The gospel is a message that offends the world and Christians can sometimes be tempted to water down the message. But as Paul begins his letter to the Romans, he says “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” This passage gives a great summary of the gospel while also telling us who it’s for and how it works.
Tag: Bible
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Sermon: Pride and Prejudice – Galatians 5:25-6:5
We are called to love our neighbor and to bear one another’s burdens. In this passage, these commands are contrasted by two things which are destructive to our relationships: envy and pride.
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The hardest commandment: love your neighbor
Throughout the Bible, there are lots of commands to love people. Why?
Obviously because it’s important. But it’s also interesting that the command keeps coming up.
The fact that it has to be told to us over and over again points to the fact that it’s actually hard for us to do. The Bible doesn’t call us to do things are super simple and which come naturally to us.
There’s no command to love chocolate in the Bible.
Loving people is hard. And part of why it’s hard is because we don’t think it’s hard.
It goes back to how we use the language of the things we love. If we will throw around the word “love” for things we don’t actually even love, then we believe in an idea of love that’s pretty easy.
The Greek language actually had four words for four different types of love. I’m not going to get into all of those this morning, but even to know that fact is interesting. That there are different ideas of love, different types of love.
And we probably all understand that but we only have one word for love. We don’t think it’s hard to love people because we think love is easy.
Real love is hard.
Sometimes when we say “love,” what we really mean is tolerance. Let and let live is not love. That’s easy. Anyone can do that.
We do love our families. That’s usually pretty easy, at least for most of them. They’re our family. But we’re called to love everyone.
Now, that’s easy to do in that aggregate. It’s easy to love humanity as a human race and want what’s best for it. And that’s fine. But that’s also pretty easy because that’s so big and broad that we can also still get away without having that really needing to impact how we live.
But what about loving the people who are hard to love.
Jesus and love
We see that from Jesus throughout his ministry.
We see him associating with those his society most despised. We see him visit lepers, people who were viewed as inherently unclean and who were outcasts in their society. We see him show grace to a woman who was a prostitute.
One of his disciples was a tax collector. Tax collectors were hated in their society. For the Jewish people, they were looked at as being traitors to their people. Taking money from Israelites to give to Rome. We see Jesus show grace to those who hated him, personally. Pharisees who plotted against him, guards who beat him, officials who crucified him.
Jesus loved the groups who were hard to love.
Every society has its groups it looks down upon. We see how Jesus showed love. Who are the groups with whom our society struggles?
Criminals. People who struggle with addiction.
People who have hurt us. And that can be hard. There’s incredible damage people can inflict. Forgiveness can be hard. Let alone saying that we love that person.
People who have different political views than us. The division right now in this country is incredible. Some of us can really struggle with not being judgemental on those who have some different political views.
You still have to love them.
How do we love people? It begins not with the people, but with the God we serve. Loving others is, and especially loving those who are hard to love is a reflection of our love for God.
We are to love others because we have a savior who loves us when we were unlovable.
Knowing the love God has for us. Knowing the need others have for grace and the gospel. Knowing that every person we meet is created in the image of God and is worthy of value and dignity.
How do we love people?
By praying for a person, by sharing the good news of Jesus with someone, by showing kindness to someone, by serving someone. By stepping into a person’s life.
Jesus stepped into our world to show love for our world.
Jesus went out and found the people who were hard to love. We actually can have pretty good control of our surroundings to avoid people we don’t want to be around. And I’m not saying that we all need to make a checklist of every difficult group. But let me ask you this: when is the last time you’ve had to regularly interact with someone who challenged you? When was the last time you’ve been around someone where you’ve had to turn to God and ask you for strength to love that person?
For some of us, maybe it’s been recent.
And I’m not even saying that you need to go out today and go out of your way to find the most difficult person you possibly can. But I think we do need to have some humility that love is actually hard. The love that God calls us to is hard. But Jesus didn’t shy away from us, he didn’t walk away from our world, he entered into it. He loved us when we were unlovable.
We can’t do it perfectly. But we have a savior who loves us perfectly.
And the more we understand God’s grace, and the more we grow in our love for God, the more that is meant to impact our love for those around us.
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Jesus is the true vine. John 15:1-2
In John 15:1-2, Jesus compares himself to a vine.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes,
In saying that he is the true vine, he’s pointing to himself as the one who sustains his people. Jesus is the vine. God the Father is the vinedresser or gardener.
