These three last forever – faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

God loves us so much

11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 19 We love because he first loved us.

God’s love is unlimited – it holds nothing back

9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Most of us know John 3:16 off by heart. We ought to learn 1 John 3:16 off by heart as well –

1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us is the standard and supreme example of the kind of love we should show to other Christians. Not just love when it suits us, love when we can spare the time, but love which costs, love which pays the ultimate price! Think of how much it cost Christ to die for you. Be honest! How much does it really cost you to live for him? Laying down our lives not just for God but for our brothers.

God’s love is totally undeserved

We can never ever do anything to earn or deserve God’s love!

God’s forgiveness is Unilateral Forgiveness

The essence of Christian forgiveness is that God makes a way for us to be forgiven BEFORE we repent. “It was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8) As Jackie Pullinger puts it, “Jesus didn’t wait for me to make good before he died for me.”
The Father is out looking waiting for the prodigal to return BEFORE the prodigal comes to his senses and returns to his Father and confesses and repents. (Luke 15) The paralysed man in Mark 2:5 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8:11 are forgiven BEFORE they repent.
Our repentance is then the channel by which we come to enjoy the benefits of forgiveness. But it is God’s gracious act of forgiving us which prompts our repentance, NOT our repentance which earns or even opens the door to God forgiving us. The initiative comes from God.
This is NOT to say that everybody is saved. Only those who receive God’s forgiveness by repentance enjoy the blessings of salvation. But God’s forgiveness is UNILATERAL – originating from within his merciful character and made possible through the death of Christ on the cross. God’s forgiveness is NOT BILATERAL – not forgiveness as a response to human acknowledgement of sin. Human acknowledgement is necessary in the process of us experiencing God’s forgiveness and enjoying a reconciled relationship, but not necessary for God to forgive us.
Most human forgiveness is Bilateral – a response to confession and repentance:
Acknowledgement by the guilty -> forgiveness by the injured -> reconciliation
God’s kind of forgiveness is Unilateral – all from God’s side:
God forgives -> this prompts sinners to confess and repent -> reconciliation
THIS is the mystery of God’s amazing grace!

God loves us!

So we love God in return

When we realise how much God loves us – we will love God!

They asked Jesus what are the greatest commandments. And He replied.
Luke 10:27 He answered: “`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, `Love your neighbour as yourself.'”

LOVING GOD

Loving God is NOT romantic love. Loving God has nothing to do with “being in love with God” 20th century charismatics are to blame for that wrong idea, as are certain popular songwriters. You could blame it on a misunderstanding of the interpretation of the Song of Solomon as a love poem between God and the church. But when the Bible says we are to love God, that concept does NOT include any notion of “being in love with God”

The proper pictures for our love of God are the love of a devoted child for a parent. Or the love the apostles showed for Jesus during His ministry. To put it in the negative, we should never address God in a way that a loving child would not address their parent. We should never address the Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, in a way that apostles like Peter, James and John would not have done!

We love God, and we also love each other

When we realise how much God loves us – we will love God! And we will love other Christians too.

1 JOHN 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. …. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (NIV)
if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen? (NEW LIVING TRANSLATION)

Loving our brothers and sisters in the church – easy in theory, harder in practice!
“To dwell above with saints we love, that will be grace and glory–
To live below with saints we know … that’s another story!”

We need to show our love for our fellow Christians in practical ways. In hospitality. In just spending time together. And in forgiving one another.

C.S.Lewis – Everybody agrees forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have something to forgive.

The parable of the two debtors remind us that the more conscious we are of how much God has forgiven us, the more we will be able to forgive others who sin against us.

George Herbert wrote, “He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven, for everyone has need to be forgiven.”

Jesus reminds us that the love Christians have for each other is our witness to the world.
John 13 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

And it is only our love for our fellow Christians which gives us assurance that we are actually saved.
1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.

