According to the Scriptures

Damian Kyle: In verses 9 through 12, the Apostle Paul continues to address the subject of sanctification in our lives as Christians. How it is that our lives are set aside unto God for his purposes, and we move from the subject that we looked at last week, sexual purity and a life of sexual purity that we are to live in a sexually impure world, to the subjects that are equally practical and important to our Christian witness in addressing the subjects of brotherly love, living a quiet life, and working to provide our own support in life.

Guest (Male): Calvary Chapel Modesto presents According to the Scriptures with Pastor Damian Kyle. Glad you've joined us today as we continue our new series called While We Wait. Jesus promised he'd return, but how are we as Christians to be living while we wait? Well, that's the focus of our study here in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. We'll learn today part of the answer involves loving each other with a brotherly love. Here's Pastor Damian in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4.

Damian Kyle: This morning we continue our teaching series on Sunday mornings through 1st and 2nd Thessalonians in a series entitled While We Wait, with the subtitle of Living in Anticipation of Jesus' Return. Here we have the Holy Spirit's instruction in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians concerning the godly characteristics that are to mark our lives as Christians in order for us to be ready for Jesus' return when it does happen.

In verses 9 through 12, the Apostle Paul continues to address the subject of sanctification in our lives as Christians. How it is that our lives are set aside unto God for his purposes, and we move from the subject that we looked at last week, sexual purity and a life of sexual purity that we're to live in a sexually impure world, to the subjects that are equally practical and important to our Christian witness in addressing the subjects of brotherly love, living a quiet life, and working to provide our own support in life.

We remember again that sanctification refers to our lives being set aside unto God for his use. That is when we trusted in Jesus for salvation, we made him not only our Savior, but we also made him our Lord. The recognition that our life belongs to him and our lives are free for him to use however he sees fit to use our lives, to call us to be whatever he wants us to be, and with the confidence and the knowledge that his will for our life is always good and it's acceptable and it's perfect.

Having made this lordship commitment to Jesus at the start of our Christian lives, the recognition that now the Holy Spirit begins this work of sanctification, the process in my life whereby my life becomes progressively more and more set aside for him and his purposes. By virtue of that, it comes to look like the character of Christ more and more, what the Bible teaches a Christian is to be more and more. God takes all these old habits and old practices in our lives and then they're replaced with God's new ways. It's a wonderful process that God works in our lives all the way until the day that we go into heaven.

It's important to realize, too, that these verses have the same context of the first 12 verses as we saw last week, in the sense that our motivation for obeying him on this call to sanctification remains the desire to please him, which for the Christian is the greatest motivation for obedience that we possess. He begins there in verses 9 and 10 by telling us that we're to be continually growing, that is continually increasing in brotherly love.

So what is brotherly love? The Greek word that Paul uses for brotherly love here in writing the epistle originally is the word Philadelphia. Of course we have a city named Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love, unless you're going to an Eagles game. But that's where the name comes from and it means to have a brotherly love. Brotherly love is the love that Christians have and we are to have toward other Christians.

A love that comes from the recognition that as Christians, we are brothers and sisters, we're part of the same family. Every one of us shares the same father. We share the same heavenly Father with every other Christian in the world. Paul also uses another Greek word for love in that same verse. He refers to agape love when he writes, "love one another." Agape love is the love that God has for us, and it is the love that he provides to us by his Holy Spirit within our lives.

It's a love that gives us the ability to love people no matter how unlovely they are, just the way that God does, and to love them in the way that he does. This agape love is very selfless and it always does what's right for the other person. Sometimes in our culture we think that the loving thing to do is whatever a person is asking me to do. No, the loving thing to do is what is best for that person. We are to love, but that will mean that we will not always do what people want us to do, but always what is best.

Paul is telling us that we should here not only love one another as Christians in this way, but we're to love one another with this phileo love. We are to love one another with a warm, committed, family love. So both loves are to be in operation in our lives as Christians toward our fellow Christians. We're to regard other Christians as family and love them as members of the same family.

Why would God need to command that of us, except that it isn't always easy? An even more superior reason is because every one of us as Christians, we need a family. We need the warmth and the acceptance, we need the encouragement of a family. A spiritual family in living our Christian life, and I know I certainly do. This world is not an easy place for a child of God to live in. We face obstacles that those that don't know the Lord don't face.

But we face all of the obstacles that they do. For instance, we face on an equal measure the threat of crime, the threat of violence in our lives, the need for daily bread, for shelter, for clothing. When economic hard times come into the country, we are as affected as Christians as any other population of our country. We face all the difficulties that others face. We have difficulties in family relationships, there are marriage issues and problems that we have to deal with, there are all the challenges of raising children, physical illness and so forth.

Beyond all of these things that we share with our fellow man, no matter who they are, there are those things that we face uniquely as Christians that they never face and will not face until one day they become a Christian as well. Those things that we face simply for identifying ourselves as a Christian and identifying ourselves with Jesus and with his teaching. There's a persecution that's involved in that, whether it's aggressive or whether it's passive-aggressive. There's rejection related to that relationally.

There is mocking and scorning for our faith in Jesus. There's a very real spiritual warfare that comes into our lives as a result of being a Christian. There's a constant pressure to compromise on God's standard for our living in this world. The challenge that we face of not only raising a child into adult life, but the additional difficulty of raising a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord in this culture, which is one of the hardest things a person will ever do in life. That list goes on and on as well.

It's important to remember, as I often remind myself in endeavoring to love other Christians in this phileo love and agape love, but phileo is our focus this morning, it helps me to realize that every single Christian I see and am in contact with, who is talking the talk and walking the walk, they are paying a price for that. I may not see it, they may not wear it on their sleeve, but they pay a price to identify with Christ and to walk with Christ in this world. It produces a compassion within my heart. It produces a brotherly love longing for fellow Christians, recognizing that that is the case.

