Your Salvation Depends On Jesus and This - Daniel Willis

Let all that you do be done with love. Let all that you do be done with love. What does that mean? How can we do everything in love? How is that possible?

What is love? We have to—if we're to do everything in love, then we must answer the question, what is love? And I'm going to go through who, what, when, where, why, and how we are to love. Who are we to love? What is love? When are we to love? Where are we to love? Why are we to love? And how are we to love? And what spurred this on, what made me want to talk about this was last time whenever we were combating faith alone, saying that faith must be accompanied with love.

We were talking about circumcision and the law of Moses. And Paul said this: "Mark my words. I, Paul, tell you that the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." And if the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love, we must learn what love is.

And we talked about 1 Corinthians 13 last time and how if you're the greatest prophet and you know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if you give everything to the poor and you can move mountains with your faith and you even die a martyr's death, but you don't have love, it counts for nothing.

And then he ends it saying, "And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." And so the greatest—what's greater than faith is love.

So what is love? We're not going to go in order, actually. But love so far is greater than faith. Love is how we are to express our faith. And faith, prophecy, tongues, knowledge, benevolence, and martyrdom counts for nothing without love. So this makes love pretty important. But we're going to keep going on and adding to what makes love so important and great.

And by doing that, we are answering why are we to love. So if we understand how great it is, we'll know how essential it is.

Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. What makes the law love so important? All of the law and the prophets hang on loving God and your neighbor. Jesus answered him, "This is very similar. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. And the second is like it, that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."

So all the law and the prophets hang on it, and the greatest commandments hinge on love. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you do well.

Why is love so important? The law is fulfilled by loving our neighbor. The law and the prophets hang on it. The greatest commandments hinge on it, and it's fulfilled by it. By this, all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

So it adds to why it's so important. If we don't love people how we should, people aren't going to know we're followers of Jesus. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. So we see that love is of God, and God is love.

And so if God is love, that obviously makes love pretty important. And if we are to be of God, we are to—love is of God. And if we love, we are born of God. And if we do not love, we do not know God and aren't born of God.

And talking to my old self, the people who think that everything is—people that come from where I come from, we often say things like, "Is that a salvation matter? Is the head covering a salvation matter? Is loving an enemy a salvation matter?"

And everything's—if it's not a salvation matter, we really don't need to do it. But this, appealing to those people, love is a salvation matter. Who are we to love? We already know God. We're to love God and our neighbor, and we must ask, who is our neighbor?

And I would argue that everyone around us, everyone we come in contact with, is our neighbor. But it's not limited to geography, as we know in the great—with the great Samaritan. He was on a travel a long way away and saw someone in need, and he made that person his neighbor.

We are to love our brother. And our brother, according to Paul, is the church, the people in our church. I don't think it's just our blood brothers. And here's some scriptures on that. "He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar." That's pretty strong. "For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, how can he love God, whom he has not seen?" It's a rhetorical question. You don't love God if you're not loving your brother. "In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest." Still very strong language. "Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.

The one that does not love God is the one who does not love his brother." We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. "He who does not love his brother abides in death." This seems pretty essential.

It seems like a salvation matter. We are to love our enemies. "You have heard that it is said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." Why? That you may be children of your Father in heaven. We're to love our enemies so that we can become children of our Father in heaven. "He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?

But to you who are listening, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.

Give to everyone who asks, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do unto you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even the sinners love those who love them."

So just remember, do unto others as they would have them do to you. I'll go back to that later.

Who are we to love? Another way to ask this is, on whom does rain fall? Everyone.

So let me go—yeah. When are we to love? So if you go to the very first question, the thing that I'm trying to make the main point of the topic is, let all that you do be done with love.

And I asked my son, seeing if he'd understand it, and he didn't, when do we do all that we do? And he scratched his head. And I said, "Well, we do everything that we do all the time." And he still didn't look at me puzzled. I don't say things very clearly, obviously. So I said, "When are you not doing something?" I put it in different words. And he's like, "Well, when I'm sleeping and when I'm just sitting there." And I was like, "Well, you're sleeping when you're sleeping and you're thinking and you're dreaming and you're breathing. And when you're sitting there, you're doing other things." And then I said, "If we are doing something—" and he agreed.

