8. LOVE IS NOT PROUD Based on I Cor. 13:4

9. LOVE IS NOT RUDE based on I Cor. 13:5

10. LEGALISM VERSUS LOVE Based on Matt. 5:20

11. BODY LOVE Based on I Cor. 15:35-49

12. EDUCATED LOVE Based on Phil. 1:1-11

13. LOVE'S LIMITATIONS Based on I John 2:15-17

14. THE END IS LOVE Based on I Tim. 1:5

Ignorance may be bliss, but it is a fools paradise when others are in the know. General

Motors learned this the hard way back in the early 60's when they launched a campaign to

sell their new compact, the Chevy Nova, in Mexico. It was a flop, and the sale figures were

appalling. That is when their investigation discovered that Nova in Spanish means "No go."

History is filled with the blunders of big corporations who act first and think later. Back

in the 1950's the Pepsodent Corporation decided to export their toothpaste to Southeast

Asia. They took their success winning slogan from America with them. "You'll wonder

where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent." When nearly nobody

was buying their product a vice-president was sent to investigate why. He discovered that the

people in Southeast Asia chewed Betel Nut like Americans chew gum, but Betel Nut is much

more expensive, and it stains the teeth. The stain teeth are a prized symbol of affluence.

There was little demand for a product that promised to eliminate this status symbol. It

would be the equivalent of trying to sell a product that would make gold look like copper.

Man, in his pride, is constantly trying to impose his ideas and values on others without

knowing the others and their needs. Love listens before it speaks. It is patient in striving to

understand the other. It is kind in seeking to meet the needs of the other. Non-love is just

the opposite. It comes to conclusions about the other based, not on the other, but on the self.

I think this is what is good for them, or bad for them. I think this is the way they should go,

and the way they should be. It does not ask what others feel, but operates on how the self

feels, and it seeks to impose those feelings on the other. Not only is this a disaster when

business does it, it is a tragedy when tyrannical governments do it to their people, and it is a

catastrophe when the church does it to people.

When Jesus came into the world He did not come in pride to dominate, and to have His

own needs met. He came in love to serve and meet the needs of others. He knew what those

needs were. People did not need more religious laws, and they did not need more religious

ritual. They did not need condemnation, what they needed was to know that God loved them

in spite of their sin. They needed to know God cared, and that He cared enough to find a

way out of the dilemma of a holy God relating to sinful man. They needed to know that God

had provided a way to forgive sin. They needed to know that God wanted them to have life,

and life abundant. No wonder the common people heard Jesus gladly, and flocked to be

near Him. He gave the sinner a sense of self-worth.

Pride does not do this, but love does. Pride seeks to take from others and not give. Pride

does not care to serve, but to be served. Pride is always self-centered, whereas love is always

others centered. This is why the people flocked to Jesus. They knew He loved them. This is

why they fled from the Pharisees, for they knew they loved only themselves, and they

thanked God that they were not as other men.

A test was given to 676 students at the University of Illinois. They found that the number

one characteristic that both males and females did not like about another student was

conceit. The person who thinks too highly of himself is the only one who turns everyone else

off. A sophomore said to a freshman said, "The trouble with you is that you are to conceited.

I use to be that way too, but now I'm the nicest guy on campus." His progress in overcoming

pride is very questionable.

People are constantly talking about finding themselves, but the Bible keeps telling us that

the self is not something you find. The self is something you create by the choices you make.

If you choose the path of pride, yourself is headed for the pits. If you choose the path of

love, yourself is headed for the peak. Being proud is the refusal to accept the truth that

without love you are nothing. Pride says I am something, and I am somebody on my own,

and independent of God and His love. It is the spirit of defiance that says I need nothing of

the image of God to be of worth.

Being loving goes the opposite way and says I am nothing without love. I am dependent

upon God for my self-worth. I only has worth because God made me in His image and gave

me eternal value. Which person really feels best about himself? The loving person is the

one who does, for he knows his worth is not just in how he feels, but it is in how God feels.

His self worth is not in subjective feelings, but in the objective promise of God. He knows

that what is done to the least of God's children is done to God, and so even if he feels he is the

least of the lot, he is still of infinite worth to God, and so he can have love for himself.

This self-love which is based on the love of God for you is also a form of pride, but it is

not sinful or destructive. It gets somewhat confusing when we use the same word for both

the terrible and the tremendous, but the fact is, we do. We are proud of our children and

grandchildren. We are proud of our school, team, or church. We are proud to be

Americans, and proud to be Christians. So before we look at what love is not, we need to see

that there is a positive pride which prevents the pits.

The Bible and psychology are in full agreement that self-esteem and self-respect are

essential to a healthy personality. It is not dangerous or damaging to recognize the worth of

the individual. It is, in fact, a Christian duty. Paul says we are not to think of ourselves more

highly than we ought to think, and start boasting in conceit that we are really something. But

it is also true that we need to think high enough of ourselves so that we have a sense of

self-worth. The Christian is one who has enough self-worth to feel he does not want to loose

his reputation by doing what is foolish or sinful. I think of myself too highly to tell a dirty

joke from the pulpit. It is a sense of pride that would keep me from damaging my self-image

that way. There are things we are all kept from by our sense of pride. Pride keeps us from

being dirty and slovenly. We would not wear a dirty shirt with big holes in it to church. We

comb our hair, shave, and try to look presentable because we have a sense of self-worth, and

we want to be acceptable in appearance as well as behavior. This is all a part of praiseworthy

pride.

It is important that Christians see the positive side of pride, for if all self-worth is bad, it

forces the Christian into the intolerable position of not being able to be honest about values

and excellence. If you bake the best cherry pie in your circles, it is not pride to know that, or

to be told that. It is legitimate to accept compliments and praise for your skill, and not have

to think that Christian humility demands that you act like your pies are not fit for the pigs.

All gifts, talents, and skills are to be recognized for their excellence and value, and each one

who possesses such should feel good about what God has blest them with, and feel pride in

their cooperation with God in developing their gift. This kind of pride is a virtue. As long as

pride is cooperative, and is an aid to uniting people, it is on the side of love, and is that

necessary ingredient in the Christian life to obey God's command to love your neighbor as

yourself.

It is only when this self-love leads you to the pride that seeks self-glory to the detriment of

the body, and which leads to competition and division within the body, that it crosses over to

the negative side. Pride is a good thing that can go bad, and that is why it needs to be

constantly checked and evaluated in the light of love. Love is always the greatest because it

is love that helps us keep all things in balance. Here is a poem that expresses a popular idea

I have heard many times.

Sometime when you are feeling important,

Sometime when you ego is in bloom,

Sometime when you take it for granted

You are the best fellow in the room;

Sometime when you feel that your going

Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow the simple instructions

And see how they humble your soul:

Take a bucket, fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out, and the hole remaining

Is the measure of how you will be missed.

Author unknown

The problem with this idea is that it goes too far, and it fights pride by damaging the

self-image. It reduces the person to nothing, and makes the self of zero worth. That is as

anti-Christian as the pride which makes the self a god. Love gives us balance, and it helps us

see the self as of great worth to God and to man. But it keeps the self-worth limited so it does

not soar beyond its bounds, for love loves God as well, and in loving God it comes to know

that He is the source of all worth, and He has placed worth on all by His grace. He has made

the salvation of all possible by the gift of love, which is the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. All

legitimate pride is pride in God and His love, and the worth He has placed on all people.

Some are proud of their face; Some are proud of their race, Some are proud of their lace,

but Christians are to be proud of God's grace. This is God's favor which is given because He

loves us, and because we are of infinite worth to Him. Self-love is a virtue as long as it is

balanced, and as long as it is only one aspect of love. If you love God supremely, and love

your neighbor as well as yourself, then you have the balance that prevents the vice of pride

taking over. Self-love becomes the vice of pride by making the self the only object of love,

and all other loves are excluded. God is cut out, and so are all others, and it becomes a love

perverted, and like all perversions of good things it becomes a bad thing. The higher the

value that is perverted, the worse the evil of it, and because pride is a perversion of the

highest virtue of love, it is the worst of vices. It is the king of the 7 deadly sins. Now let's look

at the other side.

The path of pride leads to the pits. It is considered the parent of all other sins, for it was

the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve. You shall be as God's is the appeal of the

tempter, and it is hard for anyone to resist the opportunity to play God. That is the essence

of pride. Pride exalts the self to the level of the supreme authority. It says, I am the master

of my fate, and the captain of my soul. Pride not only puts its possessor in competition with

God, and leads him to the pits, it is so offensive to others that it leads the world to the pits.

Pride is the number one cause for the revolutions of history. The ruling class becomes a

pack of proud snobs who consider all who are not in their class to be of little or no worth.

Madam Roland was once visiting an aristocratic chateau in France, and the lordly owner

of the place said, "Show her into the servants hall." This snub made her so angry that she

became a leader of the French Revolution. It is a story repeated over and over through

history. People who are treated like dirt by the ruling class tend to want to bury that class.

We saw it in South Africa. It was in that part of the world where Gandhi was made to feel

sub-human, and where he began his fight for human rights and dignity, which he took back

to India, and by which he began a revolution that changed the course of history. Pride which

puts others down will inevitably put you down. Hitler and his Aryan pride destroyed

millions of innocent people, but it also destroyed him.

People and powers of all kinds have always loved the idea of playing God. It was Satan's

first, and man's first, sin. Pride led most of the rulers of Israel to their fall. The Roman

Emperors loved to do the same thing. Caligula built a temple in his own honor. He

sacrificed peacocks and flamingoes to his own statue. He even took a gold statue of himself

with him. He had the most famous images of the gods of Greece brought to Rome where he

lopped off the heads and substituted his own. Nero made a statue of himself 120 feet high,

and did all manner of evil, for he felt he was god and could do as he pleased, for he answered

to no one. These and many others demonstrated that pride goes before a fall, and that a halo

can quickly become a noose as it slips down, and men are hanged by the folly of their pride.

Pride is primarily competitive, and love is primarily cooperative. This is not to say all

competition is bad, for it is not so. It can be good in many ways, but when the goal of life

becomes proving that you are superior to others, you are on a God-displeasing road that is

heading for the pits. This is what leads to those personalities that are so obnoxious. They

are all the time boasting of their superiority, and comparing themselves with others. They

become conceited bores, and destroy the chance of being loved and loving. Pride's goal is to

ever widen the gap between the self and others, for this magnifies the superiority of the self.

The man with a million dollars is seldom happy if he is proud, for he lives with and associates

with men with 10 million dollars, and they make him feel that gap. Love is just the opposite

of pride. It's goal is to narrow the gap between self and others. The gifted person who loves

does not make others feel inferior. He brings himself down to their level to be one with

them, and to be a blessing to them.

Jesus is the greatest example of love narrowing the gap. He was infinitely above us, and

He had the riches and glory of the universe at His disposal. He was on the top, and among

the most intelligent creatures. Yet Jesus narrowed that gap-that infinite gap-and became a

man on our level, and with our weaknesses. That is what love is all about. He did not use His

superiority just to lord it over us, but He used it to lift us. He brought His power and glory

down to our level that we might be saved and lifted to His level. His life and death reveal

cooperation, and the stooping of the loftiest to lift the lowliest. Envy says, "I am less if you

are more, and so I must seek to bring you down." Pride says, "I am more if you are less, and

so I must seek to keep you down." Love says, "I am more if you are more, and so I must seek

to lift you up." Love seeks to make life an adventure where everybody wins.

Pride says, "Why should I stoop to life others. I am above that. If others are too inferior to

climb to my heights, that is their problem. I will enjoy my mountain air without them."

