The task of coaching has been described as getting someone to do what they don’t want to do so they can be what they want to be. A good coach knows that if his athletes are going to achieve their dreams, he will have to push them harder than they would naturally push themselves.
In some ways, a pastor is like a spiritual coach. Every week, I stand at this pulpit and encourage you to be what God wants you to be. But God’s desires for us go against the natural desires that flow out our sinful natures. So if we are going to obey God, we have to push beyond our natural desires.
This is very obvious when we think about the subject of forgiveness. The whole idea cuts against the grain of our sinful natures. We don’t want to forgive people after they have hurt us, nor do we want to ask for forgiveness because we don’t like to admit that we’re wrong. So as we talk about this subject, my desire as a spiritual coach is to push all of us past our natural desires.
A good coach also knows that he must make the fundamentals the main focus for his athletes. It is said that Vince Lombardi used to open training camp with the Green Bay Packers every year by huddling his team around a football and saying, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Then, during camp, they would talk about the fundamentals of football over and over and over.
Today we are going to start talking about arriving at forgiveness. The things we’re about to discuss may seem rather basic, but as is true in any sport, we will fail to meet our goals if we forget about the fundamentals. So today we’ll answer this question:
How should I ask for forgiveness?
First let’s turn to Matthew 5:21–24 to read a command from Jesus on this matter [READ Matt. 5:21–24]. According to Jesus, it is more important to make peace with someone that you have sinned against than it is to offer acts of worship to God. Obviously, its important to offer acts of worship to God, but it is even more important to ask a person to forgive you after you have sinned against them.
But how should we do that? What should we plan to say in a conversation when we need to ask someone for forgiveness? I believe the biblical concepts can be expressed in just a few basic steps.
1. Repent of your sin
Luke 17:4 uses the phrase “I repent” as the basic statement from a person who is asking for forgiveness, so this concept should make up part of our request for forgiveness. The Greek word for repentance is metanoeō, which consists of the prefix meta-, which means “after,” and the verb noeō, which means “to think or consider.” So the idea of repentance is that of reconsidering an action after you have done it and coming to a different conclusion about it.
When we sin against other people, we were either not thinking about our actions, or we were thinking that a sinful behavior was in fact okay. But when we repent, we change our mind about the way we acted. We come to believe that our actions were in fact sinful and thus wrong.
Repentance will actually take place in our hearts before we ask someone for forgiveness, but its very helpful to express our change of mind when we’re talking to the person that we have wronged. This will help them understand that we’re not trying to make a superficial apology, but instead we are talking to them because we have truly come to realize that we sinned against them.
2. Confess your sin
We talked about the word “confess” a couple of weeks ago, but it will be helpful to review it here. The Greek word for confess is homologeō, which consists of the prefix homo-, which means “the same,” and the verb logeō, which means “to say or speak.” Thus, the idea of confession is saying the same thing about your sin that the other person says about it, or agreeing with them about the sinfulness of your actions. Confession is really the expression of your repentance, because by repenting you have changed your mind about your actions and you have come into agreement with the other person who feels that you have sinned.
So when you’re talking to the person that you have wronged, you should call your sin what it is, just as God and the other person have already. If you’re asking another Christian to forgive you, it can be helpful to point out a specific command from the Bible that you have broken. That could also be beneficial if you’re asking an unbeliever for forgiveness. It may not be very meaningful for them, but it could be a good testimony to them to show them that you’re willing to acknowledge that you’re not perfect and you don’t always obey God as you desire to.
3. Offer to make restitution
“Restitution” is just a fancy word that means making things right. It’s the idea of restoring things to the way they used to be. So if your sin caused property damage, then making restitution would mean that you pay for the cost of the repairs. Or if your sin damaged the other person’s reputation, making restitution would mean that you do what you can to restore their good name.
Now at first, the idea of making restitution may not seem to fit with forgiveness. After all, the Bible compares forgiveness to the idea of forgiving a debt, and if a debt is forgiven that means you don’t have to repay it. But if you think about, even when you are forgiven of a debt, the debt is still paid—its simply paid by the person who forgave the debt; or in other words, they just absorb the loss of the debt that they forgave you.
In reality, ALL forgiveness is based on restitution—even the forgiveness that we enjoy from God. We don’t have to pay the debt of our sins because Jesus paid it for us. He made restitution, and we receive the forgiveness. But note this—God didn’t leave our sin debt unsettled. He simply chose to pay it Himself so that we wouldn’t have to, but nevertheless, restitution was made.
Jesus even praised the idea of restitution as an expression of a genuine change of heart. You may remember the story of His encounter with Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Why don’t you turn there with me? Now Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he, so when Jesus was traveling through his town and Zacchaeus couldn’t see over the crowds, he climbed up in a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. Jesus saw him in the tree and told him to come down because He planned to stay at his house. Now during the course of that visit, Zacchaeus became a believer in Jesus, and he demonstrated that by his statement in Luke 19:8–9 [READ Luke 19:8–9]. Now Jesus was saying that it was obvious Zacchaeus had been saved because his offer to make restitution revealed his change of heart.
So when we ask for someone’s forgiveness, we should offer to make restitution. This offer is really just an act of love toward the person that we have harmed through our sin. It is an expression of our repentance—an expression of the change of mind that we have had. Previously, we had thought about our behavior in a way that lead to the other person’s harm, but now, we are thinking about our behavior in a way that leads us to desire their good.
Now the other person may say that restitution is unnecessary, and that’s fine. That’s up to them; they can choose to absorb the cost of your sin if they want. But on your part, you should offer to make restitution however you can, and tell the other person how you plan to do it. Offering to make things right will normally melt even the coldest heart, and it will unlock the door to the forgiveness that you are seeking.
4. Ask for forgiveness
After you have stated your repentance and confession and you have offered to make restitution, all that’s left is to ask the other person to forgive you. When you make that request, you are asking the other person to make the four promises of forgiveness that we discussed last week:
• I will not dwell on this incident
• I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you
• I will not talk to others about this incident
• I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our personal relationship.
Now of course, the person that you are talking to may not understand forgiveness in quite the same way that we are learning to understand it in this series, so it might be helpful to subtly mention these promises—not by sitting the other person down and saying, “Okay here’s what I expect from you,” but simply by mentioning these ideas when you ask for forgiveness. After you have offered to make restitution, you could simply say, “I hope my sin won’t dominate the way you think about me, and I hope it won’t hinder our relationship from now on. Will you forgive me?” I didn’t explicitly mention all four of the promises, but a simple statement like that will give the other person an idea of what you’re hoping for when they say, “I forgive you.”
Now, we’ve gone through these four steps, but how would this actually sound in a real conversation? Let’s think about two scenarios, and I’ll describe how it might actually sound to ask for forgiveness with these biblical concepts in mind.
First, let’s think about a scenario in which I have damaged someone’s property. Let’s say that I’m backing out of my driveway one day, and I didn’t notice my neighbor’s car parked in the street. I accidentally back into her car, but instead of taking responsibility for it, I drive away and hope that no one saw me. Now, my carelessness and dishonesty have left her with a damaged car and a repair bill.
But now let’s say that just a day or so later, my conscience convicts me and I go to my neighbor’s house to ask for her forgiveness. Based on these biblical concepts, my confession might sound like this: “Ma’am, I’m sure you’ve noticed that someone damaged your car the other day, and I wanted to tell you that it was me. I accidentally backed into it, and instead of owning up to it, I drove off and didn’t tell you. I realize now how wrong it was to do that and how much that must have upset you. That’s not how God wants me to act, and that’s no way for me to treat my neighbor. I’d like to pay for the damage that I caused, and I just hope this won’t change the way you think about me or hurt our relationship in the future. Will you forgive me?”
Now of course, that’s just an example, and in a real conversation you may not be able to say all that at once because the other person may jump in and speak. But by the time you’ve finished the conversation, you want to make sure that you’ve expressed those four ideas.
Now let’s think about a scenario in which I have damaged someone’s reputation. Let’s say that out of jealousy toward someone, a spread a lie about them. That person then finds out that a lie has been told about them, but they don’t know who started it. Finally, my conscience convicts me, so I approach that person and say something like this: “John, I know you’ve heard some gossip that’s been going around about you, and I want to confess that I started it. I was jealous of you, and so I made up this lie about you and started to spread it. I realize how wrong it was for me to do that, and my actions must have caused you a lot of pain. You and I both know that God commands us to love each other, but I disobeyed Him and I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry for that. I want you to know that I plan to talk to every person that I know of who has heard my lie, and I plan to tell them that I started this gossip and that its not true. I hope my actions won’t define the way you think about me, and I hope that my sins won’t hurt our relationship in the future. Will you forgive me for what I’ve done?”
A confession like that sounds sincere, doesn’t it? And if you were the one whose car had been damaged, or the one who was the victim of gossip, wouldn’t a confession like that make it just a bit easier for you to say “I forgive you” and really mean it? You see, when we base our request for forgiveness on a biblical model, it paves the way for us to truly put sins behind us and restore our relationships. We can help the other person start to trust us again by revealing the sincerity of our motives and intentions. At some point, we will all need to ask someone to forgive us of a sin, so let’s ask God to help us do it according to the pattern of His Word.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Editing Our Mental Dictionary: Defining Forgiveness
Communication can be a very frustrating process. It seems like it should be easy to express ideas from my brain and make them perfectly understandable to your brain. After all, we all speak the same language; we use the same words and basically the same grammar. Why should communication be so hard?
One major problem that we face in communication is that we rarely stop to clarify or define the words that we use, and we don’t stop to think that the person we’re talking to may have a slightly different understanding of that word than we do. I’ll give you an example that you can appreciate. For most of my life, I have used the word “cow” to refer to any animal that eats grass and moos. But since I have moved to Montezuma, I have discovered that all cows are not cows. Some cows are cows, but some cows are actually heifers, and some cows are bulls who later become steers. This was all very confusing until I realized that I had been using the word “cow” in a very general way, whereas people who work with cattle use the word “cow” in a more specific way and with a slightly different definition.
