Why Christians Ought To Be The Most Loving People In The World

This month for Calvary Baptist Church is what we call Love Works Month. I will be encouraging the members of the church to perform individual acts of kindness and then use that kindness to then share the Gospel. The church will also be involved in several corporate activities including: making lunch for first responders, giving away cookies at our local 5k run, holding a special offering for Hart Life, and giving donuts to fast food workers all across town. I adopted the Love Works concept from several other churches, but as the years have gone by my own personal feelings toward it have grown and even changed. The purpose of Love Works, for us, used to be to give out the Gospel in a unique way; that is certainly still what it is all about, but over the last few years another purpose for Love Works has emerged in my heart and that is this: Christians ought to be loving people. It breaks my heart that when I look at the landscape of our solid independent, Baptist churches I see a few dots of loving, caring people in the midst of a sea of mean-spirited people. I understand that sometimes our stand for doctrine will make us seem mean-spirited, and that is not what I am talking about; instead, I am talking about the rude behavior, the grumpy attitudes, the “get off my lawn” mentality that so many have. But here is the things: Christians ought to be loving people, not just any kind of loving, but the most loving. To not be so is a poor representation of what we are and who we serve. Here are three reasons why Christians ought to be the most loving people in the world:

We Have Christ

There is no greater example of love than Jesus Christ. He lived 33 years on this planet, despised and rejected of man. But even through the mistreatment, the name calling, and the hatred, Jesus still went to that cross and died on it out of a love for me, out of a love for you, and out of a love for them. It is hard for us to fully grasp that when Jesus was on that cross, he was able to look down at the people who were cheering his death and were mocking but was able to truly say that he loved them. Jesus loved every Pharisee that was standing around the cross, he loved every Roman centurion, he loved Herod and Pilate, he loved Judas, and he loves us.

Sometimes we feel like we have just cause for hating someone because of a way they mistreated us, but we would be wise to remember that no one can do as bad to you as you have done to Jesus, yet he still loves you and he died on the cross for you. The love that Jesus displays for me motivates me to love others in a greater way.

We Have The Capability

Because we have the example of Christ, we are capable of loving in a greater way than the rest of the world. The “acts of love” that a lot of people perform today are not completely sincere. A lot of people give time and/or money to feel good about themselves, sometimes they do these things because of a feeling of guilt. In both of those cases, the action is performed, not for the person that is the recipient of the action, but for the person doing the action. Now, I am not saying that every Christian is always completely sincere when they are loving, but I am saying that Christians have the distinct capability of being self-less in our love because of the purpose of our love: sharing Jesus Christ. When we give out 300 bags of cookies in a few weeks, we will not be doing it to feel good about ourselves, we will be doing it to get the Gospel into the hands of 300 people. It’s not about us, it is about those who are still lost and on their way to Hell, and an action of love by a Christian may very well push them over the edge and they might accept Christ.

We Have The Command

If the other two reasons were not a reality, this one stands by itself. Countless times in the Bible, we are shown that we ought to be kind, loving people:

Ephesians 4:32, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

Galatians 5:22, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love…”

John 13:34,35, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

Romans 12:10, “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another”

Do I need any more than that? Because there are more! There is no legitimate excuse for a Christian to be a hateful person, to be so is to either be ignorant of what the Bible says or to resist what the Bible says. Let’s be loving people, because Christ commands us to be.

When we display the love of Christ, that is when we will make a difference in this world, Jude 22, “And of some have compassion, making a difference”. It does not say that our stand against wickedness will make a difference, or that our standards will make a difference, both are very important, but the passage tells us that compassion is what will  make a difference in our world. Could it be that Christians today are not seeing the world turn upside down for Jesus because they do not have compassion that makes a difference? Give me your thoughts in the comments!

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What Is Church?

I believe that when we all get to Heaven, there will be many people shocked and bewildered that Jesus will not like the way that they did church while on earth. I see the church of the first century and compare it to the practices of a lot of churches today and amazed how far off the mark many have gone. I am not claiming that the first century church was perfect, just a casual study of Acts and several of the epistles proves for a fact that they were far from perfect. But there were quite a few things that they did get right. Today I want to point out three operations that the Bible says that the church ought to be involved in:

The Great Commission

Mark 16:15, “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

The church exists to be a vehicle of the furtherance of the Gospel. This is the primary function of the church. I have been asked before, “Should the church focus on evangelism or should it focus on discipleship?” The answer is… “Yes.” I understand, some churches emphasize one over the other. Some churches focus on winning souls but they never do anything to help baby Christians to grow, whereas some churches get so wrapped up in searching out the depths of Scripture that they forget to look outward to a lost and dying world. A balanced church will reach out to a sinful world, and when those people get saved that church will bring them in, teach them the Word of God (discipleship) and then send them out to do the work of the ministry and reach more people for Jesus.

