How to Love Your Neighbor

0:55Loving our neighbors is a very big deal to God, and it should be a very big deal to us as well. In fact, Jesus taught that the entire law can be summed up in two commands: to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Loving our God and loving our neighbor, that's so important. Jesus said the whole law, all 613 commandments, are summed up in those two commands.

1:30So, Paul is going to expand upon that today. This passage is all about loving our neighbors, but I think before we can jump into what that means, we have to answer a very important question, and that is, what is love? What is love? Many people today would answer that with the popular expression, love is love. You've probably seen that on bumper stickers, you've seen it on people's front porches, seen it on commercials. Love is love. In other words, love is whatever I say that it is. Everyone decides what love means for himself or herself.

2:13But of course, like so many things that the world comes up with, that doesn't work in real life. If love is love, love could be anything and everything, even something that is opposite and contradictory. So, as always, we need God to reveal the truth about what love is. Look on the screen at 1 John chapter 4. John says, Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

2:56So, what is love? God is love. And God manifested his love to us by sending his son Jesus in love to live and die and rise again for our sins, that we would have eternal life through faith in him, that we would be forgiven and counted righteous. And so love, then, the way we can define love is love is doing what is best for someone else, even at cost to ourselves. Love is doing what is best for someone else, even at cost to ourselves. And in today's passage, Paul is going to help us understand why we're called to love our neighbors in verses 8 through 11.

3:41And then he's going to share how we go about loving our neighbors in verses 12 through 14. So let's start here in verse 8 of chapter 13 with that first point, Paul's main point. We must love our neighbors as ourselves. Look at verse 8. Paul says, owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling command. Of the law.

4:32So, friends, in these four verses, you have Paul's main point, his thrust of the argument, his central idea. We must love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And he starts off here in verse 8. He says, owe no one anything. Now, listen, that does not mean, as some people think, never take on debt. Okay, there's lots of places in the Bible, principles for borrowing are taught all over scripture. So the Bible is not condemning debt per se. Rather, Paul is building on what he taught in the previous section in verse 7.

5:12Christians pay our debts to the government, into businesses, into individuals. We pay taxes and we pay revenue and we pay respect and honor. We pay what we owe. But there is one debt that we can never repay, and that is the debt to love our neighbor. It's the debt of love. We can never get to the point with love where we can say, I have repaid my debt. I don't owe anyone any more love. I've loved enough. God loves us without end, and we are called to love our neighbors without end as well. And so you notice in verses 8 through 11, Paul gives us three. Two reasons why we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. First, because God commanded it, and second, because Jesus is coming soon. So, first, we must love our neighbors as ourselves because God commanded it. Now, in Scripture, it's taken for granted that we know how to love ourselves.

6:21Have you ever noticed that when you read the Bible? That's taken for granted. That is really important for a generation like ours that is constantly hearing about self-love and self-care. We're told over and over again: you need another podcast, you need a YouTube video, you need a class on how to love yourself because you're not very good at that. The Bible says that's not true. The Bible takes it for granted that we know how to love ourselves.

6:50So, think about what Paul said to husbands in Ephesians 5. Look on the screen. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Jesus puts it even more plainly in what we call the golden rule in Matthew 7. Take a look at this: So, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Prophets.

7:32So Paul tells husbands, you know how to love yourself, so love your wife the same way. You already know that. You know how to love yourself, love your wife that way. Jesus says, do to others, whatever you want done to you, do that for others. That is how you love your neighbor as yourself. And then Paul goes on in verse 10, and he says this: Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Okay, surely we can all agree that doing wrong to someone is not loving them. I don't think anybody on earth would disagree with that, that if you do wrong to someone, you're not loving them.

8:13The problem, of course, is that we can't agree on what's wrong. We can't agree on what actually constitutes a wrong. So, for example, someone may say, in general, adultery is wrong. They would say, in general, adultery is wrong. It's sin. You shouldn't do it. But then, when people commit adultery, they say things like this. And I've heard this many times as a pastor. If you only knew how unhappy I was in my marriage, if you only knew how unhappy they are in their marriage, you wouldn't say that it's wrong.

8:57So, see, what's right and wrong isn't dependent, apparently. On an objective standard, it's dependent on how I feel about it. That's why we need the objective standard of the Word of God. We need God to tell us the truth. We need Him to tell us what is right and what is wrong because sin blinds us to the truth. It makes it so that we can't see it or we won't see it. We need God to tell us that adultery is wrong, no matter how we feel about it. We need Him to tell us that murder is wrong, no matter how we feel about it. We need Him to tell us that stealing and coveting and the things that come later in this passage, if you look down at verse 13, things like drunkenness and sensuality and quarreling and jealousy, we need him to tell us that those things are wrong and they are wrong no matter how we feel about them. They are not dependent on your circumstances, what has been done to you, what's going on in your life.

