Galatians 5:13-16
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." But if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
e Five-Fold Vision Statements of Dr. Barry - #2
"Care for One Another"
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
This week we continue to examine the Vision Statements of Dr. Barry. This morning our topic is the vision of Dr. Barry that we should be a church in which the members care for one another. Our banner illustrates the care with the cup - suggesting the Lord's Supper, the heart - symbolizing our affections and emotions, and the cross - standing to remind us of the love of God and of the motivation we have as God's people to love one another. Our text suggests what might happen if we fail to love one another - biting and devouring and consuming each other.
We can certainly see how that biting and devouring has happened at times, even in our own congregation. We have a controversy, and we are more concerned with winning than with what is right or good or helpful. People sometimes leave congregations, never to return, over the battles we have fought. Many times things are said which have no place in the conversation of Christians, actions may be taken, and judgments are made which confuse and injure the fellowship of the body. It has happened in congregations, and it has happened in our Synod as a whole. The vision of Dr. Barry for our Synod which we focus on this week is a vision of a church which stops doing such things to one another, and cares for one another instead.
The care for one another is referred to in our text by the words, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Such love is by deed, not by emotion. Emotions are fine, and we should have tender feelings toward one another, but the only way our tender feelings are of any value and effect for our neighbor is when we live them out, so the love of which God speaks is not primarily a love of feelings, but a love in action, a love that does something - and we call that something caring for one another.
And there are two kinds of care. There is the spiritual care, and there is the physical care. The spiritual care is care we exercise to see to it that our neighbors in the congregation have what they need spiritually. This care would include worship services, Bible Studies, and the like. We care for one another by participating. You know that it is always better when we have a full church, than when we have just a handful in the pews. When we worship together regularly, we confess our faith to one another, and we encourage and strengthen one another.
We also care for one another by holding sound doctrine as important, and insisting that our congregation does all things according to the Word of God and not just in accord with our desires or human opinions and fads. Just like any other part of life, the church has to deal with passing fashions, styles and fads. But it is the Word which works in us, and only the clear and true Word. So, we may feel up-to-date and fashionable if we follow the latest fad in doctrine or worship, but only the good, old-fashioned Word of God will be a blessing for us.
We can also care for one another outwardly. True love is not content unless it knows that the ones loved possess the necessities for life. If we have plenty and someone in our congregation cannot afford to eat, we must love them by providing. If they cannot get around, we should provide either transportation for them, or for the necessities of life which they need to get to them. They may need company. They may need comfort. They may need a helping hand with chores around the house or around the yard. We can love them by acting on those needs and filling the need.
Of course, you don't have to - and many of you don't. You were called to freedom, according to our text. You don't have to do anything to earn salvation. But then the Apostle continues his exhortation, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. What Paul was talking about might well be referred to as the American Way.
We are brought up on a diet of freedom as personal license to do whatever pleases us, and a fierce individualism that makes self number one and hardly admits of a number two. But that self-service is not godly. It has nothing to do with Christ. He gave Himself. He lived for you and He died for you. He did it all for you and for me and for others so that we might have forgiveness, and we might have resurrection from the dead, and so we might have life everlasting as a consequence of His self-sacrifice.
To hold to riches, possessions, time and energy just because we can, and for our own purposes and pleasures is as natural and human and American as hell - and that is where it will lead, hell. Christ and Christian is not that way. To cling to our rights and our riches and our pleasures when fellow-members of the body of Christ are in need and suffer because they need what we could provide out of our abundance is to turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh.
The Apostle writes that we should, instead, through love serve one another. Whether we serve to meet spiritual needs with the Word, and with our participation together in the Gospel and in worship and study, or we serve them by sharing their burdens and giving of our substance to meet their needs, we do it through love. We do it through the same love - not our love, but the love of God which He has poured out on us in Jesus Christ and in the Gospel. There are two kinds of care, but just one love - agape love.
Agape love is a spiritual love of will and intellect first, and then of the emotions. It is a love which sees the need of the one who is loved, and then intelligently plans to meet those needs, even if the plan should cost the self something. And then Agape love puts that plan into action, even at great expense to self, and serves the beloved. This is the love by which we are called to serve - to care for one another.
And the best illustration of that love is the Gospel itself. God saw our need. He planned our rescue - planning how to accomplish the impossible - to punish sin and yet save the sinner. He had to do the impossible several times to accomplish the plan, and it cost Him His only-begotten Son. But He did not count the cost too great: listen to the words of the Apostle from Philippians 2: Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
That freedom to which we have been called in Christ is called Christian Liberty. It is the freedom of the Gospel. But that freedom is the freedom from sin, not the freedom to sin. Many people get this confused.
We have been freed from sin and from the power of sin to threaten us and enslave us and force us to do things we don't want to do. We have been set free from the fear of sin because it is clearly no longer our actions which save us - it is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. So we are free. Paul even describes that freedom in 1 Corinthians 6:12, like this, All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable.
We have been set free to serve God in holiness of living and in loving service one of another. But many mistake the freedom of the gospel to be the freedom to do anything they desire and to serve themselves. While it is true that you can do those things, that is not the freedom into which God has set us free. That is slavery to the flesh and sin. We have not been set free to sin, for when we willingly submit to sin again, we make ourselves slaves of sin, and free ourselves from righteousness, salvation, and eternal life, just as Paul explains in Romans 6:15-23.
No, we have been set free to love God and one another and to live out that love by serving one another. We live out our love for God by loving and serving one another. This is true because God does not need us, nor does He need anything from us. But we serve Him by serving one another, and by loving one another. And, as I said in the beginning of this sermon, we love by doing, by serving, and not just by feeling all warm and squishy. We care for one another by filling the needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ with the abundance with which He has blessed us!
Walk by the spirit, Paul wrote by inspiration, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. If we follow what God teaches us we ought to do, and let the Holy Spirit lead us even when that leading contradicts our own "enlightened self-interest," then we will serve one another and not serve the flesh with our freedom, for the desire of the Spirit is spelled out in the Law - that we love our neighbor in the same ways and to the same degree that we love ourselves.
We need to follow that principle as a church, also. We must love one another by resisting the desires of the flesh and by serving the desires of the Spirit. The flesh would have us count bodies instead of faithfully holding out the unvarnished truth of the Word. The flesh wants "big" more than it wants "faithful." The flesh wants "exciting" more than it wants "comforting" or "reassuring." The flesh want "prestige" more than it wants "true."
But we must serve the desires of the Spirit. The Spirit desires a people who stand in the grace of God, holding one another up and each supplying the other with what they have in abundance, while the other supplies what they have been given which the first may lack. Together we carry the cross which Christ commands everyone who desires to follow Him to pick up and carry. But He does not desire us to carry it alone. He fully intends that we share the load with one another - and He has blessed each of us for the common good with what we all need - never what we need alone.
The principle is the same whether we speak of each person, or of each congregation. None of us were intended to go it alone. None of us were designed to struggle alone or prosper alone. God's plan is that we share what we have and we receive back from others what we lack and what we need.
We are a family. The members of this congregation form the body of Christ in this place. Each one of us is a member of this family more genuinely than those who share the same parents, the same bloodline, and the same house. We are the family of God. We are to serve one another in love. When we are the people of God at our best, carrying out the desires of the Spirit, we care for one another.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say "Amen".)
Back to this Series' menu page
Sign our Guestbook | Related Links