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Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and rejoices with the truth, it is relentlessly positive and caring for others.

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By washing His disciples’ dirty feet, Jesus gave us a powerful example of servanthood in order to enable us to defeat our own tendency toward selfishness and pride. True blessing in the Christian life comes from following His example. The spiritual significance of the washing goes to our salvation in Christ, such that, unless Jesus

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Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:5. The main subject of the sermon is the fact those who love are not easily angered and are forgiving of others' faults.

 Well look in your Bibles with me today as we continue our study in 1 Corinthians 13:5. And as we've walked through 1 Corinthians 13, our goal has been a careful hearing and application of each phrase of this incredibly vital and strategic chapter. We've not hurried through this magnificent chapter and nor will we. We want to take each phrase; we want to understand it. The image that I have of salvation in general, but now when we come to this love chapter is a therapeutic image of salvation. Jesus is the great physician. Jesus is the healer of our sick souls. Jesus himself introduced this therapeutic way of thinking and speaking by the river of miracles that he did, most of which were healings, and also Jesus saying, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

And so I think through the Holy Spirit, through the pen of the Apostle Paul, so many centuries ago, he is calling on us who are sin sick to repentance for healing. So listening carefully to each of the phrases in 1 Corinthians 13 is really like laying on the examination table of a skillful doctor who has our best interests at heart. He's asking us a ton of questions. He's poking and prodding our bodies, he's seeing where we twitch and where we flinch and where we jerk back where there's pain, for where there's pain there's likely to be disease or injury. Furthermore, he's running, in our modern age, many high level diagnostic tests, x-rays, and MRIs and blood work. And he's sending these samples and these tests to the laboratory and bringing it back and comparing what he gets from these diagnostics alongside a pattern of health. He's trying to see how we are sick. And health is defined by healthy metrics that are set up by physical science, by medical science, so that would be your body temperature, your blood pressure, your complete blood count, the red blood cells, the white blood cells, the platelets, all of that to see if any of those numbers are elevated, elevated enzyme counts, to see if there's evidence of specific diseases and all of these things are accumulated by the loving and skillful doctor to see where there is disease, where there is injury. So it is I think, with 1 Corinthians 13, our minds, our hearts, our souls, our behaviors, are laid alongside what God calls the healthy norm, the standard, which God has given to the human race for a holy human life, which is the law of God. As Jesus himself defined the law in two great commandments, the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, that's that vertical love for God. And then the second commandment is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. This is what health is, that horizontal love. And that's what 1 Corinthians 13 addresses, primarily that horizontal love that we have for other people.

Now, the law, “the letter [Paul says] kills, but the Spirit gives life." 2 Corinthians 3:6. The written letter, the law of God engraved in stone, effectively stands over us and kills us. It condemns us; it has the power to send us to hell. The written law alone can never save us. It can never show us mercy. That is not its purpose. The law defines health and disease, by its “you shalls” and “you shall nots” and it declares the justice, the righteous justice of God over every violation. The law is designed, in this sense then, to bring us to desperation, to bring us to a genuine humility, and ultimately, to the cross of Jesus Christ. At the cross of Christ, our Savior died for all of the loveless hearts and loveless acts, loveless motives that have ever been done by our wretchedly loveless human race. They are forgiven through faith and repentance, faith in Jesus Christ. Christ died on the cross for all the ways that we have failed to love, failed vertically to love God, and then horizontally failed to love one another. And we, through faith in Christ are perfectly forgiven. We are completely forgiven; we are eternally forgiven. That's what justification by faith alone is. And we are justified by faith, not by works of the law. So now, having been justified through faith, we stand perfectly forever, eternally forgiven by God, but the Holy Spirit also at that time, at the time of conversion, at the time of justification, works within us a transformation of our hearts. He makes us new creations. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come." So this transformation that the Holy Spirit works in genuinely converted people is described in many ways in different Bible verses, Hebrews 8:10, he says, "I'll put my laws in their minds, and I'll write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." Or, again, beautifully in Ezekiel 36:26-27, he says, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

So the indwelling Holy Spirit moves in us to keep God's law perfectly. That's the goal. That is the standard of sanctification, perfect love. Therefore, in powerful tenant, as Jesus, the great physician of our souls, brings us back again and again to this chapter, this careful definition of love, and presses it onto us, and shows us how we deviate from it. Not to shame us, not to condemn us, but that we might be conformed more and more to the perfect love that it describes. So amazingly then, the word of God, the law of God speaks what must be and then makes it so. We think about how it says in John 1:1, "In the beginning is the Word." And then at the beginning of the Bible, God says, "‘Let there be light,’ and there is light." So effectively, God says, "This is love," he gives us a definition, and then says, "Let there be love, and there is love." That's the power of the word of God.

So if for you today, if it feels painful to go over this meticulous description of the law, don't despair. Let Jesus, through the Spirit, poke you and prod you and run his diagnostic tests over you. Let him expose your sins and your failings and your loveless attitudes. Let him show you your loveless behavior patterns. His intention here is not to hurt you; his intention here is to heal you completely from all of them. And just as 1 Corinthians 13 in the end, at the end of the chapter, ends up setting our hearts on eternity, on a time when love will be perfect. When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. We're going to end up talking about heavenly perfect love. So all of our contemplations of love should bring our minds ahead to a time when in heaven, we will be at last free forever from sin, when love will have been perfected and completed in us. We'll be free from all sin and will love one another perfectly.

So this morning, the specific diseases that the text addresses are these: Sinful anger and sinful record keeping of wrongs. Oh, what great damage, how great the damage has been of these two diseases in human history. How many relationships have ended because of sinful anger? How many divorces have their roots in sinful anger and sinful record keeping? How many crimes have been committed by sinful anger? How many relationships have soured and become bitter and ended because of keeping a record of wrongs? How much damage has been done by judgmental people who simply can't forgive and must bring up the past and walk around every day in bitterness; filled with malice because of something that happened years ago? The word of God, applied by the Spirit of God, paid for that by the blood of the Son of God, has the power to change everything.

So if this morning's sermon makes you twitch, and makes you flinch, and makes you jerk back and start to feel resentful, it just means that you need to hear it, and so do I. So let's let God's law do the perfect work in us to set us free from sin. As James 1:25 says, "The one who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it, he'll be blessed in what he does." So let's gaze this morning into the mirror of God's law, and let's see all of our warts and our blemishes and even our tumors, and our bleeding sores, and let's bring it all under the skillful hands of the great physician, Jesus Christ. Let's let these words transform us and heal us and make us genuinely loving men and women, boys and girls. 

So look at verse 5. It says, "Love is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs." Let's look at the first part, "Love is not easily angered." What does this word anger mean? Jonathan Edwards defines it in Charity and Its Fruits. Anger itself is, "An earnest and more or less violent opposition of spirit, against any real or supposed evil or in view of any fault or offense of another. An earnest or more or less violent opposition of spirit against any real or supposed evil, or in view of any fault or offense of another." In simple terms, it's a passionately negative response to wrong done that we see in the world, done to us or done to others. Something that we perceive is wrong. Frequently in life, in everyday life and in the scriptures, it's likened to heat, like a fire that burns. Sometimes we use the word kindle, like somebody's anger is kindled like a fire that burns, and like a fire, it can burn low and hot over a long period of time, or it can flare up and become a massive bonfire. You think about Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3:19 that says, “Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage and the expression on his face changed towards Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And he gave orders to heat the furnace seven times more than was customary.” So that was Nebuchadnezzar just losing it, and becoming enraged, and the furnace then pictures what's going on in his mind and heart. It's this rage. The scope of the rage can be almost immeasurable, 2 Chronicles 28:9 speaks of a slaughter, "You have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches to heaven." So that's just the magnitude, the greatness of human rage and where it can reach.