9:59They're wrong. And so, friends, we must love ourselves, must love our neighbor as ourselves because God commanded it. We already know how to love ourselves, and loving our neighbors means that we do for them what we wish they would do for us. Do you hear how Jesus words that in Matthew 7? There is no 50-50 in loving your neighbor. There is no place for the Christian to say, my wife, my child, my next-door neighbor, my coworker, they don't treat you. Me very well, so I'm not going to treat them very well. No, Jesus says, whatever you wish that others would do for you, you do that for them. That's what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. So, the first reason we do that is because God commands it. But the second reason we love our neighbor as we love ourselves is because Jesus is coming soon. Look at verse 11.

10:56Paul says, Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. Denou, students, wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than we first believed. Throughout his ministry, Jesus taught a lot about his second coming. And he was very clear about something that he would come suddenly when nobody expected it. In fact, three times in Revelation chapter 22, the last chapter of the Bible, Jesus says, Behold, I am coming soon. Behold, I am coming soon. Behold, I am coming soon. It's some of the last words that he leaves us with, and he leaves us with them three times. And here in Romans 13, Paul is reminding the Christians in Rome that they know that Jesus is going to return soon. So they need to wake up. They need to get out of bed. They need to get up because nighttime is over. The day is at hand.

12:00The idea here is that we are asking ourselves the question, how do I want Jesus to find me when he comes back? How do I want Jesus to find me when he comes back? Specifically, how do we want Jesus to find us treating our neighbors when he returns? In Matthew 24, Jesus tells an entire parable about this truth. Take a look on the screen. Jesus says, who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, my master is delayed, and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

13:19Friends, Jesus is coming soon. And he is coming at an hour that no one knows or no one expects. That's why every time you see on the internet, somebody says, I know when Jesus is coming back, you know that they're lying because Jesus himself says no one knows. Only the Father knows. No one knows. No one can expect him. So what do we want him to find us doing when he returns? Do we want him to walk in on us committing adultery or murder?

13:55Do we want him to find us drunk or quarreling with each other or eaten up with jealousy? Of course not. When Jesus returns, we want him to find us doing what he commanded, loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. We want him to find us not only doing no wrong to our neighbors, we want him to find us doing for them what we wish that they would do for us. So in view of God's command and the fact that Jesus is coming soon, we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But the question is how? How are we called to do that? Well, in the rest of this passage, verses 12 through 14, Paul's going to give us four ways that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And the first one that we'll see in verse 12 is: we love our neighbors as we love ourselves by casting off the works of darkness. Look at verse 12.

15:03Paul says, the night is far gone. The day is at hand. So then, let us cast off the works of darkness. So Paul says, if you want to love your neighbor as you love yourself, the first thing you have to do is cast off the works of darkness. The New Living Translation, the way that team translates this Greek phrase is, remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes. Remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes. Take them off like you would clothing that has gotten filthy from rolling around in the mud. Take those off. And what are those dark deeds that you and I are called to cast off, to take off? Well, again, in verse 13, we have at least a partial list here. Orgies and drunkenness, sexual immorality and sensuality, quarreling and jealousy. One of the things that I want you to see here, I want you to notice that Paul includes behaviors that many of us would consider big sins, things like orgies and drunkenness. But he also includes things that a lot of us would say those are little sins, things like quarreling and jealousy. And that's because. Because all sin leads to death. It's true that some sin has bigger consequences in this life.

16:39But friends, in God's world, there are no small sins. Every sin leads to death. There is no sin that doesn't lead to death. Every sin is a failure to love God or love neighbor or love both. So the command is to cast off the works of darkness, but how do we do that? Well, we do that through what the Bible calls repentance. Paul teaches about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 7. Take a look on the screen.