Pride says, "I am superior because I am made to be served by others who are inferior."

Love thinks just the opposite, and it says, "If I have a gift that makes me superior to others it

is because God has selected me to be a blessing to others by means of this gift. I will use my

gift to help and lift and encourage others so that they feel my gift is God's gift to them."

Those who are truly wise are humble about their gifts. Michaelangelo as an old man

would be seen studying the works of the ancients, and when asked why he responded, "I go

yet to school that I may continue to learn." M ozart on his death bed said, "Now I begin to

see what might be done in music." Sir Isaac Newton after his life of fame and discovery said,

"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and

then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of

truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Paul in the realm of spiritual truth says in v. 12, "Now I know in part..." He knew we are

still only children in comparison to what infinite light God has for us. Let us not be proud of

what we have attained, but be humble because we know we are just tasting of the riches that

God has for us, and let us in love share what we have that others might enjoy the taste. Love

is not proud that it has what some others do not have, but it is proud that it has what it can

share with others so that all can have the pleasure of God's love in time.

The ship Tecumseh was engaged in a battle with the ship Tennessee. A torpedo struck the

Tecumseh and it began to sink immediately. Out of a crew of 114 men, 93 went down with the

ship because it sank so fast. Tunis Craven was the Commander and at the time the torpedo

struck he was in the tiny pilothouse with the pilot. Both ran for the small opening in the

pilothouse but only one could pass at a time. Craven stood back and said, "You first, sir."

The pilot escaped, but Craven went down with the ship. Courtesy was extremely costly in

that particular situation, and the natural response is to think it was foolish. Even Christians

do not place that high a value on being courteous, but that is due to the fact that we seldom

consider the value of polite behavior for the kingdom of God.

We are fully aware of the eternal dividends to be gained by a life invested in following

Jesus, but we seldom realize the potential gains to be made for both time and eternity by

being courteous and polite. In other words, we do not bring out Christianity down into the

practical level of everyday behavior. Agape love is segregated and reserved for special

occasions only.

A survey of employees who were dismissed by 76 firms showed that only 10% lost their

jobs because they lacked mechanical skill. The other 90% lost their jobs because of bad

manners. A rude person who is not courteous and polite is a liability in every area of life. But

one who has these qualities is always an asset. Therefore, a Christian has an obligation to be

courteous, even if the Bible had nothing to say about the issue. The Bible does, however,

have much to say about it because it is directly linked to agape love. Paul tells us in v. 5 that

love is not rude. Phillips has it, "Love has good manners." Berkeley has it, "It is not

conceited or unmannerly."

We could generalize and say that whatever is socially offensive is behavior which is

incompatible with agape love. A Christian who is filled with this fruit of the Spirit will not be

offensive because of personal ill behavior. His beliefs may be offensive to others, but his

attitudes and manners are to be above reproach it he is to be a true channel of God's agape

love. Beauty and charm are to characterize Christian conduct. This beauty of the soul is far

more significant than beauty of the body. Fleshly beauty is a matter of chance, but spiritual

beauty is a matter of choice. Every Christian has an obligation of God and man to be

beautiful of soul by not behaving in an offensive manner. Those filled with the Spirit will be

truly ladies and gentlemen.

Dr. Buckingham once said, "Wendel Phillips is the most beautiful person I eve saw...what

I mean by beauty is his grace of character, his kindly generous manners, his brightness of

mind, and his perfect purity and whiteness of soul." Every Christian should strive to fit that

description. There are people who are proud of their offensive manners. I have heard many

people say with a tone of pride, "I say just what I think, and I don't care who it is or who it

hurts." This is supposedly a superior quality of character in comparison to the silent

sufferer who doesn't strike back when his toes are stepped on, but according to the highest

standard for Christian conduct, it is an inferior quality of character. In fact, it is

incompatible with agape love, for agape love does not behave in such a proud conceited

unmannerly way. Hilaire Belloc wrote,

Of Courtesy, it is much less

Than Courage of Heart of Holiness,

Yet in my walks it seems to me

That the grace of God is in Courtesy.

The Christian must realize that all of his life is to be lived decently and in order, and not

just during a church business meeting. No Christian ever has the right to be disrespectful,

vulgar, or embarrassing to either a brother in Christ, or an unbeliever. When we do it, it is

because we are not filled with the Spirit, and, therefore, not expressing agape love. Like the

Corinthians we often fail to shape up and live in the perfect form of loveliness.

These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end,

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

Author unknown

In relation to the unbeliever agape love makes the Christian care what other people think,

and not so much about you, but about the Christ you claim to love and follow. The Christian

guided by love is cautious in the means he uses to gain his end. If he is rude and impolite, and

in any way unethical in his behavior it is Christ who suffers. The Gentiles blasphemed God

because of the behavior of the unfaithful Jews Paul said. Many reject Christ because of the

behavior of professing Christians. Someone said, "the means some people use in getting

ahead in this world probably means they are getting behind in the next." No means that is

inconsistent with agape love has any part in the life of the Spirit led person.

One of the most common errors in thinking is that truth is always good. This is not so, for

truth can be a great evil. A great deal of truth is evil in itself. All of the smutty and

pornographic literature is dealing with what is real and true. The Chicago scandal sheet

deals with bloody and gruesome facts. Gossip is often dealing with what is true. The world is

filled with true things that have no place in the Christian life. Truth can be a weapon of the

most cruel nature, and can be used with the most depraved motives to crush and destroy

other persons. Francis de Sales said, "Judicious silence is far preferable to the truth roughly

told." Agape love will often be silent when the tongue of flesh is aching to speak what is true.

Another area of life where we fail to express agape love is in the area of judging.

Christians often behave unseemly at this point. Instead of giving people the benefit of the

doubt we are so quick to hold them guilty until proven innocent. It is by being guilty of this

myself that I have learned the folly and unkindness of it. It shows contempt for a basic

principle of our way of life that says one is innocent until proven guilty. For example, we are

so conditioned to think according to generalizations and categories and labels that persons

are irrelevant to our conclusions. If a man belongs to a certain group, convention, church ,

or school of which I have formed an opinion, then I do not need to bother with finding out

what the person believes, for I simplify everything by accepting or rejecting him on the basis

of his association. This is a common reason for much evil thinking and judging.

Persons are the primary value in Christian thinking. Every individual is to be accepted or

rejected for his or her personal views and commitments. To judge any person by impersonal

things such as labels and associations is not only being false logic, it is being false to love, for

love does not behave that way. A New England Episcopal Bishop met a young minister at a

social gathering, and when he discovered he was a Congregationalist he said, "Mr Jones,

excuse me, but while I recognize you as a gentleman, I cannot recognize you as a Christian."

"That's all right Bishop, for while I can recognize you as a Christian, I cannot recognize you

as a gentleman." Mr. Jones was right, for no man is a gentleman who judges another by a

mere label. May we so yield to the Holy Spirit, and become such channels of agape love that

we shall be recognized as both Christian and gentlemen, or ladies, as the case may be.

One of the major problems of the Christian life is the folly of waiting for some big

opportunity to serve the Lord. This leads to meanwhile missing the many opportunities to so

His will in the everyday routine of life. Dr. Paul Tournier wrote, "Love is not some great

abstract idea or feeling. There are some people with such a lofty conception of love that they

never succeed in expressing it in the simple kindness of ordinary life. They dream of heroic

devotion and self-sacrificing service. But waiting for the opportunity which never comes,

they make themselves very unlikable to those near them, and never sense their neighbor's

need."

This has implication for our relationship to the world that we seldom consider. The

eminent biologist T. C. Schneirla studied all types of life from the ameba to man, and

concluded there is one fundamental activity common to all of them, and that is approach and

withdrawal. When confronted by a stimulus that enhances pleasure the ameba moves toward

the stimulus. If it is harmful it moves away. All of life seeks what is pleasurable and shrinks

from what is painful. All of life moves toward what is positive and helpful. It moves toward

love and away from what is not love. If the Christian is not polite, kind, and courteous,

people will move away from them, but if they are loving, and all that goes with love, then

people will move toward them and the Savior they represent. It is loving behavior that will

drew people to Christ, and bad manners will keep them away. Just read this testimony and

you realize how little Christians realize how their behavior looks to the world.

"Presently our daughter Laurie is going to college and working as a waitress in a

restaurant. She frankly agrees with other waitresses that Sunday is the worst day to work. As

one of the non-Christian waitress friend said, "It's horrible on Sundays with all those

Christians coming in. All you hear is griping and unreasonable demands from them. They

have little fights among themselves, they com plain about the menu and the prices, and they

are just plain disagreeable. Then, after I serve their food, they stop everything, bow their

heads, fold their hands, and pray their little prayer. It blows my mind because right after

their prayer they are their same mean old selves." These Christians are totally unaware of

how they are witnessing to the worthlessness of being a Christian.

When a Christian is aware of the importance of love is every relationship they will seek to

add oil to the machinery and not sand. The goal is to keep things running smoothly, and to

keep people living in harmony. The loving Christian is always seeking for ways to counteract

friction and ease tension, and not add to it. Rudeness is insensitive and does not care if other

people are offended or not. Rudeness says I have a feeling that I am going to express, and if

it hurt others that is tough. It is a form of pride that says all that matter is how I feel, and

how others feel is no concern of mine. When a movie wants to express the essence of pride

and rudeness they have a motorcycle gang ride into town and destroy property and treat

people like dirt. It is so obvious as evil that we despise them, but we fail to see we do the same

thing when we show disrespect to others by being rude.

This is a major problem in marriages. Arnold Bennett wrote while single, "In a long and

varied career as a bachelor, I have notices that marriage is usually the death of politeness

between a man and a woman." Smiley Blanton said, "The typical husband will be quite

considerate and attentive with his friends' wives. He'll open car doors for them, help them on

with their coats-but somehow consider himself exempt from such niceties where his own wife

is concerned. That kind of neglect is hurtful to women, who tend to equate it with lack of

affection. Isn't it foolish not to try to make a good impression on ;the woman you will be

seeing constantly for the rest of your life?"

The Corinthians were hurting the church-the bride of Christ, by their rudeness, and we

often do the same to our brides by this form of non-love. There are so many ways to be

non-loving. It is no wonder we fail constantly, but if we realize when we fail we are growing in

love. What love is, we are not, is the essence of what Paul is saying in this great love poem.

He is saying it in a dozen different ways so we get the point that we are a long way from the

goal, and we need to keep on moving. We cannot stop and be content with where we have

arrived, for wherever we are it is still a long way from the ideal of agape love. Our growth in

love is never done in this life.

If we lived on a deserted island we would have no problem being kind and courteous. All

the characteristics of love, however, are relational, and if you have no one to relate to you

cannot be loving. Until we are able to relate to all people in love we are not through

growing. Marjorie Holmes writes of just what a struggle it is to be loving in all relationships,

and hold back the rudeness that wants to let loose. We have all been where she is. She writes,

"Right now, calm my exasperation as I try for the third time to get that telephone operator

to respond. Let me sit gently, think gently, speak gently when the connection is

made.........................Help me to practice gentleness in small inconveniences like this as well as

large problems with those close to me. If I can just keep gentle, firm but gentle, then I'll be

better able to meet life's major crises with dignity and strength."

