Chapter 10: Love

Well, good morning. We've made our way to the last chapter in A.W.Pink's Profiting from the Word. Chapter 10. The last chapter is about love. Love and the Word of God. It doesn't get any simpler than this.

Love is the greatest of Christian virtues. Paul says, and now these three remain. Faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love. The Bible says a lot about love. And so if we are profiting from the Bible, then we, in the way we love, are going to be affected. Pink admits that if we are really going to talk about love in its proper order, we should probably start with God's love towards us and our love towards God and His Christ.

But since we've already touched on those matters in previous chapters, we aren't going to be talking about that very much. We also could say a lot about the love that we owe to everyone, to all men, everywhere.

Love your neighbor as yourself is the second greatest commandment. And it wraps up all of our duty that we owe to everyone in our lives.

But we aren't going to interest ourselves so much with that. But we're going to narrow the question down to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

How will our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ be affected if we are profiting from the Word of God? This morning we have four points. Four points.

The first one is this. We profit from the Word when we perceive the great importance of Christian love. When we perceive the great importance of Christian love.

How important is Christian love? Well, I already quoted 1 Corinthians 13.13. And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love is the most important thing that a Christian can do. How important is love? Well, let's take a true or false quiz to find out. Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13.

1 Corinthians 13. You'll find all the answers there to the true or false quiz that we're having. The first question.

True or false? False. Speaking the language of heaven and the angels is more important than love. True or false? False.

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I don't have love, it doesn't matter how well I speak.

It doesn't matter how wonderful my speech is. I am dead. I'm as dead as a musical instrument. The breath of life is not in me. If love is absent, the fairest, the most beautiful Christian talk that we can give is just noise.

True or false? Knowing God's word and being a good, sound Calvinist is more important than love. False. True or false?

If I have the faith to move mountains, that means I don't need to love my brothers and sisters in Christ. What? False.

1 Corinthians 13. 2. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have the faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing.

This verse is a real measuring stick for us. How does God look at us and measure us? How do we measure up in God's sight? How much am I like Christ?

Well, this verse says it's not so much how much we know about God, about the word of God, prophecy, things like that. And it isn't by how much faith that we have.

It's by how much love we have. How much do you love? And that's the measure. It's easy for us, most of us, sophisticated, Reformed Baptists who are well taught, who can rightly divide the word of God, to think that, you know, we're the best thing since sliced bread, when in fact we're a big, fat zero on God's scale.

God doesn't measure us by how much we know, by how much we love. He doesn't look at us and say, well, let me see here. Jason Webb, he's reformed in his soteriology.

And let's see, ooh, he's a Baptist. Wow. Well, what do you know? He's a cessationist in regard to the apostolic gifts. He gets my gold stamp of approval.

No, it's not those things. It's how much I love. And if you don't love, you're nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Nada. So what that means is if there was an Arminian dispensationalist, charismatic, and he loves, and you don't, he is something, and you are nothing.

Love is more important than having the right doctrines in your head. And as a side note, don't ever think that I don't think having right doctrine is important.

It does matter. It matters a lot. But it's still not more important than love. So let's keep going on our quiz. True or false? If I give away all my worldly possessions, then it is okay for me not to love the people in the church.

False. True or false? False. If when I don't have anything else to give, and I give my body to be burned in the flames as a martyr, that definitely gains for me eternal life.

False. What does the word of God say? If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

So without love, generosity, and even martyrdom, don't even register in heaven. Love is more important than faith.

It's more important than self-sacrifice. It's more important than the hope of eternal life. It's more important than knowing right doctrine. It's more important than having the most beautiful Christian language.

Love is the most important of all Christian virtues. So do you see how important love is? Well, let's step it up a notch.

How important is love? Well, if you don't love your brother, if you don't love your brothers and sisters in Christ, then you are a reprobate. And that's an old-fashioned word for a dead, filthy sinner.

If you don't love your brother, if you don't love your brother, if you don't love your brother, if you don't love your brother, if you don't love your brother, if you don't love your brother, then you are a dead, filthy sinner who doesn't know God, who isn't following Jesus.

No matter what it looks like on the outside, you're not a disciple of Jesus. Love is that important. You can't make chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips.