17:14Paul writes, as it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. So when you see this word repent or repentance in Scripture, it's this Greek word metanoia. It means to change your mind, to change your mind that results in a change of behavior. That's what repentance is, a change of mind that leads to a change in behavior. In this passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul says that repentance starts with what he calls godly grief. And he contrasts godly grief with what he calls worldly grief. Worldly grief, we've all experienced this before, worldly grief is when you feel sad about your sin, but you just feel sad because of the consequences. You just feel sad because you got caught. And as a result, you don't repent. You don't change your mind and you don't change your behavior about that sin. Because all you feel is sad that you have to deal with the consequences or sad that you got caught. But godly grief, Paul says, is very different. Godly grief is when you sin, you're not just sad about the consequences. You're not just sad that you got caught. You are sad that you have hurt others with your choices. You are sad that you have grieved God. You are sad that you have grieved your neighbor. You have injured your neighbor. You have done something wrong to your neighbor. And that is what you feel upset about. Godly grief, Paul says, produces repentance. When you feel that kind of sadness, you change your mind. You say, I can't live like that anymore. I shouldn't live like that anymore. That's wrong. And so I'm going to change my behavior. I'm going to make different choices. In other words, repentance is catalog. Casting off the works of darkness. It's taking off those filthy deeds and not putting them back on.

19:37And in Scripture, Zacchaeus, the tax collector, a lot of you are familiar with that story. That's such a great example. Zacchaeus, if you remember, is the man of short stature who climbs up a tree to see Jesus. And Jesus says, Zacchaeus, come down. I want to come to your house today. And Zacchaeus throws this huge party. And the religious people are looking at the situation and they say of Jesus, look at this guy. He's going to be the guest of a sinner.

20:06But Zacchaeus ignores all that noise. And look at what he says to Jesus in Luke 19. Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold. Zacchaeus encountered Jesus. And that encounter with Jesus led him to say, I'm going to give half my stuff to the poor. If I've taken advantage of any person, I'm going to restore it fourfold. I'm going to give four times back what I took from them. That encounter with Jesus is what changed Zacchaeus. You see, he knew it wasn't enough for him to just feel sorry about what he had done. It wasn't enough for him to shed a few tears. Go make a couple of apologies, like, I'm sorry, I took way too much money from you. I'm sorry I extorted you, I'm sorry I took bribes from you, and call it good. He knew he couldn't do that. He understood that repentance meant he had to change his mind and change his behavior, and so that's what he did.

21:19He said, Not only can I not defraud people anymore, I need to make restitution. I need to go back and make things right plus some with all of these people that I've hurt. So, I want to ask you this morning: have you cast off the works of darkness? Are you walking in real repentance for your sin that was motivated by a godly grief? Seeing your sin and feeling sorry about it, motivated by God's Word and God's Spirit, not just because you got caught, not just because you have the consequences to bear, but because you have hurt God. You have hurt your neighbor. That's what real repentance is.

22:03And so, we love our neighbor as ourself by casting off the works of darkness. We don't justify sin, we don't explain it away, we don't say, in this instance, here's why it's okay that I was quarreling or jealous or drunk or anything else. We repent of it just like Zacchaeus did. We cast off the works of darkness. Let's look at the second way that we love our neighbors as ourselves. By making no provision for the flesh. Look at verse 14 all the way at the bottom.

22:41Paul says, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. A few years ago, I went on a backpacking trip in the mountains with my good friend Dusty. And before we left for the trip, we spent the vast majority of the day just gathering provisions, water filtration systems, and freeze-dried meals and snacks and bedding and batteries and fire starters and everything that we might need because we were thinking to ourselves about the future and thinking, what are we going to need or what are we going to want later on? We were planning now for the future, what we might want.

23:42And people do the same thing with sin. Sadly, even professing Christians do the same thing with sin. They think, I want to get drunk later. I want to hook up with somebody. Later. I want to watch porn later. I want to steal from my employer later. How can I plan to make that happen? But that's probably not the case with most of us and with most professing Christians. We're not actually planning to sin later. But we do leave that door cracked, don't we?

24:34You keep alcohol in the house, though you know that you often fail to exercise self-control with your drinking. You keep going out dancing, though you know you've fallen into sexual sin many times because of it. You keep unfiltered access to the internet, though you know you're addicted to pornography. You keep your social media account, even though it leads to quarreling or jealousy. Let's be honest with ourselves. What are we doing? We are making provision for the flesh. We are not actively planning to sin later on, but we are leaving that door open.

25:30So, that if we feel like it, we can walk through it. That is making provision for the flesh. And every time we do that, we fail to love our neighbors. Friends, there is no victimless sin. Let me say that again: there is no victimless sin. The world will tell you, Satan will tell you, your friends might tell you that it's not wrong if no one is getting hurt. It is impossible to sin and have no one get hurt. People get hurt every time we sin.