How can we be sure we are saved? Because we love our brothers. Not because of what we say we believe – but because we love other Christians! It’s not our beliefs which are the test – but how much love we show! This is embarrassing. This is challenging. This is the kind of verse we would like to ignore – and if it were just that one verse we might be able to ignore it. But hear what else John says

14 ¶ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
John is very clear. If we are not loving your fellow Christians, we don’t have eternal life! And again:-
3:10 Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

When Leonardo da Vinci was painting the Last Supper, he had an intense, bitter argument with a fellow painter. Leonardo was so enraged that he decided to paint the face of his enemy into the face of Judas. That way the hated painter’s face would be preserved for ages in the face of the betraying disciple. When Leonardo finished Judas, everyone easily recognized the face of the painter with whom Leonardo quarreled.
Leonardo continued to work on the painting. But as much as he tried, he could not paint the face of Christ. Something was holding him back.
Leonardo decided his hatred toward his fellow painter was the problem. So he worked through his hatred by repainting Judas’ face, replacing the image of his fellow painter with another face. Only then was he able to paint Jesus’ face and complete the masterpiece.

We love God, we love other Christians, and we love our neighbours

When we realise how much God loves us – we will love God! And we will love other Christians. And then we will love our neighbour as well!

This is the second of the greatest commandments. `Love your neighbour as yourself.'”

The challenge for Christians in this day and age is to get to know our neighbours. Not to be so busy with church activities that we never meet our neighbours and get the opportunities to show God’s love to them. We all think loving our neighbours is a good idea, but many Christians just never get around to it!

Love isn’t always easy. There is a story of a certain professor of psychology which reminds me how difficult it can be to love other people. Whenever he saw his neighbour scolding his child for some wrongdoing, the professor would say, “You should love your boy, not punish him.” One hot summer afternoon the professor was repairing the concrete driveway leading to his garage. After several hours of work in the sunshine, he laid down his towel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and started back towards his house. Just then out of the corner of his eye he saw that mischievous boy deliberately putting his foot into the wet cement. The professor rushed over, grabbed him, and was about to throttle him when his neighbour leaned out from a window and said, “Watch out, Professor! Don’t you remember? You must always ‘love’ the child!” The professor yelled back, “I do love him in the abstract, just not in the concrete!”

It is easy to love – in abstract, in theory. What is difficult is to show true love in practice, in everyday life, with real people. It should be so simple. God loves us. So we should love God. We love should each other. We should love our neighbours.

But let’s be honest about this challenge to love each other as Christ has loved us? What about this standard of loving our neighbour as much as we love ourselves? These are the ideals God calls us to aim at, by his grace. But we have to admit that all of us have times when we fail to show the kind of love God calls us to show. That leads us to an important question.
Does love have limits?

God’s love for us does not have limits. But does our obligation to love other people have limits? Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that we are not allowed to retaliate – we must always turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile. We are obliged to keep on forgiving.

Matthew 1821 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

We must keep on forgiving. But there may occasionally come a point when we are allowed to stop loving. There can be situations when loving with God’s love is simply beyond us. And in an extreme situation, if we find ourselves completely unable to show God’s love, then

We are allowed to walk away.

A woman or equally a man might find themselves trapped in a loveless and abusive relationship. Because they are Christians they might think they are obliged to stay with that partner and obliged to keep on being rejected and hurt, emotionally and maybe even physically. It seems very clear to me that God says that a person in that situation is not obliged to keep on suffering. They are allowed to walk away.

I believe the same is true for people who are trapped in jobs which are destroying them, with bosses exploiting and mistreating them. You are allowed to walk away. Trust in God for what you are going to do next – but don’t keep on suffering. Walk away.

I have even said the same to Ministers where the church they are seeking to serve is treating them unacceptably. Making unreasonable demands on them. Failing to love them and support them. Gossiping about them. They are allowed to just walk away.
We aren’t allowed to retaliate. We do have to keep on forgiving. But in the interests of self-preservation, Christians are allowed to walk away. The obligation to love DOES have limits.

Remember at the beginning of his ministry, the apostle Paul was fiercely opposed by the Jews.
Acts 923 After many days had gone by, the Jews conspired to kill him, 24 but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25 But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.

So Paul escaped. Just think how different the history of the church would have looked if the apostle Paul had NOT walked away at that point. No second half of the book of Acts. None of Paul’s letters. There are times when it is alright to walk away! It is not the first resort. Or the second. But as a last resort, walking and even running away is an acceptable option. Walking away can be the right thing to do. But one last thing.
The reason God loves us is NOT because we love Him or anybody else

Whether we love Him back as much as we should – or not – God loves us just the same.
Whether we love each other as much as God loves us – or not – God loves us just the same. Whether we love our neighbours as much as we should – or not – God loves us just the same. If our love runs out and we just can’t love any more and so we walk away – God loves us just the same! That is the amazing love of God! So we don’t love God because that will make God love us more. We don’t love other people because that will make God love us more. We love because God first loved us.