And you can't make a Christian without love. Jesus says in John 13, 35, By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

If you love one another. How will men be able to identify a Christian? Well, if you see a person who's loving Christians, who's loving the brothers and sisters in Christ, then that's a pretty good indication that they are a Christian.

You're looking at a Christian. Pink says this, and speaking of love, It is an essential test of the genuineness of our profession. We cannot love Christ unless we love his brethren, for they are all bound up in the same bundle of life with him.

And the Apostle John in 1 John 3 has even stronger words for us. We know, this is John speaking, We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.

Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

So if we don't love the brothers, then we're still dead. So listen to me. Listen clearly. You can look around right now, see the people that you're sitting with, and if you don't love these people, if you don't care about them, if you won't sacrifice for them, if you won't give to them, then no matter what you look like on the outside, you're dead on the inside.

God sees a corpse. So, if that's your heart, if you can honestly say, when I look at these people around me, I don't really love them, then you have no life in you.

You have to flee to the one who has life. It's Christ. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. If you want life, true life, if you want to live, and you want to love, you have to flee to Jesus.

That's where this love comes from. So we haven't said anything new, have we? Has anyone heard anything new here? Probably not. But I hope you've heard some things that you needed to hear again.

We're a lot like little children, aren't we? I tell Eowyn, go pick up your room, let's say. Well, usually her mom does. Mom says, go pick up your room.

And how long does it take her for her to pick up her room? She doesn't get it done, ever. Because as soon as she starts playing with her stuff, her mind's a thousand miles away.

She's picking up books, reading books, playing with toys. So you constantly need to remind her, Eowyn, you need to pick up your room. And we're like that. We need to be reminded all the time because we get our minds a thousand miles away, and we forget this most important thing that we are told to do, and that's to love one another.

It's a simple command, but we need to remind it. That's our first point. If you are profiting from the Word, then you will be, you will see the great importance of loving the brethren.

Our second point is this. We are profiting from the Scripture when we understand the true nature of Christian love. We are profiting from the Scripture when we understand the true nature of Christian love.

The New Testament word for love, generally, there's a few, but the one that's used most often is agape. And it was a pretty uncommon word. Most people didn't use it.

And that's probably why the Christians picked it and used it because they could fill it with all sorts of meaning that it didn't have before. It was an uncommon word for an uncommon thing.

You didn't see Christian love out in the world. And so that's why they picked it. They filled it with the richness of Christian love. And so it wasn't confused with other forms of love.

So when we see the true nature of Christian love, when we see agape love, then it's really easy to detect the counterfeits that are out there.

There's a lot of counterfeits. There's a lot of people saying, I love, and I love with Christian love, and really it's just a counterfeit. There's nothing to it. Pink says, people are always confusing Christian love with natural human sentimentality and amiability.

That means, you know, I get along with you. We get along together. I'm easy to like. I like you. That kind of thing. And Christian love is more than that. It's more than just feeling good about others and having others feel good about you.

It's quite possible to be all those things. To be liked and likable. To be friendly and outgoing and kind to people. And to be totally devoid of Christian love.

Christian love is a spiritual thing. It has spiritual motives behind it. Christ is standing behind it. And without those spiritual motivations, without Christ standing behind it, without a true spiritual source, there can't be Christian love.

Because, let me back up. Pink points out that Christian love can be confused with softness and compromise.

You know, with just being peaceable all the time. He says, one of the most trying experiences that he's ever been through in all of his travels, Pink used to travel around a lot, was one time he found himself in a Christian home where the Christian parents refused to discipline, to spank their children.

and it was miserable. And so, have you ever heard that line? I love them too much to spank them. So, is that Christian love? You're gentle, you're kind, you're soft, you're compromising.

It's not. Christian love is something more than that. Proverbs says, he who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

Parents, are you confusing love with compromise? And if you love your children, will you discipline them with the rod? That's what you're called to do. That's the loving thing to do.

And if you don't do it, it's called hating your child. Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Love, Christian love, presses the claims of God.

It's uncompromising. It's concerned about holiness. Pink says, it is a wicked perversion of the word love to apply it to moral laxity and parental looseness.

Love is concerned with morality. Love is after the true spiritual good of the person that is loved.