26:12And so, what does God say? God says, make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. No provision at all. That means we do not leave the door open. We don't provide the means for us to sin later on if that's what we decide that we want to do. What this means is, you need to know yourself. You need to know the sins that you commit most often and the means that you use to commit those sins.

26:48You need to know yourself so that you can make no provision for the flesh. If you know that you rarely exercise, Self-control with alcohol, make no provision for the flesh. Get it out of the house. Stop going to bars. If you know you keep falling into sexual sin with others, make no provision for the flesh. Stop putting yourself in bad situations where you're going to be tempted to sin. So many times in the last 10 or 15 years, I've had young couples come to me, one or both of them, and say, we keep falling into sexual sin. And I'm like, tell me about that. They're like, well, I don't know. We were watching Netflix in the dark in his bed, and one thing just led to another. I'm like, man, I'll pray about that and try to help you figure out why that happened.

27:48Make no provision for the flesh. If you're viewing pornography, make no provision for the flesh. Get rid of your smartphone. Get rid of your laptop. Come talk to Pastor Marty or another computer expert here in our church about blocking, filtering, accountability software, steps that you can take to make no provision for the flesh. If you know that social media has not been good for your spiritual health, and friends, it is not good for anybody's spiritual health. Some of you have to be on it for business or for other reasons. That's between you and the Lord. You need. To decide that for yourself, but just understand, it's like so many things in this life. It's a good thing that we have planes and cars and factories and everything else, but they produce pollution, and pollution is killing us. That's a fact.

28:43Social media is like that. You may need it for business or for something else. But get on and do what you need to do and get off. Most of us do not need it, and it's harming us spiritually. Friends, it's just not possible, though, to close every single door. It's not possible to make sin impossible. We cannot eliminate every temptation from our lives. But with God's help and out of love for our neighbor, we need to make no provision for the flesh.

29:20So we love our neighbors as we love ourselves by casting off the works of darkness and making no provision for the flesh. But what about positively? Is there anything positive that we can do to love our neighbor as we love ourselves? Paul says yes. And the next thing that he's going to point out, the third truth here, is we love our neighbors as we love ourselves by putting on the armor of light. Let's look back at verse 12 again.

29:54Paul says, the night is far gone. The day is at hand. So then, let us cast ourselves. Off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Well, friends, the Bible says that we need armor because we are in a spiritual war. Look on the screen at Ephesians 6. Paul reminds us: for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

30:34We are in a spiritual war, and it is not smart to go into battle without armor. In war, bullets are flying, shrapnel is flying, you are going to get hit with something. So we need armor. But what's interesting is that Paul says that we are to put on the armor of light. The armor of light? That sounds like the emperor's new clothes. The old folk tale about the emperor who was tricked into thinking that he was wearing a beautiful robe made of magical fabric, but he was actually walking around naked.

31:17How is armor made of light supposed to help us in a war? Well, from Scripture, we learn that light protects us in two ways. First, light drives out darkness. And second, light deters evil. First, light drives out darkness. My very first seminary professor, Dr. Norman Geisler, he passed away a few years ago, really godly, awesome man. He helped me to understand that darkness is not actually a thing. Now maybe you knew this, but I didn't know this. Darkness is not a thing. Darkness is the absence of something, namely waves of light. So when it gets dark, it's not because darkness is increasing, it's because light is decreasing. Look what the Bible says in 1 John.

32:12This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. So friends, God is light. The closer we walk with God, the more his light shines on us, and the light drives out the darkness, the sins that we commit against him and other people. And what that means is when we walk in the light, we have fellowship with each other because we're not sinning against each other. We're walking in the light. Light drives out darkness.

33:01The second truth about light that we learn from scripture is that light deters evil. Now, many of you know that right after my wife and I got married, we moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. But you may not know that in that first year of our marriage, we got robbed three times. Had to come back to Texas, where nobody robs people because everybody has weapons. One thing we learned from those experiences, from talking to all the police officers and the insurance adjusters and everybody else, is that good light is very important. In fact, police officers and insurance adjusters will tell you that good lighting is better than dogs, it's better than locks, it's better than alarm systems, and that's because criminals do not want to be seen.

33:55So good lighting is the best defense. Look at John chapter 3. Jesus says, and this is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

34:28Friends, sin thrives. In the dark, because light deters evil. If you love wickedness, you hate the light because you don't want your evil deeds to be exposed. But if you love truth, if you love God and neighbor, you want to walk in the light. You confess your sins to God and to other people, inviting them to pray for you, inviting them to ask you questions, to hold you accountable. Light deters evil. So, we love our neighbor as we love ourselves by casting off the works of darkness, by making no provision for the flesh, and by putting on the armor of light. And that takes us to our fourth and final way that we love our neighbor as ourself. And that is by putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 14, one more time.