This little example just shows us that if we’re going to communicate well, we have to give a little thought to the definition behind the words that we use. So today, as we continue to study the subject of forgiving each other, we’re going to spend our time defining forgiveness. We’ll deal with this question:
What does it mean to forgive someone?
The Bible points us to a very specific example to show us what it means for us to forgive each other. In Ephesians 4:32, the Apostle Paul writes, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” That last phrase gives us both the motivation and the method for forgiving each other. We should be motivated to forgive each other because God has forgiven us, and we should use the method or the example of how God has forgiven us as our example for forgiving each other.
So to forgive someone means that we respond to their sin in the same way that God has responded to our sin. Just how has God responded to our sin? That’s what we will spend the rest of our time looking at this morning. In light of what Jesus did to pay for our sins through His death and resurrection, God has made specific promises to us regarding our sins. These promises show us how we should respond to the sins that other people commit against us.
I’m going to use an outline this morning from a book called The Peacemaker, by an author named Ken Sande. His book has an excellent discussion of God’s promises and how they teach us to forgive others. He boiled this subject down to four basic promises, so that’s how we will outline our discussion this morning.
The Four Basic Promises of Forgiveness
I should note before we continue that these four promises are promises that we make AFTER someone has asked for our forgiveness. If someone has sinned against you but has not yet asked for forgiveness, there are other steps that we should take, and we will talk about that in the coming weeks. But after someone asks for our forgiveness, these four promises summarize the way that we should respond to them.
1. “I will not dwell on this incident.”
When God forgives us, He promises that He will not allow our sin to dominate or define the way He thinks about us. This promise is expressed beautifully in Jeremiah 31. Toward the end of that chapter, the Lord speaks of a day when the people of Israel will repent of their sins and turn to God, and he says at the end of v. 33 [READ Jer. 31:33c–34]. The Lord makes the same promise in Isaiah 43:35 when He says, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” We can also see this promise come through in the definition of love that is given in 1 Corinthians 13. 1 John 4:8 says that God is love, and 1 Cor. 13:5 literally says in Greek that love “does not count up wrongdoing.” God does obsess over our sins to keep a running total of our failures.
Now notice that the statements we read from God in the Old Testament were promises, which means that they expressed a deliberate choice that God was making. Since God knows everything, He can’t actually forget that something happened, but rather He makes a deliberate choice not to let our sins define the way that He thinks about us. This means that when we forgive someone else, we too must make a deliberate choice not to let that person’s sins stand out in our mind when we think about them.
Think of it like putting a mental name tag on someone. Let’s say that I lie to Carmen about something, but later I repent of that sin, confess it to her, and she forgives me. Now since she has forgiven me, that means that her mental name tag for me should not read “The Liar.” If it does, then she is dwelling on my sin; she is allowing my sin to define the way that she thinks about me. Instead, her mental name tag for me should read “My Husband.” That doesn’t change the fact that I did lie to her, but she is choosing not to think about me in those terms, and that’s going to change the way that she acts toward me.
So this is a promise that we need to make when we forgive others because its precisely the promise that God makes to us. When God thinks about you, He doesn’t think, “There’s the Adulterer.” He thinks, “There’s my son; there’s my daughter; there’s the one that my Son died for.” Making the deliberate choice to extend this promise to someone else will change the way that you act toward them down the road and it will pave the way for the relationship to be repaired.
2. “I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you.”
Years ago, Garth Brooks recorded a song called “We Bury the Hatchet” in which he talks about the way that he and his wife forgave each other. The last line of the chorus was, “We bury the hatchet, but leave the handle sticking out.” His point was that they would go through the motions of forgiving each other, but when another fight came up, they would take hold of each other’s past sins and use them like weapons against each other.
That is a far cry from the way that God forgives us. According to the Bible, after God forgives us, our sins are long gone. Psalm 103:12 says, “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Micah 7:19 says, “He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
This promise was also portrayed powerfully during Old Testament times on the yearly holiday called the Day of Atonement. On that day, the priests offered special sacrifices to cover all of the unconfessed sins of the people. The high priest would take a goat, known as the scapegoat, and he would put both of his hands on its head and confess all of the sins of the nation over it. This act symbolically placed the sins of the nation on the goat. Then, the goat would be taken and sent away from the people out into the wilderness, which symbolized that their sins had been taken away from them.
So God doesn’t treat our sins like an arsenal of weapons to use against us. He promises that our sins are long gone—He doesn’t keep them close at hand to use against us. Thus, we must make the same promise to others when we forgive them. Sometimes we don’t want to make this promise to others because we gain a sense of power over people when they ask for our forgiveness. They clearly want to make things right, but we gain some leverage over them by holding on to their sin.
But if we are going to forgive as God forgives, we must make this commitment and say, “I will not use this to manipulate you, I will not use this to blackmail you, and I will not bring this up down the road to harm you.”
3. “I will not talk to others about this incident.”
This third promise really flows out of the second one—it simply highlights a very common way that we use the sins of others against them. When other people sin against us, we face strong temptations to slander them to other people, to gossip about them, or to bring up their sins in an effort to get sympathy from other people. These sins of speech are very tempting because we don’t feel like we’re directly attacking the person who sinned against us. After all, we’ve all heard that what someone doesn’t know won’t hurt them, right?
But in reality, we can hurt someone by hurting their reputation with other people. We can hurt their relationships with others by spreading the news about what they did to us, and that is an attack that is just as real as anything that we might say to a person’s face.
Now this promise comes only indirectly from God’s example of forgiveness. God, of course, has no equals and no true peers, and so He does not talk to others about our sins. But His Word clearly tells us not to engage in sins like gossip and slander. Ephesians 4:31 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” Psalm 15:3 says that the one who can be close to God is the one “who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend.”
One exception to this idea of not speaking to others would be if you and the person who sinned against you are seeking help to overcome an ongoing pattern of sin. If you talk to a counselor about the matter, then you’re not trying to hurt the person by discussing their sin, you are truly trying to help them. But we must be very careful in other situations to make sure that we avoid gossip and slander.
4. “I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our personal relationship.”
Our culture has a very poor substitute for forgiveness in which we say the words “I forgive you” to another person, but then we end our relationship with them and have nothing more to do with them. Someone once said that this behavior is a twist on phrase “forgive and forget”—I “forgive” you, and then I forget all about you and kick you out of my life.
Sometimes we justify this kind of behavior by saying, “It’s really for the best because at least we’re not fighting anymore.” In reality, you’re still not at peace with that person—your relationship has simply shifted into a cold war. Our country may not have nuked Russia during the Cold War, but we certainly weren’t at peace with them!
This kind of behavior cannot be called “forgiveness” because it doesn’t line up with God’s example. God’s example is to reconcile with those who have sinned against Him. He literally took great pains upon Himself to make a way for us to have friendly relations with Him again. And when we as God’s children sin against Him, He doesn’t end His relationship with us; He doesn’t kick us out of His family!
Turn with me to Jeremiah 31:37. In this chapter, God makes some powerful promises to the people of Israel. He states that He will forgive them of their sins and put His law in their hearts, and just so that they know He’s serious, He makes this promise in v. 37 [READ Jer. 31:37]. God acknowledges that they’ve sinned against Him, but He promises that He will never cast them away from Him.
Then turn to 1 John 2:1, and be prepared to be blown away by God’s grace [READ 1 John 2:1]. When we sin against God, Jesus actually takes up our case like a defense attorney. And its not that God the Father actually becomes hostile to us, because Romans 8 says that He has already decided that our case is closed. We’ve been forgiven, we’re His children, and that’s it!
So since God does not end His relationship with His children after we sin against Him, we should follow His example and maintain our relationships with those who ask for our forgiveness. Now it may take some time for that relationship to be all that it used to be, but the promise should be there from day one when we forgive someone.
So friends, what we should see above all else from today is that forgiveness is a decision. It is a promise, a commitment that you make to the person who has asked for your forgiveness. And like any commitment, this commitment will be challenged by temptations. When you decide to go on a diet, your commitment will be challenged when you drive past Dairy Queen in Dodge City, but that doesn’t mean you never made the original commitment—it simply means that you’re commitment is being challenged by temptation.
I want you to keep that idea in mind, because its very easy to heap guilt on ourselves and feel like we haven’t truly forgiven someone when our promises to them are challenged down the road by temptations. When we’re tempted to dwell on their sin, or we’re tempted to feel resentful, we can feel defeated and tell ourselves that we’ve never truly forgiven that other person, which will then make us feel like we’ve been disobedient to God. But just remember that forgiveness is a commitment, and if you’re commitment is challenged, it doesn’t mean you never made the commitment—it simply means that we need to look to God, who has forgiven us, and ask Him for the strength to keep our promises.
One major problem that we face in communication is that we rarely stop to clarify or define the words that we use, and we don’t stop to think that the person we’re talking to may have a slightly different understanding of that word than we do. I’ll give you an example that you can appreciate. For most of my life, I have used the word “cow” to refer to any animal that eats grass and moos. But since I have moved to Montezuma, I have discovered that all cows are not cows. Some cows are cows, but some cows are actually heifers, and some cows are bulls who later become steers. This was all very confusing until I realized that I had been using the word “cow” in a very general way, whereas people who work with cattle use the word “cow” in a more specific way and with a slightly different definition.
This little example just shows us that if we’re going to communicate well, we have to give a little thought to the definition behind the words that we use. So today, as we continue to study the subject of forgiving each other, we’re going to spend our time defining forgiveness. We’ll deal with this question:
What does it mean to forgive someone?
The Bible points us to a very specific example to show us what it means for us to forgive each other. In Ephesians 4:32, the Apostle Paul writes, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” That last phrase gives us both the motivation and the method for forgiving each other. We should be motivated to forgive each other because God has forgiven us, and we should use the method or the example of how God has forgiven us as our example for forgiving each other.