Not just about their physical and emotional comfort. It's more than that. So if you're profiting from the word, you will see the counterfeits for what they are.

It's not compromise. It's not moral laxity. It's not softness and being good and kind all the time. The true nature of Christian love is something different. So what is the true nature of Christian love?

Can you turn or can someone actually remember our quote to me? John 3.16. John 3.16. We're all together. God so loved the world that he gave his only God and Son that whosoever believed in him should not bear respect that ever life.

So the two big verbs in that sentence. God so loved the world that he what? Gave.

God loves and God gives. What was the measure of God's love? What was the measure of how much he gave? How much of himself did he give away? Did God's love cost him?

Yeah. It cost him dearly. One of my favorite songs begins like this. How deep the Father's love for us. How vast beyond all measure that he should give his only son to make a wretch his treasure.

How great the pain of searing loss the Father turns his face away as wounds which mar the chosen one bring many sons to glory. Was there pain in God's love?

Yeah. Is there going to be pain in a Christian's love? Yeah. Christian love is God-like love. It's self-sacrificing love.

It's not only an affectionate regard for the person. It's not only liking the person. It's really a powerful desire to promote their spiritual welfare.

Love sees the cost and it sees what needs to be done for good to be done and it gives itself to the person. God loved us, didn't he?

He loved us. He saw what trouble we were in. And the only way that he could help us was to give his son for us. So he gave his son to the nails and to the thorns to the fists of wicked men.

And do you think that God the Father just painlessly gave his son over to those things and said, no big deal. No big deal. Doesn't matter. Doesn't hurt me. No.

Love costs. And it costs the Father. But the good of the beloved, our good, overcame that. Good had to be done to us because that's what love required.

And so God was moved to help. God was moved to save, no matter what the cost was. So if we're profiting from the word, then we will see that the true nature of Christian love is the self-sacrificing, giving of oneself for the good of your brother or sister.

But Christian love is more than even that. It's not softness and compromise and things like that. It's even more than just self-sacrifice, even though I think that's the very heart of it.

Christian love is a holy thing. We talked about that. Christian love is a holy thing. Why was the cross necessary? because God's love was holy.

We were sinners. God just couldn't do good to us because he wanted to do good to us because we deserved to have bad things done to us, to be punished, to be judged.

And God cannot look on sin and let it go undealt with. And so, if we want to know what Christian love is, we just need to see what was in the cross.

There was holiness there. It was God being unflinching in his holiness, of not relenting. And we see that in Jesus' life.

If we want to see what Christian love is like, then we can look at Jesus. What did Jesus do? If he was the perfect man, and everything he did was completely, perfectly loving, then we know that everything that he did shows us what Christian love is.

So, what did Jesus do? Jesus rebuked. Jesus corrected.

He rebuked his own mother on several occasions. He rebuked his disciples, James and John, the ones that were in the inner circle. They wanted to destroy the Samaritan village, and Jesus rebuked them and said, what do I have to do with you?

He rebuked the Pharisees. Christian love can be stern. It can be stern. Jesus tells his disciples that I must go to Jerusalem and I must die and I will be raised in three days.

Jesus is going to be killed. Peter takes him aside. Come over here, Lord. You've got to wonder, what did Peter eat for breakfast that morning? I mean, it must have been like a bowl of, a big bowl of courage and with a side of stupidity.

And he takes Jesus aside and he says, never, never. And what does Jesus do? Oh, Peter, you misunderstand me. No.

He says, Satan, get behind me. Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me. Christian love can be stern. Christian love can be angry.

Think of the temple. Jesus was angry when he saw what the men were doing to the temple. people. See, Christian love is not based on emotions. That's not what it's based on.

It's not how I feel. Although, if you don't feel those emotions, then there is a problem. If you don't like your brothers and sisters, there's a problem.

You need to like them. You can't say, oh, I don't like them, I just love them. That's not true either. If you don't like your brothers and sisters, then you don't know very much about love.

But, Christian love is not based on emotions. It's the principle of self-sacrificing, giving, with a concern for holiness, with a concern for their welfare.

And sometimes doing good for your brother and sister will mean rebuking them, will mean taking them aside and telling them the truth and correcting them. And that is not an unloving thing to do.

