1^st Corinthians 13; 1^st John 4: 7 – 21; Luke 10: 25 – 37 (Sermon)

The Title of our message this morning is: "The Attitude Of Love"

In our text from 1st Corinthians we see the importance of love and we read what Christ-like love is.

We saw that love is the greatest gift of all and that love never fails. Without love we are nothing. Christ-like love is patient and kind. Christ-like love keeps no record of wrongs and is not easily angered. Christ-like love is never proud or self-seeking. Christ-like love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

In our text from 1st John we see that God is the source of love and we can not truly love apart from God because God is love.

Also The Apostle John lists some reasons why true believers should want to love.

• True believers want to practice love because the God who lives in them is love. (vs. 7-8)
• True believers want to practice love because they want to imitate their Lord Jesus who loved us so much that He willingly laid down His life for us (vs. 9).
• True believers will want to practice love because love is the heart of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus calls His disciples to carry on the ministry that He started while He was on this earth.

We can love other people because God first loved us. Our love for others is an outward expression of our relationship with our Lord. If we are not loving other people that is an outward sign that our relationship with The Lord is not right and that our relationship with The Lord needs our immediate attention.

In The Parable of the Good Samaritan we see the application of Christ-like love. Jesus told this parable in response to the Jewish religious leaders were trying to trick Him when they and asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment. As you know, Jesus answered them by saying, "You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to the lawyer’s question, "Who is my neighbor?" In the parable a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho was beaten, stripped of his clothes, robbed, and left for dead. When a priest and a Levite, who were good upstanding religious folks, came along and saw the helpless hurting man, they passed on the other side of the road. Notice they went out of their way to keep from being involved. But when a Samaritan who was a despised outcast foreigner saw the helpless hurting man he took pity on him. The Samaritan cared for the man’s wounds, put the man on his donkey, took him to an inn and the Samaritan took care of the man that night. The next day the Samaritan paid the innkeeper to take care of the man and the Samaritan promised to reimburse the inn keeper for any extra expenses that he might incur. The Samaritan went out of his way and unconvinced himself to help someone he did not even know!

Then in verse 36, Jesus turned the lawyer’s question inside out by asking, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" The lawyer replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus said, "You got that right, now go and do likewise."

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is a dramatic description of the different attitude the priest and Levite had compared to the attitude of the Samaritan.

My Epiphany word this year was "Love". When I starting studying this word, one of the first definitions I read was "love is giving a person what they need the most; when they least deserve it even when you have to sacrifice a great deal"

When Jesus gave us the greatest commandment Jesus emphasized that our lives should be characterized by love. Our lesson from 1^st John goes so far as to say that everyone who loves is born of God. And we also read that if we love God we will love our brother. Conversely if we do not love other people we do not know God. This is strong language!

In verse 20 John rejects the idea that we can love God unless we love other people.

John is telling us love has two interconnected aspects. Our love for God compels us to love other

people and as we begin to understand God’s love for us, we learn how to love other people.

Jesus reaches out to everybody. The only question is how people respond. Some people are completely changed and are totally committed to following Jesus. Some people outwardly accept Jesus as their Savior and Lord, but then they betray or deny Jesus whenever it is expedient to do so. Other people do not even listen to Jesus’ call and totally ignore Him or they deny His presence in their life.

Jesus commanded us to love one another as He has loved us. That is with an unconditional unlimited love. Our love for one another should never be conditional and never based upon the other person’s performance or on our expectations. We are to reflect God’s love in success and in failure. We are to love one another even when the other person is self-righteous. We are to love other people even when they cannot love themselves.

You see when we love someone we always want the best for them. If we love them, then it is only natural for us to tell them about Jesus because we will want them to have the abundant life that Jesus promised in John 10:10. If we love them we will want them to be spared from spending eternity in hell.

But before we can tell other people about God’s love … we must first demonstrate the message of God’s love. "People do not care how much we know until they know how much we care." That is why we give food to the hungry. That is why we provide shelter for the homeless. That is why we provide money to help people get back on their feet. That is why we reach out as a church, to give credibility to our message. We have compassion because God had compassion on us. We love because Jesus loves us.

God’s word to us today challenges us to imitate the love of Jesus in our thinking, in our speaking, and in our actions. Obviously that is a very tough assignment. We will stumble and we will fall. We will be inconsistent in our ability to love God and to love other people. But the Good News is that it is God’s plan is to create a new you from the inside out. Our part is to cooperate with Him in that process of change. God does not promise to change our circumstances but God does promise to change us. In Ezekiel 36:26 we read this promise "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh". The Good News of Jesus Christ is that God has put His Spirit in all of His disciples to enable us and empower us to imitate Him; to love other people as Jesus loved people.

The Good News of Jesus Christ is that He is ready willing and able to forgive us when come to Him and admit our failures. The Good News of Jesus Christ is that He has adopted us as His children and He has placed us in His body, the church, to forgive and to encourage each other in our walk. Together we live out our faith and create an environment that nurtures, stimulates and expresses our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

As Christians we are called to new way of thinking, a new way of speaking, and a new way of behaving. We are called to imitate the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which one of the characters in the parable do you most closely identify with? The priest and the Levite or the Samaritan?

This morning we all need to ask ourselves:

• "During this past week did I go out of my way to help the people I saw in need?
• "Did I go out of my way to be a friend to the friendless?"
• "Did I demonstrate my love for Jesus Christ by the way I spoke to people and by the way I treated them?"
• Do you love an unsaved friend enough to tell them about Jesus so they will not have to spend eternity in Hell.

If we were perfectly honest with ourselves we would have to admit that sometimes we are like the priest and the Levite Jesus talked about!

You see perfect love is something that we as Christians must continually strive to achieve. But honestly our ability to love is in training. We must learn day-by-day to love in the way Jesus loved. We are a work in progress and this process will continue until we are called home to be with our Lord.

Our part is to:

• Have the desire to love like Christ loved,
• Have the faith to believe God will change us, and
• Have the commitment to allow The Holy Spirit to change our attitude?