So to forgive someone means that we respond to their sin in the same way that God has responded to our sin. Just how has God responded to our sin? That’s what we will spend the rest of our time looking at this morning. In light of what Jesus did to pay for our sins through His death and resurrection, God has made specific promises to us regarding our sins. These promises show us how we should respond to the sins that other people commit against us.
I’m going to use an outline this morning from a book called The Peacemaker, by an author named Ken Sande. His book has an excellent discussion of God’s promises and how they teach us to forgive others. He boiled this subject down to four basic promises, so that’s how we will outline our discussion this morning.
The Four Basic Promises of Forgiveness
I should note before we continue that these four promises are promises that we make AFTER someone has asked for our forgiveness. If someone has sinned against you but has not yet asked for forgiveness, there are other steps that we should take, and we will talk about that in the coming weeks. But after someone asks for our forgiveness, these four promises summarize the way that we should respond to them.
1. “I will not dwell on this incident.”
When God forgives us, He promises that He will not allow our sin to dominate or define the way He thinks about us. This promise is expressed beautifully in Jeremiah 31. Toward the end of that chapter, the Lord speaks of a day when the people of Israel will repent of their sins and turn to God, and he says at the end of v. 33 [READ Jer. 31:33c–34]. The Lord makes the same promise in Isaiah 43:35 when He says, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” We can also see this promise come through in the definition of love that is given in 1 Corinthians 13. 1 John 4:8 says that God is love, and 1 Cor. 13:5 literally says in Greek that love “does not count up wrongdoing.” God does obsess over our sins to keep a running total of our failures.
Now notice that the statements we read from God in the Old Testament were promises, which means that they expressed a deliberate choice that God was making. Since God knows everything, He can’t actually forget that something happened, but rather He makes a deliberate choice not to let our sins define the way that He thinks about us. This means that when we forgive someone else, we too must make a deliberate choice not to let that person’s sins stand out in our mind when we think about them.
Think of it like putting a mental name tag on someone. Let’s say that I lie to Carmen about something, but later I repent of that sin, confess it to her, and she forgives me. Now since she has forgiven me, that means that her mental name tag for me should not read “The Liar.” If it does, then she is dwelling on my sin; she is allowing my sin to define the way that she thinks about me. Instead, her mental name tag for me should read “My Husband.” That doesn’t change the fact that I did lie to her, but she is choosing not to think about me in those terms, and that’s going to change the way that she acts toward me.
So this is a promise that we need to make when we forgive others because its precisely the promise that God makes to us. When God thinks about you, He doesn’t think, “There’s the Adulterer.” He thinks, “There’s my son; there’s my daughter; there’s the one that my Son died for.” Making the deliberate choice to extend this promise to someone else will change the way that you act toward them down the road and it will pave the way for the relationship to be repaired.
2. “I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you.”
Years ago, Garth Brooks recorded a song called “We Bury the Hatchet” in which he talks about the way that he and his wife forgave each other. The last line of the chorus was, “We bury the hatchet, but leave the handle sticking out.” His point was that they would go through the motions of forgiving each other, but when another fight came up, they would take hold of each other’s past sins and use them like weapons against each other.
That is a far cry from the way that God forgives us. According to the Bible, after God forgives us, our sins are long gone. Psalm 103:12 says, “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Micah 7:19 says, “He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
This promise was also portrayed powerfully during Old Testament times on the yearly holiday called the Day of Atonement. On that day, the priests offered special sacrifices to cover all of the unconfessed sins of the people. The high priest would take a goat, known as the scapegoat, and he would put both of his hands on its head and confess all of the sins of the nation over it. This act symbolically placed the sins of the nation on the goat. Then, the goat would be taken and sent away from the people out into the wilderness, which symbolized that their sins had been taken away from them.
So God doesn’t treat our sins like an arsenal of weapons to use against us. He promises that our sins are long gone—He doesn’t keep them close at hand to use against us. Thus, we must make the same promise to others when we forgive them. Sometimes we don’t want to make this promise to others because we gain a sense of power over people when they ask for our forgiveness. They clearly want to make things right, but we gain some leverage over them by holding on to their sin.
But if we are going to forgive as God forgives, we must make this commitment and say, “I will not use this to manipulate you, I will not use this to blackmail you, and I will not bring this up down the road to harm you.”
3. “I will not talk to others about this incident.”
This third promise really flows out of the second one—it simply highlights a very common way that we use the sins of others against them. When other people sin against us, we face strong temptations to slander them to other people, to gossip about them, or to bring up their sins in an effort to get sympathy from other people. These sins of speech are very tempting because we don’t feel like we’re directly attacking the person who sinned against us. After all, we’ve all heard that what someone doesn’t know won’t hurt them, right?
But in reality, we can hurt someone by hurting their reputation with other people. We can hurt their relationships with others by spreading the news about what they did to us, and that is an attack that is just as real as anything that we might say to a person’s face.
Now this promise comes only indirectly from God’s example of forgiveness. God, of course, has no equals and no true peers, and so He does not talk to others about our sins. But His Word clearly tells us not to engage in sins like gossip and slander. Ephesians 4:31 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” Psalm 15:3 says that the one who can be close to God is the one “who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend.”
One exception to this idea of not speaking to others would be if you and the person who sinned against you are seeking help to overcome an ongoing pattern of sin. If you talk to a counselor about the matter, then you’re not trying to hurt the person by discussing their sin, you are truly trying to help them. But we must be very careful in other situations to make sure that we avoid gossip and slander.
4. “I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our personal relationship.”
Our culture has a very poor substitute for forgiveness in which we say the words “I forgive you” to another person, but then we end our relationship with them and have nothing more to do with them. Someone once said that this behavior is a twist on phrase “forgive and forget”—I “forgive” you, and then I forget all about you and kick you out of my life.
Sometimes we justify this kind of behavior by saying, “It’s really for the best because at least we’re not fighting anymore.” In reality, you’re still not at peace with that person—your relationship has simply shifted into a cold war. Our country may not have nuked Russia during the Cold War, but we certainly weren’t at peace with them!
This kind of behavior cannot be called “forgiveness” because it doesn’t line up with God’s example. God’s example is to reconcile with those who have sinned against Him. He literally took great pains upon Himself to make a way for us to have friendly relations with Him again. And when we as God’s children sin against Him, He doesn’t end His relationship with us; He doesn’t kick us out of His family!
Turn with me to Jeremiah 31:37. In this chapter, God makes some powerful promises to the people of Israel. He states that He will forgive them of their sins and put His law in their hearts, and just so that they know He’s serious, He makes this promise in v. 37 [READ Jer. 31:37]. God acknowledges that they’ve sinned against Him, but He promises that He will never cast them away from Him.
Then turn to 1 John 2:1, and be prepared to be blown away by God’s grace [READ 1 John 2:1]. When we sin against God, Jesus actually takes up our case like a defense attorney. And its not that God the Father actually becomes hostile to us, because Romans 8 says that He has already decided that our case is closed. We’ve been forgiven, we’re His children, and that’s it!
So since God does not end His relationship with His children after we sin against Him, we should follow His example and maintain our relationships with those who ask for our forgiveness. Now it may take some time for that relationship to be all that it used to be, but the promise should be there from day one when we forgive someone.
So friends, what we should see above all else from today is that forgiveness is a decision. It is a promise, a commitment that you make to the person who has asked for your forgiveness. And like any commitment, this commitment will be challenged by temptations. When you decide to go on a diet, your commitment will be challenged when you drive past Dairy Queen in Dodge City, but that doesn’t mean you never made the original commitment—it simply means that you’re commitment is being challenged by temptation.
I want you to keep that idea in mind, because its very easy to heap guilt on ourselves and feel like we haven’t truly forgiven someone when our promises to them are challenged down the road by temptations. When we’re tempted to dwell on their sin, or we’re tempted to feel resentful, we can feel defeated and tell ourselves that we’ve never truly forgiven that other person, which will then make us feel like we’ve been disobedient to God. But just remember that forgiveness is a commitment, and if you’re commitment is challenged, it doesn’t mean you never made the commitment—it simply means that we need to look to God, who has forgiven us, and ask Him for the strength to keep our promises.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Hammering Out the Dents of Life: The Importance of Forgiveness
The bumper car ride has always been a favorite at fairs and amusement parks. There we get to do things that we can only dream about on the open road—we get to go as fast as we can, and we get to drive aggressively. If someone gets in our way, we can just run into them! Of course, the whole rink quickly descends into chaos, and we spend most of the time just knocking each other silly.
Sometimes our relationships in life can be a bit like those bumper cars. As we bounce around through life, we inevitably run into each other—we get in fights with each other, we cheat each other, we lie to each other or speak hurtful words to each other. In life, this is no game. Our hearts don’t have protective bumpers around them, and so when we sin against each other, we wound each other and hurt each other, so that our hearts start to feel less like a bumper car and more like something that’s in the junkyard!
This is life in a fallen world; we commit sins against others, and they commit sins against us. These sins cut holes in our hearts and leave our relationships in tatters. Fortunately, God has laid out a path for our relationships to be repaired and the holes in our hearts to be healed. That path is called “forgiveness,” and it is the path that we should take whenever a sin is committed in one of our relationships. But it is obvious from the broken relationships that we see all around us that we rarely take this path. Perhaps we take a worldly path that looks very similar to forgiveness, but it leads to a different destination; or perhaps we see God’s path laid out for us very clearly, and we simply refuse to set foot on it.
It has been said that forgiveness is the oil that reduces friction and keeps the engine of our relationships running. And so, because forgiveness is such an important activity in our lives, we’re going to spend the next few weeks looking at what the Bible says about forgiving each other. We’ll define forgiveness, and we’ll talk about how to arrive at forgiveness from both sides of a sin—whether you have committed the sin, or whether you have been sinned against. We will also cut through some false ideas about forgiveness that often keep us from walking on God’s path to forgiveness. But this morning we’re going to start our study by answering this simple question:
Why is it so important for us to forgive each other?