John Wesley was once put to the test. After he preached on the village green he was

invited to the home of a wealthy man for lunch. Other guests were there, including a local

preacher who was seated next to the lovely daughter of the wealthy host. She was noted for

her love of luxury which was conspicuous by the several rings on her hand. The thoughtless

visitor seized the hand of the young lady and said to Wesley across the table, "What do you

think of this sir for a Methodist hand?" The girl was embarrassed, and began to turn

crimson for everybody knew Wesley's aversion to finery and materialism. Wesley could have

joined the flow of rudeness that was begun, but he nipped it in the bud and with a smile he

said kindly, "The hand is very beautiful." He was not compromising his convictions, but he

knew that love demanded that this was a time to ease the girls fears and embarrassment.

Love has a time for judgment, but this was not the time, and in that setting it was time for

love to be courteous and not rude. May God help us all to be as sensitive as Wesley was in

our relation to people we can help or harm by how we express love, or fail to express it.

We live in a world where competition is a master motive. When the news reach Russia in

1945 that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Stalin ordered secret

scientists to find a way to catch up to the U.S. Andrei Sakharov was only 24 years old then,

but his brilliant mind was fired by the challenge of the competition. So much so that he

helped Russia leap frog ahead by developing the hydrogen bomb months before the United

States.

Then when Russia surprised the world with Sputnik, and beat the U. S. into space,

American scientists reacted with such a competitive spirit that they quickly thrust the U. S.

into the lead, and on to be the first to reach the moon. Is it really love, or is it competition

that makes the world go round? One of the reasons we look to the Olympics with

anticipation is because man is a competitive creature. Will Durant in The Lessons of History

writes, "So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competitive." Even cooperation,

he goes on to say, is a tool of competition. We cooperate with our group, be it family, club,

church, nation, or race, in order to strengthen our group in its competition with others. It is

human nature to want their group to be the best. Everybody enjoys the opportunity of

saying, we are number one, top dog, high man on the totem, king of the hill, and champions.

I have been in enough church league sports to know that one of the things that being

saved doesn't change is the competitive spirit. Christians love competition as much as

anyone, and they love to come out on top as often as they can. Some of the largest Sunday

Schools in our country got that way by well organized contests where the competitive spirit

was used to motivate people to come and bring others. Christians are challenged by

competition. They love to win and set records. They love to win prizes, and gain honor and

status. All of this carries some risk, of course, for one can get so caught up in competition

that winning is everything, and other values are lost.

The story is told of three churches that sat on three of the four corners at one

intersection. It was a hot Sunday morning, and the windows were open in each church. The

Methodist began their service by singing Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown? The

Presbyterians then began to sing No Not One, No Not One. Finally, the Baptist began with O

That Will Be Glory For Me. It is like the Pastor of a small church which was not growing.

He thanked God that none of the other churches were growing either. The competitive spirit

can be dangerous and divisive as well as delightful.

Dr. M ilburn describes how people use to act in the days of river travel. "If another boat

came in sight, you find yourself becoming anxious that she shall not pass you. If she gains

upon your craft, all your fears about the danger of racing are laid aside. And with your

fellow passengers, male and female, you are urging the captain to do his best....Side by side

the boats go thundering along, and so completely has the thought of winning taken

possession of you, that you would almost as soon be blown up as beaten." This is the same

competitive spirit that leads so many youth to be killed or injured in racing. Competition

can become so strong that it drives out all fear of danger, and this can be good or bad

depending on the situation.

The fact is, there is no escape from competition. You might just as well try to eliminate

the trivial from life as to try and eliminate competition. Jesus, in this great sermon to His

followers, uses the language of competition. He begins this sermon with the beatitudes

which are promises of prizes. Christian life can be tough, but it is worth it, for there will be

great rewards for those who take the risks and endure the rigors of it. Then Jesus, like a

coach before a big game, gives His team a pep talk to motivate them to do their best. "There

is a job to do, and you have got to do it. The salt has got to be active, and the light has to

shine. The opponents are tough, and Jesus says, you can't afford fumbles and penalties.

Don't neglect the least of the rules of the game. Go out there and be great." Then in verse

20 He sets the standard for His team. He says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of

the Scribes and Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." Paraphrased, He is

saying, "Unless you guys play better than your opponents you won't make it to the Super

Bowl."

Now you may not like the football analogy, but choose your own sport or arena of

competition to illustrate what Jesus is saying. You can't escape it. He is using competitive

language like least, great, and exceed. Jesus is saying that He wants His followers to be

winners, and that means being better than the religious leaders of Israel. That is

competition, and the whole thrust of this chapter is competition. Jesus says, here is the old

standard, but you are to do better than that. The Christian is to set new records, and leave

the Old Testament saints in the dust when it comes to fulfilling the law.

The Old Testament saints loved their neighbors, but you are to go one better, and love

your enemies. The challenge of Jesus to Judaism is matched by another challenge by the

Gentile world at the close of this chapter. Jesus says, if you love those who love you, that is

no better than what tax collectors can do, and even Gentiles can't compete on that low level

of love. Jesus says, the Christian is to do more, and rise above Judaism and the natural

religions of the world. It is, an anything you can do I can do better challenge, that the

Christian is to rise to.

Now its not too much of a threat to Christians to compete with tax collectors and pagans.

It seems like this is a fairly easy challenge, but when Jesus says we are to exceed the

Pharisees, and be better than them, and the Scribes, in righteousness, it is a scary challenge,

because they are real pros and formidable foes. The more you know of these guys the

Christian team has to beat, the more you realize the story of David and Goliath is a never

ending conflict. Jesus is asking amateurs to be superior to the pros, and this sounds like

more than any coach ought to expect. Competition can be demoralizing when the non-gifted

are pitted against the gifted. Most Christian would feel inadequate compared with the

Scribes and Pharisees.

One of Rossini's pupils composed a funeral march commemorating the death of Lundwig

von Beethoven. He took it to his master who listened attentively to the uninspired work

played falteringly by the amateur. He said, "The circumstances would have been more

favorable if you had died, and Beethoven had composed the march." The amateur can't be

expected to compete with the pro. Yet, Jesus does not just expect Christian to be in the race

with the Scribes and Pharisees, He expects Christians to beat them. In fact, He says you

don't even qualify to enter the race unless you can beat them. This is a very discouraging

demand if we think Jesus is saying that we have to beat them at their own game. This would

be like expecting David to beat Goliath in Saul's armor. It wouldn't work. There is no way

Christians could be more righteous than the Scribes and Pharisees on the level of what they

called righteousness. They obeyed more rules in a day than most Christians would in a year.

When Jesus says we must exceed them He is talking about a totally different quality of

righteousness where even the amateur can surpass the pro. It is not only possible, it is easy

when we understand the difference between their righteousness and Christian righteousness.

Not understanding this distinction could lead you to feel like the two cows standing in the

field when a milk truck came down the road. On the side of the truck it said,

MILK-PASTEURIZED AND HOMOGENIZED. The one cow looked at the other and said,

"It's not use, we just can't compete with them trucks."

We know there is a radical distinction between the cows and the truck. One is a creator of

milk, and the other is only a carrier. So it is with the righteousness that the Christian is to

produce that exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees. Christian righteousness is to

fulfill the law, and, thus, the purpose of the creator of the law. The competition does not do

that. They are only carriers of the law and tradition. C. S. Lewis wrote, "Nothing gives one

a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence

of all real charity and faith." To better grasp this distinction we need to study the contrast

between the two kinds of righteousness. We need to grasp the strategy of our opponents if

we expect to counter it with a superior strategy. So let's examine firstI.

THE OPPOSITION GAME PLAN.

Their strategy is really quite simple. It is the oldest and most popular strategy of history.

It is the religion of the rule book, also known as legalism. All you have to do to be righteous

is to keep the rules. If you don't break any rules you can't suffer any penalties, and so you

are bound to be a winner. This is appealing to human nature. It leads to a sense of security.

You know where you are at, and you are in control of your own destiny it seems, and once

you get into the rut, life is predictable and carefree. Legalism may get technical, but it is

always cut and dried. You always know what is right, for everything is regulated by the

rules. You don't have to bother with all the complexity of motives, for all that matters are

deeds.

If you don't kill, that is all that matters. The fact that you are full of hatred and

resentment toward another is no issue, for as long as you keep the law by not killing you are

righteous. No matter how corrupt you are in your inner life, as long as you do not externally

violate the rules you are alright. Legalistic righteousness is all a matter of external conduct.

It has nothing to do with the inner life. This makes religion easy, for it means you don't

have to be like God at all. You can harbor all kinds of negative attitudes of prejudice, envy,

and bitterness of all sorts, and yet be a religious leader. All you have to do is keep the rules.

The beauty of it to human nature is that you don't have to change the inner man. All you

have to do is conform to external conduct that is in harmony with the rule book. This is

religion made easy, and it has been popular all though history. Christianity has had plenty of

this as well. The most evil of men can be religious leaders with this strategy. You can be a

leader in the Mafia, and still be a good Catholic at the same time. You can be a corrupt

politician and still be a good Baptist in good standing at the same time. All that matters is

that you obey the rules of the game in public. What you do when you are not playing at

religion is your own business. Then you can do what your real inner nature compels you to

do. As long as you keep the rules when you are being religious you are acceptable. No sinner

could ask for a better religion than one of legalistic righteousness.

You don't have to care about God, people, or anything but yourself. You can have your

cake and eat it too. The Scribes and the Pharisees were the worst hypocrites that ever lived,

but they were also the world's champion ruler keepers. What other strategy but legalism

could make this possible. It is perfect for people who want to be super religious, but who

don't want to be bothered with God's will and purpose in history.

Jesus came to blast the ship of legalism out of the water, but it persists in staying afloat,

and competing for men's loyalty. The spirit of legalism has been a part of Christian history.

People are led to believe they are super Christians because they keep all kinds of rules. They

may be obnoxious people full of bitterness and prejudice, and with little or no love, but they

are champion rule keepers, and so are convinced that this is what Christianity is all about.

The problem with legalism is it locks one into a narrow rut, and it can feel so comfortable

that one cannot change and get out of the rut.

Jewish Christians who were raised up under legalism had a hard time adjusting to their

liberty in Christ. They had a tendency to slip back into the security of legalism. The

Pharisees were so locked in that they could not see the value of what Jesus was doing in

healing on the Sabbath. Jesus put the value of the person above the law, and they refused to

change, but would stick to their game plan no matter what. It didn't matter who got hurt,

even if it was God Himself, for they would stick to their game plan. Jesus does not expect us

to compete on that level and be better legalists than they were. He has a totally different

game plan which we want to look at.

II. THE WINNING GAME PLAN.

In contrast to the righteousness based on legalism, Jesus promotes a righteousness based

on love. It is better than the rule book religion, not because it forsakes the rules, but because

it fulfills the rules. Legalism stops short of God's value system, and it makes precepts the

highest value. Love goes beyond this to make persons the highest value. The legalist says

that the law must be obeyed regardless of who gets hurt. What really matters is the law and

not people. You do what has to be done, and if people have to suffer its worth it, because

this is the only way to win.

William Faulkner said, "If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ode on a

Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies." This is the value system of the legalist. The

Scribes and Pharisees did not care about old ladies, or sick ladies, or anybody. Jesus healed

a number of them on the Sabbath, and they hated Him for it. It was great for the people

healed, and there was much rejoicing, but Jesus was not following the rule book. Jesus

loved people, and they loved the rule book. This is the main distinction between their

righteousness and the winning righteousness Jesus expects Christians to have. This is what

exceeds their righteousness, for it is based on a superior value system.

Jesus did not come to abolish the rule book, but to fulfill it, and by that He meant that He

came to rescue it from the ridiculous absurdity to which the Scribes and Pharisees had

reduced it. Jesus came to restore the law to the level of love where its original intent could

be accomplished by aiding people to love God and their neighbor more effectively. The law

is not fulfilled just because you don't kill a man. It is only fulfilled when you love and respect

him as one made in the image of God, and as one who is loved of God the same as you are.