Anger is frequently addressed in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 29:22 says, "An angry man stirs up dissension and a hot tempered one commits many sins." Or again, Proverbs 16:32, "Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city." Proverbs 22:24-25 says, "Do not make friends with a hot tempered man, do not associate with one easily angered or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared." Or again, Proverbs 29:11 "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control." I think of a volcano blowing its top. That's the picture of giving full vent to your anger.

Now Paul, here in 1 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Love is not easily angered." That would be sometimes the translation give irritable or easily provoked. The Greek word refers to “a certain sharpness,” the Greek word relates to sharpness. We get the English word paroxysm from it, like a fit of rage. The face you can picture gets red, the breathing elevates, the voice rises, blood vessels start coming out- we can see the trembling and the shaking. And you get the sense here of that kind of rage but added to it easily, so like a hair trigger on all that. This individual goes off at the slightest provocations. And in general, this teaching I think, has to do with sinful anger. Now, Jonathan Edwards, who we've been following all along, and one of the great men in church history had a big family, a number of daughters, and there was one daughter in particular, her name was Emily, and she apparently had a violent temper. She was constantly flying off the handle. Well, a suitor came to Edwards to ask for Emily's hand in marriage and Edwards flat denied it, said no. The man was very dismayed, asked if there was something wrong with him, “Is there something, some fault you're finding in me?” if he was unsuitable. Edwards answered, "No, she is not worthy of you." Well, when the man asked why and was told, he said, with some puzzlement, "Yes, but isn't she a Christian?" And Edwards said, "Yes, but the grace of God may live with some people with whom no one else could ever live." So this is a father who's speaking from years of experience with his daughter. I don't know if they ever did get together. Some of you history buffs can tell me what the end of that story was. But there's that pattern of just being irritable, of flying off in a rage and it just sours married life, it's sours family life. So that's the focus here, irritability, being easily provoked, people who go off quickly, hair triggered, constantly angry, but also those that are consistently angry for no good reason.

Let's talk about what we mean by that, no good reason, because honestly, not all anger is sinful. Actually, Psalm 7:11 says, "God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.” So that actually teaches us that God gets angry every single day with the sins that are happening on planet Earth. At the human level, Paul says in Ephesians 4:26, "Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger." So clearly, when he says, "Be angry, but do not sin," he does not equate the two. It is possible to be angry and not to sin. Jesus was angry from time to time in his ministry. We can picture him making a whip, carefully making a whip, so he didn't fly off the handle, and then driving out the money changers from the temple, or the time that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, a man with a withered hand and his enemies were there looking at him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath, and they didn't care at all about the man with the withered hand. And Jesus asked them in Mark 3:4-5, “Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger, and deeply distressed at they're stubborn hearts.” So that is a righteous, pure holy anger on the part of Jesus.

However. If we are all honest, and I hope we are, we will acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of the times that we get kindled, that we get angry in life, is sinful. One godly brother I was talking to a short time ago said, and I was talking to him about this and he said, "Honestly, my anger is righteous and Christ-like, probably not once in 1000 times." Now there's a humble man, there's an honest man, so he's gonna say 99.9% of his anger is sinful. I don't know if it's that high, but fundamentally, much of our anger is sinful. Paul eliminates varieties of anger in one verse in Ephesians 4:31. There are different types of anger and he says, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice." Those are all different flavors or heats temperatures of anger.

Well, what anger then is sinful? How shall we define it? And here I'm going to lean on Edwards’ Charity and Its Fruits; again I commend that to you for your study. He says that anger is sinful because of its nature, its occasion, its end or purpose, and its measure. Let's look at each of the four of those, first, sinful because of its nature. Any anger that contains ill will, a poisonous will toward another, or a desire for revenge is sinful. We are never permitted in scripture to harbor malice or bitterness, or ill will toward any human being on Earth, no matter what they have done to us. Leviticus 19:18 says, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." So love even for a persecuting enemy, one that has done incredible harm to you, to your body, or to your loved ones, even death. Love - even for a persecuting enemy, consistent, essentially wanting that person, ultimately, eternally to be blessed by the grace of God, forgiven and spend eternity with you in heaven. That's the nature of the gospel. So if your anger contains any poisonous ill will or a desire for vengeance, for revenge, to get that person back it is ruled out by this chapter. It's ruled out by Christian love.

Secondly: sinful because of its occasion. Anger is sinful if it has no just or scriptural cause. Perhaps that person that you're angry at has literally done nothing wrong at all, sometimes people are just angry people. You think about the guy that comes home from work and kicks the dog. That's the proverbial picture. What did the dog do? Well, maybe much, I don't know. That's another issue. But there are some people, they just come home and they're angry and anybody in their way, they're going to lash out at that person they're going to... They're gonna kick that person; there's an angry outlook in life. Sometimes the action that is triggered... That triggers the sinful action is not sin at all, but it may be an honest mistake. We all make mistakes, an accident, something that's not that person's fault at all, yet the angry person goes off anyway, and that is sinful anger. A very clear category, vertically, is those people that say they're angry at God. And we have a number of counseling booklets that talk about various counseling issues, and one of them is entitled, Angry at God, and there are people like this. But God never does anything wrong ever, and yet people do get angry at God. Think of how angry Jonah was at God for forgiving Nineveh and not judging them.

Also people get sinfully angry at others who are actually doing the right thing, they're doing the righteous thing, especially people that persecute Christians for sharing the Gospel. So all the persecution that happens in reference to Christians that are trying to share the Gospel, spread the Gospel is an example of this. People have... That person's doing nothing wrong, doing everything right. But even within the church or within families, a person may see somebody else in a sinful pattern of behavior, and our church covenant says that we're gonna watch over one another in brotherly love, and you go and try to bring the person to repentance, to try to show them their fall, to try to help them and they lash out. The angry person can effectively shoot the messenger; we all can do that from time to time. Obviously, the greatest example of this is the sinful reaction of the Jewish nation to Jesus, the only pure and perfect person that ever lived. They frequently were enraged and Jesus openly says, “The reason the world hates me is that I testify that what it does is evil." They hated him, therefore, as the scripture says, without a cause, without a cause.

Anger is also sinful when it's caused by a minor trifling thing, a trivial thing, people get angry over every little fault and failure that they see in other people. In this case, the victim of the anger has done something wrong, they have sinned in some way, they have messed up through perhaps carelessness or forgetfulness, or even some willfulness, but the rage monster goes off and the reaction is disproportionate to the sin. And here I wanna speak, especially a word of warning and exhortation to parents, it is very easy for children as they grow to trigger parents into sinful anger, it's a regular pattern, so you can see children as they're playing, as they're running through the house, might bump into something and break it or carelessly spill something that leaves a stain on the carpet. It's very easy in those kinds of every day life parenting situations to discipline in anger. Yeah, the child needs to be disciplined, they need to be trained in order to control their bodies in that environment, but it is vital for parents to go get themselves under control, like that earlier proverb of controlling your anger is better than conquering a city. Just get yourself under control. Think of the glory of God and the benefit of your child, not your own situation. And so parents that parent in anger; that is a very dangerous pattern. Finally in this category, just broadly, whenever our anger is caused or triggered by something in reference to us, and not in reference to God vertically or to others horizontally. If it's all about me and what you've done to my reputation, what you've done to my ego, or what you've done to my convenience, it's almost certainly sinful anger. A lot of sinful anger is caused by selfishness, people that are not angry because God's honor and glory has been impugned, or some other person has been hurt by injustice, that would be a good example of biblical anger.