There are at least four answers to this question in the Bible. It may be possible to name more, but this morning we’ll focus on four.
I. Forgiving others is the proper response to the forgiveness we have received from God—Matthew 18:21–35
Let’s read Matt. 18:21–35, and I’ll make a few comments along the way. Just before this, Jesus had been telling His disciples what to do when a Christian brother or sister sins against them. So in v. 21, Peter says [READ v. 21]. Now in the Jewish teaching of Peter’s day, the rabbis taught that you were obligated to forgive someone three times, and after that you didn’t have to forgive them anymore. It was like four strikes and you’re out, because on the fourth time you were no longer obligated to forgive. So Peter probably thought he was being very generous in suggesting seven times—he doubled the number and added one more for good measure!
But notice what Jesus said to him [READ v. 22]. That’s obviously a lot further than even Generous Peter was willing to go, but of course Jesus’ real point was that we shouldn’t put a limit on the number of times that we will forgive someone. And why is that? Because of how generously God has forgiven us, and that’s the point of the parable that starts in v. 23 [READ v. 23–24]
Now ten thousand talents is a ridiculous amount of money. ONE talent was the amount that an average laborer would earn in twenty years of work, so this man owed a debt that was worth 200,000 years of pay. If you multiply that by our year of 365 days, that’s 73 million days worth of pay!! Obviously, there would be no way that the man could pay off a debt like that, so let’s see what happens next [READ vv. 25–28].
A denarius was the amount that an average laborer would earn for one day of work, so the second servant owed the first servant an amount that was equal to 100 days worth of pay. That’s not an insignificant amount, but when compared to the debt that the first servant had just been released from, its like a drop of rain compared to the ocean! Let’s finish the parable [READ vv. 29–35].
Jesus’ point in this parable is very clear: we are like the first servant. We have been forgiven by God of an unimaginable debt of sin, so how could we refuse to forgive another person for the microscopic debt of sin that they have committed against us? Our gratitude to God should compel us to forgive each other time and time and time again, and if we refuse then we just show that we don’t comprehend how abundantly we have been forgiven by God.
Verse 35 of this parable alludes to the second answer to today’s question.
II. Refusing to forgive others hinders our fellowship with God—Matthew 6:14–15
Turn with me to Matthew 6:14–15. Just prior to these verses, we have the very familiar passage known as the Lord’s Prayer with its familiar request in v. 12—“forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Verses 14–15 then go on to expand on that thought a bit [READ vv. 14–15].
Now we need to read these verses in the proper light. Jesus is not setting this up as a standard for getting into heaven. Think through this with me—who truly has the right to call God “heavenly Father?” Only those who have been born again, right? Paul says in Romans 8:15 that believers “have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’.” So it is only those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit who can rightfully call God their Father. So in these verses, Jesus is talking about people who have already been born again, and he says that if we don’t forgive others, then God won’t forgive us. There will be distance and a lack of intimacy in our relationship with our heavenly Father.
What might that look like in our lives? It could mean that our efforts to serve God will be powerless and ineffective. It could mean that our prayers will not be answered. It could mean that we won’t enjoy the fruits of the Spirit like joy and peace. It could mean that God will discipline us in some way. All of those things are unpleasant realities that we could face if we fail to forgive others.
But I think a question comes up at this point—how do these verses fit with a verse like 1 John 1:9, which says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” How could God choose not to forgive us if we confess our sins to Him? Well, it all revolves around the meaning of the word “confess.” The Greek word is homologeo; its made up of the prefix homo-, which means “the same,” and the verb logeo which means “to say or speak.” So the idea is that in confessing your sins, you have come to the place where you say the same thing about them that God does. You are acknowledging that His assessment of your actions is correct.
Now if you think about the idea of refusing to forgive someone in light of the parable that we just read in Matthew 18, if you refuse to forgive someone else, that means that you’re not assessing your own sins correctly. You are not looking at your own sins the way God does; otherwise you would remember how much you have been forgiven and you would then be willing to forgive others. So if refuse to forgive others, we are clinging to a distorted view of our own sins that prevents us from truly confessing them. That means that our sins are still hindering our fellowship with God because we haven’t come into agreement with Him about our actions.
III. Forgiving others prevents Satan from gaining a foothold in our lives—Ephesians 4:26–27
Why don’t you turn with me to Ephesians 4:26–27? Here we have this interesting statement: “Be angry and do not sin.” That really is a command, by the way—“be angry.” Paul is clearly talking about how we should respond when someone sins against us, and his words tell us that a certain measure of anger is an appropriate response when we have been legitimately wronged. But, in the same breath he says, “do not sin,” and then he instructs us to get rid of our anger quickly when he writes, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
Now this doesn’t mean that if someone sins against us in the morning, we can be angry at them all day as long as we patch things up before sunset. Paul is telling us to put away our anger quickly, and that would clearly come through forgiveness. Paul was probably drawing on the Old Testament with his reference to sundown. Under the Old Testament law, if a person was working for you, you were supposed to pay them their wages every day, so as each new day dawned, you would be squared away with others.
That’s really the goal for our relationships—as each new day dawns on our relationships, we don’t want to have conflicts from yesterday putting a strain on our relationships today. We want to deal quickly with problems that are caused by sin and then choose not to dwell on them as the days go by.
Then, in v. 27, Paul mentions an important result of forgiving others and putting away our anger. He writes, “and give no opportunity to the devil.” If we choose to hold on to anger, we are actually giving Satan an opportunity to launch attacks on our lives.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Normandy region of France, where the D-Day invasion took place during World War II. That invasion was a major turning point in the war because prior to that the Allied forces had lost their foothold on the European continent. They had been driven back to England by Hitler’s army, and they launched the D-Day invasion because they needed to regain a place on the continent from which they launch attacks.
That kind of beachhead—or foothold, or place—is precisely what Paul says we are NOT to give to Satan! We are not to give him a place in our lives where he can do his dirty work. But if we fail to forgive other people, he has a whole arsenal of temptations that he can throw at us—bitterness, resentment, hatred, gossip, slander, revenge. And don’t forget—as we just learned, we will also be far from God if we refuse to forgive. So we will be right where Satan wants us if we refuse to forgive others.
IV. Refusing to forgive others hinders our witness for Christ—2 Corinthians 5:17–20
Turn with me to 2 Cor. 5:17–20, and listen for a repeated word as I read these verses [READ 2 Cor. 5:17–20]. Did you catch the word? It was “reconcile,” right? (Or “reconciliation”) Paul says that we have been reconciled to God, and He has called us to spread the message of reconciliation. The word “reconcile” means “to re-establish a friendly relationship between people.” That’s what the gospel is all about—re-establishing a friendly relationship between God and man. That’s what forgiveness is all about, too, when we choose to forgive each other.
But how can we convincingly preach a gospel of reconciliation if we refuse to be reconciled to each other after we sin against each other? Let’s say that I’m fighting with Billy Bob; some things were said 5 years ago, and now I’m holding a grudge against him and we haven’t spoken ever since. But let’s say that I talk to Billy Jean and say, “You need to come to know God, because God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. I just hope that plan doesn’t involve Billy Bob, because I really don’t get along with him. But honestly, if you accept Jesus, you can have peace and harmony in your life, just like I do—except when I’m around Billy Bob, because we just can’t get along.”
How ridiculous is that? How can we claim to offer other people peace with God if we can’t live at peace with each other? You see friends, we hinder our witness for Christ when we refuse to forgive each other. We tear down the very bridges that we are trying to build.
So for these four reasons—at the very least—it is so important that we forgive each other when we sin against each other. Perhaps at the very mention of the word “forgiveness,” you can think of someone whom you need to forgive. My friends, I urge you—don’t delay. Don’t let the sun go down on another day without making things right with whomever you might be separated because of sin. I urge you to do this as soon as possible, but if you’re not sure how to forgive someone or how to ask for forgiveness, we’re going to be talking about those things over the next few weeks. So today, at the very least, ask God to prepare your heart to learn over these next weeks and then to take the steps that you need to take as soon as they become clear to you.
Sometimes our relationships in life can be a bit like those bumper cars. As we bounce around through life, we inevitably run into each other—we get in fights with each other, we cheat each other, we lie to each other or speak hurtful words to each other. In life, this is no game. Our hearts don’t have protective bumpers around them, and so when we sin against each other, we wound each other and hurt each other, so that our hearts start to feel less like a bumper car and more like something that’s in the junkyard!
This is life in a fallen world; we commit sins against others, and they commit sins against us. These sins cut holes in our hearts and leave our relationships in tatters. Fortunately, God has laid out a path for our relationships to be repaired and the holes in our hearts to be healed. That path is called “forgiveness,” and it is the path that we should take whenever a sin is committed in one of our relationships. But it is obvious from the broken relationships that we see all around us that we rarely take this path. Perhaps we take a worldly path that looks very similar to forgiveness, but it leads to a different destination; or perhaps we see God’s path laid out for us very clearly, and we simply refuse to set foot on it.
It has been said that forgiveness is the oil that reduces friction and keeps the engine of our relationships running. And so, because forgiveness is such an important activity in our lives, we’re going to spend the next few weeks looking at what the Bible says about forgiving each other. We’ll define forgiveness, and we’ll talk about how to arrive at forgiveness from both sides of a sin—whether you have committed the sin, or whether you have been sinned against. We will also cut through some false ideas about forgiveness that often keep us from walking on God’s path to forgiveness. But this morning we’re going to start our study by answering this simple question:
Why is it so important for us to forgive each other?
There are at least four answers to this question in the Bible. It may be possible to name more, but this morning we’ll focus on four.