35:21But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. What does that mean to put on the Lord Jesus Christ? Look at Galatians 3. Paul says, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And that's because baptism is a symbolic representation of our death, burial, and resurrection through faith in Christ. Through faith in Christ, we die to our sin and our old way of life, and through faith in Christ, we are raised to walk in a new way. Life. So we put on Christ by putting our faith in him, which is symbolized in baptism.

36:10But the question here is: if Paul is writing to Christians, which he is, they've already put on the Lord Jesus Christ. So why would Paul be telling Christians like these people and many of us here today, why would he be telling us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, friends, it's because that's not something that you do just once when you believe and you're baptized. Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is something that you do every day.

36:40Think about this. When you get up in the morning and you walk into your closet, you decide what you're going to put on. Could be this outfit or that outfit. It might depend on the weather or the occasion or how you're feeling that day, but you're going to choose something to wear. And in the same way, every single day when we wake up, we have a choice to make. We can either put on the works of darkness and clothe ourselves in those, or we can put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

37:13What does that look like to put on the Lord Jesus Christ? I want you to look at this picture of Jesus from John 13. He and the disciples are in the upper room when they took the Lord's Supper together and all those things. Jesus, knowing that the Father Had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

37:54Friends, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he clothed himself as a servant. He got down on his hands and his knees, and he served his neighbors. He did this loving act, knowing that every one of them was going to desert him, that Peter was going to deny him, and that Judas Iscariot was going to betray him. He still served these people. And after that, he served his neighbors again. Those neighbors whose feet he had washed in the upper room, and those neighbors who were going to shout, crucify him, crucify him.

38:42And those neighbors like us, people just like you and me. He loved us and he served us by going to the cross to bear our sin. Every sin that you have ever committed or witnessed. Will ever commit. He went to the cross to take that upon himself so that you did not have to bear it. He died and he rose again on the third day, so that anyone and everyone who puts their faith in Jesus, your sins were nailed to the cross with him.

39:22Your sins are forgiven. You are counted righteous, not because you're a good person, not because you're a religious person, not because you try hard, but because Jesus took your place. He served you ultimately on the cross. Brothers and sisters, Jesus set a perfect example for us in terms of what it means to love our neighbors. But his example alone, inspiring as it is, does not give us the power that we need to actually love our neighbors, the people who are closest to us, the people that we are commanded to love.

40:04We must put on the Lord Jesus Christ through faith. Because when we do that, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we are actually empowered to do what God has commanded, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Look what Paul says in Galatians 5. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires. Of the flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

40:54Friends, we are commanded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But you know and I know that that is not possible without power from above. That power is only accessible through faith in Christ. So if you have not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, adults, if you have not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, students, if you have not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, children, if you have not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, today needs to be the day. Today needs to be the day that you look at God's word, his commands, his standards, and you say, there is no way. I cannot keep these things. I am not good enough to get into heaven. Today should be the day that you put your faith in Christ alone, that you trust in his life and death and resurrection on your behalf. Because when you do that, you'll be filled with the Spirit. And when you're filled with the Spirit, you'll be empowered to do what God has commanded us to do. And that is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

42:00Let's pray. Father, who is sufficient for these things that you have commanded us? Your standard is perfect. It is far beyond us. We have all of the good intentions in the world for loving our neighbors. But the second we go home with our parents, our children, our siblings, the second we go to work, the second we go to class, and we see those difficult people and they do and say frustrating things, all of our good intentions can go out the window. And so we acknowledge before you this morning that the only way we can do what you have commanded, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, is through the power of your Holy Spirit. So we pray that you would fill us with the Spirit. Fill us with the Spirit today and every day, that we could do what you have commanded.

43:06God, you said that everyone in this world would know that we are your disciples if we love one another. Help us to love each other. Help us to love our enemies. Help us to love people who wish ill on us, that we might paint an accurate picture of your self-sacrificing love that resulted in our salvation. Jesus, we thank you that you loved us while we were your enemies. While we were still sinners, you died for us.

43:38I pray that anyone who has not received Christ would receive Jesus this morning, his offer of forgiveness and eternal life. Thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you for your spirit. Thank you for being able to gather today to hear it preached and read and prayed. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.