That's the way you love. That's the very vehicle of how you love. Because Christian love is concerned with the welfare of the beloved and it's best for the person that they're holy and that they're obeying God.

So, if you're profiting from the word, then you'll be seeing more and more of the true nature of Christian love. That's the second point. Our third point is this, if we are profiting from the scripture, then we will be learning to rightly exercise Christian love in all its varied manifestations.

If we are profiting from the scripture, then we will be learning to rightly exercise Christian love in all its varied manifestations. Christian love is something that has to be exercised.

You know, you hear of romantic love where it remains hidden. Oh, I can't tell the person. I won't tell the person. I mean, romantic love, that's okay, I guess.

But Christian love is something that has to be active. It has concrete expressions. You can point to something and say, that is Christian love.

That person is doing something that is Christian love. So, let's just talk about a few of the many expressions. I mean, the sky's the limit here.

We only have time for a few. Christian love manifests itself in encouragement. In encouragement. We talked about rebuke. That's one way to love.

Well, sometimes people don't need rebuke. They need help. They need encouraged. They know what their problem is. It's not that they need to be corrected that way. They need to be picked up and encouraged.

The Christian life is not easy. You know that. There's troubles within. There's troubles without. There's the conflict with Satan and the world and the flesh.

And there's all the usual conflicts of life. There are wayward children. There's slow spouses that just have a hard time going.

There's sickness. Financial difficulties. There are many problems. But one thing that will help all those problems is encouragement. If you will stand beside someone and encourage them, then maybe that won't make the problem go away, but it will make it a lot easier to deal with.

Christian love sees the difficulty the person is going through and finds a way to encourage them. So, let me ask you. This is for your response.

What are some ways that others have encouraged you? You don't have to be specific, but what are some ways that people have encouraged you in the body of Christ?

Let me know if they're praying for me. Okay. Why is that encouraging? Because they're concerned about my well-being and they want to take my concerns before the Lord because they know he answers prayer according to his will.

That's a encouragement to me. Okay. We're going to talk more about that later. How else? Have people encouraged you?

I hope that's going on. Correction? Okay. How does that encourage you? Yeah, sometimes we need a prod, don't we?

That helps us, encourages us. How else? Why lean? Taking you out to lunch. Why was that so encouraging?

It just shows Christian love and concern and fellowship and spirit and compassion. Okay.

So if you're looking to encourage someone, take them out to lunch. That's a good idea. What else? Dave? Just communicating how my activities or words were a vehicle by which God spiritually demonstrated them.

Yeah. Especially, you know, your teaching. It helps if someone says, you know, I was helped by that because it doesn't, there's not a big sign on your face that says, I was edified by that.

Um, how else? Meeting needs. Yeah. That's encouraging. When you have a problem, you're having a hard time making ends meet.

Someone gives you a gift. What else? Okay.

Okay. What else? There's one big one out there that I hope you guys are getting, even if you're afraid to say it. Sharing the scriptures. How often have we been ran down and someone shared a promise with us?

And, well, my problems haven't gone away, but you know what? The Lord will help me through it. 1 Thessalonians 4.18, therefore, encourage each other with these words.

And, Paul was just talking about how Jesus is coming. We're going to have a resurrection body. We're not going to be left behind. We're going to be joined with Christ forever.

Encourage each other with these words. The words of scripture encourage us. And, the remembrance that Christ is coming for us. That we're not here forever and ever and ever, but there's going to be a day that we're going to be with Christ, and that day will never end.

So, in all those ways, we can support one another. Christian love shows itself in encouragement. Ed talked about the next way. Christian love exercises itself in giving financially.

Financially. 1 John 3.17 13-18. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. There's love, concrete expression, not with just words and the moving of your tongue, but truth and actions.

Our money represents us. Our work, our sweat, our tears and our labor. So, when we give our money to someone, we are sacrificing a part of ourselves for them.

It's not just writing on a check and, oh, that's all it is. It's giving ourselves to someone. And God calls us to sacrifice for those who are in need.

There's many people in the body of Christ who are poor in this world's goods. They don't have a lot and it's a great trial for them.

They're constantly finding anxiety and worry and, how am I going to pay this bill? How am I going to put food on the table? But, you know, God in his mercy and his wisdom, he's given other Christians to have money.