I. Forgiving others is the proper response to the forgiveness we have received from God—Matthew 18:21–35
Let’s read Matt. 18:21–35, and I’ll make a few comments along the way. Just before this, Jesus had been telling His disciples what to do when a Christian brother or sister sins against them. So in v. 21, Peter says [READ v. 21]. Now in the Jewish teaching of Peter’s day, the rabbis taught that you were obligated to forgive someone three times, and after that you didn’t have to forgive them anymore. It was like four strikes and you’re out, because on the fourth time you were no longer obligated to forgive. So Peter probably thought he was being very generous in suggesting seven times—he doubled the number and added one more for good measure!
But notice what Jesus said to him [READ v. 22]. That’s obviously a lot further than even Generous Peter was willing to go, but of course Jesus’ real point was that we shouldn’t put a limit on the number of times that we will forgive someone. And why is that? Because of how generously God has forgiven us, and that’s the point of the parable that starts in v. 23 [READ v. 23–24]
Now ten thousand talents is a ridiculous amount of money. ONE talent was the amount that an average laborer would earn in twenty years of work, so this man owed a debt that was worth 200,000 years of pay. If you multiply that by our year of 365 days, that’s 73 million days worth of pay!! Obviously, there would be no way that the man could pay off a debt like that, so let’s see what happens next [READ vv. 25–28].
A denarius was the amount that an average laborer would earn for one day of work, so the second servant owed the first servant an amount that was equal to 100 days worth of pay. That’s not an insignificant amount, but when compared to the debt that the first servant had just been released from, its like a drop of rain compared to the ocean! Let’s finish the parable [READ vv. 29–35].
Jesus’ point in this parable is very clear: we are like the first servant. We have been forgiven by God of an unimaginable debt of sin, so how could we refuse to forgive another person for the microscopic debt of sin that they have committed against us? Our gratitude to God should compel us to forgive each other time and time and time again, and if we refuse then we just show that we don’t comprehend how abundantly we have been forgiven by God.
Verse 35 of this parable alludes to the second answer to today’s question.
II. Refusing to forgive others hinders our fellowship with God—Matthew 6:14–15
Turn with me to Matthew 6:14–15. Just prior to these verses, we have the very familiar passage known as the Lord’s Prayer with its familiar request in v. 12—“forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Verses 14–15 then go on to expand on that thought a bit [READ vv. 14–15].
Now we need to read these verses in the proper light. Jesus is not setting this up as a standard for getting into heaven. Think through this with me—who truly has the right to call God “heavenly Father?” Only those who have been born again, right? Paul says in Romans 8:15 that believers “have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’.” So it is only those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit who can rightfully call God their Father. So in these verses, Jesus is talking about people who have already been born again, and he says that if we don’t forgive others, then God won’t forgive us. There will be distance and a lack of intimacy in our relationship with our heavenly Father.
What might that look like in our lives? It could mean that our efforts to serve God will be powerless and ineffective. It could mean that our prayers will not be answered. It could mean that we won’t enjoy the fruits of the Spirit like joy and peace. It could mean that God will discipline us in some way. All of those things are unpleasant realities that we could face if we fail to forgive others.
But I think a question comes up at this point—how do these verses fit with a verse like 1 John 1:9, which says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” How could God choose not to forgive us if we confess our sins to Him? Well, it all revolves around the meaning of the word “confess.” The Greek word is homologeo; its made up of the prefix homo-, which means “the same,” and the verb logeo which means “to say or speak.” So the idea is that in confessing your sins, you have come to the place where you say the same thing about them that God does. You are acknowledging that His assessment of your actions is correct.
Now if you think about the idea of refusing to forgive someone in light of the parable that we just read in Matthew 18, if you refuse to forgive someone else, that means that you’re not assessing your own sins correctly. You are not looking at your own sins the way God does; otherwise you would remember how much you have been forgiven and you would then be willing to forgive others. So if refuse to forgive others, we are clinging to a distorted view of our own sins that prevents us from truly confessing them. That means that our sins are still hindering our fellowship with God because we haven’t come into agreement with Him about our actions.
III. Forgiving others prevents Satan from gaining a foothold in our lives—Ephesians 4:26–27
Why don’t you turn with me to Ephesians 4:26–27? Here we have this interesting statement: “Be angry and do not sin.” That really is a command, by the way—“be angry.” Paul is clearly talking about how we should respond when someone sins against us, and his words tell us that a certain measure of anger is an appropriate response when we have been legitimately wronged. But, in the same breath he says, “do not sin,” and then he instructs us to get rid of our anger quickly when he writes, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
Now this doesn’t mean that if someone sins against us in the morning, we can be angry at them all day as long as we patch things up before sunset. Paul is telling us to put away our anger quickly, and that would clearly come through forgiveness. Paul was probably drawing on the Old Testament with his reference to sundown. Under the Old Testament law, if a person was working for you, you were supposed to pay them their wages every day, so as each new day dawned, you would be squared away with others.
That’s really the goal for our relationships—as each new day dawns on our relationships, we don’t want to have conflicts from yesterday putting a strain on our relationships today. We want to deal quickly with problems that are caused by sin and then choose not to dwell on them as the days go by.
Then, in v. 27, Paul mentions an important result of forgiving others and putting away our anger. He writes, “and give no opportunity to the devil.” If we choose to hold on to anger, we are actually giving Satan an opportunity to launch attacks on our lives.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Normandy region of France, where the D-Day invasion took place during World War II. That invasion was a major turning point in the war because prior to that the Allied forces had lost their foothold on the European continent. They had been driven back to England by Hitler’s army, and they launched the D-Day invasion because they needed to regain a place on the continent from which they launch attacks.
That kind of beachhead—or foothold, or place—is precisely what Paul says we are NOT to give to Satan! We are not to give him a place in our lives where he can do his dirty work. But if we fail to forgive other people, he has a whole arsenal of temptations that he can throw at us—bitterness, resentment, hatred, gossip, slander, revenge. And don’t forget—as we just learned, we will also be far from God if we refuse to forgive. So we will be right where Satan wants us if we refuse to forgive others.
IV. Refusing to forgive others hinders our witness for Christ—2 Corinthians 5:17–20
Turn with me to 2 Cor. 5:17–20, and listen for a repeated word as I read these verses [READ 2 Cor. 5:17–20]. Did you catch the word? It was “reconcile,” right? (Or “reconciliation”) Paul says that we have been reconciled to God, and He has called us to spread the message of reconciliation. The word “reconcile” means “to re-establish a friendly relationship between people.” That’s what the gospel is all about—re-establishing a friendly relationship between God and man. That’s what forgiveness is all about, too, when we choose to forgive each other.
But how can we convincingly preach a gospel of reconciliation if we refuse to be reconciled to each other after we sin against each other? Let’s say that I’m fighting with Billy Bob; some things were said 5 years ago, and now I’m holding a grudge against him and we haven’t spoken ever since. But let’s say that I talk to Billy Jean and say, “You need to come to know God, because God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. I just hope that plan doesn’t involve Billy Bob, because I really don’t get along with him. But honestly, if you accept Jesus, you can have peace and harmony in your life, just like I do—except when I’m around Billy Bob, because we just can’t get along.”
How ridiculous is that? How can we claim to offer other people peace with God if we can’t live at peace with each other? You see friends, we hinder our witness for Christ when we refuse to forgive each other. We tear down the very bridges that we are trying to build.
So for these four reasons—at the very least—it is so important that we forgive each other when we sin against each other. Perhaps at the very mention of the word “forgiveness,” you can think of someone whom you need to forgive. My friends, I urge you—don’t delay. Don’t let the sun go down on another day without making things right with whomever you might be separated because of sin. I urge you to do this as soon as possible, but if you’re not sure how to forgive someone or how to ask for forgiveness, we’re going to be talking about those things over the next few weeks. So today, at the very least, ask God to prepare your heart to learn over these next weeks and then to take the steps that you need to take as soon as they become clear to you.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Follow the Leader?--3 John 1:9-15
A number of years ago, in the devotional book “Our Daily Bread,” the author related the story of a once-powerful business man named Eli Black. Mr. Black had made some impressive accomplishments in the business world, but he apparently had quite a passion for power and control.
Another business executive once told the story of a business lunch that he had had with Eli Black. At the beginning of the lunch, the waitress brought a plate of cheese and crackers as an appetizer. Black reached out and took them, placed them on the table, blocked them with his arms, and continued talking. The executive hadn’t eaten for hours and hinted that he would like a cracker. But Black acted as though he hadn’t heard him and went on with the business meeting. After a while, Black placed a cracker and cheese on the tips of his fingers and continued to talk. Several moments later, Black placed the cracker on the executive’s plate and then blocked the rest as before. It was clear that Black was in charge, manipulating others as he pleased.1
We are not very surprised when we hear about power-hungry people in the world of business or even in the world of politics, but sadly, the same addiction to power and control can exist among church leaders as well. In fact, in some ways, churches have fewer checks against the ambition of someone who has become drunk with power.
When a leader begins to act this way within a church, the members of the church are often left scratching their heads and wondering exactly what to do. And more often than not, such a leader forces people to decide whether or not they are with him or against him.
Just how should we respond when we encounter such a leader within a church? John gives us some good instruction for this question as he deals with just such a leader in the latter half of 3 John. The clear standard that he sets for us is this:
A church leader who sets an evil example is not to be followed.
Follow along with me as I read 3 John 1:9–15 [READ vv. 9–15]. Let’s take a look at this passage in two parts—first, we’ll look at the example that Diotrephes is setting, then we’ll look at how John tells us to respond to such an example.
I. A love of power is a bad trait for a church leader (vv. 9–10)
Last week, we were introduced to Gaius, a man who was faithfully serving God. We don’t know what kind of role he had in his church, whether he was in an official leadership position or not. But in v. 9, we are introduced to a leader in Gaius’s church who had become rather full of himself.
This leader—Diotrephes—is described by John as a person “who likes to put himself first.” In Greek, this description is written almost like a title or a nickname for Diotrephes. How would you like to have a description like that as something of a nickname? “Look out, here comes Tim—he’s the Commander-in-Chief!”