Now think about David, the example of David. Do you remember before he became king, when he was just a young man, a teenager, he went out filled with the zeal for the glory of God, and fought Goliath and slew him, because he had impugned the glory of God and the armies of Israel. Okay, that's a glorious form of anger of battle, but later in his life, when David was running for his life against Saul and he and his men were frequently fugitives and had a hard time making a living, he found himself in a situation where he looked after a man's sheep, the man's name was Nabal, and they were very kind to the shepherds and shepherdesses and cared for them and were like a wall of protection, and when all of that work was done, David sent some messengers to Nabal to ask for some food and some provisions in response for what he had done. And Nabal responded to the messengers with a very surly rude answer and sent the messengers away empty-handed.

Well, when David heard about this, he said to his men, “Strap on your swords,” and then he swore, “I've wasted my time with this man, and may God deal with me severely if I leave him and any male of his household alive,” and he starts to ride off. But what is the zeal for, there at that moment? Is it not for his own honor, his own reputation? And it's a critical moment in David's life where Abigail comes and stops him, gives provisions and speaks gently to him and warns him not to be avenged on himself. And you see critically how he really stands at a fork in the road there, where he could have become a tyrant ruler eventually as a king, killing people who he didn't like or who insulted his pride, but instead Abigail stepped in and stopped him from sinful anger. Well, this kind of thing, our own zeal for our own situation, zeal for our own glory, our own name, our own reputation, or reference to our own convenience or inconvenience, things that are hindering our lifestyle, probably makes up well over 90%, if not higher of our anger.

Thirdly, sinful anger is sinful because of its end or purpose. Sinful anger is essentially insane; it's essentially irrational. It doesn't think it through, it really doesn't have a purpose, it doesn't have an end thought out, it's a venting of the spleen, the injury of the person that's committed this offense, you want to be avenged on yourself. The person going off in the rage that just violently angry has no plan, they're just... It's like they're drunk almost. Edwards says, "Such anger is the blind passion of beasts rather than the affections of a rational creature." There are other categories, however, of sinful anger in which there is a cold, calculating vengeance that comes on, that's a long, slow burn at that point. There's a plan and it is evil. Again, has to do with vengeance generally.

This can happen even in marriages, sometimes: a sin has been committed by one, even a serious sin, the couple is trying to work through to recover, to give forgiveness, to receive it all that, but sometimes the victim of that first sin can turn the tables and through anger, and as we're just about to talk about keeping a record of wrongs, gains the upper hand in the relationship, the dominant position in the relationship for years to come, perhaps even permanently. That other individual that has sinned is more or less permanently in the doghouse. Permanently walking on eggshells. And so this is nothing other than a filthy, prideful power play, where that person who was sinned against then actually gets the upper whip hand in the relationship and it becomes a weapon of pride, so all of this is an example of sinful anger.

Fourth: sinful because of its measure. Edwards says this in two senses, how great of display of anger and how long it goes on. So first, how great, like we've said, sinful anger pays back exponentially, as we saw in that Chronicles verse, it's a rage that reaches to heaven. And what that does is we're almost making gods of ourselves, “You've sinned against me. You deserve infinite punishment.” That's why God established the eye for eye, tooth-for-tooth rule, because there's a principle of escalation, “You took my eye, I'll take your life, you killed one of our clan, we'll wipe out your entire tribe,” this is what pride does, it escalates. And so God established eye for eye, tooth for tooth, to keep that exponential escalation from going on. Like I said, sinful anger can be like a drug and you get irrationally moved to take vengeance and lose all boundaries. And people get filled with this feeling and then they do things and then later they don't realize even what they've done. And so it reaches a magnitude that's disproportionate. And then also sinful anger is sinful because of how long it's held on to, way too long. And this again is a partner with the other passage or aspect, we're gonna look at in a moment, which is keeping a record of wrongs.

So we can just keep remembering what happened, we can keep not forgiving. There are two really excellent checks in the scripture from keeping anger from going on long. And we already looked at one. That's Ephesians 4:26, it says, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry." So what that says, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry." Let me give the other verse two, and let me talk about each of them as helps. Lamentations 3:23, "God's mercies are new every morning." So the first one, "Do not let the sun go down while you're still angry." If something makes you wrong, let's say in your family, in your marriage, your relationship with your kids or parents, something's going on, deal with it quickly. “Settle matters quickly,” Jesus said. Try not to go to bed, still angry about that thing, try to give and receive forgiveness. Talk it through, pray together; get to reconciliation. If you fail to do it that night, as sometimes we do, I love the next verse, Lamentations 3, "God's mercies to me are new every morning," I just feel again and again, the forgiveness of Christ. This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. The day is fresh. It's clean. It's a fresh start. Yesterday's sins are forgiven. Let's start fresh. I think that's vertically. Let's do that horizontally. Yeah, this happened yesterday. Today is a new day. Talk it through, pray about it. Those two verses have helped me again and again to keep sin from spilling out day after day, week after week. Brothers and sisters, this is a vital issue in family life, John McArthur said this about anger, sinful anger. He said, "Telling our wives or husbands that we love them is not very convincing if we continually get upset and angry at what they say and do. Telling our children that we love them is not convincing, if we often yell at them for doing things that irritate us and interfere with our own plans. It does no good to protest, I lose my temper a lot but it's all over in just a few minutes, so is a nuclear bomb. A great deal of damage can be done in a short time. Love takes a person out of himself and centers his attention on the well-being of others." I think that's a great quote.

Well, how does Christian love drive out sinful anger? Well, first and foremost, Christian love goes up vertically; it immerses our hearts in God himself, it is vertical. So we see, therefore, in this sense, all sins committed against us as ultimately committed against God and not ultimately against us, like David said, "Against You, and You only have I sinned," God is the issue. And when you see that, then you're just a servant of God, even though you were the one sinned against, you are a servant of God to minister the grace of the gospel, very helpful to see it that way. Christian love also drives out that settled, dark malignant desire for revenge, that's just such a toxin, a pollutant, that deep settled desire to get vengeance. Christian love also is constitutionally against pride, and pride is at the root of most of our sinful anger. It's against our selfishness. So Christian love has the power to drive out sinful anger.

All right, secondly, love keeps no record of wrongs. Now, there are different translations and different conceptions of this. The KJV, on which Jonathan Edwards’ Charity and Its Fruits was based, looks at it this way: love thinketh no evil. And Edwards goes into this, he talks a lot about judgmentalism, his entire treatment goes in that direction, "Judge not lest you be judged." He describes the different ways people can judge each other and think evil motives of each other and ascribe evil motives to them, and even though they lack information, they can do this judging evil of the spiritual condition of other people. “Well, if they act like this they are probably not Christians.” Or if they weren't... They didn't have your same testimony or they don't talk the way you do as a Christian, they're probably not born again. Or judging evil of the qualities of others, magnifying their bad qualities and minimizing their good qualities, nursing a low opinion of others, that's what he talks about. And judging evil of the actions of others without any evidence at all, just assuming that someone has sinned when all you have is a little bit of the information. Or are sinning privately in their closets, and in just some kind of evil pattern that we don't know anything about, or there's some kind of plot or jumping to the worst conclusions about activities of others, guilt without evidence. That's what Edwards did with all of this, and there's a sort of delight in the dirt and the evil, thinking evil of others. That's the angle that he went.