I said, "If we're doing something all the time, and the Bible says, 'Let all that you do be done with love,' then when are we to love?" All the time. Why are we to love? Because the law and the prophets hinge on it. Because the greatest commandments rely on it. Because it's essential that if we don't love, we don't know God. I mean, there's so many reasons we have to love, why we should love. Who are we to love? Everybody. God, our neighbor, our brothers, and our enemies. And sometimes it's easier to love your brothers than enemies. And sometimes it's actually easier to love your enemies than your brothers. And I think that it's kind of a circular practice.

The better we can love our brothers, the better we can love our enemies. Because often our enemies are someone that are just temporary, someone that cuts you off in traffic or wants to beat you up for a moment. And you only have to love them for a moment. But our brothers are next to us all the time. And we're going to make mistakes, and we're going to hurt each other. And if we practice loving our brothers, we'll be able to better love our enemies. And if we practice loving our enemies, we're going to better love our brothers.

And before I get to that, so also, the first fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. And my old self would say, "Well, then it's kind of automatic. It's a fruit of the Spirit, not a fruit of us." But we're to follow the Holy Spirit's guidance in our life. We're to—the Spirit's going to give us guidance to love, but it's our choice if we follow the Holy Spirit or not.

And it is not automatic. If it was automatic, it would not say, "Do everything in love." It would say, "Everything's going to be done in love because you believe in me." But it's something that we have to practice.

When are we to love? All the time. And if we're to love all the time, then we're to love everywhere because we're somewhere—we're always somewhere, right?

What is love and how are we to love are the remaining questions. So how do we love God? "If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love Jesus and God, you'll keep his commandments. He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves me, he will—" let me go back to that. I don't want you to miss that.

If we love God and keep his commands, he will manifest himself to us. That's like so amazing. Like this is so important. And this one liked it. "Jesus answered and said to him, 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. If we do this, they, God, the Father and the Son, will come to us and make their home with us.'" It's weird saying there, but I guess that's what it is. "He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word you hear is not mine, but the Father who sent me."

Okay, so whoever—so I put this in there to show that even Jesus did this. "However, in order that the world may know that I, Jesus, love the Father, so that we know that Jesus loved the Father, even as the Father gave me commands, so I do."

So that is how we love God. Sorry, I got a typo in there. But I would argue that this is also a way we can love our parents, to obey their commands. If my son or my daughter, if I give them lots of things that I would like them to do and things that I would like them to not do, and they always lived in opposition to me and did the opposite of what I said, I would say they didn't love me. But if they tried, even though they failed, if they tried over and over to do as I said, I would know that they loved me and my wife. And same with God. Like we only can do this as good as humans, broken humans can do this.

Like we're going to—it's essential to salvation. This is what doesn't click in evangelical circles, is when something's essential to salvation, they think it's completely black or white. Like, "Oh no, I lost my salvation. I wasn't patient, so I wasn't loving." But we don't think in those terms.

God is our Father, and he understands that we're going to make mistakes. But if it's the norm, if the norm is to disobey God, then we don't love God. But if the norm is to obey his commands and we seldom, or even maybe often, but we're doing our best to love God and obey him, we can be assured that we're walking in the light as he is in the light. "My children, let us not love in word and tongue, but in deed and truth."

So this continues. This is how we love the brethren. How are we to love? What is love? "By this we know we love, because he laid down his life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." So we need to be willing to die for the brethren. But I don't think this only means die, because the very next verse says, "But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?" Kind of a rhetorical question. The love of God doesn't abide in him, maybe, if he's not taking care of the needs of his brothers when he has the world's goods to do so. "Though I speak in tongues of men," this is where the rubber hits the road.

The sermon's not much longer, so y'all can take a nap in a minute. "Though I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. It is not puffed up." So I'm going to start asking a series of questions. And when I say you, I also mean me. I am very—I normally try to be pretty qualified at something before I preach it, and I don't feel—the more I prepared the sermon, the more I realized I'm not the best at this, and maybe I shouldn't be preaching it.

Like I would tell you an example this morning, but it's too embarrassing maybe for me and my wife. But even this morning, I was like, "Man, I just got irritated. Like how do we do this all the time? We're supposed to be like always loving." And I fall very short of this. So please don't feel—when I'm saying you, I'm saying us, we, I, and you. And so it's just easier to say you in this. So don't think that I think that I have all this down. "Love suffers long and is kind. Today, this week, this month, have you been impatient with people or not kind to someone? Even in your thoughts, did you think evil towards someone or negative towards someone?