As this description suggests, it simply means that Diotrephes loved to feel like the top dog, and we can see that he certainly enjoyed acting like it. Diotrephes obviously had some kind of problem with John and perhaps the other apostles (that could be who John is referring to when he says, “our authority”). It could be that Diotrephes felt like John had no business “interfering” in the affairs of a church that he wasn’t a part of. Whatever the problem was, John knew that it was just coming from Diotrephes own pride.
The New Testament consistently warns us that pride and a love of power and authority are deadly poisons for spiritual leaders. This lesson first came from Jesus Himself. He said to His disciples in Matthew 20:25–28, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus’ apostles took that lesson and kept it alive through their teaching and their writings. John, for example, recorded the story of Jesus washing His disciples feet, which has become such a moving picture of what it means to be a spiritual leader. And Peter wrote to elders in some local churches in 1 Peter 5:3 and he told them not to be domineering over those in their charge, but to be examples to the flock. There he used that familiar, beautiful metaphor of spiritual leaders acting as shepherds for a flock of sheep.
So this example of servant leadership is the example that a spiritual leader is supposed to set, but unfortunately, Diotrephes was setting a very different example. John writes in 3 John 1:10 that Diotrephes refused to welcome the brothers (who were the travelling missionaries that we talked about last week). He refused to show them hospitality and give them support. And what’s more, he prevented other members of the church from showing them hospitality, and if some of the church members went against his wishes, he kicked them out of the church!
This is a shocking example of church leadership gone bad, but that’s the kind of havoc that can arise when a leader’s pride causes him to fall in love with power. It may seem impossible for a church leader to act this way, but remember, church leaders are humans, too, who face all of the same temptations that anyone else faces.
And sometimes, a power play can like this can come from someone who is not an official leader within a church. Sometimes a certain member of a church may have a lot of influence because of their financial standing or their standing in the community, and even though such a person may not be an official leader in the church, he or she still wields a lot of power over other people. And if pride gets the best of that person, it can be just as devastating to the church as if the behavior were coming from an official leader.
So unfortunately, we do have to realize that a person with power and influence in a church just might set a bad example for others. And if that’s the case, the response that John calls us to is very clear…
II. We must not follow a church leader if he sets a bad example (vv. 11–12)
John obviously has Diotrephes’ example in mind in v. 11 when he gives this command: “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good.” Then he tells us why we should shun evil and imitate good—“whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.” John paints good and evil in black-and-white terms so that there is no doubt that the two are mutually exclusive. If someone acts in a way that is truly good, then you can be sure that their actions were from God, but if they act in a way that is evil, you can have equal confidence that God is not the source of their behavior. John says that the person who does evil “has not seen God,” which means that they have not come to know what God is really like because they are choosing behaviors that are contrary to His character.
Then in v. 12, John apparently mentions one of the men that he had referred to back in v. 6 when he asked Gaius to provide support for his visitors on their journey. John now mentions Demetrius by name and emphasizes that he has earned a good testimony as he has served the Lord. So the decision for Gaius is clear—John is basically saying, “Gaius, don’t follow the example of Diotrephes by refusing hospitality and support to these missionaries. Instead, choose to do what you know is good, even if your church leaders won’t do it.”
My friends, it is sad but true that we might someday find ourselves facing a similar choice. Church leaders are not perfect people; we can be overcome by pride just the same as anyone else, and when that happens, we can set a bad example—one that you should not follow!
Now in general, the Bible does call us to obey the leaders of our church. Hebrews 13:7 says, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Then in v. 17 of the same chapter it says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
So we should be ready and willing to follow the lead of our spiritual leaders in the church, but what the example of Diotrephes shows us is that we cannot blindly follow anyone simply because they have a leadership role. It can be easy to put a pastor or an elder or our favorite TV preacher on a pedestal and assume that they can do no wrong, but nothing could be further from the truth.
This is just one reason among many why it is so important for you to read and study the Bible for yourself. You can read for yourself how we are supposed to live, so if I would go off the deep end some day, you could point to Scripture and say, “You know, I just can’t follow Pastor Tim down that path; he doesn’t seem to be doing what’s right.” I hope I never put you in that position, but you can’t just assume that my example will always be what it should be.
We have a big advantage today that people in the past were not able to enjoy. In the centuries before the printing press was invented, people didn’t have their own copy of the Bible, so they had to rely on church leaders to teach them and lead them. I think in many cases church leaders were faithful to adhere to the truth, but I am convinced that that is why some of the problems came into Christianity that the Reformation set out to correct.
My friends, I cannot stress to you enough how important it is that you do not wrap your faith around any human being, but only around Jesus. At some point, human beings will let you down—maybe in a small way, maybe in a big way, but in some way their imperfections will shine through. In those moments, it is easy to become disillusioned if our faith is wrapped around a man, but if our faith is wrapped around Jesus, we can stay on the right path.
The highest allegiance for our faith is to be given to Jesus Christ, and no one else! Colossians 1:18 says, “He is the head of the body, which is the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent”—not me or our elders or your favorite TV preacher or anyone else!
Just remember this, my friends—Jesus Christ is the Chief Shepherd of this flock that we call Christianity, and He is leading the way. He has asked some under-shepherds to help the flock stay in line, but if the under-shepherd wanders off the path, just keep following the Chief Shepherd! If you keep in line with Jesus, you will never be lead astray!
Notes:
1. Our Daily Bread, February 6, 1994
From http://bible.org/illustration/follow-leader
Another business executive once told the story of a business lunch that he had had with Eli Black. At the beginning of the lunch, the waitress brought a plate of cheese and crackers as an appetizer. Black reached out and took them, placed them on the table, blocked them with his arms, and continued talking. The executive hadn’t eaten for hours and hinted that he would like a cracker. But Black acted as though he hadn’t heard him and went on with the business meeting. After a while, Black placed a cracker and cheese on the tips of his fingers and continued to talk. Several moments later, Black placed the cracker on the executive’s plate and then blocked the rest as before. It was clear that Black was in charge, manipulating others as he pleased.1
We are not very surprised when we hear about power-hungry people in the world of business or even in the world of politics, but sadly, the same addiction to power and control can exist among church leaders as well. In fact, in some ways, churches have fewer checks against the ambition of someone who has become drunk with power.
When a leader begins to act this way within a church, the members of the church are often left scratching their heads and wondering exactly what to do. And more often than not, such a leader forces people to decide whether or not they are with him or against him.
Just how should we respond when we encounter such a leader within a church? John gives us some good instruction for this question as he deals with just such a leader in the latter half of 3 John. The clear standard that he sets for us is this:
A church leader who sets an evil example is not to be followed.
Follow along with me as I read 3 John 1:9–15 [READ vv. 9–15]. Let’s take a look at this passage in two parts—first, we’ll look at the example that Diotrephes is setting, then we’ll look at how John tells us to respond to such an example.
I. A love of power is a bad trait for a church leader (vv. 9–10)
Last week, we were introduced to Gaius, a man who was faithfully serving God. We don’t know what kind of role he had in his church, whether he was in an official leadership position or not. But in v. 9, we are introduced to a leader in Gaius’s church who had become rather full of himself.
This leader—Diotrephes—is described by John as a person “who likes to put himself first.” In Greek, this description is written almost like a title or a nickname for Diotrephes. How would you like to have a description like that as something of a nickname? “Look out, here comes Tim—he’s the Commander-in-Chief!”
As this description suggests, it simply means that Diotrephes loved to feel like the top dog, and we can see that he certainly enjoyed acting like it. Diotrephes obviously had some kind of problem with John and perhaps the other apostles (that could be who John is referring to when he says, “our authority”). It could be that Diotrephes felt like John had no business “interfering” in the affairs of a church that he wasn’t a part of. Whatever the problem was, John knew that it was just coming from Diotrephes own pride.
The New Testament consistently warns us that pride and a love of power and authority are deadly poisons for spiritual leaders. This lesson first came from Jesus Himself. He said to His disciples in Matthew 20:25–28, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus’ apostles took that lesson and kept it alive through their teaching and their writings. John, for example, recorded the story of Jesus washing His disciples feet, which has become such a moving picture of what it means to be a spiritual leader. And Peter wrote to elders in some local churches in 1 Peter 5:3 and he told them not to be domineering over those in their charge, but to be examples to the flock. There he used that familiar, beautiful metaphor of spiritual leaders acting as shepherds for a flock of sheep.
So this example of servant leadership is the example that a spiritual leader is supposed to set, but unfortunately, Diotrephes was setting a very different example. John writes in 3 John 1:10 that Diotrephes refused to welcome the brothers (who were the travelling missionaries that we talked about last week). He refused to show them hospitality and give them support. And what’s more, he prevented other members of the church from showing them hospitality, and if some of the church members went against his wishes, he kicked them out of the church!
This is a shocking example of church leadership gone bad, but that’s the kind of havoc that can arise when a leader’s pride causes him to fall in love with power. It may seem impossible for a church leader to act this way, but remember, church leaders are humans, too, who face all of the same temptations that anyone else faces.
And sometimes, a power play can like this can come from someone who is not an official leader within a church. Sometimes a certain member of a church may have a lot of influence because of their financial standing or their standing in the community, and even though such a person may not be an official leader in the church, he or she still wields a lot of power over other people. And if pride gets the best of that person, it can be just as devastating to the church as if the behavior were coming from an official leader.
So unfortunately, we do have to realize that a person with power and influence in a church just might set a bad example for others. And if that’s the case, the response that John calls us to is very clear…
II. We must not follow a church leader if he sets a bad example (vv. 11–12)
John obviously has Diotrephes’ example in mind in v. 11 when he gives this command: “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good.” Then he tells us why we should shun evil and imitate good—“whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.” John paints good and evil in black-and-white terms so that there is no doubt that the two are mutually exclusive. If someone acts in a way that is truly good, then you can be sure that their actions were from God, but if they act in a way that is evil, you can have equal confidence that God is not the source of their behavior. John says that the person who does evil “has not seen God,” which means that they have not come to know what God is really like because they are choosing behaviors that are contrary to His character.