But I would go with other translations that instead, give us this statement, "Love keeps no record of wrongs." I think all of those themes that Edwards brings up are gonna be better addressed in Verse 7, where it says, "Love believes all things." So we'll actually cover a lot of what Edwards covers there, but let's look at this idea of love keeping no record of wrongs. The Greek word there is logizomai. It's like an accounting term, it's a bookkeeping term, it's a ledger book, and you can imagine a business, which has accounts payable and receivable or receivable, payable, that kind of thing. You get this ledger book. So picture again, our old friend Ebenezer Scrooge, who is there in his counting house with all his gold coins and silver coins, and he's got his books. And those books are careful records of everybody who owes him money: when they borrowed, how much interest they owe, all of that, that ledger book. Obviously, for business, you need good accounting techniques, not saying that, but this is just a metaphor, that approach is devastatingly harmful when it comes to love relationships. When it comes to relationships horizontally with family members, with friends, with co-workers, and with fellow church members, other Christians, it's devastating.

So such a person is meticulously aware all the time of the wrongs done to him or her, they just know it. They know the ways that so and so has done them dirty, and they nurse a grudge. They remember the dates, the circumstances. It could be this way in a marriage or family, like I said a lot of damage is done because of this pattern of keeping a record of wrongs, “You did such and such to me, I still remember that. I'm never gonna be able to forget that,” kind of thing. Bitterly holding on to the past. And we can remember all of the sins and the insults and the things that people promised us that they didn't follow through on, broken promises, the hurtful words, the unkind moment, especially if it's out in public, the very painful things. And within that heart comes, as we've said with anger- these really are partner concepts here, that desire for revenge, “I'm gonna pay you back.”

But let's start with understanding the sweetness of the gospel. Let's just zero in again on justification by faith alone, it says in Romans 4:7-8, "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will not take into account." Isn't that beautiful? God is not taking into account your sins. It's the same Greek word, logizomai, to reckon to your account, to credit to you. He doesn't credit your sins to your account. He credits the blood of Christ and the righteousness of Christ to you. The blood of Christ paid for your sins. What the law righteously demanded that you be punished, Jesus paid it all. And then his perfect righteousness is credited you by faith, not by works, so you're seen as righteous. So God's ledger book says, over all of your sins and crimes and bad motives and all of that, paid in full. Paid in full. We know when Jesus died in John's Gospel, he said, "It is finished," and the Greek word He used, tetelestai there, the word that's given it, it's a business term, “paid in full,” it is perfected. It's completed. It's done. And so, that's justification. That's the freedom we have in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:19, it says, "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them." He doesn't count our sins against us, or again, Acts 3:19, "Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord." That's what we get. Our sins are wiped away, “times of refreshing come from the Lord.”

That's the basis of our horizontal forgiveness of everyone that's ever sinned against us. Here we must remember the parable of the 10,000 talents. You remember how Peter came to Jesus, thinking he was getting extra credit on the test, I guess, or quiz. "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Rabbis, say three times. What do you say we go up to seven times?" And Jesus said, "I tell you not seven times, but seventy times seven times." And then he told the parable of the 10,000 talents of the king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants and one owed him basically, the gross national product of the Roman Empire. And he was not able to pay and the king ordered that he and his wife and all that he had to be sold to repay the debt. The man fell on his knees and begged, "Be patient with me and I'll pay you back." And the king had mercy on him and cancelled all that debt and let him go. But when that man went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him about a third of a year's wages, a hundred denarii, a denarius is a day's wage so that's 100 days of work. It's a significant debt, but it's nothing compared to the vertical debt of 10,000 talents. Well, anyway, this man found this man and demanded the 100 denarii, and the guy fell on his knees before him and said, "Be patient with me, I'll pay it back." But he refused; he was choking the man saying, "Pay me what you owe me." And he had the man thrown in prison. Well, that man, the other servants heard about it, they dragged him back in before the king. He said, "You wicked servant. I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" And in anger, the judge, the king, threw him into prison until he should pay back the 10,000 talents. Jesus said, "That is how my Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." maybe one of the most forceful of all of Jesus' parables. And what it's saying is, because we have been forgiven an infinite debt by God, we must forgive the finite debt made horizontally toward us. Love, the love of God is an ocean of grace. Our love needs to be like that. Chris Systems put it this way, he said, "A sin committed against the loving heart is like a spark that falls into the sea and is quenched." Your heart needs to be a quenching ocean of love and grace and mercy toward other people around you because you're just humbled and forgiven by what God's done for you. Conversely, someone once said that, “Un-forgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping that someone else dies.” And there's a lot of bitter people that are shriveling and dying because of un-forgiveness.

All right, application, and the application we're gonna do is self-examination, repentance, prayer, and action. Self-examination, we've looked at two issues: to not be easily angered and keep no record of wrong. So look at your heart. Look at your conscience. Look at your conduct. Look at your patterns, your habit patterns. Are you frequently angry? Does that characterize you? Do you have the kind of easily provoked demeanor that we've been talking about today? Do you have a hair trigger? Or perhaps you're a low simmer all the time, you're just grumpy toward life, nursing grudges secretly, unforgiving to this or that person, looking for a chance in some way, to pay them back, do them some harm, hopefully without being noticed 'cause you know it's not really a Christian thing to do. And when you have been angry, is it not true that the overwhelming majority of your occasions of anger are sinful anger, as we've been saying? Isn't it good to be honest about that? You who are married, has anger polluted your marriage, has it polluted the sweet well of your marriage? Have you expected your spouse to tolerate your personality? Like Edwards talked about, his daughter Emily, tolerate the fact that you're an irritable person and that you fly off this off the handle quickly, that you're thin-skinned. Have you just accepted this about yourself and you expect the people around you to accept it too? You expect your spouse to make allowances for you. Is your marriage characterized by angry conflicts and arguments consistently? You parents, have you been given to disciplining your children in sinful anger? Do your kids see you frequently irritable and angry, walking around the house? Older people, as you've gotten older, have you become more and more irritable as you've gotten older? As your aches and pains have multiplied and other difficulties have come in your life, have you found yourself becoming more and more grumpy and irritable with the people around you? Teenagers, what about you? Do you get angry quickly, do you fly off the handle? Do you blame your hormones, say, "There's nothing I can do; it's just body chemistry. I'm gonna be irritable today, I'm gonna be angry, people just need to deal with it."

What about the issue of keeping a record of wrongs, do you harbor ill will toward people who have sinned against you? Do you, in your demeanor toward them effectively choke them and say, "Pay me what you owe me?" Do you make much of the sins of others toward you, but make little of your sins toward others? Are you bitter? Do you have any un-forgiveness? Is there somebody you haven't forgiven? Think about it, is there someone popping in your mind right now that you say, "You know, I don't think I've forgiven that person," that may well be the Holy Spirit telling you, you've got some work to do in that relationship. As you look inward, ask the Holy Spirit to show you the perfect mirror of God's law. There may be a deeper issue; it could be that you're not a Christian at all. We are aware that there are people watching this livestream that are not members of this church. And maybe even some that are members of this church, but they're really not born again, have you ever come to a genuine faith in Jesus Christ, have you come to the cross, have you realized Jesus died for all of your sinful anger and all of your bitter un-forgiveness and all the other sins that you've ever committed? Jesus was willing to die in your place and give you full forgiveness of sins. Have you ever asked him to be your Lord and Savior? And if you are a Christian, if you see these sin patterns in your life, you need to do the same thing. Bring them to the cross. Seek forgiveness. Crucify those sinful patterns.