Fulfilling the law and love are one and the same.

What this means is, God is not a legalistic person who sits in heaven with a celestial

calculator keeping track of how many times a law is obeyed. God does not get his kicks out

of statistics saying this is a good day for commandment number 6, for two billion people kept

this one today, but number 4 is down, for only 480 million kept that one. God is not

infatuated with the law. God so loved the world means that He loves the people of the world.

The purpose of the law is for man's benefit, and not for God's statistical tables. What

matters to God is that man's evil nature be controlled, and that he be restored to the image

of God where love is the dominate motive in his life.

The righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees is the

righteousness of Christ, which we partake of when we surrender to Christ as Lord. When

Jesus comes in, self-righteousness goes out, and that is what conversion is all about. You

cannot be a Christian and enter the kingdom of heaven with a law dominated righteousness.

The only kind of righteousness acceptable in the kingdom of God is the righteousness of

Christ, which is love righteousness. This means that what is right is what is loving and best

for persons.

How is this better than legalistic righteousness? Just look at the life of Jesus. He is the

model of His message. When He encountered a need He let love, and not the law, determine

His response. The law said do not work on the Sabbath, but when Jesus saw a need crying

out for action, He responded in love and compassion, and He healed on the Sabbath. He was

hated by the ruler keepers, for they said that keeping the rules is more important than

helping the people. Love says just the opposite. You help the people, and let the law wait.

But isn't this anti-law? Does it not set a dangerous precedent? Not at all. Love is not

thoughtless. Love asks, what is the purpose of the law? The answer is, that man might be

benefitted. God's intention in giving the Sabbath is that man might not be a slave to

materialism. God demanded that men leave their labor and learn to rest and relax. They

are to develop the higher values of life in the mental and spiritual realm. God's whole

motive in the law was to lift people to a higher spiritual level. This being the case, love does

not violate the law by doing anything that lifts and blesses man, for that is its very purpose.

The letter of the law may be broken, but it is broken for the sake of fulfilling its intent. If

that is the case, then let it be broken, for the goal is not to keep a law, but to be a blessing to

people.

Those who follow legalistic righteousness are bound by the law, for the law is the absolute.

Those who follow loving righteousness are free to make decisions about the law, for the law

is not the absolute, but persons are. There is flexibility in love to chose that which is best for

the persons. Jesus says that this is the winning game plan. This is the value system that

makes the Christian superior to the best of the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus goes on in this

sermon to give specific ways in which loving righteousness is superior to the legalistic

righteousness. We will be looking at these in coming weeks. For now, let me share with you

some examples of how we need to struggle to follow the winning game plan, and avoid the

losing one of legalistic righteousness.

When I became a Pastor in rural South Dakota one of the first things I observed was that

farmers do not obey the law the same way as city people do. Stop signs in the country do not

possess the same authority that they do in the city. I was shocked as I watched Christian

farmers go through stop signs like they were not there. They gave them about as little

thought as they gave to their guardian angel. I was a law abiding citizen, however, and

legalistically stopped at every stop sign. I even stopped at the one a mile from the church

where you could see if anyone was coming for at least half a mile in either direction. I must

admit I felt sort of strange stopping when I knew there was no one in sight, but the law is the

law. When it came to stop signs I was a confirmed legalist.

I have to confess I felt somewhat superior to those Christians who felt free to not stop. It

took time for me to see from their perspective. I never did feel free to ignore a stop sign, but

I did learn to slow down and proceed with caution without stopping. Did those Christians

make me a law breaker by their influence? No they didn't. They just help me see on a trivial

level how easy it is to be legalistic. The purpose of the stop sign in the country is to prevent

accidents by giving one roadway the right of way over another. Naturally, if a car is coming,

everyone stops to let them have that right of way. That is the law. But if nobody is coming

you can safely ignore the stop sign, and the law is still fulfilled.

This may sound like rationalizing and situation ethics, and that is exactly what it is, for

that is what makes Christian ethics different from legalistic ethics. It is the freedom to think

and act in a loving way depending on the changing situations. The city drivers have found a

way to break the old law too so as to be more loving to drivers. The rule for many years was

always to stop for red, and do not go until it is green. But then the law was changed so that it

all depended on the situation. If you were at a red light waiting to turn right you could now

proceed through the red light if there was no on coming traffic. People had to go through a

lot of guilt feelings to get over going through a red light. I was already prepared by having

learned to go through stop signs in the country.

This change in the law was anti-legalistic, and in favor of love, for it permits greater

freedom of choice, and prevents unnecessary waste of time that serves no useful purpose.

People do abuse this freedom, and there are risks that go with it as in all freedom, but unless

studies show that the risks outweigh the value, this freedom to go through red lights under

certain conditions will remain a part of our lives. The purpose of lights and stop signs is not

to get people stopped who desire to get somewhere. The purpose is to protect and keep

people moving toward their goal as safe and fast as possible. Since that is the purpose, you

can then fulfill the purpose of the light by violating its basic meaning which is to stop. That is

what red has always meant in a traffic light. But now we violate that meaning and break it,

but do so in order to fulfill the purpose of it.

This should help us see what Jesus was doing with the Old Testament law. He was fine

tuning it, and making it more useful to the end for which it was given, which was to lift man

to a higher level of love for God and man. All of God's rules are for man's good, and they

are to be for man's blessings and not to be burdens. Jesus calls us to rise above mere

legalism, and to get in on the purpose of God which is to love and to lift.

Paul was once locked into legalistic righteousness. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

Jesus set Paul free from that prison, and Paul became a great champion of the loving

righteousness of Christ. He went on to save Christianity from the Judaisers. Had the

Judaisers won the battle Christianity would have been a mere rerun of Judaism. They said

every Christian must be circumcised according to the law of Moses, and they tried to coerce

the Gentiles to conform to this conviction. Paul fought hard against this legalism, and he

won the battle, and set Christians free from bondage to the law, which was no longer

relevant to those who were made righteous in Christ.

We are in a world of great religious competition. We will all tend to follow one of these

two strategies: The legalistic or the loving, the rule book power, or relationship power. Tom

Garrett and his family were held prisoners by two prison escapees for 24 hours. A few days

later he went to pick up his unemployment check and he was denied. The law clearly states an

unemployed worker must be available for work every day of a normal work week. He was

not available the day he was held captive and so did not qualify. This is the folly of legalism

which sees the law as the ultimate rather than persons. If you want to be a winner, keep

checking your Christian life to see which strategy you follow. The petition in the Lord's

Prayer, thy kingdom come, is only answered in the lives of Christians who choose love over

legalism. The dynamics of the distinction between the two kinds of righteousness is seen in

the effects on the world of people they touch. One drags people down, and is a burden that

makes life hard. The other gives life a lift, and adds beauty to life. Is it legalism or love that

motivates your life?

I don't care how widely traveled you are, I know you have never sailed among the Island of

Langerhans, or drifted lazily down the Aqueduct of Sylvius. Nor have any of you ever

strolled along the banks of Hunter's Canal, or watched the sun go down behind McBurney's

Point. None of you have ever ridden through the Tunnel of Carti, nor have you ever

climbed the Pyramids of Malpighi. I can say this with confidence, not because I know where

all of you have ever been, nor because all of these places are fictions and unreal. On the

contrary, they are more abundantly real than most of the places you have ever been. But I

can say this because all of these places are parts of our body.

The Islands of Langerhans are small masses of tissues in our pancreas.

The Aqueduct of Sylvius is part of the brain.

Hunter's Canal is in the thigh.

McBurney's Point is a spot on the right side which is tender to the touch in acute

appendicitis.

The Tunnel of Carti is in the inner ear.

The Pyramids of Malpighi is in the kidneys.

The point of this little anatomy lesson is that there is a great deal about our bodies that we

do not know. We live in them, but we know more about the house our body lives in than we

know about our bodies, which is the house of our spirit. Sophocles said, "Numberless are the

world's wonders, but none more wondrous than the body of man." We live in this wondrous

temple 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year. We never leave this house in which we dwell

until we die, for to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

This body we dwell in is the first part of man that God made. Man was a body before he

was anything else. As Paul says in verse 46, the natural comes first than the spiritual. Man

was first a body as a part of God's creation. Then God breathed into man the breath of life

and he became a living soul. Man is a combination of the creation and the Creator. He has a

material and a spiritual reality. He is akin to the animal, mineral, and vegetable on the one

hand, and a kin to God and angelic beings on the other hand. In God's ultimate plan we can

safely say that man is the best of both worlds. He is a mixture of both the dust and the

divine.

As soon as man begins to lose his awareness of the reality of this combination, he loses his

understanding of just who man is, and of the role his body plays in God's plan. All through

history men have followed three basic philosophies concerning the body. They are-

The body is nothing.

The body is everything.

The body is something.

We want to examine each of these philosophies, for only by doing so can we come to a

clear understanding of the biblical view of the body. This is important in understanding I

Cor. 15, for this is the body center of the New Testament. There is no other part of the Bible

where there is so much on the body, and where it is so basic to Christian doctrine. First let's

look at the view-

I. THE BODY IS NOTHING.

This does not mean that those who hold this view reject the existence of the body, but they

do reject its significance. They say the body is not a value or an asset, but it is a liability, and

so it is to be despised and held in contempt. Heraclitus considered death a blessing because

it got rid of the contemptible burden of the body, which he called a fetter and dark abode of

the soul. Epictetus called the body a corpse, a beast of burden, a product of filth. He

referred to himself as, "A poor soul shackled to a corpse."

Pathogarus called it a soma-semas, that is a body tomb. Plato and Socrates felt that the

body defiled the soul, and man could never be at his highest until he escaped the prison of his

body and entered into the immortality of the soul. Seneca the Roman said, "I regard the

body as nothing but a chain which monocles my freedom." Dr. Ralph Stob in Christianity

and Classical Civilization writes, "It can be put down as a mark of the Graeco-Roman world

that men wanted a deliverance from the body..."

There was another side to this, and some Greeks had a high view of the body. Aristotle

came along and took an opposite stand from Plato, and he made the body of first priority,

and he said it was before the soul, even as Scripture teaches. But the negative philosophy is

want dominated the New Testament world. It gave rise to the great enemies of Christianity,

who were the Gnostics. They picked up on the anti-body doctrine and made it fundamental

to their theology. They said the body is evil and the source of all sin. Because of this they

rejected the Incarnation. They said that Jesus could never take on a real body, for God is

holy and could never enter into sinful flesh. He had to be in a phantom body, for real flesh is

totally evil.

This negative body thinking influence both later Judaism and early Christianity. It was a

part of the culture and people could not escape it without deliberate efforts to resist it. In

the Wisdom of Solomon 915 it was written, "This contemptible body weighs down the soul..."

Some Jews felt this way. Some Christians picked up this negative spirit and developed

Asceticism, which is a very anti-body form of Christianity. The body was no friend, but was

an enemy. You had to fight it constantly and deny it as much as possible. This led to

celibacy in the church.

Truly spiritual people would not marry and engage in the practice of sex, for this was a

body centered activity. Some of the church fathers said that sex even in marriage was a

polluted way of life. Origin, one of the church fathers, went so far as to castrate himself to

thrust the foul desires of the body from him. We do not have the time to trace the impact of

Greek thought and Gnosticism in the history of the church, but let me assure you that it can

be traced even into the present day so that many Christians feel about their body that which

comes from Plato more than that which comes from the Bible. Christians are often more a

product of their Western culture than they are a product of God's Word. The reason is

obvious. They live in the culture 24 hours a day, and live in God's Word maybe 24 hours a

year. The Greek view is not the biblical view, for it says the body is negative, and what

matters it the immortality of the soul.