Then in v. 12, John apparently mentions one of the men that he had referred to back in v. 6 when he asked Gaius to provide support for his visitors on their journey. John now mentions Demetrius by name and emphasizes that he has earned a good testimony as he has served the Lord. So the decision for Gaius is clear—John is basically saying, “Gaius, don’t follow the example of Diotrephes by refusing hospitality and support to these missionaries. Instead, choose to do what you know is good, even if your church leaders won’t do it.”
My friends, it is sad but true that we might someday find ourselves facing a similar choice. Church leaders are not perfect people; we can be overcome by pride just the same as anyone else, and when that happens, we can set a bad example—one that you should not follow!
Now in general, the Bible does call us to obey the leaders of our church. Hebrews 13:7 says, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Then in v. 17 of the same chapter it says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
So we should be ready and willing to follow the lead of our spiritual leaders in the church, but what the example of Diotrephes shows us is that we cannot blindly follow anyone simply because they have a leadership role. It can be easy to put a pastor or an elder or our favorite TV preacher on a pedestal and assume that they can do no wrong, but nothing could be further from the truth.
This is just one reason among many why it is so important for you to read and study the Bible for yourself. You can read for yourself how we are supposed to live, so if I would go off the deep end some day, you could point to Scripture and say, “You know, I just can’t follow Pastor Tim down that path; he doesn’t seem to be doing what’s right.” I hope I never put you in that position, but you can’t just assume that my example will always be what it should be.
We have a big advantage today that people in the past were not able to enjoy. In the centuries before the printing press was invented, people didn’t have their own copy of the Bible, so they had to rely on church leaders to teach them and lead them. I think in many cases church leaders were faithful to adhere to the truth, but I am convinced that that is why some of the problems came into Christianity that the Reformation set out to correct.
My friends, I cannot stress to you enough how important it is that you do not wrap your faith around any human being, but only around Jesus. At some point, human beings will let you down—maybe in a small way, maybe in a big way, but in some way their imperfections will shine through. In those moments, it is easy to become disillusioned if our faith is wrapped around a man, but if our faith is wrapped around Jesus, we can stay on the right path.
The highest allegiance for our faith is to be given to Jesus Christ, and no one else! Colossians 1:18 says, “He is the head of the body, which is the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent”—not me or our elders or your favorite TV preacher or anyone else!
Just remember this, my friends—Jesus Christ is the Chief Shepherd of this flock that we call Christianity, and He is leading the way. He has asked some under-shepherds to help the flock stay in line, but if the under-shepherd wanders off the path, just keep following the Chief Shepherd! If you keep in line with Jesus, you will never be lead astray!
Notes:
1. Our Daily Bread, February 6, 1994
From http://bible.org/illustration/follow-leader
Monday, August 1, 2011
Laboring Together in Love--3 John 1:1-8
How many of you just love to participate in fundraisers? Maybe you were that kid in school who always sold 200 pounds of chocolate for the band trip or the new basketball uniforms. I would guess that most people get pretty uncomfortable asking others for money, even if they’re raising money for a good cause that they really believe in. Many of us feel uncomfortable talking about money in any setting, let alone when we have to ask people for some kind of contribution (you can relax—we’re not starting a fundraising campaign!).
I want you to imagine yourself as a missionary, traveling around (quite often) to church after church after church, asking people to contribute to your ministry. That wouldn’t be a really fun process, would it? You might start to feel like you did when you were in school, knocking on door after door trying to sell cookie dough or frozen pizzas.
Well, I hope we will see today that we can make the support-raising side of missions so much easier if we will take to heart what John has to teach us in the first part of 3 John. I believe we will see that partnering with a missionary is about so much more than a financial transaction—its ultimately about the outworking of a relationship of Christian love. This morning we’ll focus on this lesson from John:
Loving others in truth involves rejoicing over those who walk in the truth and supporting those who proclaim the truth.
Follow along with me in your Bible as I read 3 John 1:1–8 [READ 1:1–8].
Now let’s think about our main idea in two parts.
I. Loving others in truth involves rejoicing over those who walk in the truth (vv. 1–4)
In a moment we’ll see that this kind of love should overflow into support for those who proclaim the truth, but we should note that we can have this kind of joy over anyone we know who is living for God, whether they are missionaries or not. Now in these first four verses, John makes two points to help us think about the way that we love other Christians.
a. We should be concerned about each other’s overall well-being (v. 2)
John is a model for us through his loving concern for Gaius’s entire life. In v. 2 he writes, [READ v. 2]. John had heard that Gaius was doing very well spiritually, and he expresses his prayer that the rest of Gaius’s life would prosper in the same way.
This verse is an important reminder for us that to love someone with Christian love means that we will be concerned about the entire person, not just their spiritual well-being. We are reminded many times in the New Testament that Christian love should lead us to meet the practical needs of our fellow Christians as they arise. John himself wrote in 1 John 3:17, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” So we can’t say that we’re truly demonstrating the love of God if we are not concerned about a person’s physical needs and the other aspects of their life.
Then in vv. 3–4, John writes about a tremendous source of joy that we can have as Christians
b. We should rejoice as others live according to God’s truth (vv. 3–4)
John said in v. 3 that he “rejoiced greatly” when he heard some others believers report Gaius’s obedience to God’s truth. Then he states in v. 4 that there is nothing that makes him happier than to hear that his children are walking in the truth (by children he probably means spiritual children—those who came to believe through his ministry or those who were under his spiritual care).
As I thought about John’s words this week, I found his example here to be a very convicting one. As I thought about the things that bring me joy in life, I had to ask myself, “do I come very close to John’s example?” He said that he has no greater joy than hearing about the obedience of other believers—can I really say that that idea tops my list? Do you think you can say that in your own life?
I started to get a little convicted when I thought about the way that I rejoice when my favorite sports teams win. I know that’s not the same as hearing that someone is obeying God’s truth, but why am I so visibly joyful when my team wins, yet my joy isn’t always so noticeable when someone takes a step of obedience for God?
Friends, if you feel like you need more joy in your life, here’s the source right here! We can learn to celebrate when others take a step of obedience. I think we find it far too easy to obsess over the things that will steal our joy—like the weather or politics. Why don’t we ask God to help us obsess over encouraging each other to take steps of obedience, and then we can celebrate when we see those steps taken.
Now one reason in particular that John was rejoicing over the report about Gaius was that Gaius had been supporting those who were serving as Christian missionaries. This overflow of love is the second point in our main idea this morning.
II. Loving others in truth involves supporting those who proclaim the truth (vv. 5–8)
When we look at vv. 5–8, we find that Gaius had already been providing help to Christian missionaries, and now John is asking to keep up the good work. In fact, this letter was probably delivered to Gaius by a missionary named Demetrius—who we will meet in v. 12—and John is apparently asking Gaius to support Demetrius the same way that he had supported other missionaries.
Now in these verses, John points us toward two ideas that describe what our support for missionaries should look like.
a. We should meet their needs according to God’s example (v. 6–7)
In v. 5, John commends Gaius for supporting missionaries even though they were strangers to him. They weren’t personal acquaintances, but because of their bond of love in Christ, Gaius had supported them. Now, Gaius has another opportunity to do the same with the arrival of Demetrius, who apparently had some other companions with him. So John says at the end of v. 6, “You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God,” or in other words, in the same way that God would!
Now friends, when we think about how God has provided for our needs, what one word would best describe the way that God provides for us? I think that word would have to be “generously.” Don’t start comparing yourself to others—just think about your basic needs. There isn’t a person here who couldn’t say that God has meet their basic needs generously.
So what John is saying is that we should support missionaries in the same way that God provides for us—with generosity. That, of course, flows out of a relationship of love, because that’s where true generosity flows from. Generosity is love’s echo when someone cries out in need.
So we must strive to support our missionaries generously. They should never have to feel like they are begging for the crumbs that fall from our tables—we must show them that they have a seat at our tables, that we are willing to share with them the good things that God has generously shared with us.
Then in v. 8, John describes another idea that should characterize our support for missionaries.
b. We owe it to them to partner together for the sake of the truth (v. 8)
John wrote in v. 8 [READ v. 8]. Let me focus on just a few words of this verse for a moment. First, John says we “ought” to support people like these. The Greek word that he uses tells us that we need to read the word “ought” in its strongest sense, not just as a suggestion, but as an obligation. We often hear about things that we “ought” to do, and many of them are just helpful suggestions, like “you ought to floss every day,” or “you ought to chew your food 20 times before you swallow it.”
Well, John isn’t giving us a suggestion here; he is really saying that we have an obligation to support our missionaries. We owe it to them! They have a right to count on our generous support, and we ought not withhold it from them.
John describes this partnership as becoming “fellow workers for the truth.” His wording describes us as co-workers, laboring side-by-side for the sake of God’s truth. We may not think of ourselves very often as co-workers with our missionaries because many of them live in foreign countries, and we’re not able to see them very often. But even though we may not be physically present with them, we have a very real stake in their ministry.
You can think of it like a company that you might invest in on the stock market. If you invest in a company like Microsoft, for instance, you don’t move to one of their factories and start building computers. So you may not be on site, but nevertheless, you do have a real stake in what goes on there, don’t you? You literally have some ownership in what happens with that corporation.
Well, our relationship with our missionaries is similar to that. We may not be physically present with them, but spiritually, we have a stake in their ministry, and we are co-workers with them through our support. When Paul talked about his relationship with the Philippians in Philippians 1, he described it as a “partnership in the gospel” because they had financially supported him. So in Paul’s mind, his ministry was their ministry; his ministry was just an extension of what their church was doing to spread the gospel.