Thirdly: prayer. Seek his forgiveness, confess those sins, those sins of anger, confess that un-forgiveness to him. Ask the Holy Spirit to transform you, to work genuine love in you. It is your birthright as a Christian, to be perfected in love, and the more you can do it now, the better life you're gonna live. And finally action, walk in newness of life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Ask loved ones to pray for you, if you know that you're an angry person, they know it too. Be honest with them, say, "I don't wanna be this angry five years from now, would you pray for me." Pray every day. Talk to me about it, I'll talk to you about it. I want to be... To grow in this area, confess un-forgiveness to the Lord and then walk in forgiveness in a newness of life. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the time we've had to study your word today. How rich it is, how deep, how powerful God work on us. It's convicting to go over these details, it is, it brings a sense of the sting of conviction, and I pray, O Lord, that you would work a genuine work of repentance in the members of First Baptist Church. I pray that we would not be characterized by angry people. I pray that we would be genuinely loving toward one another. I pray that the marriages in our church would not be characterized by anger and un-forgiveness, but rather by sweet mercy and love and kindness. Lord, I pray for the parenting for the teens, for young ones that are growing up, that they would learn to live a life of love. And Father for those that were lost when they began hearing this message, I pray that now, even now, they would feel a pull in their hearts to come to Christ, and we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Love does not keep a record of wrongs and does not get easily angered. How do these two vices impact our lives and relationships?

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John summarizes Jesus’ public ministry by marveling over the amazing refusal of the Jews to believe in Jesus despite all the evidence of His supernatural nature and power. According to John, the Jews’ unbelief fulfilled prophecy which said it would happen, and that God would actually blind eyes and harden hearts to make it happen.

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Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:5. The main subject of the sermon is the selfless nature of love.

Well, as you've heard from Andy Winn, we're gonna continue our study this morning in 1 Corinthians 13, so go ahead and open at 1 Corinthians 13. We're zeroing on just one aspect, negative aspect of love. Love is not self-seeking, or perhaps a little simpler; love is not selfish. As we look at that one assertion, you may well wonder why I think it worthwhile to spend an entire sermon on just this one aspect of love, but I consider this topic, love, to be the goal of our salvation, in terms of the massive change that God works on the human condition, the human heart. He moves us sovereignly by his grace by the power of the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit, from being fanatically committed to self-interest. A selfish mindset that's followed by a selfish lifestyle, he moves us from that to finding perfect fulfillment in ourselves in love, vertically for God, certainly, but 1 Corinthians 13 is primarily about that horizontal love that we have for other people. To be set free from selfishness into a perfectly loving frame of mind and heart and a loving lifestyle.

Now, that's where we're all headed, we who are in Christ, we're headed there in heaven, we are going to be like that in heaven. And this may be the hardest aspect of our journey of sanctification, for from birth, we have had this monster of selfishness raging within our souls. Now, every Easter, my family decorates eggs, and we do it by taking eggs, hard-boiled eggs and putting them in containers of dye. So you could picture purple dye and putting an egg in there, and we all know that if you put the egg in there for 30 seconds, and then lift it back out, all of the dye will drip off the surface, the hard surface of the egg shell, and there'll be no difference if you took it and ran it underwater, it would look exactly as it did a moment before. You have to leave it in there. And the longer that the egg is in the dye, the more deeply it is colored with that color, purple, let's say. And so it is with our minds and hearts when it comes to the word of God. We need to settle in on key texts like this one and let it marinate into us, it needs to seep into the pores of our being. We can't just go quickly past this, "Love is not self-seeking," and think it's going to make any difference at all.

And so as we come to this, we have, because of our hearts, we have this natural resistance to this message. We are staggeringly selfish, stunningly selfish, and honestly, we hardly see it. We don't even realize it. We have blind spots. So this is a journey of sanctification, it's right down the center of the transformation the Holy Spirit wants to work in us. A number of years ago, I remember I was preaching on Matthew 16, and there in Verse 24-25, Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, for whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." So as I was thinking about that text, I realized how difficult it is for us to deny ourselves, and as I did, I began with an illustration, and it came from nature, the king salmon as it makes this incredible journey back upstream in order to spawn and die. The king salmon are born in some small tributary of a stream somewhere, of a larger stream, maybe in Alaska, and then it will swim down stream, that's the easy part of the journey, all the way down into the Pacific Ocean. And as it enters into that water, amazingly biologically, it acclimates to a saltwater existence from the fresh water in which they were born. And then they'll swim as much as 2000 miles or more in their lives until they reach full maturity. And then in the summer of their maturity, inner instinct and some other forces that we can't even understand, something that God has set up within their being, they begin a journey back. They begin to navigate back, not only to their parent stream, but actually to the very tributary where they were born. It's really quite remarkable.

Now, this journey upstream is staggeringly arduous, the fish batter themselves against the rocks as they leap waterfalls, as they jump upstream, occasionally unlucky ones, so to speak, are eaten by eagles or bears, but the ones that are able to avoid that, they expend immense amounts of energy to swim upstream. They stop eating once they begin this journey, once they enter fresh water, and so their bodies are being steadily depleted of fat, 90% of their fat reserves are used up, 50% of their protein is consumed as they make this incredible upstream journey. Then once they've completed it and they go back to that tiny little tributary where they were born, then they spawn and die within a week. Now, perhaps you've seen pictures of a fully mature king salmon jumping the waterfall, and it's amazing. When you think about the power of the white water of the river, that they are fighting against every mile, every foot, really, of the journey. But they do it; it's a natural journey. Jesus is calling on us to make a supernatural journey and to go against the flow of our sin nature, every step of the way. This upstream battling that the king salmon does is a picture of the fight that we are in for if we want to genuinely love our neighbor as ourself, that we can fight our self, self-interest, every moment. Jesus in Luke's Gospel adds the word daily, Jesus calls on us to deny ourselves daily and take up our cross daily and follow him. And so this is the challenge that's in front of us as we look at this text today, love is not self-seeking, or, love is not selfish.

Now, my mentor, as I learned this text has been, as I mentioned, primarily Jonathan Edwards, who wrote 17 sermons on 1 Corinthians 13, zeroed in on this in particular. Charity and Its Fruits is the overall work; you can get it and read it. And so I'm going to borrow his insights, I'm gonna lean on his outlines and some of his cross-references mixing in my own thoughts as well. But he has been an amazing mentor. Also along with that, some of you are aware that John Piper, in his book, Desiring God, which has really shaped his entire ministry, so much of it comes from Edward's meditations on love and on the nature of self-love, what healthy self-love is, and what unhealthy self-love is. And we'll get in. But all of that came from Edward's meditations, quite remarkably. John Piper says that in the world, there are two irresistible forces at work shaping all of human history, and they really have to do ultimately with our salvation. The first and greatest irresistible force is the drive, the determination that God has to be glorified, that God be glorified; he is absolutely committed to his own glory. We human beings are absolutely committed to our own happiness, and these two come together in our salvation and in a slogan, that if you know anything about John Piper's work, "God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied or delighted or happy in him."