And do you think that's just an accident? No. Christian love. It calls out Christian love. It says give financially. Listen to Pink at this point.

Real love is intensely practical. It considers no office too mean, no task too humbling, where the sufferings of a brother can be relieved.

When the Lord of love was here upon the earth, he had thought for the bodily hunger of the multitude and the comfort of his disciples feet. So, Christian love calls us to not only care about their spiritual good, but for their bodily good, for their physical good.

I mean, we are a body and a soul put together. And Christian love tells us to take care of both. Take care of your brother's body. Take care of his spirit. So, when was the last time you gave to your brother and sister in need?

Maybe there's no one in the body that you know of that can help, that you can help. Kind of doubt that, but maybe there isn't. But there's plenty of opportunities out there in the world.

There's thousands of brothers and sisters in Christ, sprinkled all around the globe, who need financial help. The Underhills in Kenya have opportunities.

The Ellis's in the Philippines have numerous opportunities. And the point is that Christian love will work itself out in giving financially. And so, maybe some of you are on that poor spectrum and you say, you know what, can't cut back anymore, can't make anymore, can't give anymore.

And that's maybe the truth. Well, there's other things that you can do. to love, can't you? Encouragement doesn't cost anything. And prayer, like what Jim says, doesn't cost anything.

If you have nothing to share with others, you can always pray for them. Love seeks out opportunities to do the beloved good, and there's no higher good than prayer.

There's no higher good than prayer. In prayer, you can bring that person's needs before the throne of grace and present them to God. And God is omnipotent, and he is good, and he can take care of those problems and those needs.

So in prayer, we bear the burdens of others. If we can't physically do anything about it, then what we can do is put them on our back and take them to the throne of grace and present them to God who can help.

We can do the work of love through prayer. prayer. So when I'm distressed, speaking personally, when I'm distressed and I have too much work to do, and I have my family to care about, and I have my school work to take care of, and I have the teaching responsibilities, there's nothing better for me than to know that you guys are praying for me.

Because God, even if you guys can't help me, God can help me. And I desperately need God to help me. And so when you pray, you move God to work for me.

And so, if I need grace to live patiently, to just do one more thing, to work one more day, to keep preserving, I need prayer.

And I need your prayer. And you all are in the same position that I am. Whether you feel it or not, you are in desperate need. of God's help. And when you pray, or when someone prays for you, it does the greatest good for them.

And then, if you love me, you'll pray for me. And if I love you, and if you love one another, then we should be praying for one another. That's how Jesus loves us now.

He didn't just die and rise again, and that's how he loved us. Hebrews 7.25, therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him. because he always lives to intercede for them.

Jesus makes our cause his own. He's always living to intercede for us. Jesus forgets none of his sheep. Jesus doesn't forget any one of you.

He knows your need, and he prays for you. And so, where would I be without Christ's prayer for me now? If he wasn't praying for me constantly, I know where I'd be.

I'd be a thousand miles from here, wallowing in a pit of sin and just loving it. I need Christ's prayer, and that's how Christ loves me now. He takes my concerns before his Father, and he says, Father, take care of this one.

We need your help. So that's just three ways that love expresses itself. Encouragement, financial giving, and prayer, and there's lots of others.

The point is that if we're profiting from the scriptures, then we're going to be learning how to concretely manifest love. The fourth and final point is this.

We profit from the word when we are taught the cultivation of Christian love. The cultivation of Christian love. So right now, I'm seeking to cultivate my lawn.

I live within a stone's throw. It's a pretty long stone's throw from the Yellow River. My dirt, it's not really dirt, it's clay. It's 100% clay.

And if you know what it's like to just exhaust yourself trying to turn up the soil so you can get some seed to grow, then you know how hard cultivation can be. But you also know how necessary cultivation is.

If I don't cultivate my lawn, I have no lawn. That's the sum of it. Right now, I hardly have any lawn as is. But if we don't learn to cultivate Christian love, then we're not going to have much love either.

The Bible teaches us how to cultivate Christian love, how to make it flourish and grow and grow more and more so that we abound more and more in love. And if we're profiting from the scripture, then we're going to see ways of cultivating our love and we'll make our love grow.