The anti-body feelings were so strong that at one point in Christianity it was considered

giving comfort to the enemy to bathe. Some of the saints went for years without a bath, and

vermin would fall from their bodies as they walked, and this was proof of their hatred for

their body. Some of you probably have children who have a touch of Gnostic philosophy

because they hate to bathe, but fortunately most Christians who have anti-body feelings do

not carry it to such a logical conclusion.

Christians can, however, as Christians were in Corinth, carry their low view of the body

into their theology and corrupt the Christian doctrine on the resurrection of the body. The

idea that the body is nothing is anti-Christian, and totally out of line with the biblical view of

the body. Next let's look at-

II. THE BODY IS EVERYTHING.

Novalis expressed this view as strongly as anyone when he said, "There is but one temple

in the world, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this high form...We touch

heaven when we lay our hand on a human body." The materialist says the body of man is all

there is of man. There is no non-material spirit, but only matter. This is the view of the

atheist and the secularist. The conclusion you come to with this view is, "Let us eat, drink,

and be merry, for tomorrow we die." If the body is everything, than all life is good for is

sheer animal pleasure. If it feels good, do it, for physical pleasure is all there is.

In contrast to those who say the body is evil, this view says the body is the only good, and

anything that deprives the body of pleasure is evil. This leads to the rejection of all moral

restraint and a libertine life-style. The body becomes an idol, and men worship it by

devoting all their time, talent, and treasure to its exaltation. This view is totally

anti-Christian, but it is a very popular view in our culture.

Evolution is taught in the schools, and youth get the impression that they are just another

animal, and if there is a soul and a spiritual part of them, they do not get much insight into

that. They become almost totally secular. I wonder how many young people are writing

things like this essay I found on anatomy written by a young boy: "Your head is kind of

round and hard and your brains are in it and your hair is on it. Your face is in front of your

head where you eat. Your neck is what keeps your head off your shoulders, which are sort of

shelves where you hook your overall straps...You arms you got to have to pitch with and so

you can reach the biscuits. Your fingers stick out of your hands so you can scratch, throw a

curve, and add arithmetic. You legs is what you got to have to get to first base, your feet

what you run on, and your toes are what gets stubbed. And that is all there is of you except

what is inside, and I ain't seen that." We live in a culture where this is the common view.

The body is everything, and without some instruction that will be the total view of persons.

Next we look at-

III. THE BODY IS SOMETHING.

Between the two extremes of those who say the body is nothing, or that the body is

everything is the biblical view that the body is really something. It is not a trivial something,

but a tremendous something, and a something without which we can never be fully what God

made us to be. When God made the first human body, that of Adam, He had made the body

out of which every other human being would come. For out of Adam He took Eve, and out

of them came all other humans. In Adam all humanity was in a single body, and God

pronounced it, not just good, but very good.

This body was the handiwork of God, and God made it to last forever. God was not just

playing around with clay forming a body only to squash it and roll the lump into some other

shape. He made Adam's body with the potential for immortality. He tells us this in Gen.

3:22, "And the Lord God said, the man is now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take hold of the tree of life and eat, and

live forever." So God banished Adam and Eve from Eden, which was a place where they

could have lived forever had they not eaten the forbidden fruit. The body God made was not

weak and inadequate house for man. It was created to be his eternal palace. But they ate the

wrong fruit, and God did not want man to live forever as a rebel, and so access to the tree of

life was cut off. Even so, Adam lived 930 years before his body gave out and he died.

Death was an enemy and a punishment, but you can also see how death was essential for

God's plan to save man. If he never died, he would be an immortal sinner like Satan. God

did not want such a fate for man, and so it was ordained that he die. This made if possible

for him to be redeemed and resurrected to life, not as an immortal sinner, but as an

immortal saint. Even the great enemy death is used in the long run for the good of man.

Better to die and rise to live forever holy than to live and never die, but be forever unholy.

The choice was to let man live forever in hell, which is separation from God, or let him die

and be raised to be forever with God. With these two options I think we can all agree that

God made the best choice for us, even though it would cost His Son the tasting of death for

every man.

The body is a God-made wonder, and should be honored as such. There is nothing

Christian about treating the body like dirt and thinking that one is more spiritual because his

body is weak, drab, filthy, or suffering. You don't have to go to the other extreme and

replace praying with jogging, but the fact is, there is nothing anti-spiritual about a clean

healthy body. Adam had the best and there is no hint in the Bible that the body of Jesus was

anything less than an ideal specimen of health and strength. There is no virtue in being

sickly or unkempt. Many a fool has developed muscles of steel and the lungs of a race horse,

and still broke all the commandments, and so there is also no ultimate virtue in health and

strength in themselves.

The Christian view is that the body is not everything, but it is something, and something

important to the total man. It should be treated with honor and loving care so it can be the

best of what God made it to be. You don't worship it, but neither do you whip it. You work

it by discipline to be a tool for God's glory, and you dedicate it as a temple in which God can

dwell. The defamation of the body is anti-Christian, for it is a denial of the body as God's

handiwork. The deification of the body is also anti-Christian, for it is idolatry, and it puts

the body in competition with God.

In between these two extremes is the dedication of the body to be what its Creator

intended; recognizing that He loves His handiwork enough to send His Son into the world to

redeem the fallen body of man as well as his lost soul. In cooperation with God's plan the

Christian is to love his body and discipline it to bring it under the control of God's

standards. We often blame the body for our sin and folly, but the fact is, it is not the body at

all, but our minds choices to force it, or to not discipline it. C. S. Lewis gives us an insight

into the plight of the body by means of this verbal conflict of body and mind;

"You are always dragging me down, said I to my body.

Dragging you down replied my body, well I like that!

Who taught me to like tobacco and alcohol? You, of

course, with your idiotic adolescent idea of being grownup.

My palate loathed both at first, but you had to have

your way.

Who put an end to all those angry and revengeful thoughts

last night? Me, of course, by insisting on going to sleep.

Who does his best to keep you from talking too much or

eating too much by giving you a dry throat and headache

and indigestion?

Well what about sex? said I. Yes what about it retorted

the body. If you and your wretched imagination would

leave me alone I'd give you no trouble. You give me orders

and then blame me for carrying them out.

Lewis is making a powerful point. The problem is not the body, but the things the body is

forced to do by the mind. Sex is absolutely no problem as far as the body is concerned. God

made the body for sex, and He built the body to enjoy great pleasure in sex. He told man to

practice sex and populate the world. Then in the New Testament Paul makes it clear in I

Cor. 7 that sex is to be a regular part of married life. Paul goes so far as to say, not only is it

not a sin to have a lot of sin, but it is a sin not to, for soon as you cease to satisfy one another

in marriage Satan will tempt you to find satisfaction outside of marriage.

The Christian method of preventing immoral sex is not to denounce the world of sexuality

as the devil's plot, but rather to promote moral sex, and to exalt the joy and pleasure that

God intended for the body. Don't blame the body is the point. The body is good and its

sexuality is another of God's wondrous works of art. The way the body functions is not

man's problem, for that is God's gift. The problem of man is that he will not discipline his

body to function within the guidelines God has established. If you want to blame anything,

blame the disobedient spirit of man, but don't blame the body and start dragging in all this

Gnostic heresy and foolish Christian asceticism that rejects the body as evil.

The body is not evil and sex is not evil, and nothing the body does is evil. There is no evil

function of the body. It is God's handiwork and it is good. If it is treated right and loved

right it will not seek the false and fake love that makes it a tool of evil. Nobody knows more

about the immorality of the body than Paul. He wrote more about lust, impurity,

debauchery, orgies, and all forms of sexual immorality than anybody. You can't add

anything to Paul's knowledge about sexual corruption. Nevertheless, Paul says sex is good

and the body is good, and is even the temple of the Holy Spirit and the agent by which all the

gifts of the spirit can be expressed.

The point is, you do not fight evil by rejecting the good. You do not hold the body in

contempt just because it is a gate Satan so often uses to get to us. This is as senseless as

breaking down your front door because you are sick of germs getting into the house by that

route. Satan is clever. He has convinced Christians all through the ages to throw out some

of God's best blessings because he gets his agents to use them as weapons. If evil can use the

body to promote its line, then the Christian says we must attack and reject the body. We do

not fall for this in conventional warfare. If Russia comes out with a tank or a supersonic

airplane, we do not demolish our tanks and planes, and refuse to use the same weapons as an

enemy. Instead, we say how can we make our tanks and planes better, and more efficient and

powerful.

That is the biblical approach with the body. Satan does use the body as one of his

primary weapons. Some Christians react by saying the body is an enemy, and they develop

anti-body life-styles. The Christian who listens to God's Word

will see the body as a key weapon in the battle for righteousness. The body is not our enemy.

It is an ally and one of our greatest friends. It is made of the dust of the earth, but it is not

contemptible. It is God's doing and the source of all who gives us life. We do not despise the

earth even though its dirt can be used in negative ways. It is not always pleasant when it gets

on your rug, and the body has it unpleasant side as well, but it is nevertheless a friend and

source of great blessing.

The body of man is something because God made that body to live forever. We tend to

think that death is natural to the body, but it is not. Death only happens to the body as a

judgment. It does not die naturally. It has to be killed by force or by disease. The body is

designed to keep renewing itself. The cells that form the body keep replacing themselves so

that we have a new body every 7 years. There is no reason why they should not keep doing

this indefinitely. Science can only tell us that for some unknown reason degeneration sets in,

and each generation of cells becomes less efficient until death occurs. It is not natural at all.

It is unnatural and contrary to the way the body is built. It is built to experience natural

immortality. Adam and Eve's bodies would have lived forever had they not sinned, but ate

of the tree of life.

This is not a far fetched idea, for we have examples of natural immortality even in God's

fallen creation. The Ameba does not get born, grow old, and then die. They divide into two

daughter cells, and pass on all their substance, and leave no corpse behind. If they die, they

die by accident and not by nature. The Paramecia also live forever if no accident kills them.

Man has protected a single celled Paramecia as it went through 20 thousand generations in

the lab over a period of 37 years. That first cell they started with never died, but it lived on

and on for an equivalent of a quarter of a million years.

The living for nearly a thousand years by Adam and some of his descendants is not in the

least hard to accept in the light of what we know about natural life and the potential of cells.

Before man loused up the body it was designed to live forever. Sin poisoned the system of

God's cellular renewal, but it took time to destroy this marvel of God's handiwork. And so

for generations the body still lived on for centuries as it renewed itself.

Even today the body does not die naturally. It has to be killed by external forces. Arthur

Constance says there has never been a case of natural death on record. Dr. Hanns Selye, the

world's authority on stress, says that he never found in all his autopsies a man who died of

old age, and he does not think one will ever be found. Everybody dies because something

kills them.

The point is, man's body is not like a car or a pair of shoes. These things age naturally.

They only have so much potential and no more. When that is gone they are worn out and

useless. But the body of man is built with far more potential than is ever used. But death

comes as an intruder and as an enemy of the body, and it robs it of its potential. Paul says

death is the last enemy to be destroyed, and when this enemy is out of the way man will have

a body that will live forever.