Sadly, however, that drive that we have, that is natural to us as human beings to be happy, to be satisfied, when Adam fell into sin, became twisted and perverted. Adam fell from the moral perfection in which he was created, his heart was corrupted with sin, his heart was designed to love God above all else, and then love other creations in their proportions. But instead of that, the heart became twisted. We were supposed to see the greatness of God and to love him. We were supposed to see the beauty of all creation, including other people. To love all of those creatures, especially human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, that we would delight in them. And so because of sin, our hearts were made to constrict instead of expanding and swelling up vertically to the infinitude and the magnitude of God's greatness and then horizontally to the beauty of creation, especially other people. Sin acted as an astringent, it caused us to shrivel inward, to pucker inward, to contract within ourselves, and so love, self-love became corrupted. Self-love became the master of the soul of men, and Adam's children, his descendants were all born in that cursed condition, made in his likeness, and made in his image in sin and in corruption. But God, God in his infinite mercy stepped into our helplessness and into our corruption and our selfishness in the form of his only begotten Son. He stepped into this world, he sent his only begotten Son to liberate us from sinful self-interest, to set us free from fanatical commitment to self, so that we will spend eternity worshipping God, but also cherishing and loving others. That's where we're heading.

Now, let's zero in on Jonathan Edwards’ first adjustment as he begins in this sermon on “Love is not Self-Seeking,” he begins by a very critical adjustment in our thinking, an important disclaimer, "Christian love is not opposed to all self-love." This is very important. Christianity does not cause human beings to cease loving themselves entirely or in all respects. It doesn't tell us to cease trying to be happy or blessed or delighted. If Christianity were to do that, it would destroy our very humanity itself. We would cease to be in the image of God, for God made hearts to find delight and blessedness ultimately in himself. God is therefore not a cosmic killjoy, like he's looking over the ramparts of heaven to see if anybody is happy anywhere and yelling down at us, "Cut that out!" Like you think about the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk stalking around in his heavenly kingdom, “Fee-fi-fo-fum!” Trying to sniff out any human happiness and crush it. That is not the God of the Bible, it's not the God, it's actually Satan. Satan hates human happiness. John 10:10, "The thief," ultimately, that's Satan. "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy." Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly." Well, there's the contrast right there, God is not a cosmic killjoy at all. He wants to fulfill our delights in himself and in all that he's made.

The fact that God desires or even commands human self-love is obvious in the second great commandment. We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. If God hated all self-love, why would he use it clearly as a measure of the way by which we should love our neighbor? Notice that the command does not say we should love our neighbor more than ourselves, but love our neighbor as ourselves, so that's the measuring stick of how we do it. All of the commands and indeed the promises of God in the Bible appeal in some sense to our self-love or our self-interest or our desire to be blessed. He set before the Israelites blessings and curses. The ultimate blessedness he gives us in Psalm 16:11, where the Psalmist says, "You have made known to me the path of life, you will fill me with joy in your presence... " Listen to this, "with eternal pleasures at your right hand." That's a direct appeal to us in our desire to be filled with pleasure and joy. What that Psalm says is, we're gonna find it at God's right hand in heaven. The saints in heaven will spend eternity swimming in a sea of pleasure. An ocean of happiness, that's what heaven's all about. They will love their own happiness to a level we can scarcely comprehend. And so if self-love were evil, then why would God perfect it so in heaven? He appeals for us to find our perfect happiness, our perfect blessedness in God in our heavenly home.

Interestingly, even this chapter itself appeals to a healthy self-love. Look again at verse 3, "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." It's like the Holy Spirit is saying through Paul, "Hey, you wanna gain something, then love while you sacrifice." That's what he's saying. You don't want to not gain anything, do you? So there's a whole appeal here to a healthy self-interest or self-love. We also know instinctively, I think that for an action from any human heart to be genuinely loving, that heart has to delight in doing it, there has to be some enjoyment in the heart or it's not really love, it's robotic. If we were to do even the most sacrificial acts of service to another person and got literally no delight out of it, it would not be love. Conversely, you can imagine, and I want you to picture, a little girl who's drawing a picture for her daddy because it's his birthday, and she is smiling and she is humming to herself and she's coloring the best she can. And she's got an idea of what he would like and she is working on this picture and she's just happy. And I don't think she could put into words what she's happy about, but I think I know what she's happy about. She's happy in the combination of his delight and hers coming together in the picture, in the giving of the picture. She is looking forward to the hug, the happy hug he's gonna give her when he looks at the picture, that's what love is. Her heart is filled with love for her daddy, because she's happy in the gift she's gonna give. So it is with worship vertically, any worship we really do, it's our hearts kindled and heated up and delighted in God. That's what worship really is, and heaven is gonna perfect that. So if all self-love were wrong, then how could we ever really love at all? God loves a cheerful giver, God loves a cheerful worshiper, God loves a cheerful servant. We are to find delight in loving God, and especially in this context here, loving others. 

Alright, so if Christian love is not opposed to all self-love, what kind of self-love is it opposed to? Well, Christian love is opposed to unhealthy or inordinate self-love, says Jonathan Edwards. Sin takes the healthy self-love, which is essential to our very humanity and twists it to become unhealthy and inordinate, inordinate means outside of boundaries that God has set up, out of proportion. Imbalanced, grotesque, I've used the word twisted. You could picture a tumor which is vibrant with life, but it's a deadly kind of life, it's greedily taking resources from the body, and the tumor is growing and growing until at last it kills the person. And so this self-love is like that, it's a vibrant lively, energetic, evil thing in our souls.

So the self-love that Christian is opposed to is love which finds happiness confined to self. It's confined to me, to the exclusion of others, ultimately God above all else, but also horizontally, as this chapter is concerned about, the exclusion of other people. Love is not self-seeking. When we say that love is not selfish or self-seeking, it means a love that is limited to self, pushing aside everyone else. A healthy, mature Christian, therefore, is called to imitate Christ. I love that Wes chose the song, “Show us Christ.” I think this sermon, if you hear properly, you will see how selfless, beautifully selfless was the love of Christ, and we can and should imitate Christ. Jesus found delight- it was his good pleasure to give people the kingdom. He loved healing sick people, he loved speaking truth to truth-starved people; he loved driving out demons. Remember that woman that was bent over and hunched over and kept in chains, physically even, by demonic force, Jesus set her free on a Sabbath. She was a daughter of Abraham, and Satan has kept her bound and he just set her free. He delighted in that. He loved setting sinners free from their sinful lifestyle, like Zacchaeus setting him free from his covetousness. When he said... When Zacchaeus said, "I'm not gonna do that anymore, I'm giving back what I've taken wrongly, I'm gonna repay four-fold." And Jesus delighted and said, "Today, salvation has come to this house." And so there is a delight in Jesus' heart in seeing the Kingdom of God take over, he just loved that. And so also we are called on to imitate that expansive, including others delight. I am delighted to see the blessings of the gospel work in somebody else's life.

Now, contrast that with the selfishness, that inward focus, that astringent skewed kind of love that is natural to our sin nature. Again, I think about my favorite whipping boy in this: Ebenezer Scrooge, I can do that 'cause he was a fictitious character. But think about what Dickens wrote about him, “He was a tight fisted hand at the grindstone [Scrooge] a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner, hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out, generous fire.” That is our sin nature personified, there's nothing generous coming from it, it's hard, self-focused. Scrooge's pleasure was in money, and that's a perfect display of idolatry. He loved it to the utmost as a creature, as an idol, without any delight in the God who gave it or the people it could bless until he was transformed. So it is with any recluse addict, binging on electronic entertainment or drowning his sorrows in drugs or alcohol, or a porn addict alone in the dark staring at images. Or a glutton, eating, stuffing his face, trying to get pleasure out of the food in and of itself, there's a greediness and an inward focus in that idolatry. It's totally self-focused, a pursuit of the pleasure of senses without any vertical love to God and thankfulness and any horizontal including of others in that idolatrous binge experience. Edwards put it this way, "A Christian spirit is contrary to that selfish spirit, which consists in the self-love that goes out after such objects as are confined and limited, such as a man's worldly wealth or the honor that consists in a man's being set up higher in the world than his neighbors. Or his own worldly ease and convenience, or his pleasing and gratifying his own bodily appetites and lust." The wicked selfishness of the heart is to find love in these creaturely things, these creatures without any relationship to God or others.