Love does not envy. Did you want other people's goods? Did I want the things that people have? Love does not parade itself. It is not puffed up." And this isn't only like talking—like have you talked—have you tried to make yourself look good in front of others by your words and by whatever you do, trying to make men love you?

Or the not puffed up thing, I noticed that me and others often will find something that we're pretty good at or that maybe we've struggled through and now we no longer struggle with. And we see some other brother who's struggling with it, and we point out their negative—their things that they're not good at to others, and we make ourselves look better—to make ourselves look better. And we puff ourself up. Have we done that today, this week, this month? "Love does not behave rudely. Have we been rude?" And this is like when a scammer calls me, for some reason, I felt like I have the license to be rude.

And I realized he's an enemy trying to take my money. I'm supposed to love this guy. Should I be like, "I know you're scamming me, but I can send you 20 bucks"? You know, like, but I'm always rude. I'm trying not to be rude. And I realize when I'm making this, like, I'm not always kind to people.

And there's always different places in my life that I feel like I have the license to do it because of something. But when I realize, when I think about this deeply, we don't. We should not be. "It does not seek his own." This one's the hardest because we all have needs and desires. And trying to wrap my head around this and how to do this well is very difficult. To not be selfish or not to seek our own, but always be thinking of what everybody else is going to want and need.

This is probably where I fail the most. And it's a not—let me think of the way to say this. And I don't—I don't even realize it when I'm doing it. It's like one of those blind spots. Like what we're going to eat and who's comfortable and where am I going to sit and different things like that. I'm not thinking like, how can I make all my children more comfortable than me and my wife and everything and people around me? And that's something that it's hard to go through all of life and think of all the times that when we start to complain is often where we're kind of seeking our own or we think that we should have something that we don't have.

It's not provoked. And I think this is the one that you said was irritable. And that's where this morning I was like, anyway, it doesn't matter. "Think no evil." This one also could be translated. And I looked at the Greek, and it seems the Greek seems pretty clear that it's to keep no records of wrong. That we're to be completely forgiving and not hold any grudges or records of wrong. And we're not to think evil of each other. And I think that's also a good translation, but I couldn't see how they got that from the Greek. But I think it's also—we shouldn't be thinking of others in negative terms and that we should focus on building each other up and encouraging one another always and getting rid of negativity toward one another.

I'm not saying if there's like a red flag or something that's pretty big, I think we should go to that person and address that person. But I don't think we should be in groups conversing about different people's dirty laundry.

And that we should always just talk about what is good about those brothers. And if it's something worth mentioning, we go to them and we share our heart with them. And likely they know the problems that they're going through. Likely they're working on it. And then that's all—like when you hear that from them, they're like, "Oh good, you can keep working on that."

"It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth." And I don't know exactly—I know that it's saying don't rejoice in sin, but I think that sometimes we also, whenever—unfortunately, when we see people who we're really close to and maybe we envy and they fail, I've experienced it myself where I have this like, "Oh, I'm glad he did wrong." And that's a terrible thing. We should never be glad when people fail and fall and don't do as good as us because it suddenly makes us look better. It's a terrible idea. We should never rejoice in those things. We should always be saddened by those things, and we should rejoice in the truth. "Love bears all things.

We should be able to bear each other's burdens. We should be able to walk with each other. When people are in need or they're struggling, we should be alongside them. It believes all things. We should give the benefit of the doubt to people. We should hope—we hope all things. We hope the best for everybody. And it endures all things. We are long-suffering, and when we do sacrifice ourselves for our brothers and when we're living or in a dying way, we endure it for them. Love never fails. But whether there is prophecy, they will fall, fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect comes, that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I am known.

And now abide faith, hope, and love. These three, but the greatest of these is love." My last comments, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as good for building up." Let's not talk about the negative things about people, but only what's building people up. If we see something that's worth talking about, let's go to them and build them up in it and help them get through those things. "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as Christ forgave you." And when we do find it where we're a—if someone is talking bad about you and hurting you, this is our chance to be loving, to forgive, and to be humbled and let those things humble us.

Let those things make us better people. And don't let those things drag us down. Don't let those things tear apart the church because we are going to hurt each other, but we need to focus on trying not to and trying to lift each other up and carry each other's burdens and be patient with one another.