We live in a troubled world. On Thursday evening in Nice in the South of France a terrorist driving a lorry murdered 84 innocent people and many more injured or terrified, including many children. On Friday evening an attempted coup in Turkey left 265 people dead and again many more injured and frightened. Friday night was difficult for us personally because our daughter Susie was away on holiday in Turkey last week. We had a few very anxious hours before we were most relieved to learn that Susie’s flight had left the country safely just before the shooting started and the airports were closed. We live in a troubled world but sometimes it seems as though those troubles are getting closer and closer to us every day. It may only be a matter of time before civil unrest or a terrorist attack comes to Essex.
At the same time there are worrying signs of greater opposition to Christianity in our country. It was very sad to see the press directly criticising two of the candidates to be Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom and Stephen Crabb, specifically because they have stood up to be counted as Christians. We hear stories of Christians being persecuted and physically attacked in places like Huddersfield and Oldham as well as parts of London. Such opposition to the gospel could even come to Chelmsford one day soon.
In troubled times, what helps Christians keep on going? What helps us not to give up as Christians? What gives us the strength to keep on loving our neighbours and to keep on talking about Jesus when it is getting harder and harder to do these things? The answer is hope – our Christian hope.
1 Peter 1:3 ¶ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you,
What helps us to keep on going as Christians through the hard times is that living hope which God has given us. Just think of all the amazing and wonderful blessings God has given us as Christians. We have been born again! We have a brand new life as we share in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ! And with that new life comes the living hope of an inheritance.
In his lifetime the billionaire J. Paul Getty was America’s richest man worth $8 billion in today’s money. The world’s richest man today is Bill Gates and he is worth $80 billion but that’s by the way. When Getty died in 1976 somebody asked, “How much did he leave?” The answer came back, “Everything.” When people die they leave their earthly life behind. All their property, all their possessions, all their wealth are left behind for others to inherit. But when Christians die, that is the time when we receive our true inheritance. That is an inheritance which can never perish spoil or fade because God is keeping it safe in heaven waiting for us. We are so much richer than the heirs of Paul Getty. So much richer than the heirs of Bill Gates will be. Because we have a glorious eternal inheritance waiting for us. This life is not all there is. This life is just a foretaste. This life is the appetizer. We have the living hope of heaven.
We have an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you,5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
Whatever this life may throw at us, God has guaranteed to keep us safe. The infinite power of Almighty God is shielding us, protecting us and keeping us safe until our salvation is finally revealed in glory. This is our living hope.
It has been said that man can live for 40 days without food, for three days without water, for several minutes without air but for only a few seconds without hope. Dostoevski said, “Hell is hopelessness.” The inscription above the entrance to Dante’s inferno read, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” When you look at the pessimism and gloom of some Christians you would think that they were destined for hell and even at its door. In fact the opposite is true. True believers have every reason to be filled with hope. We have a hope which is steadfast and certain! And what a hope!

The apostle Paul said in Romans 5:2 And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. The Bible idea of hope is not some wishy washy optimism but a confident expectation. A better translation would be, “the happy certainty”. The happy certainty that one day God will take us to be with him and we will share His glory for eternity. THIS is our destiny as Christians. THIS is God’s wonderful plan and purpose for us – yes even for you and even for me!

It is this glorious hope which Christians have in Jesus Christ which helps us to face the trials of life with courage and faith. Peter was writing to Christians who were facing brutal persecution under the Roman Empire led by Emperor Nero following the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. Ordinary Christians were being crucified and even used as human torches in Nero’s gardens. So Peter reminds them of their living hope of an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you. He continues,
6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Whatever troubles this life brings, Christians should still rejoice in the living hope God has given us. God is allowing those terrible trials to refine and purify our faith. We put our trust in Christ and as we do so, God will fill us with joy in Him.
8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
We have this wonderful living hope that one day we will be united with Christ in glory. As a result, strange as it sounds, we are able not only to endure but even to rejoice in the trials and sufferings we experience. All the apostles suffered persecution for proclaiming the gospel, so Peter knew what he was talking about. It was the hope of glory which kept Peter going. And the same was true of the apostle Paul.