Alright, how does Christian love oppose that? How does it oppose selfishness or self-seeking? Well, at first, the work of salvation moves us out of ourselves to seek first and foremost, vertically, to glorify God. And then secondly, having done that, to move out horizontally and seek delight in the blessing of others. So when the Holy Spirit works salvation in us, he expands our constricted inwardly, self-focused, sinful hearts upward to himself. We are given a vision in our hearts of the glory of God in the face of Christ, this beautiful light that shines in the previous darkness of our hearts, and it is beautiful and it's attractive, and it's the glory of God. And we love him, and we are moved by faith, we see him and delight in him and move upward. Essential to that then, is a growing desire like the little girl drawing the picture, a growing desire to please him. We increasingly realize that we should desire nothing on Earth that does not please our heavenly Father. We would not want the whole world to be given to us if we should forfeit or lose our souls. We would not wanna have a golden bed of pleasure if we knew that God were displeased with it. We don't want that, we want him to be pleased, we wanna find out what pleases the Lord, and we wanna do it. Beyond that, we also move out to seek and to please and bless other people horizontally. So first and foremost, there's a health coming vertically in our relationship with God that's very other-centered, but we find our delight there, then we move out in a lesser way, but a very important way, and it is the focus of this chapter, to other people. And we love them and we want to see them blessed, we want... Our hearts are wrapped up in their blessedness, we desire to alleviate suffering, we want to bring blessing. This is especially true when it comes to eternity. We want to alleviate eternal torment of hell that people would hear and believe the gospel and not spend eternity separated from God, we also want to see lesser blessings coming to Christians and non-Christians alike, we yearn for that.

Many commandments show this outward movement away from selfishness to blessing others. For example, Philippians 2:4, "Each of you should look, not only to your own interest, but also to the interest of others." Or again, 1 Corinthians 10:24, "Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others." Again, 1 Corinthians 10:33, same chapter, "I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many that they may be saved." And then Romans 15:2, "Each of us should please his neighbor for his good to build him up." and many such verses. The grace of God then works in us a deeply sympathizing and merciful spirit for us as Christians, we begin to sympathize, to not only rejoice with those who rejoice, but to mourn with those who mourn. Selfish people make much of their own afflictions as though no one in history has ever gone through as much suffering as they're going through right now, and no one can understand the depth of their suffering, they make much of that. Also selfish people who are not suffering do not have it in their hearts to move out toward those who are suffering, so that they make sacrifices of time, energy, money, so they can alleviate other people's suffering, they do not do that, they make much of their own sufferings and they make very little of other people's sufferings. But the grace of God heals us from that narrow selfishness, it causes us more and more to see other people's sufferings, even our own suffering, we see it in light of ways we might possibly be able to minister others that are similarly suffering. We see Christians that get a diagnosis of cancer, they have a serious life-threatening disease, but some of the most mature people I've ever seen saw that as a platform to minister to other non-Christians who have the same diagnosis. And so to some degree, that individual is minimizing their own suffering. They don't think about it, "Oh, how much I'm suffering." They're thinking, "What can I do with the time I have left to minister to others who are suffering the same way?" Christian love takes delight in bringing blessing to others and supplying the needs of others, it also causes us to care about what's going on around us.

I think about COVID-19 and so many opportunities we have to see the suffering in the world, we're not as able as ordinarily would be directly to minister unless we are in the healthcare if we're doctors, nurses, etcetera, we can. But we understand that this disease is leaving a trail of wreckage around the world, economic records, physical ailments, all kinds of things, and there's gonna be much work for Christians to do and for us to have our heart expand to care about what's going on here in Durham or in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, our geographical region. Edwards said this, "A man of right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views but is greatly interested and concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, particularly of the city or village in which he resides, and for the true welfare of the society of which he is a member." So in other words, it makes you civic-minded and care about what's going on right in your own community.

Ultimately though, it has us care about the lost, the spiritual condition of the lost. Psalm 119:136 says, "Streams of tears flow from my eyes for your law is not obeyed." So the Psalmist there has an emotional reaction to the brokenness of lawlessness. He's not indignant and angry he just sees the brokenness of it. There is a righteous anger, I understand that, and Jesus showed that, but Jesus wept over Jerusalem, he wept over his enemies. Moses interceded for Israel and was willing that his own life be taken and Israel spared. The Apostle Paul said he had sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart for lost Jewish people in his own generation, and he was willing even that he would be denied heaven, that he would give up his own soul if it could be, he knew it couldn't, but that the lost of the Jews would be saved.

So Christian love will increasingly be willing to make sacrifices for the salvation of the lost. I think especially about the missionary enterprise has been going on for 20 centuries. I had my IMB trustee meeting this week, and the IMB is gonna be in a very challenging position economically because of what's happened to the economy of the world, but especially in America. And so we need to begin praying for financial support for missionaries. But think about the missionary spirit, willing to go to some distant land to face challenges, persecutions, suffering, even death, death from disease, or in very rare cases, death from martyrdom, willing to do that so that others can be saved. So that's being completely... Not completely, but as much as we can be, cured of the kind of selfishness that the Scripture is addressing. So the spirit of Christian love moves us out to make sacrifices for others. 1 John 3:16, “This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” This is the opposite of the spirit of Scrooge, that stingy, grasping, hard as flint, selfish spirit. Instead, it looks at all the earthly blessings and opportunities we have as a conduit of blessings to those around us. 

Now, what evidence, according to Jonathan Edwards, what evidence is there that Christian love must oppose selfishness? What scriptural or theological support can we put under this? Well, let's begin by looking at the nature of love itself. Love by its very nature moves outward from itself; it goes out from itself to another. Imagine you're at a wedding... I saw this in a movie, it had nothing to do with a wedding, but it had to do with one of these extravagant French kings, I don't know if it was the Sun King or who it was, but he had a servant walking around with a full-length mirror so he could look at his outfit all day long. Imagine if you went to a wedding in which the couple didn't look at each other at all, didn't talk to each other, didn't talk to the guest, they just looked at themselves in the mirror the whole time, like, "What in the world? Is there any love here? Can I introduce you to one another? You're going to love each other for the rest of your life." That's what the wedding is, and so essentially love has to move outward to include another, it can't be self-absorbed, it can't be selfish. That's what love really is.

But specifically, Christian love is opposed to all of the worldly counterfeits of love, there's a lot of selfishness in apparent love. People make connections, non-Christian people make connections that are really all about self-interest, they join clubs with common interests, and they boast over one another in that and they're really... It's like a mutual admiration society, they know they're gonna get a lot of feedback that stokes their pride and their ego. Back in the days of the flourishing of the Bible Belt, even in regions like this, like this city, people would join First Baptist Church for social reasons or business reasons or other connections, it was ultimately selfish, it wasn't other centered at all, it all came back to me. But Christian love is the opposite. Christian love moves out supernaturally and causes us to include others, and ultimately God. Edwards calls it, and this is a beautiful image, “a plant transplanted into the soul out of the garden of heaven.” Isn't that beautiful? By the Holy and blessed Spirit of God. So it has life, it has its life in God and not in itself. So this holy seed of love has been planted in you, supernaturally, from the garden of heaven, it's a seed of love, and it starts to move out vertically toward God, but yes, sweetly, horizontally toward others. Thus Christian love soars high above all lowly motives and selfish connections.