We are guilty of treating the church as more of a book club and less like an army. The point is to recruit more soldiers and then train them to go out and recruit more soldiers. The church does not continue without the Great Commission. By the way, I believe that is one of the reasons why we are seeing a decline in church attendance and in Christianity in our nation today, for more than a generation the church has been fixated on making the sinful world conform to its standards by using the government as its tool at the expense of spreading the Gospel, which will transform the sinful world, with the Bible as our tool. Satan does everything he can to stop us from spreading the truth of the Gospel, because it is the Gospel that has the power to save souls and change lives. Why has the church become satisfied with simple conformity to our way of life rather than yearning for the transformative work of the Gospel? Complacency. Laziness. Pride. The church is about spreading the Gospel.

Worship

Next time you go to a church service, I want you to intentionally think about how each aspect of the service is an act of worship. I look at Calvary Baptist Church’s particular schedule of events for our worship services and notice that each action done is for the purpose of worship (with the exception of Announcement time). The first thing that comes to mind is the singing of songs, we do not do that as a time filler so that we do not have to listen to the pastor preach an hour long sermon, we do it as an act of worship. Our tithes and offerings are an act of worship. It is saying, “Lord, you have been so good to me, I want to give you something in return.” Truly a time of worship. The preaching of God’s Word is worship, as it is approached in a desire to learn more about our God and his Word. Even the altar call at the end of the sermon is an act of worship, as it is kneeling down before God and saying, “Lord, I am convicted of my sin, please help me to please you with my life!”

The problem is, too often we approach Sunday morning as more of a routine than actual worship. “I sing because that is what we do every week”, “I give because I have to”, “Pastor preaches because he has to do something around here,” It all becomes a routine rather than an act of true worship. Let me challenge you, when you walk into your church on Sunday, have a worshipful attitude. Participate in the service as if God is standing in front of you and you are worshiping Him (because He is and you are!)

Growth in the Word

Acts 17:11, “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”

I was once told that doctrine and theology were for a pastor to know and not the laypeople. It is a shame that a lot of people feel this way. There are plenty of Christians who have been saved for decades but still only have a surface concept of their faith. As the average Christian how to prove from the Bible that Jesus is God and they may break out in hives out of fear. How many Christians know how to go through the Gospel and lead someone to Christ? Too few! How many Christians actually understand their salvation and all the beauty of it? Again, too few. We go to church so that we can grow in the Word of God. By the way, this does not contradict my first point at all. True growth in the Word of God will motivate me and equip me to be a better soul winner. A Christian who knows what the Bible says about eternal security can show that to another Christian who is wavering. A Christian that can show the deity of Christ in the Gospels is better equipped to show that Jesus indeed died on the cross and rose again for our sins. A Christian that dives deeper into learning everything that happened to them at the moment of their salvation will be amazed and more thankful and, in turn, motivated to reach more people with the Gospel. The Bible is an incredible book (quite the understatement!) we need to dig deep into it, and when we do, we will be motivated to serve more. That is why I suggest being in church every time the doors are open. The way I preach (and a lot of pastors do too), is on Sunday morning I preach in a series (right now in the ministry of Christ) Sunday night I typically do stand alone sermons as God leads me to preach, and then on Wednesday night we do a verse by verse study of a book of the Bible (right now we are in Revelations). That gives us a well-rounded schedule of Bible study not just in where in the Bible we are studying but even in how we are studying it. But the point is all the same- Growth.

I believe that in many churches today we have lost sight of these three things. We have become overly concerned with making the church our own little family group that gets together every week. We make it into a social club. We use the funds of the church to cater to the whims of our own rather than reaching a dying world with the Gospel. We have meals and potlucks just for the sake of having them, rather than using them to bring people in from the fields of sin. Do not forget Jesus’ purpose for the church, and do not forget to follow it. If we are to be Jesus’ church, we are to follow his rules. 

Check out my newest book- Level Up