That’s why Paul wrote in Romans 5:2 We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings,

We have this wonderful Christian hope of sharing God’s glory. This brings us great joy even in the midst of suffering. C.S.Lewis said, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” Excitement and enthusiasm are not excesses in the Christian life, but they are inevitable overflowing of our faith and our hope. We are not weighed down by the trials of life. Rather we are even able to rejoice in the midst of them. Because of our living hope of heaven, Christians are indeed “The Happiest People on Earth”. Peter, Paul and the rest of the apostles knew more about trials and suffering and persecution than we will ever knew. And they agree that the result is that believers are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

Romans 5:2 And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us,

We rejoice in our hope of sharing God’s glory. Christ Himself suffered and died on the cross to give us this hope. And Christians experience this hope as we follow Christ in the way of His cross. The sufferings and trials we face are the pressures of a godless hostile world on those who follow Christ. These teach us perseverance and build up our character. Instead of undermining our confidence in God, in fact these experiences of adversity and opposition all strengthen our faith and build up our hope. Our hope comes through the resurrection life of Christ in us. Jesus has died – but Christ has also risen! And He has shown us the path we must follow, through suffering to glory, through cross to resurrection. But be reassured, however tough life gets, God will not let go of us. We WILL share in His glory!

Romans 5 5 And hope does not disappoint us, Paul says. But how can we be sure? How can we be certain that in the end our hope will not turn out to be empty? In Romans 5 Paul gives us three reasons why our hope of sharing the glory of God is not some naïve optimism but a happy certainty!

Reason 1: 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
The Holy Spirit is the seal, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, the foretaste of heaven. Every experience of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives strengthens our hope. We are secure in our salvation, sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Once saved, always saved! Hope never disappoints us!

Reason 2: 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
We have been “justified by his blood.” God has made it “just as if I’d” never sinned. Romans 5 verse 1 “We have been justified through faith”, so now have “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This fact gives us great assurance. We were saved through God’s gift, not through our own good works but by grace alone, received by faith alone. We never earned or deserved our salvation in the first place. So we don’t have to keep on working hard to hang on to that salvation. None of us is perfect. We all still sin. But God will never let us go. Hope does not disappoint us! Once saved and always saved!

Romans 5 10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

Reason 3: Since God loved us so much while we were still His enemies facing His wrath, how much more will God keep on loving us and keep us safe now that we are His children. Once saved and always saved! Hope does not disappoint us and hope will never disappoint us!

The great evangelist D. L.Moody expressed this triumphant hope as his life was drawing to an end. He said, “Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody is dead. Don’t you believe it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I have ever been. I shall have gone up higher, that is all.”

Those without Christ face a hopeless end. But through Jesus, every Christian can rejoice in an endless hope, the wonderful hope of eternal life, life in all its fullness here and now which not even death can take away. This Christian hope is not some vague optimism but a happy certainty. Hope is a combination of expectation and desire. I would love one day to walk on the moon. But since I have no expectation of that ever happening I can’t say, “I hope to walk on the moon.” On the other hand, one day I am sure I will have to visit the dentist. But since I have no desire to visit the dentist it would be wrong to say, “I hope to visit the dentist.” But as a Christian my greatest desire is to spend eternity with Jesus. And the promises of God make it absolutely certain that I will spend eternity with Jesus. So it is correct to say that my hope is spend eternity with Jesus. This is not wishful thinking. This is the happy certainty of our Christian hope. This promise is for every person who puts their trust in Jesus Christ who died and rose again.

But I suppose the reality is that for most Christians for most of the time our glorious Christian hope doesn’t make too much difference to our lives. Our lives are actually quite comfortable. From day to day most of us not facing much persecution or experiencing much suffering or enduring terrible trials. When life is mostly easy our Christian hope may not really mean very much to us. We may not feel that we are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy at the moment. G. K. Chesterton said a very wise thing. “Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all…As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.”

So our Christian hope may not mean too much to us from day to day. We may not be filled with joy so much. “It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.”

If we aren’t feeling particularly filled with glorious hope and inexpressible joy, then we should make time to think more about the wonderful hope we have in Christ.

Colossians 3 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

When Christ returns then Christians will share his glory. That is the happy certainty of the living hope of our glorious inheritance. Until that day, we are not working for time any more. We are working for eternity. So we should set our hearts and our minds on things above, not things below. We should make every effort to base our lives on this wonderful hope which is more certain than anything in this life and this world can be.

1 Peter 1:3 ¶ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you,