Five Ways to Love Your Church Neighbor 1 Peter 3:8-12 Have you ever met someone in church that you didn t like? I know it wouldn t happen here but maybe in another church. I want to talk to you this morning about five ways to love your church neighbor. In our text this morning Peter calls us to love our church neighbor. Peter has been helping us think through the issue of submission for the sake of mission. He s talked about being submissive for the Lord s sake to government authorities whose policies you disagree with, to bosses who are unfair and unjust, and to spouses who don t believe what you do and mock your faith. Peter has consistently told us, remember, you serve a great God you can submit to bad authority with a good attitude. And here, he turns his attention from our attitude to those who are not in the faith to our attitude towards those that are in the faith. Your evangelism and your living, for the sake of gospel witness to unbelievers, will be empty if you do not love fellow believers. Your witness to those outside the church will be hollow if you do not love those inside the church. / Imagine if our greeting team welcomed you and then said I m not going in there, I don t even like those people! See that guy. That lady [8] Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. (1 Peter 3:8) Finally. The capstone of your missional attitude towards those that are not Christians is a love for those that are Christians. All of you this is not something for the mature or the leaders or the adults or the experts, this is something for all of us. And it s not just for the people we like. It s for all of us. You could probably look at someone in the room right now who is not your favorite person in the world. (Might be listening to them preach!) / And so Peter says, finally, all of you In the Greek there are five adjectives without any verb. Parents, have you ever gotten so emotionally charged that you started speaking sentences but skipping words?! We know that Peter was an emotionally charged man I guarantee he didn t write this letter without some veins popping out. As we consider these five adjectives what we see is that they are in large part adjectives that should describe the relationships in the local church. We re actually going to take the next few sermons in 1 Peter and spend some time in this paragraph. Some of your Bibles may have the
heading Suffering for Righteousness Sake over this paragraph that s because Peter is transitioning from submission to suffering and this is a hinge paragraph in many ways. And one of the things we ll see in weeks to come, I think is that a prerequisite for suffering well is a community that doesn t allow you to suffer alone. But we re getting ahead of our selves. Today: five ways to love your church neighbor. Membership Covenant This covenant is a promise to watch over one another in love according to all that the Bible commands; to pray for one another in all circumstances while coming to one another s aid in sin and distress; to rejoice in our mutual salvation and gifts received from God; to love and serve one another, being slow to take offense, always ready to forgive and reconcile, following the example and teachings of Christ our Lord. Five ways to love your church neighbor. 1. Unity of Mind Peter calls us to have unity of mind this is the only time in the Bible that this word is used. It literally means together and of the mind. What you think and what I think, what you value and what I value should not be at odds. We should be unified in this. Now, there s a difference between unity and uniformity. We re united but we re not merely robots programmed to the same motion. [10] As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: [11] whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10-11) / We are each stewards of God s varied grace and we each steward that grace accordingly. Unity of mind is not when we all have the same mind, but each of our minds and gifts are submitted for the same purpose. - tuning fork - So what s the tuning fork? It s the gospel. It s 1 Peter 1 and 2 // When you think about Catalyst Church, do you consider yourself more in tune or out of touch? // It could be that we ve forgotten our why and we ve drifted from the unity of mind to which Peter calls us. [3] Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. [4] Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. [5] Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, (Philippians 2:3-5)
We won t get unity of mind as long as we re unfocused. 2. Sympathy When we have unity of mind, we know that we re with one another. And Peter moves from the head to the heart here. Sympathy is the act of sharing the feelings of one another. [25] that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. [26] If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Corinthians 12:25-26) - sym together - This goes naturally against our individualistic culture - In our church covenant we use Paul s language of bearing one another s burdens. This flows from a belief about the gospel. I will be sympathetic towards you according to the measure with which I believe God has been sympathetic towards me. Would you describe yourself as sympathetic towards others in the body at Catalyst? Is this an adjective that is applicable to you? // Do you pray for others in this body? // This is so easy to overlook. And this is so critical not to miss. / Do you realize that if we fail here, it will have drastic implications for the church? One scholar explains, Sin among members of the fellowship, particularly sins of the tongue, grieves the holy sensibilities of the Sprit of God, thus compromising the effects of his divine influences. (Spirit Empowerd Preaching, 156). A lack of sympathy leads to an increase in bitterness and gossip and sarcastic side comments. And that is anti-gospel. How badly do you want your church neighbor to be refreshed with the gospel this morning? That is the extent to which you will be sympathetic to them. Sympathetic is not awe, that s hard. Sympathy is a war-time tactic in which we pick up arms and fight for our brother or sister. Sympathy is saying, I desperately want you to know the joy of the gospel, and I m with you until you do. This clearly leads us to the next way we love our church neighbor. 3. Brotherly Love Admittedly, I m an only child so this is a foreign concept and the first time someone called me brother I didn t get it. Still don t. / This is a family affection. Now, as a dad I m getting a taste.
And I think we need to acknowledge that this is a command to love how do we obey commands to feel? Jesus is not merely trying to get you to do things externally, but to feel them internally. He s not just creating mercenaries who do his bidding. He s redeeming a people who bear his image, inside and out. These are all inward. Each one of these requires nothing short of a miracle in you. The command is to have these things Peter basically says, I don t care if you feel like it You ve been born again, you ve been ransomed, you call on him as Father who judges each one according to his deeds Repent Rest in Christ Resolve for new obedience You were saved for this! God s glory seen in how we love one another. [22] Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, [23] since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; (1 Peter 1:22-23) Paul said, if I have not love I am nothing. And I think he would say to us as a congregation, If you have not love you are nothing. / The unavoidable question is: Do we have love?! Charles Spurgeon, God the Spirit does not bless a collection of quarrelling professors. Those who are always contending, not for the truth, but for petty differences, and families jealousies, are not likely to bring to the church the dove-like Spirit. It doesn t matter how good I preach if you don t love one another. Good sermons will not resonate in hate-filled hearts. And I know that not all of my sermons are good, that s not what I m saying. But if you re so critically bent that that s what you hear me saying Do you love your church neighbor? You must. 4. A Tender Heart literally means good bowels. It means, that which is in you your heart, has been softened by the gospel. Some of us are familiar with tenderizing meat. How do you tenderize meat? With something that looks like a weapon. Until the meat has been tenderized, the marinade will have limited impact. // In the same way with the Christian, God is in the process of tenderizing you. Luke 10 Parable of the good Samaritan But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. (Luke 10:33).
Ephesians 4:32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Are you tender-hearted or tough-hearted? When you walk in on a Sunday morning are you seeking to serve? To love the person in front of you? Has the gospel impacted your attitude towards this specific person? When I m able to have a tender heart towards some people but not towards others, chances are the shortfall is in me. Develop a tender heart. Fifthly, and finally, a humble mind. 5. A Humble Mind Lowly mindset, humble. If my mindset is that I am proud of myself and ashamed of you, I will never know true fellowship. If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own? (Bonhoeffer) himself. And he had a lot to clarify Well, let me tell you how it really worked when I cut that guys ear off who was trying to arrest Jesus. Well, look, I know that it sounds boastful when I said to Jesus, I ll never turn from you! Okay, when I denied Jesus. A humble mind is more focused on serving others than defending itself. It s more focused on the mission of God than the opinion of man. A humble mind knows it s not about me. Fire truck illustration in the church (Catalyst advance the gospel, Volunteer teams) Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. (1 Peter 5:5) Jesus prayed in Jn 17 that we would be one he even uses the phrase perfectly one. In all of Peter s letters, he never spent much time defending