Modern man has already discovered in the lab that death is an outside force and not

anything that is inherent in life itself. They have confirmed that death is a foreign agent and

not natural. They have taken the cells of rats and chickens and have nourished them in test

tubes for 30 years. They just go on dividing and living without death being a part of the

picture. Science has already demonstrated that if you can get an environment that is free

from the poison fingers of death, cells can live forever. This excites man to try and figure

out how to conquer death, but he never will be able to do it. But God can, and He has

promised to destroy death and give us bodies that will never die.

What man can get hints of, but can never produce, he can have freely as a gift of God. He

can have eternal life in Jesus who submitted His body to death that He might conquer death

and give all who trust Him victory over death. This body is such a gem of God's creation

that He will not be satisfied until it is totally redeemed. Paul in Rom. 8:23 says this too is

what we wait for as Christians, which is the redemption of our bodies. In Phil. 3:21 he says

again that we eagerly await the coming of Christ because He will, "Transform our lowly

bodies so that they will be like His glorious body."

To be anti-body is to be anti-Christ, for He lived in an ideal body in time, and He dwells in

a perfected body for eternity. His goal is to see that all who love Him have their bodies

raised and transformed like His. To be in any way negative toward the body as a philosophy

of life is to be on the opposite side from Christ. Satan's goal is to see both body and soul cast

into the lake of fire.

The goal of Jesus is to see both body and soul saved and united with each other and Him

forever in heaven. The body was made to live forever, and the plan of salvation is not

completed until man is in a body that will do just that. So the body is not everything, but it is

something, and a powerful, valuable, and honorable something.

The best of Christians make their share of mistakes, but John Turner was apparently

trying to get a large portion of his quota of mistakes out of the way all in one day. John was

a conscientious pastor who got to his church early one Sunday morning, and he discovered

that he had left his sermon notes at home. He thought it was no problem. There was plenty

of time to correct his first mistake of the day. But when he got home, he discovered his

second mistake. He had left his notes on the table right where his 18 month old daughter

eats breakfast. The notes were sopping wet from a glass she had turned over. It was no

problem he thought, for he could wipe them dry in time. The words were blurred somewhat,

but still readable.

He finally left for church as he corrected his second mistake of the day, and all was still

under control. Out of the house he bounded with all he needed, except for one thing. He left

his car keys in the house, and also the key to the house on the same key chain. Mistake

number three was staring him in the face. He didn't have time for mistake number 3.

Church was about to begin and he was several miles away locked out of his house, and with

no keys to the car, and his family had already gone to church.

Desperation drives one to desperate measures. They had a dog's door on the bottom of

their back door that led to the back yard. It was for the dog to be able to come and go,

especially to go. Pastor Turner was not so proud that he would not lower himself to getting

into his house by Woofy's door. He shed his suit coat, and got on his knees and proceeded to

squirm into mistake number 4. He was bigger than the dog, and when he got half way in he

was stuck, and could not move either way. There he was half in and half out, and his

congregation was probably already singing, "Stand up, Stand up for Jesus."

His dog was deeply impressed with the new game, and was licking his face the whole time.

It seemed like an eternity that he was stuck there, but he finally was able to twist around and

reach the door knob. He even eventually got to church, but due to his lateness he had to

share the whole embarrassing story of his comedy of errors. His experience proves that

reality can be funnier than fiction, and that there is always room for improvement in our

lives as Christians. And not just in the trivialities of where we put our notes and keys, but in

the tremendous areas of life like what do we do with our love?

Is it possible to ever make mistakes with our love, and follow up life with a poor use of the

highest of all virtues? If not, why would Paul pray that the love of the Philippians would

abound more and more in knowledge, and depth of insight, so they could discern what is

best. The implication is that love can lack knowledge, and when it does it can chose what is

less than the best. In other words, uneducated love can make foolish choices.

J. Vernon McGee in his famous Through The Bible Series tells of when he first became a

pastor of a church in downtown Los Angeles. He did not know that there were people who

loved to see new preachers come into the area, for they tended to be such suckers. One

Sunday morning a man came forward in the service, and he refused to talk to anyone but the

pastor. The personal worker told pastor McGee, and the pastor showed the man the way of

salvation. He was so interested that tears came to his eyes. He got on his knees and prayed

the sinner's prayer. Then he told pastor McGee that he needed money to get his suitcase out

of a hotel. They were holding it until he paid for his room. McGee felt obligated to help him

out and so he gave him the money for the hotel. He felt good about being such a Good

Samaritan. But then, six weeks later, he saw the man's picture in the paper. He had been

arrested. The article told of how he had been living for six months off the preachers of the

city. His comment was, "They are the biggest saps in the world." McGee knew he was one

of them, and he learned quickly that love has to be discerning, or it can be used for folly.

McGee focused on this verse for his own life, and he wrote, "Paul says to let your love

abound more and more, but let it abound in judgment, let it abound in being able to discern.

Over the years when I would drive to my study in Los Angeles, I use to say to the Lord, "I'm

going to meet new people today, and I don't know them. Some of them I will be able to help.

Others of them will put a knife in my back. Lord, help me to be able to distinguish between

the two. Show me which I should help." Actually this verse rescues a Christian from being

nam6ve and gullible. His love is to abound in knowledge and discernment."

Like most loving people, he had to learn by experience that love alone is not enough, for

love can be uneducated, and when it is it can do stupid things. Love has to abound in

knowledge. It has to get educated if it is to make wise choices that lead to the glory and

praise of God. Feelings alone can set you up for a fall. A young boy wanted to go swimming

but his mother said no because it is to cold. He said, "Can I just go and look at the

swimming hole?" She said, okay to that. He came back and his hair was all wet. She said,

"Did you swim?" "No, I fell in." "Then why are your clothes dry?" "I felt like I was going

to fall in, so I took them off." His punishment made him realize that he allowed his feelings

to lead him into making a wrong choice.

Paul's point here is, if love gets educated and abounds in knowledge, it will be able to

discern what is best. Uneducated love chooses what is less than the best because it is not able

to discern. Uneducated love goes too much by feelings alone, and this leads to unwise

decisions. I love music, for example, but if I went by my feelings alone and decided to give

my life to music, I may waste my life trying to do what I am not gifted to do. Wise love seeks

for confirmation of feelings. If other Christians do not feel the same, then I have to

recognize my feelings may not fit the evidence. If there is no abounding evidence to support

my feelings, they must be seen as love on a very low level of education, and not mature

enough to make major decisions. "It is not the calling of cats to plow, or horses to cat mice."

Every Christian needs to do for God what they are gifted to do, and it is growing in

knowledge that helps them discover their gifts. My mother had less than an 8th grade

education. She would be what many would call a non-gifted Christian. But at her funeral I

was impressed by the service of my mother. For 46 years she did what she could. She loved

other people's babies in the nursery at her church. There are all different levels of love, and

all of them are good, but they are not all the best. Kindergarten love is good, for it is a

loving feeling of caring about people, but it is like the tiny bean spout, and not the full grown

bean ready for harvest. All love has to begin here just as all beans have to start as mere

sprouts. Christian puppy love is positive, for all love has to start somewhere, but it has to

press on and get an education is what Paul is getting at. Light is good, but there is candle

light, moon light, and sun light. There is an enormous difference in the power and value in

these different degrees of light, and so it is with love.

Paul is not knocking the love of the Philippians. Kindergarten love is not bad, but it is no

place to level off and be content. A child who does not progress beyond kindergarten is

greatly handicapped, and so is the Christian whose love does not abound more and more in

knowledge. Why is it that Christians can do every stupid thing man is capable of doing

stupidly? It is because their love has not abounded more and more in knowledge, and so

they choose what is second best, third, or tenth, or even worse. If there is no limit to how

wise love can be, then there is no limit either as to its lack of wisdom. If love does not go the

way Paul prays it will, and abound in knowledge, it can become a drop out, and abound in

ignorance or lethargy. This can lead to all the folly Christians have proven themselves

capable of in history.

Christians have supported tyranny, persecution, intolerance, slavery, and every form of

non-loving oppression you can think of. It was because they had a kindergarten love that did

not abound more and more in knowledge. But to the credit of Christians, it was those

Christians who did what Paul prayed for who did so abound, and who became the key leaders

in history for the victories over oppression. Christians with educated love have given us a

world with rights and freedoms that make us the richest and most blest of peoples.

Abraham Lincoln was opposed by many Christians with kindergarten love, but those who

had abounded more and more in knowledge gave him their support, and he came to

appreciate the church as his strongest ally in the fight to end slavery. The same thing

happened to Albert Einstein in Germany. There were so many baby Christians who

supported Hitler that Einstein hated Christians. But then he found out there were also

mature Christians with a degree in discerning love, and he came to treasure the church as

the key ally in fight against Hitler. He wrote, "I'm forced to confess that what I once

despised I now praise unreservedly."

There were Christians who loved Hitler; Christians who loved slavery, and there have

been Christians who loved every form of folly in history because their love was feelings

without knowledge. In a previous message we saw that Paul was an affectionate Apostle, and

the ideal Christian is one who, like Jesus, was full of affection and deep feelings that can be

expressed. But now we see those feelings have to be guided and controlled by knowledge. So

we have in the Bible the wedding of the heart and the head. Christians are forever trying to

separate the two, and when they do they put asunder what God has united, and they create a

monster.

Christians who stress emotion without the mind, and say that the heart is to lead, produce

fanatics. Those who see this as folly, and reverse the focus so that the head leads without the

heart, produce dead intellectualism which is an equal curse. What God has put together we

should not separate. Just as God made it so that your body cannot be alive and well if both

the heart and head are not functioning together, so he has made the body of Christ the same

way. The heart of love must abound in the knowledge of the head, or there will be a very

inadequate expression of the love and wisdom of God.

I love the suffering people of the world. I have some degree of pity and compassion, but

my love is mere kid's stuff of feelings. But there are Christians such as the World Relief

Organization who have abounded more and more in love with knowledge, and depth of

insight, on how to choose what is the best way to meet the needs of these people. I give my

money to them because I have not done the research to make a wise choice as to how to show

love. I could go off and try something based on mere feelings, and give my money to

someone who will spend 10 cents on the dollar to meet the need. I could give my money to

con men all over the place, and be a sucker, and support evil rather than good. I would be

operating on my feelings of love which is good and noble, but because it would not be

informed love, it could end up being very ineffective in achieving the goals of love. By

supporting a well-known, and reliable Christian organization, my love will be making a wiser

choice.

The point is, my love has to be more than a feeling. It has to be informed by facts and

knowledge of what is truly a wise way of loving. I can love foolishly or wisely, and the only

way to love wisely is to abound in knowledge more and more. Love cannot just feel its way to

right choices. It has to study and learn, and get educated as to what is the best way to love.

The issue is not, do I feel right about people and needs, but do I care enough about people to

find out what is the best way to express love. Do I take a hundred dollars in ones and throw

them off the roof of an inner city building, or do I buy one hundred dollars worth of books

on poverty, or do I give it to the Union Gospel Mission where they can get nearly two

hundred dollars worth of goods and services to needy people. The first is a heart plan; the

second is a head plan, and the third is the heart and head combined to do what is best for the

people you claim to love.

Paul made it clear in I Cor. 13 that love is the greatest of all values, and without it nothing

else is of value. But he does not intend us to conclude that this means that love needs nothing

else as if it alone can be sufficient without all the other things that would be nothing without

it. He says in 13:2, "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all

knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

This is not to say that prophecy, knowledge, and faith, are of no value. It is to say that their

value comes from their being linked with love. But love which has not the gifts of prophecy,

faith, and knowledge, is puppy love, and will not be able to make mature choices for the glory

of God. Knowledge without love may be nothing, but love with knowledge is more than

something-it is the best.