Pete gives us three rules. They're quick. Three rules for cultivating love. First, recognize that there's a lot in you that is unlovable. And so don't be surprised when you find something unlovable in your brother and sister.

This is a call to realism. You have problems. And guess what? So do they. If we were called to love perfect people, well that would be easy.

You know? But unfortunately there's no perfect people here. There's just imperfect people. And those are the ones that we have to love. Ephesians 4.2 Be completely humble and gentle.

Be patient, bearing one another with one another in love. So why do we need to be humble? Because I have lots of shortcomings. Why do I need to be patient and gentle and bear with one another because you have lots of shortcomings.

So if you want to cultivate Christian love, look and see how bad you are. And don't be surprised when you find something like that in your brother and sister. Just need to get used to it.

It's the way it's going to be until Christ comes. The second rule for cultivating Christian love is practice it. Practice makes perfect. So if you want to love a lot, then love a lot.

Talk is cheap. You can talk all day about loving people. But there's no better alternative, there's no alternative than just to do it, to love.

And so I'm calling you to find an opportunity today to love your brother and sister. And I'm serious, today. How are you going to love your brother and sister that's in this room today? How are you going to find one person and love them?

Encourage them with their trials. We're going into a luncheon. You'll have time to talk to one another. Well, find out what they need. Find out where they're burdened and encourage them.

Find out if they need financial help and write out the check. Put it in the box. Do whatever you need to do. Or just pray for them. Tell them, I will pray for them.

And then really go home and pray for them. Don't just say it, but do it. So, find someone. Maybe someone who's lonely. Needs just someone to talk to, to empathize with, and really love them.

Just concretely love them. The third rule for cultivating Christian love is feed yourself on God's love for you. Feed yourself on God's love for you.

why do I love God? Because He first loved me. Before there was time, before there was a world, before there were angels and demons and anything like that, God set His love upon me.

And He said, this one is going to be with me forever. And I will love Him forever. And when I was sunk in sin, I was wrecked, ruined, by the fall.

God loved me and gave His Son for me. And His Son was beaten. And His Son was tortured and mocked. And the King let His Son be mocked.

Can you imagine that? The King let His Son be made fun of. And that was for me and that was for you. Christ loved you and gave Himself for you. And so when you drink deep of that love, then you'll have a fountain of love overflowing in your own heart.

It'll be easy to love your brothers and sisters when you realize how much God has loved you. Who was this disciple that Jesus loved? The disciple that Jesus loved.

And I want you to think for a moment about the Apostle John. He wrote the whole Gospel of John. He never refers to himself and the person. He never says, I was there, Jesus talked to me.

He always uses this title. And it was the disciple that Jesus loved. It was the disciple that Jesus loved. John was more aware of Jesus' love for him than any of the other disciples were.

It was John who, on that troublesome and dark last night, the last supper, it was John that leaned back against the Lord and talked to him.

And so, is it any surprise that John was the one who talked about love the most? He knew what it was to be loved by God, to be loved by Jesus.

And so, when you read 1 John, you just read over and over again, God's love for him, God's love for us, and our need to love others. So, if you want to cultivate Christian love, then meditate on Christ's love for you.

And say to yourself, I am Jason. I am whatever. I am Jason, the disciple that Jesus loved. And when I'm weary of doing good, when you're weary of doing good, say to yourself, I am Jason, the disciple that Jesus loved.

And when I'm tired, and I can't go on, and my brother and sister do something that really hurts me, and I just want to lash out against them, say to yourself, I am Jason.

I am whoever. I am the disciple that Jesus loved. And if you drink deep on that, if you meditate on Christ's love for you, that you, of all people, were the one that he loved, then you'll have plenty of love to give to others.

So that's our four points. If we're profiting from the word of God, we will perceive the great importance of Christian love. We will understand the true nature of Christian love.

we will learn to rightly exercise Christian love in all of its manifestations, and we will be taught how to cultivate Christian love. Well, may God bless us and really help us to love one another.

Let's pray. Father, our heavenly Father, we have been loved by you, and that is wonder, and that is grace, and we ask that you would help us to drink that in, and to know that more and more, that your son died for us, that we could love you, that we could be right with you.

I pray, Father, send your Holy Spirit, help us to truly love one another, and love one another today, and every day of our journey.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.