3. Romans 12:9-21 NLT
Marks of the true Christian
• Really Love
• Hate wrong, hold on to good
• Honour each other
• Work hard
• Keep praying
• Help the needy
• Practice hospitality
• Bless those who persecute
• Be happy and weep
• Live in harmony
• Enjoy company with ordinary
people
• Don’t repay evil with evil
4. Romans 12:9-21 NLT
Marks of the true Christian
• Love
• Morality
• Work ethic
• Spirituality
• Social impact
5. Love
Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake,
spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake. Therefore, human love
seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a
free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain,
to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be
irresistible, to rule.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
6. Morality
Matthew 22:36-40 NLT
“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law
of Moses?” Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God
with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the
first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the
demands of the prophets are based on these two
commandments.”
Sunday 5 June Title: Framing Community
Teaser: What are the marks of Kingdom Community?
Quotes: God’s love compels us to work hard at doing the works of God.
When it comes to love; ... “God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth” - Bonhoeffer
Charles Darwin said “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”
Shakespeare expressed a similar observation “The fool doth think he is wise but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
On one fine morning in Pittsburgh (PA), in the year 1995, a man aged 44, known by the name McArthur Wheeler decided to rob a bank. Since he thought he knew a lot about a peculiar chemical property of lemon juice, he decided to smear the juice on his face before executing his plan to rob the bank.
His logic – As lemon juice can be used to write invisible letters that become visible only when the letter is held close to a heat source, he thought, the same thing would work on his face too. By smearing lemon juice all over his face, he thought that his face would become invisible to the security cameras at the bank. He did not just think that, he was pretty confident about this. He even checked his “trick” by taking a selfie with a polaroid camera. I’m not sure if the film was defective, or the camera wasn’t operated properly, but the camera did give him a blank image. The blank image made him absolutely sure that this trick would work. Or he would not have ever dared to rob a bank with lemon juice on his face.
That day, he went on and robbed not one, but two saving banks in Pittsburgh. A few hours after he had done his job, the police got their hands on the surveillance tape and decided to play it on the 11 O’Clock news. An hour later, an informant identified McArthur in the news video and contacted the police with the man’s name. McArthur got arrested on the same day. Ironically, the same surveillance cameras that he was confident would not be able to capture his face, got him behind the bars. During his interaction with the police, he was incredulous on how his ignorance had failed him.
The Dunning–Kruger-Jiro effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.
Rom 12:9 Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10 Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other. 11 Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. 12 Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. 13 When God's people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. :14 Bless those who persecute you. Don't curse them; pray that God will bless them. :15 Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with each other. Don't be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don't think you know it all! 17 Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. :18 Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. 19 Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, "I will take revenge; I will pay them back," says the LORD. 20 Instead, "If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads.” 21 Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.
The marks of a true Christian are not what you must do to be a true Christian but if you are a true Christina this will be what you do.
Love – Genuine affection, delight in honouring, eager to help and practicing hospitality,
Morality – hate evil, hold tightly to what is good, never repay evil with evil
Work ethic – never be lazy, work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically
Spirituality - Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.
Social Awareness – Help the needy, be happy with the happy, weep with the weeping (empathy), enjoy the company of ordinary people, don’t think you know it all, do all things to live in peace with every one, conquer evil by doing good.
When it comes to love; .... “God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth” - Bonhoeffer
“Spiritual love. . . comes from Jesus Christ; it serves him alone. It knows that it has no direct access to other persons. Christ stands between me and others. I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my emotional desires. All this may instead be hatred and the worst kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. Only Christ in his World tells me what love is. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love for my brothers and sisters really looks like. Therefore, spiritual love is bound to the Word of Jesus Christ alone.” (From Life Together)
Because love is not based on emotion but truth, love requires definition. This definition is the basis of morality. We need in God and not without God to define what love is and what it is not. The fall came about when Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which resulted in God being removed from the moral discussion. Man would now for himself define what is right and wrong. God’s law in the OT was given to reestablish a moral law based on God’s word, the problem was that while the law could tell us what right and wrong is it could never enable us to do it. Jesus came to fulfill that law and to give it its proper defenition, love the lord with all yor heart . . . And the Holy Spirit now enables us to live the word of God.
Love compels us to work hard, it rouses us from our laziness and commits us to do the works of God
In order to know what love us and to be able to sustain it we need a deep but real spirituality. Not only as individuals but together we seek God through rejoicing and lamenting, we pour out our hopes and fears in prayer and we seek His word together so that we can know His will.
As His Spirit speaks to us and the love of God is stirred in us we cannot ignite the plight of the suffering. We understand that God’s kingdom is spiritual in origin but practical in effect. We seek to extend God’s kingdom over others that even when they don’t get the ultimate benefit of restoration with God they can feel his love in the restoration of their physical reality. We show them God’s care through empathy, relationship, reestablishing dignity through our common humanity, we absorb their anger and fear and give them grace and mercy.