Every Christian does face that price and pays it spiritually, mentally, emotionally, relationally for sure, and often materially and so forth. So yes, the blessings of living the Christian life outweigh anything that will be an obstacle and an opposition to us in the Christian life, but it is still a reality that we deal with. When we live in a world that is unaccepting of our beliefs and our lifestyle and is even hostile to it, then we need a larger family who will love us and accept us beyond the world's conditional loving and acceptance of us.

We need a family who understands us, understands our faith, our commitment to God. They'll encourage us, they'll care for us, and they'll look out for our safety and our best. That's real. That's a real need that we have in our lives. God knows that we need it, and so he's provided it by making the body of Christ a family. The household of God. He uses language like that in order to cause us to see it that way.

Maybe, just maybe, you've noticed that families can be complicated things. They'd be a lot less complicated in my mind if they were all like me, but they aren't like me. The Christian family that we're in is way more complex than any family that we're a part of. The family that my wife Karen and I have, it is a very uncomplicated family compared to the diversity within the world. It is a very small gene pool that she possesses and I possess and by virtue of that, our children and family possess.

When you talk about the body of Christ worldwide, it includes brothers and sisters out of every tribe, tongue, people, nations, cultures, personalities, and backgrounds. It's a mind-boggling diversity that makes up the body of Christ and it's intended to be exactly that diverse. Then on top of all of that, not a single one of us in this family living on this earth is perfect yet. As a result we need God to not only supply us with the love that we need to have for one another, but we need him to supply us with a shared history with one another.

A shared history that is greater than all of our differences, all of our spots and wrinkles, and he's done exactly that. In Jesus, and the context of speaking with a man that's known in the scriptures as the rich young ruler, after the rich young ruler decided not to heed Jesus' counsel to him and walked away, as Peter and the disciples are watching all of this, Peter began to say, Matthew chapter 10 verse 28, Peter began to say to him, "See, we have left all and followed you. We've done what he wouldn't do. What's in it for us?"

Jesus answered and said, "Verily, verily, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or family or mother or wife or children or lands physically for my sake and the gospel's, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the age to come, everlasting life." I think it's very interesting that in that passage, the word that Jesus uses for the brothers and sisters that we gain upon becoming Christians, spiritual brothers and sisters that Peter and us would gain as a part of becoming a part of God's family, the word he uses there means "from the same womb."

There is a love that people have for those who have entered into this world physically through the same womb that they did. There is a unitedness by virtue of sharing that womb at one time, that birth canal, and there is that physical connection where they're connected by that common source, that common womb. In the same way, the Bible teaches that every Christian is united by an even greater birth. A spiritual birth. By being born again spiritually when we put our faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.

The greatest miracle that can occur in a person's life has occurred in our lives. We have been born again by the Holy Spirit. You stop and you think about the wonder and the power of brothers and sisters being united by a single womb on the physical level. It's an amazing and a unique commonality. But then to stop and think of the fact that this spiritual birth that we've experienced was born of Jesus' death upon the cross for our sins, his burial, and his resurrection on the third day.

You think about how much greater a bond that should exist between those that have been born again out of that commonality of that experience. In Ephesians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul wrote of the virtually incomparable greatness of the things that unite us as Christians, as opposed to all the considerable things that might divide us. He wrote in Ephesians chapter 4, "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Then he gets to it: "There is one body, one Spirit, just as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord by virtue of this birth, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all." So we are one body, we are indwelt by the same Holy Spirit, we share the same Lord and Savior, Jesus. We share one faith, that is we were all born again the same way through faith in Jesus.

Every one of us has that spiritual birth in common. Each of us has publicly identified ourselves with Jesus before the world. We share the same heavenly Father with every other Christian in the world. That's quite a commonality. That is quite a womb that gave birth to us spiritually so to speak. It's important to realize that Jesus didn't merely teach that as Christians we need such a family in our lives in this world. What he was doing in his promise to Peter is he promised such a family.

If you are born again, whatever is required in order for you to walk away from or whoever walks away from you for that to happen, you will not merely have a relationship with me, though that's supreme above everything else. You will be born again into my family. There's a family that is awaiting you on the other side of that commitment. That's a heavy thing. That is why God exhorts us as Christians to love one another with a brotherly love, because each and every one of us has a part in the fulfillment of that promise of Jesus to every Christian.

It is the responsibility each of us has as a Christian to be a part of a family where we are lavish in our brotherly love toward fellow Christians. Notice as well that this brotherly love and all that it represents must always be an area of growth for us as Christians. No matter how greatly it's being expressed now, in verse 10, Paul wrote to this church they were already loving one another in this way and yet he urged them to increase more and more.

There is a whole bunch of things in life that we have to be careful not to overdo, where we say everything in moderation. Well, it's generally true, but not here. The Lord tells us that in terms of the love that we have for one another as Christians, there is no need at all to moderate that in our lives. None of us will ever, no matter how much we have this as a part of our lives and it expresses itself out of our lives, we will never run the risk of loving other Christians too much in this way.

Guest (Male): Well, this is According to the Scriptures and we are partway through a message from Pastor Damian Kyle. It's called "Additional Means of Living to Please God." Pastor Damian will go on to make a couple of observations springing from this passage in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 next time out. If you're interested in a CD copy of today's message or the While We Wait series, reach out to us at 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

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You can email us at atts@ccmodesto.com and include your prayer requests as well. Again, that's atts@ccmodesto.com. According to the Scriptures with Damian Kyle is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto. We'll catch you back here next time when we'll get back to our series, While We Wait.