The history of medicine is full of examples. Doctors have always loved health and hated

disease. They love to see people get well, but if this love is not coupled with knowledge, they

can very lovingly kill the people they seek to help. In 1837 four out of every ten women died

in child birth. Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian lad at the University of Vienna, the most

advanced center of medicine in the world of that day, was determined to find the cause for

this fever that took so many lives. He gave his life to get the facts, and spent all his time

seeking for an answer. What he learned was that doctors were spreading the disease by not

washing their hands. He was thought to be a fool and a madman, but he persisted in his

crusade to get doctors to wash. It took a generation to change things, but in 1906 his home

town in Hungry erected a statue in his honor. His love had abounded in knowledge more

and more so that doctors could choose what is best.

Their love and caring was just as real before their knowledge, but because it was ignorant

love it hurt rather than help. It was knowledgeable love, or educated love, that made the

difference. History is full of such examples, and so is each of our lives. We cannot know

what is the most loving choice to make in many areas of life without a head that is willing to

get all it can to help our love be informed. Christian education is simply helping Christian

love know what is the best choice. The more you know, the more likely your love will make

the best choice. The bottom line is, Christians are never done with their education.

Christians are to be students all of their lives, and ever learning so they can be intelligent

and effective lovers of the world, the church, their families, and themselves. Love motivate

us to care; knowledge helps us care wisely.

Why did Paul have to pray that good Christians like the Philippians would abound in

knowledge? Because there is nothing automatic about this. You don't pray for what is

inevitable. You don't pray that sun will rise in the East, or that the river will run to the sea.

You pray for what will not happen unless people choose to let it happen, or make it happen.

If Christians say, I am loving enough, and I am content with the level I've reached, they will

plateau right there, and growth is over. If 4th grade love is your bag, and that is what

satisfies your ambition, you will stay right there the rest of your life. But it is a rejection of

the biblical goal of never ending growth. We are to love God with all of our mind, and that

means love is to grow in knowledge forever, for there is infinite room for growth.

Jesus healed a leper, and then told him not to tell any man of his healing, but the man was

so happy, and so convinced that Jesus was the best thing that ever happened to him that he

went out and told everybody. It seems like a loving thing to do, and it came from a grateful

heart, but it was foolish love, for Mark 1:45 tells us that because of the publicity of this

grateful man Jesus could no longer openly enter the city. His love was real, but it was

self-centered and ignorant. He hindered the ministry of Jesus, and deprived others of the

very healing that he experienced. The man was not bad. It was just that his love was not

educated. An educated love would have recognized that Jesus had good reason for His

request for silence. Educated love would have obeyed the Master, and would have been a

blessing instead of a hindrance.

Paul does not teach that love is the greatest thing in the world. He teaches that educated

love is the greatest thing in the world. Love alone is not enough. It is not enough in

marriage; it is not enough in medicine; it is not enough in Christian service, and it is not

enough anywhere. Men of God in the Middle Ages loved the people they served, and so

when the great plagues struck they urged people to assemble in the churches to pray. The

result was that infection spread with a greater rapidness. It was uneducated love, and it did

great harm to the people. Love has to be educated, or it can be harmful, and that is why Paul

prays for the Philippians, and why we need to pray for each other, that we will be a loving

people whose love is abounding more and more in knowledge.

The reason the love of money is the root of all evil is because it is stupid love. It is

immature love that does not grow. It is like a small child that loves a toy, and all of life

revolves around that toy. But the child grows up and discovers there are greater things to

love like God and people. The lover of money does not grow up, but goes on all his or her

life locked into infant love. Any love that loves things more than persons is stupid love.

Educated love is love that loves according to God's value system. Things are loved

according to the measure of their value. Creation deserves to be loved, for it is God's gift,

but when men love the creation more than the Creator they become fools. They are like one

who falls in love with the pretty jewelry box, and throws the ring away, or one who falls in

love with a letter, and rejects the writer of it.

If I love my car, that is fine, but if I love it to the point where it is more important than my

mate, child, or even my neighbor, it is stupid love. It is uneducated love that does not go on

to higher learning, but got to the 3rd grade and stopped. Smart love is ever moving on to be

loving on a higher level. The degree to which your love grows in knowledge is the degree of

your Christian maturity. The goal is to get love so smart and well educated that you can

choose the best, and so be pure and blameless. The way to Christlikeness is the way of

educated love. Educated love is love that loves everything and everyone with a measure of

love that it deserves. That is wise living, for it puts all of reality into it proper perspective, so

that God is loved supremely, and then mate, family, church, country, and things all fall into

their level of priority where the best gets your best, and the lesser gets the lesser

commitment of your life.

If we link love and learning we will have life with a capital L, for it will be the abundant

life Jesus came to give us. Educated love will love according to priorities. If number 47 on

the list of loves gets 80% of your time, that is stupid love. The purpose of every sermon and

Bible study, and every discussion of Christian values is to educate our love so it can lead us

to make the best choices in all areas of life. In heaven we will all get our doctor's degree in

love, but in this life the goal is to get as many degrees as possible. We are to be love scholars

for life, and that is why Paul prays that God will motivate us to be such.

Why? Because life is not a matter of choosing the good or the bad. Christians think that

when they can do that, they can quit learning and growing in knowledge, but this is a major

mistake. Choosing the good is not the goal of the Christian life, for there is also the better

and the best. Having the knowledge to choose the best is to be our aim, and the only way we

can ever get to love on this level is to have a love that abounds more and more in knowledge

and depth of insight. Educated love is "more and more love." It is not content to just grow.

It abounds in more and more knowledge, and more and more insight, so it is more and more

able to choose the best, and be more and more pure, and more and more blameless, and thus,

more and more fruitful, and, therefore, more and more productive of glory and praise to

God. Paul prays for the Philippians, and we need to pray for one another, and for ourselves,

that we might be abounding in educated love.

"Atlanta's Race" is the title of Sir E. J. Poynter's most successful paintings. The story

behind the painting is from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Atlanta was the daughter of Schoenus

of Boeotia, and she was famous for her matchless beauty. She was also so swift of foot that

none could outrun her. To everyone who asked for her hand in marriage she gave the same

answer. She would be the prize of him who could vanquish her in the race. Defeat, however,

would carry the penalty of death. Many lost their lives in trying to outrun her. After a lull

there appeared a youth by the name of Hippomenes who challenged Atlanta once more to

race. He knew he could not conquer her by fleetness of foot, so he carried with him three

golden apples, for he had received this advice from Venus:

When first she heads the from the starting place

Cast down the first one for her eyes to see,

And when she turns aside make on apace.

And if again she heads thee in the race

Spare not the other two to cast aside,

If she not long enough behind will bide.

The race began, and he followed these instructions. As Atlanta was about to pass him he

dropped the first apple. She looked down, but ran on. He dropped the second apple and she

seemed to stoop, and when he dropped the third she did stoop to pick it up. It was only a few

seconds lost, but it was enough, for Hippomenes had touched the maple goal, and Atlanta

had at last been defeated. Poynter's painting pictures Atlanta at that decisive moment when

she turned her eyes from the goal and stretched her arm toward the golden temptation

which brought her to defeat.

The painting is an illustration of the danger that faces every believer in the race toward

the goal of Christlikeness. We must be looking always unto Jesus the author and finisher of

our faith, but along side of us runs the world competing for our love, and John says it also

has three golden apples to cast in our path: The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the

pride of life. The world casts these down before us hoping we will take our eyes off Christ

and stoop to gain these earthly prizes and forget the goal.

All of life is a competitive battle between the love of the eternal and the love of the

temporal. One or the other must win, for one excludes the other. You cannot have your

cake and eat it too. Atlanta must either win the race by keeping her eyes on the goal, or she

must sacrifice the race to gain the golden apple. A choice must be made, an John says the

Christian must make this choice as well. He cannot love God and the world, for love must be

limited to one or the other. John knows that Christians will be tempted to stoop and pick up

the golden apples of the world, and that is why he warns them and commands them to love

not the world.

He had just written about love being the very essence of the Christian life, and that to be

without it is to be in darkness. Now, however, he makes it clear that love must have its

limitations, for it cannot be indiscriminate. The object of one's love must be God, and if this

be so there are some things that cannot then be loved, and they are called in one word-world.

Fortunately John goes on to tell us just what he means by the world. He names the three

golden apples of the world's appeal, and he thereby defines the worldliness that we are to

avoid. It is important that we see this clearly lest we misunderstand and pervert the

statement, "Love not the world." M any have done so.

St. Bernard would spend days by the shore of Lake Constance and keep his eyes glued to

his book lest he raised them and see the beauty, and be seduced away from God. John did

not mean the creation when he said we are to not love the world. Jesus loved the world in

that sense, and He said, "Behold the lilies of the field and the birds of the air." The heavens

declare the glory of God and all of nature shows forth His handiwork. The earth is the

Lord's and the fullness thereof. It is not the work of the devil. It is legitimate for us to love

the world in the sense of delighting in God's creation. It can be excessive to the point of

worshipping the creation rather than the Creator, and this of course is folly. But to love and

enjoy nature is a part of our appreciation of God's nature.

Not loving the world does not mean we are to not love the people of the world. This

would be a denial of what is commanded. God so loved the world that He gave His only

begotten Son to die for them. We are to love the world in this sense of loving the people. We

must see that the world in this context is what we call worldliness. It is that order of fallen

society, and the attitudes of fallen people. It is the lust, pride, and all that is opposed to the

light of God's righteousness. The world is that realm where darkness reigns. David Smith

says the world here equals, "The sum of all the forces antagonistic to the spiritual life."

This is the world we are not to love.

John does not just give a command and leave it at that. He says love not the world, and

then he goes on to give reasons for command. God expects man to use his intelligence and to

weigh values. He does not compete with the world by brute force. He offers reasons for

choosing His was rather than the way of the world. We want to examine the 2 reasons that

John gives us here for not loving the world. First-

I. IT IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE LOVE OF GOD.

The Christian cannot love the world, for to do so is to forsake the love of God, since it is

impossible to love both. Paul said, "Demus has forsaken me having loved this present

world." Demus had no choice but to forsake Paul if he was going to love the world, for

loving it and serving God are opposites that cannot be reconciled. He had to forsake Paul if

he was going to love the world, just as he would have had to forsake the world to truly serve

God with Paul.

To love is to give someone a supreme and central place in your life. You cannot have two

supreme loves. It must be either God or the world on the throne, for neither of them will

share the throne with the other. If you love the world you are electing to lose the love of

God. Show me a man who is lustful and proud in an evil sense, and I will show you a man

who may be very kind, helpful, and even religious, but a man in whom the love of God does

not abide. I believe, however, this can even happen to a Christian. John is wasting his time

and ours if he writes to warn Christians about what they can never be tempted into. Who

needs to watch out for what is impossible. It is possible for a Christian to lose the love of

God, and cease to be a servant of Christ by letting the love of the world overwhelm their

hearts.

Each of us must constantly examine our hearts lest we end up as castaways, and no longer

worthy contestants for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. We are not

talking about losing salvation, but about losing one's usefulness for the kingdom of God.

Our love and loyalty must be continuously examined to see if its object is Jesus Christ or

some selfish and worldly object. Just as a person can get a dishonorable discharge from the

army and still be a citizen of the country, so a Christian can be set on the shelf and no longer

be an active member of the soldiers of the cross, and yet still be a part of God's family. But

this is a terrible demotion.