Christians are attached to the vine and bear fruit, which refers to good works and to Spiritual growth which is the result of one’s relationship to the vine, to Christ. A vine branch cannot blossom and produce fruit apart from the vine. A vine branch cannot survive off of the vine. Neither can a Christian exist apart from Christ.
Jesus talks of two different types of branches in these verses. There are the branches which do not bear fruit and the branches which do bear fruit.
This is a reference to two different types of people within the church. People who believe in the gospel and those who do not. The fruitless branch is someone who goes to church, they know how to speak the churchy lingo. They might say they’re a Christian. They know a little bit about the Bible. But they don’t really believe in Jesus. They don’t truly believe that he’s their Lord and savior.
And because they don’t really believe in Jesus, there’s no fruit. They never had fruit. It’s not that their production slowed down or that they had a bad week. It’s that they never believed in the first place.
In the Gospel of John, the most obvious example of someone to whom Jesus is referring here is Judas who had been one of the disciples and who had departed from Jesus at the end of chapter 13.
It’s not that Judas was a believer in Jesus who walked away from him. Judas never believed in Jesus in the first place.
every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
God is the vinedresser who prunes the grapevine.
Understanding viticulture
Properly pruning grapevines is essential to maximizing the harvest. Without pruning vines, they can quickly become overgrown and entangled.
Pruning requires cutting off small branches and old branches so that you can make room to support the new year’s grapevines. You wanted the vine to be cut to a certain length. Too long and it’s more susceptible to breaking. Pruning was primarily done twice a year. It would be done in the spring when they planted and again in the fall at harvest to ensure healthy vines.
And that is all important to the metaphor and what the passage is teaching.
Because for the branch the bears good fruit on the vine, God as the master vinedresser, God prunes in order to maximize the harvest.
That’s what a vinedresser does. They have to cut away at the vine for the good of the vine. Imagine that you’re a branch on the vine. You might have all of these other branches and shoots that look good and are about to blossom. And then the vinedresser starts cutting.
It’d seem cruel!
But a good vinedresser knows it’s necessary to get the most fruit out of the vine.
God brings about things in our lives sometimes for our growth that can seem painful, that can seem harsh, that can seem unfair. Yet all of it is meant for ultimate good. And God has to prune us.
God prunes us
It can be different ways in different seasons of life, but God must use the knife to cut into us. This calls to mind a passage like Hebrews 12, where God is a loving father who instills discipline in his children.
Hebrews 12:6: the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”Sometimes that’s how God prunes us. By discipline. Sometimes it’s through the challenges we face.
James 1:2-4: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James says that we are to count it all joy when we meet trials of various kinds because God uses those trials to work greater results in us.
There’s pruning. Sometimes it can be through illnesses or life circumstances. Sometimes God takes things away from us, but for greater purposes. Sometimes it can be through setbacks. But God works through those challenges and situations.
In the process, he produces different results. No two branches are pruned exactly the same. But to be a Christian is to be part of the vine, and to be part of the vine is to produce fruit. And to be part of the vine is definitely to be pruned. God is a perfecting God.
God is faithful to work in us.
God can prune us through relationships. People in our family, people in the church, people from work. He can use people to be transformational in our lives. Kari is getting me a pruning knife in October, Lord willing. He can prune through his word.
2 Timothy 3:16: All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
God can use his word in mighty ways in our lives. And let us remember that when we read our Bibles. That the Word should challenge us. We are sinful and imperfect. God’s Word is true and points us to holiness. It can be challenging to be confronted with the Bible.
You can have weeks or months of reading the Bible and nothing really stands out to you and then you come across a passage that feels like it was written with you in mind. Because God uses his word to cut us. He uses it to prune us.
Hebrews 4:12 says:
the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
How is God pruning you?
Is there an area of your life where you’re not living up? Where you know you’re not honoring God? Is there an area of sin that you’re struggling with? Is there an idol that you’re holding onto? Is there a person you’re withholding forgiveness from?
The answer for that question will vary from person to person. But what does not change is that God is working in his people. You’re not a finished product.
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Poverty, paganism, and the gospel – Galatians 4:1-11
The gospel is meant for both Jews and gentiles. Both need the grace of Jesus and are invited to receive the forgiveness that he offers. In this passage, Paul will warn Christian converts from these two distinct backgrounds from falling back into their old religious systems.