So this morning as we reflect on these lessons from 3 John, I want to issue a very specific challenge to you to ask you to respond to this message. You know that I don’t often ask you to do one specific thing in response to my sermons, but sometimes I think such a challenge is good. As we have seen today, we have an obligation to generously support those whom we partner with as missionaries, so the challenge that I want to issue to you is this: decide to do one thing to deliberately lower your standard of living, then give the money you save to our missions account.
For some of you, you might be able to lower a monthly bill. Maybe you will decide that you really don’t need the super-duper cable package with 10 channels in Spanish, so maybe you can downgrade that plan and give an extra monthly donation to our missions account.
Or perhaps you can do something on a seasonal basis or an annual basis. Maybe you could decide to shorten your vacation by a day or two, or stay closer to home on your vacation, and you could give the money you save to the missions account. Or perhaps you could have a garage sale and donate that money.
Teenagers and kids, you can get in on this act, too. Teens, perhaps you will decide to limit your clothing purchases, or to limit the number of times that you run to Dodge to see a movie. Kids, maybe you could do some extra chores and earn some money that you could donate.
Now I know so many of us feel a little squeezed right now in our current economy, and it may seem like a daunting task to give another $20. But my challenge to you today really isn’t about your money—its really about your attitude. Do you remember what Jesus said about the widow who offered a very small amount of money at the Temple? He said she gave more than anyone because she gave the money that she was living on. The amount we give is irrelevant; it’s the attitude behind our giving that really matters. We need to learn the blessedness of giving not just from our surplus, but of deliberately lowering our standard of living as an act of generosity to those whom we send out as missionaries. If we send them out in the name of God, then we should provide for them in the manner of God, which is very generous indeed. So I pray that you will take my challenge to heart today and consider how you can take an extra step of generosity.
I want you to imagine yourself as a missionary, traveling around (quite often) to church after church after church, asking people to contribute to your ministry. That wouldn’t be a really fun process, would it? You might start to feel like you did when you were in school, knocking on door after door trying to sell cookie dough or frozen pizzas.
Well, I hope we will see today that we can make the support-raising side of missions so much easier if we will take to heart what John has to teach us in the first part of 3 John. I believe we will see that partnering with a missionary is about so much more than a financial transaction—its ultimately about the outworking of a relationship of Christian love. This morning we’ll focus on this lesson from John:
Loving others in truth involves rejoicing over those who walk in the truth and supporting those who proclaim the truth.
Follow along with me in your Bible as I read 3 John 1:1–8 [READ 1:1–8].
Now let’s think about our main idea in two parts.
I. Loving others in truth involves rejoicing over those who walk in the truth (vv. 1–4)
In a moment we’ll see that this kind of love should overflow into support for those who proclaim the truth, but we should note that we can have this kind of joy over anyone we know who is living for God, whether they are missionaries or not. Now in these first four verses, John makes two points to help us think about the way that we love other Christians.
a. We should be concerned about each other’s overall well-being (v. 2)
John is a model for us through his loving concern for Gaius’s entire life. In v. 2 he writes, [READ v. 2]. John had heard that Gaius was doing very well spiritually, and he expresses his prayer that the rest of Gaius’s life would prosper in the same way.
This verse is an important reminder for us that to love someone with Christian love means that we will be concerned about the entire person, not just their spiritual well-being. We are reminded many times in the New Testament that Christian love should lead us to meet the practical needs of our fellow Christians as they arise. John himself wrote in 1 John 3:17, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” So we can’t say that we’re truly demonstrating the love of God if we are not concerned about a person’s physical needs and the other aspects of their life.
Then in vv. 3–4, John writes about a tremendous source of joy that we can have as Christians
b. We should rejoice as others live according to God’s truth (vv. 3–4)
John said in v. 3 that he “rejoiced greatly” when he heard some others believers report Gaius’s obedience to God’s truth. Then he states in v. 4 that there is nothing that makes him happier than to hear that his children are walking in the truth (by children he probably means spiritual children—those who came to believe through his ministry or those who were under his spiritual care).
As I thought about John’s words this week, I found his example here to be a very convicting one. As I thought about the things that bring me joy in life, I had to ask myself, “do I come very close to John’s example?” He said that he has no greater joy than hearing about the obedience of other believers—can I really say that that idea tops my list? Do you think you can say that in your own life?
I started to get a little convicted when I thought about the way that I rejoice when my favorite sports teams win. I know that’s not the same as hearing that someone is obeying God’s truth, but why am I so visibly joyful when my team wins, yet my joy isn’t always so noticeable when someone takes a step of obedience for God?
Friends, if you feel like you need more joy in your life, here’s the source right here! We can learn to celebrate when others take a step of obedience. I think we find it far too easy to obsess over the things that will steal our joy—like the weather or politics. Why don’t we ask God to help us obsess over encouraging each other to take steps of obedience, and then we can celebrate when we see those steps taken.
Now one reason in particular that John was rejoicing over the report about Gaius was that Gaius had been supporting those who were serving as Christian missionaries. This overflow of love is the second point in our main idea this morning.
II. Loving others in truth involves supporting those who proclaim the truth (vv. 5–8)
When we look at vv. 5–8, we find that Gaius had already been providing help to Christian missionaries, and now John is asking to keep up the good work. In fact, this letter was probably delivered to Gaius by a missionary named Demetrius—who we will meet in v. 12—and John is apparently asking Gaius to support Demetrius the same way that he had supported other missionaries.
Now in these verses, John points us toward two ideas that describe what our support for missionaries should look like.
a. We should meet their needs according to God’s example (v. 6–7)
In v. 5, John commends Gaius for supporting missionaries even though they were strangers to him. They weren’t personal acquaintances, but because of their bond of love in Christ, Gaius had supported them. Now, Gaius has another opportunity to do the same with the arrival of Demetrius, who apparently had some other companions with him. So John says at the end of v. 6, “You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God,” or in other words, in the same way that God would!
Now friends, when we think about how God has provided for our needs, what one word would best describe the way that God provides for us? I think that word would have to be “generously.” Don’t start comparing yourself to others—just think about your basic needs. There isn’t a person here who couldn’t say that God has meet their basic needs generously.
So what John is saying is that we should support missionaries in the same way that God provides for us—with generosity. That, of course, flows out of a relationship of love, because that’s where true generosity flows from. Generosity is love’s echo when someone cries out in need.
So we must strive to support our missionaries generously. They should never have to feel like they are begging for the crumbs that fall from our tables—we must show them that they have a seat at our tables, that we are willing to share with them the good things that God has generously shared with us.
Then in v. 8, John describes another idea that should characterize our support for missionaries.
b. We owe it to them to partner together for the sake of the truth (v. 8)
John wrote in v. 8 [READ v. 8]. Let me focus on just a few words of this verse for a moment. First, John says we “ought” to support people like these. The Greek word that he uses tells us that we need to read the word “ought” in its strongest sense, not just as a suggestion, but as an obligation. We often hear about things that we “ought” to do, and many of them are just helpful suggestions, like “you ought to floss every day,” or “you ought to chew your food 20 times before you swallow it.”
Well, John isn’t giving us a suggestion here; he is really saying that we have an obligation to support our missionaries. We owe it to them! They have a right to count on our generous support, and we ought not withhold it from them.
John describes this partnership as becoming “fellow workers for the truth.” His wording describes us as co-workers, laboring side-by-side for the sake of God’s truth. We may not think of ourselves very often as co-workers with our missionaries because many of them live in foreign countries, and we’re not able to see them very often. But even though we may not be physically present with them, we have a very real stake in their ministry.
You can think of it like a company that you might invest in on the stock market. If you invest in a company like Microsoft, for instance, you don’t move to one of their factories and start building computers. So you may not be on site, but nevertheless, you do have a real stake in what goes on there, don’t you? You literally have some ownership in what happens with that corporation.
Well, our relationship with our missionaries is similar to that. We may not be physically present with them, but spiritually, we have a stake in their ministry, and we are co-workers with them through our support. When Paul talked about his relationship with the Philippians in Philippians 1, he described it as a “partnership in the gospel” because they had financially supported him. So in Paul’s mind, his ministry was their ministry; his ministry was just an extension of what their church was doing to spread the gospel.
So this morning as we reflect on these lessons from 3 John, I want to issue a very specific challenge to you to ask you to respond to this message. You know that I don’t often ask you to do one specific thing in response to my sermons, but sometimes I think such a challenge is good. As we have seen today, we have an obligation to generously support those whom we partner with as missionaries, so the challenge that I want to issue to you is this: decide to do one thing to deliberately lower your standard of living, then give the money you save to our missions account.
For some of you, you might be able to lower a monthly bill. Maybe you will decide that you really don’t need the super-duper cable package with 10 channels in Spanish, so maybe you can downgrade that plan and give an extra monthly donation to our missions account.
Or perhaps you can do something on a seasonal basis or an annual basis. Maybe you could decide to shorten your vacation by a day or two, or stay closer to home on your vacation, and you could give the money you save to the missions account. Or perhaps you could have a garage sale and donate that money.
Teenagers and kids, you can get in on this act, too. Teens, perhaps you will decide to limit your clothing purchases, or to limit the number of times that you run to Dodge to see a movie. Kids, maybe you could do some extra chores and earn some money that you could donate.
Now I know so many of us feel a little squeezed right now in our current economy, and it may seem like a daunting task to give another $20. But my challenge to you today really isn’t about your money—its really about your attitude. Do you remember what Jesus said about the widow who offered a very small amount of money at the Temple? He said she gave more than anyone because she gave the money that she was living on. The amount we give is irrelevant; it’s the attitude behind our giving that really matters. We need to learn the blessedness of giving not just from our surplus, but of deliberately lowering our standard of living as an act of generosity to those whom we send out as missionaries. If we send them out in the name of God, then we should provide for them in the manner of God, which is very generous indeed. So I pray that you will take my challenge to heart today and consider how you can take an extra step of generosity.
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