When two people get married they limit the expression of their romantic and sexual love

to their partners. So it is in the spiritual realm. When a person is saved and enters into a

relationship with Christ as Savior, he becomes a part of the bride of Christ. From that point

on his love and faithfulness is to be to Christ alone. To love the world is to commit spiritual

adultery. This was the most common sin of the Old Testament people of God, and it is

doubtless in first place also in the New Testament dispensation. The message of the prophets

is the message needed today. We need to forsake all other gods, and be loyal to the God and

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Set your affections on things above and not on the things

of the earth, for these things are incompatible with the love of God.

The challenge of John is for believers to be loyal to the Lord in their love, and not corrupt

it and diminish it by allowing the world to gain their affection. Young put it, "Let not the

cooing of the world allure thee, Which of her lovers ever found her true?" E. J. Poynter,

whose painting we earlier considered, painted another well known picture called "Faithful

Unto Death." It is picture of a soldier at his post during the great volcano eruption that

buried Pompei in hot lava. All the people were fleeing for safety, but the soldier grasped his

spear firmly and stood erect. His eyes revealed terror, and one can sense the struggle that

rages in his mind between duty and the desire to save himself. Obedience wins, however, and

he remains at his post faithful unto death.

The Bible nowhere says it will be easy to be a Christian, but if a pagan soldier can be

faithful to his superior even unto death, then any Christian should be ashamed to do less for

his Lord who died foe his eternal salvation. The world desperately needs Christians who will

love Jesus supremely, and forsaking all others keep themselves to Him alone. To love the

world is incompatible with God's love, and so the degree to which you love the world is the

degree to which you suffer the loss of God's love. Let our decoration then be that of F. W.

H. Meyers:

Who so has felt the Spirit of the Highest

Cannot confound nor doubt Him nor deny;

Yeah, with one voice, O world, tho' thou deniest,

Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.

II. IT IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE WILL OF GOD.

Not only is it impossible to reconcile the love of the world with the love of God, but it will

be impossible to do so in eternity, for the things of the world have no part in God's will for

the future. These things will not last is what John is saying. They will pass away, for they are

temporal and transient, and will have no place in God's eternal plan. To love them is to

trade the solid diamond of eternity for the melting Popsicle of time.

The love of the world, which is really lust, is centered around pleasures that are purely a

matter of the flesh, and do not go deep and affect the soul. The lover of the world has only

surface pleasures. They are real, but not lasting pleasures. They do not produce joy and a

sense of ultimate purpose and meaning.

Fading is the worldling's pleasure,

All his boastful pomp and show.

Solid joys and lasting treasure

None by Zion's children know.

This is why it is of no profit to gain the whole world if one loses his own soul. You can

never come out ahead by trading the timeless for the temporary. The world throws down its

golden apples of present pleasure and say enjoy yourself, for its later than you think. The

world appeals with the same urgency as the Gospel. The world says today is the day to satisfy

the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, and so let us eat, drink, and be

merry, for tomorrow we die. Now is the time to live.

The Christian, however, with the eyes of faith looks ahead and sees the world and its lusts

pass away. We claim the promise of God that those who do His will abide forever. John fights

worldliness, not by shouting and getting angry, but by the calm appeal to the believer to

consider how incompatible it is with God's purpose and will. He appeals to their sense of

values and makes it clear that to choose the world is a poor investment, for the world and its

lust are going to go out of style for good, but those who are in God's will have a style that will

last forever. Omar Khayyam wrote,

The worldly Hope men set their hearts upon

Turns to ashes-or it prospers-and anon,

Like snow upon the desert's dusty face

Lighting a little hour or two is gone.

The Christian does not invest his time and trust in that which is fading and passing away,

but it the will of God which is lasting and eternal. Love for both are incompatible. The world

has a strong appeal in spite of the fact that it offers only fading pleasures, and the Christian

can only refrain from stooping to snatch up its golden apples of temptation by keeping his

eyes on Christ. John Henry Newman wrote,

Unveil, O Lord, and on us shine in glory and in grace,

This gaudy world grows pale before the beauty of Thy face.

Till Thou art seen, it seems to be a sort of fairy ground,

Where suns unsetting light the sky, and flowers and fruits abound.

But when Thy keener, purer beam is poured upon our sight

It loses all its power to charm, and what was day is night.

Do not love the world, for it is incompatible with the love of God and the will of God. To

love the world is to lose the best for time and eternity, and so limit your love to the Lord.

Keep your eyes on Him as your ultimate loyalty, and make sure all other loves are

compatible with loving Him supremely.

Someone has said, "You can never win in the game of life if you don't know where the goal

posts are." You can't win in any game if you don't have a goal. Great men in every walk of

life have been those with a goal, and a determination to reach it. It is difficult to be

determined if you are not certain where you are going, and so the end must come before the

means. The goal must be established, and then comes the best means for reaching that end.

I remember a successful businessman who spoke to the students at Bethel one day, and he

said that the very first rule in being successful is to set a goal and then strive to reach it.

Studies show that the one thing they all had in common as America's most successful men

was the ability to set a goal and pursue it. This principle applies to the spiritual realm as

well.

Matthew Henry, the well-known Bible commentator, was not successful in producing the

works he did because he was uniquely gifted. It was because he was a man who set goals and

persisted in using every means necessary to reach them. He set out in 1692 to deliver a

series of lectures on the questions on the Bible. He began with God's question to Adam,

"Where art thou?" Twenty years later he finished the series on the last question in

Revelation. When he set a goal he persisted to the end.

Paul wanted Timothy to be this kind of a pastor, and he wanted the leaders and teachers

of Ephesus to be like this as well. Therefore, he writes to Timothy and tells him to put an end

to the nonsense of Christians getting all wrapped up in fables and genealogies. He urges

them to make love the primary goal of their ministry. He then gives the three means

necessary to arrive at this goal. They are a pure heart, a good conscience, and a genuine

faith. Verse 5 in the RSV reads, "Whereas the aim of our charge is love..." Phillips has it,

"The ultimate aim of the Christian ministry, after all, is to produce the love which springs

from a pure heart, a good conscience and a genuine faith."

Paul is giving a standard by which we can measure the success of our ministry.

Whatever else we have done, if we have not aided men to move closer to the goal we have

failed. The end is love, and if teaching and preaching does not make Christians more loving

it is an ineffective means, for it is not doing what God intended it to do. If all the lessons and

sermons you hear, and all the books and papers you read do not increase your love, then

they are all for nothing, for that which does not move toward the primary goal is of no true

Christian value. If your Bible knowledge only makes you clever in winning arguments, but

does not increase your ability to love the unlovable, you are making no progress at all. The

end is love says Paul. The goal of the Christian life is to be a channel through which the love

of God can flow.

Paul took very seriously the exalting of love to the supreme place in the Christian life. In

all of his letters it is the supreme goal, for to be filled with agape love is to be filled with

Christ. To love and to be Christ like are synonymous. In Gal. 5:14 Paul writes, "The whole

law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." The Old Testament is

not to be used as a source of material for speculation, but as a source of material to be

fulfilled by love. Alexander Maclaren, the famous English Baptist preacher, wrote, "The

Apostle here lays down the broad principle that God has spoken, not in order to make acute

theologians, or to provide material for controversy, but in order to help us love."

The number of persons won to Christ by argument and condemnation is from small to

non-existent, but the number one through love is legion. No wonder Paul said that

knowledge, eloquence and sacrifice are nothing without love. None of these things can open

a man's heart to Christ. Love alone is the key to the human heart, and so it is the goal of the

church's ministry in the lives of its members. Our lack is not power, but love. Paul said you

can have all kinds of power and still be nothing without love. Love is the key factor in every

situation.

Paul was the greatest theologian of all time, but his goal was not to be a great theologian,

but rather, to be a channel of God's love. He wrote to the Corinthians that the love of Christ

constrains us. That was the power that drove Paul on and on with the Gospel. It was not

some craving for controversy, or desire for adventure, but it was for the end of love that he

was motivated. He then gives 3 means by which we are to reach that end of love. If we

develop these three things we will be progressing toward the goal of love. Not any love will

do, for it must be a love, which issues from these three things.

1. A PURE HEART.

Just as a pure fountain sends forth refreshing water to the thirsty, so the pure in heart

bring the refreshing attitude of love into a world of hostility. Jesus said that the pure in

heart shall see God, and it follows that the pure heart which sees God will also see the need of

men to see God, and so long to express the love of God in Christ that they may have the

opportunity to do so. The more I read about love in the New Testament the more I realize

how little Christians have moved toward this primary goal. Can it be because we are really

not pure in heart? Have we neglected the means to the end to the point that we do not even

recognize the nature of the kind of love that is to possess us and constrain us as it did Paul?

The impure heart harbors lust and not love. It is a form of love, which is selfish desire.

Have we allowed agape love, which is the selfless love of Christ, to be lost and replaced with

the natural eros love of desire? I think it is so, and so we cannot begin to reach Christian

maturity until we become pure in heart. We need to be sanctified, and to learn those truths

of God's Word that purify our attitudes and actions. We need to escape the pull of the world

in all realms, and purify our hearts if we expect to reach the end of love, which is our goal. A

church which is not succeeding to aid its people in attaining purity of heart is a church in

danger of having a meaningless ministry of no use to the cause of Christ.

2. A GOOD CONSCIENCE.

A bad conscience is the force behind much of Christian un-loveliness. The Christian

who condemns rather than loves is often filled with guilt feelings. His conscience is

bothered by his own sin and failure to be what he knows God wants him to be. And so rather

than repent and receive forgiveness he lashes out in anger to punish others who are more

guilty than he, and he seeks in this way to satisfy his own conscience. It is all futile however,

and it only leads to frustration and greater guilt.

If the Christian is ever going to love others as he ought, he has got to love himself as he

ought. He can never do this if he has a conscience, which is always condemning him. A

Christian that dislikes and condemns himself cannot really love anybody. Therefore, a good

conscience is essential in the Christian life. A good conscience is one that allows a Christian

the freedom to love himself, and to love his neighbor as himself. This means that the

doctrine of forgiveness of sin needs to be taught until all Christians understand fully the

ministry of Christ's present intercession on their behalf.

Confession of sin, which played such a major role in the New Testament must be

understood by Christians today. The Christian who does not know how to deal with his sin

and his bad conscience is greatly handicapped, and he is unable to move along the path to the

goal of love. A Christian who is always looking for scapegoats, and always complaining and

griping is a Christian with a bad conscience, and he becomes a very poor channel for the

love of Christ to be expressed to others. Any ministry that aids believers in maintaining a

clear conscience is a ministry that is fruitful for Christ.

3. A GENUINE OR SINCERE FAITH.

That is a faith that is not hypocritical. It is not simply a mask over the real person.

There is a certain insincere kind of faith, which oozes piety all over on the surface, but it is

only a shallow cover up over an impure heart and a bad conscience. Christians must be

aware of the danger of a false faith, which is a faith built up around words they have learned,

but which has no basis in experience. A sincere and honest faith will be practical and down

to earth. Those who wonder off into myths, and who take adventures into the unknown seek

to give the impression that this is a demonstration of real faith, but it is not so. Fantasy is

not faith. A sincere faith brings forth love and a devotion to people, and not a devotion to

fables and systems.

Any teaching that helps a believer to shed his mask and to live as he really is before God

and man in simple trust is a kind of teaching that will be blest, for genuine faith will lead to

the end of love. The implication of this advice to Timothy is that if a Christian lacks love the

reason is because of a defect in one of these 3 areas-his heart, his conscience, or his faith.

In verse 6 Paul says that those teachers who have wondered away from these 3 things,