seek what is good for others, just like God does for us.  Hate what is evil, cling to what is good, and God will change you into a person who loves like Jesus.

But there’s more.   Another way you can cultivate an authentic love in your heart is By Devoting Yourself to God’s Family Paul writes: Be devoted to one another in love. In other words, we are to be full of tender affection for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

As part of God’s family we should have the same kind of affection for one another that a parent might have for his child: the kind of affection that will motivate us to always seek the best for our brothers and sisters.

I remember the first time this kind of familial love truly hit home for me.  I was Pastoring in Tacoma and we had a widow, Barbara, who was selling her home and looking for a new place.  Barbara had found a place to rent a room and wanted our opinion on it.  So that afternoon I drove over and met Joann, a woman from our leadership team at this house. And together, we proceeded to check things out for Barbara.  Our first observation was that this place was in a pretty sketchy part of town, a part of town where there was a higher crime rate.  Then we met the lady she was to move in with.  And her attitude and demeanor immediately raised red flags.  After meeting this gal we both had an uneasy feeling about encouraging her to move in.  And then I said something off the top of my head, “I wouldn’t let my mother live here.”  That’s when it clicked for us.  If we loved Barbara like family, then we couldn’t let her move in, no matter how great a deal this was.  So we didn’t.

That gives us a picture of what it means to be devoted to one another in love.  When we see one another as real family, we will want what’s best for them. So one of the ways we are can cultivate authentic love among us is to start seeing each other as real family.  We are kin.  You are kin.  God has made us family.  So we need to start seeing one another the same way He sees us – as His beloved.  And when we start seeing one another through God’s eyes He will grow His familial love in us for one another.  And as a result we will be devoted to one another in love.  That’s the third way God develops His authentic love in us.

Now here’s the final way: By Honoring Others Above Yourself  Paul concludes verse 10 encouraging us to: Honor one another above yourselves   I always love God’s sense of timing – Thanksgiving is in a few days.  But if you understand what it means to honor another above yourself, the motive behind honoring others is the attitude of genuine appreciation.  It’s the idea of trying to out do one another in bragging up others.  It’s like the grandfather who can’t stop talking about how great his grandson is.  It’s like fan who want’s you to know how good his team is.  It’s like I felt a couple of weeks ago seeing so many people come out to help with the packing party.  It’s how I bragged to some old friends the other night about my two son-in-laws, who take such good care of my daughters.  It’s how I continually brag about Rock Springs in the same way.  I couldn’t help but tell of your generosity in helping pack so many boxes for Operation Christmas Child, or how wonderful it is to have so many godly and responsible people leading our ministry teams, or how awesome it is to see so many of you who have given your time to help at the food bank, or to go to the Processing Center in Fullerton, or who’ve gone to help Mark at Regeneration Church, or just to give so we can keep supporting the work there. It’s why it’s so easy for me to tell you how cool it is to have an Engineer doing our books.  Ken, you make it so I never have to worry.  You are such a gift to our Church. And finally, It’s why it’s so easy for me to say how blessed I am to have Becky as my wife.  I know without a doubt that I wouldn’t be in the ministry today without her faithful love and unwavering support. I am blessed.

Are you starting to get the point?  Honoring one another above ourselves is all about taking our eyes off ourselves and seeing people for the blessing they are to us.  And when we seek to out do one another in honoring one another – when we fan the flame of appreciation of how we see God working in their lives – this is what fans the fires of authentic love.   So let me ask you:  When was the last time you honored someone?  When was the last time you thanked your spouse for all she does?  When was the last time you bragged about a friend or a brother in Christ to someone here?

We all need to be appreciated, thanked, respected and valued.  God put us together to need each other. But when was that last time you honored someone for just being your friend? or helping you out? or believing in you?  I’m not talking about flattery so as to butter someone up for your advantage – but to honor someone for what they mean to you as a brother or sister in Christ.

For when we do this for one another, we don’t just honor someone, we cultivate a community of love.  And this is what God is looking for in His Church, and yes, this is what our world is looking for from us – to be a people who love like Jesus.

And we can be that kind of people, if hate what is evil; cling to what is good. If we are  devoted to one another in love. And if we honor one another above ourselves.  So today, before we sing our final worship songs, I want to give us that opportunity to honor one another – to out do one another in bragging up others.  To express your appreciation for how you see God at work in the lives of your brothers and sisters in Christ.  That is why today, our response to God’s Word will be taking a few moments to honor our brothers and sisters in God’s family with an open mic.  Let’s fan the flame of love in our midst by honoring one another.  Would you do that with me?  Let’s pray.