This is seen especially in love for enemies; you get nothing back. Nothing. We're called on to love our enemies so that we can be like our Father in heaven who causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous; he never gets thanked for it, but he just does it out of an overflow of love. So also Christian love moves us to make the same kinds of sacrifices. Jesus said in Luke 6, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone force you and takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic." Now, this kind of thinking is so radical and so transformative that Jesus actually calls it a new commandment. He says in John 13:34, "A new command, I give you, Love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another." Jesus is very well aware that the Old Testament horizontal law could be summed up in this statement, "Love your neighbor as yourself." That's right from the Old Testament. He knew that that command was actually an old commandment, but what is new is the measure, the example, the pattern of love that we have now that Jesus has come. Now that Jesus came and lived that life in front of us, that we read about in Matthew, Mark Luke and John, when we see what kind of selflessness, the kind of self-denial that went right to the cross, even to death on the cross, dying in our place under the wrath of God, and then being raised from the dead on the third day, so that in his death, we have our forgiveness and in his life, we have eternal life. And he did it all for us, and he lived out day after day. So that Jesus, when he says "A new commandment" what he's saying is, “What's new here is, I am the example of love, as I have loved you, so you must love one another." Jesus actually takes possession of this commandment and makes it his own. In John 15:17, he said, "This is my command." I love it that way, to say it that way. "This is my command, I own it, and I'm giving it to you. Love each other."

So Jesus is a perfect pattern of humble service to everyone he met, everyone who came to him with a need, that is our new pattern of love that we should follow, and no one loved better than Christ, no one loved his enemies better than Jesus. It was while we were still sinners and still enemies that Christ died for us, and he gave them maximum display of love to those who could never suitably repay him. Christ has united his heart with ours. He speaks of us as though we are him like we are part of him. You remember what he said to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus? "‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Saul answered, ‘Who are you Lord?’" It's one of the great questions of all redemptive history. "Who are you, Lord?" Spend eternity working that one out, Saul. But in the meantime, “I am the one you are persecuting.” Same thing with the sheep and the goats, “‘I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you nursed me to health, I was in prison and you came and looked after me.’ ‘When did we do that?’ ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,’” there's a union between Christ and his heart and his people. His heart is united with them, and he spent himself fully for our sakes, everything he had to give, he gave away. Edwards said this, "His love did not rest in mere feeling, nor in light efforts and small sacrifices." Can I just tell you those words pierced me. Christ didn't love that way, he didn't love in light efforts and small sacrifices; he gave up his own ease, comfort, interest, honor and wealth in heaven, and then he became poor, outcast and despised, and he lived it to the end of his days. He had nowhere to lay his head, and he did it all for us. Not mere feeling, not light efforts, and no small sacrifice, that's how he loved, and Christ did all of this without any expectation of any of us ever being able to suitably love him in return. So how has that applied to us? Well, “we become united with others, in our hearts, we shall seek not only our own things, but we shall seek,” says Edwards, “in our hearts to be so united with others that we shall look on their circumstances as if they were our own. We shall endeavor to be interested in their good, as Christ was in ours, we shall be ready to forgo and part with many of our own things in many cases for the benefits of others as Christ did toward us. And these things we will do without any expectation of being repaid by them, as Christ had no expectation of being repaid by us. In this way alone is this deadly, relentless principle of selfishness finally defeated and finally destroyed.”

So examine your life. Examine your life and seek, in him, a transformed heart. Look at yourself first. I have to ask, are you a Christian? Are you born again? Have you received the gift of salvation? Jesus came because sinners like you and me are so selfish and we couldn't heal our own selfish hearts, and we couldn't do anything for our past selfish actions in wickedness and sin. And so what we could not do, God did by sending Jesus, living that sinless life, dying in our place, rising again. Have you confessed that Jesus is Lord, and do you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead? And if that happens to you, all of your sins, past, present and future will be instantly forgiven forever by grace through faith. But then something else will happen, he will give you a new nature, a new heart, and he will by the power of the Spirit working within you, increasingly transform you and make you loving like Jesus is. The Spirit of Christ, will come and live within you and increasingly teach you to live selflessly for others.

So if you are a Christian, I just wanna ask you again, examine your life, see if there are patterns of selfishness in your life. Is the Holy Spirit bringing to mind something right now? A pattern of self-love, self-focus, selfishness, that is sinful. Ask him to show you how you spend your time, your energy, your money, look at that, find out what you're spending it on, acknowledge as you do this, you're not your own, you're bought at a price. Your body and all of your resources belong to Christ, bought with his blood. God has made you for himself, and he wants you to live daily for him and for others. He has also given you higher and nobler purposes than living like Scrooge, living for me, living selfishly. He's set nobility and transcendent beauty in your heart, so you can live for that, storing up treasure in heaven by living for others and ultimately for the glory of God. He's given you everything you need to live a selfless life of love for others.

Acknowledge that you are united in Christ with other Christians. We are all part of one body, and when one part of the body suffers, the whole part suffers with it. Think about if you had a stomach ailment, significant stomach ailment and a lot of pain maybe not life-threatening or any chronic disease but you're in a lot of pain. How much of the rest of the members of your body are motivated to help that one part of the body. It's not like the eyes say, "Look, why should I search on the Internet for the best GI doctor? That's got nothing to do with me. I'm an eye; I'm not part of the gastro-intestinal system. Your problem, not mine." That just would never happen, the eyes will search online, the appointment will be made, the feet will carry you from the car into the clinic, everything that is needed for health, your body will be mobilized to do. Why should it be any different with the body of Christ? When one part suffers, the whole part suffers with it, and so we need to find out and minister to others as one body of Christ. If you live selflessly and give of yourself your time, energy, money, resources to others, God will be motivated to supply what you need. As he said in Philippians 4, “My God will meet all your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.” So when you are generous and give to others, he's gonna come back in and supply your need, however, there seems to be an opposite warning, if you choose to live selfishly, God will not be motivated to care for you in the same way, you'll be on your own. “Fine, you wanna take care of yourself, then take care of yourself.” For me, I think Philippians 4 is to be able to generously give and then see how God gives to us. As it says in Luke 6:38, "Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap, for the measure you use is the measure that you'll receive."

Now, at the end of this sermon, Edwards showed us a lot of grace and I'm grateful because he could be pretty tough. You read these things it's like, "ugh." But he said very clearly, speaking of himself and his congregation, "This is very difficult for us, this is hard." That's why I gave you that image of the king salmon swimming upstream every moment. This is hard to do; it's very difficult. We will be fighting our native twisted selfishness the rest of our lives, and so we have to fight, but what Edwards said so sweetly is this, "Let all these things incline us, incline us all to be less selfish than we are and seek more of the opposite, excellent spirit of Christ-like selfless love."

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the word that we have this morning from 1 Corinthians 13, how it searches us, how it finds problems in our souls, but it also gives us hope, as we know in Christ our hope is that when we get to heaven, we will be so completely free from wicked sinful self-love, and we will find our greatest delight in the glory of God and in the blessedness of our brothers and sisters. We look forward to that day. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Love is not self-seeking, but without God we constantly find ourselves working for our own selfish desires until He transforms our hearts.

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