Wait. There is a world of articles, books, and information out there when it comes to Christianity, but we are mostly stuck with rhetoric and double talk when it comes to our relationship with the Lord, our new identity as believers, and the security and finality of the work of Christ. Are you getting everything you need spiritually from your church? Or do you find yourself feeling hungry for more? Wake up. Join Lenny as he unpacks what Scripture really taught about our Lord Jesus Christ in context and why this matters to you. Wake up, wake up, wake up to grace.

In John 5 verses 2 through 9, we read of a man who had severe physical illness. In fact, he was completely unable to walk for thirty eight years. Jesus approaches the man and says, Do you want to be healed? As the story goes, Christ tells him to take up his bed and walk, and at once he got up and walked. He was fully healed. Does this remind you of a time when Jesus revealed himself to you? Did you become aware that you couldn't walk in a way that pleased God and then find Christ asking you, Do you want to be healed? If you had this experience, you know that the love of our Lord is healing. A love like Jesus offers heals us fully and permanently. We can now stand before our Father confidently in our daily walk, knowing that we're loved unconditionally. A love like Jesus produces profound and complete healing. But the story of the lame man did not end there. We read of another interaction with Christ Jesus and the now healed man. John 5 13 says, Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you are well. Sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you. What did the Lord mean by sin no more that nothing worse may happen? This seems pretty heavy, doesn't it? This man was healed by the love of Christ. Out of all the people in the pool that day, Jesus picked him. And then he tells him, Sin no more, or else what worse thing would happen? Do you think the man stopped sinning from that day on? Did he have to love like Jesus to remain healed? In order to see the love in Christ Jesus' command, we must understand what the Lord knew about sin that they did not yet know at the time of this correspondence. A time would soon come that remaining sin free would no longer involve the endless cycle of keeping the six hundred and thirteen commandments of the Mosaic Law and its temporal atoning sacrifices. Jesus would soon shed his blood once for all to put away sin, and further he would defeat death. All who believed in him would be sealed with his Holy Spirit. This would leave only one sin that needed a miraculous eternal healing. That sin is unbelief. Though Christ fully heals us at salvation, just like the man who was healed from lameness, we're called to sin no more. This isn't a call for better rule keeping or strict behavior, it's a call to continue in the belief that healed you. Desire to love like Jesus. That is to train our hearts in the love of Christ. Our heart is not just a blood pumping organ. It's the core of our mind. It's our inner thoughts. It goes far deeper than those random thoughts that occur throughout the day that often drive us nuts. It's a renewing of the mind that transforms our inner self. In John 13, 34 we read A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You are also to love one another. And how would they be able to accomplish this love? Just like we've been discussing, it was abiding in Christ. Jesus told them, Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. Abiding is believing, and we continue to look to the vine for healing as we go through life in order to keep us strong. Although we're right with God, we still need him day by day and hour by hour. Our Lord teaches us to live by the love that we've received from him. It's his love that produces fruit in our lives. It's not about us achieving some high standard of love. It's certainly not about doing the best we can. It's the desire to be guided by a love that transcends far beyond our limited human abilities. In 1 John chapter 4, John says, We love because he first loved us. The more we understand the love of our Lord, the more we can love like Jesus. But we must look to his abilities, not our own. Christ Jesus does the heavy lifting. He changes our desires so that we can be driven. It's his love working through us that saves us in this life. And this way we can only boast in Him, just like Paul wrote in Galatians 6 14. This doesn't call us helplessness. We've been given everything we need to live a holy life, which means a life guided by the Spirit, according to Second Peter 1 3. We have the counselor, so we have no excuse for ignorance. We only need to follow the lead. This is a very light burden spiritually, and fully sets us free from the bondage of sin and error. But no matter what we believe, the world will be a difficult place. In Matthew 7 13, Christ says Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. Being guided by the Spirit is not difficult in and of itself. There's no burden whatsoever, but the world around us makes it hard. We tend to live by what we see, but faith requires living by what we do not see. This means those around us may not see it either. So how do I know if I love like Jesus? We always hear that God is love. But what does that actually mean? I think the apostles knew very well what this meant, but today I see people making it about their feelings. How many Christians actually read the Bible that they hold in such high regard? How many people have spent time studying the words of Christ Jesus the way the apostles did? They hung on his every word. We just go to church so they can tell us what to believe. Today Christians hear everything second hand. Don't let anyone tell you what to believe. I can tell you from experience that when you step away from that stinking thinking that puts you at the mercy of your church for all of your learning, you'll find Christ in your life. The Christ that heals you now and forever. Not that carrot on a stick Christ that keeps you reaching for more. Not the Christ that forgives you when you get to heaven, the Christ that wiped out your sin records now Romans 4.8. The doctrines that we hold so dearly to today don't teach us how to go and sin no more, they rather tell us to go and sin no more. Can you see the difference there? Would you rather be taught to sin no more? Or just be told to sin no more? Which would be more helpful? To love like Jesus is not to teach yourself to stop sinning through psychological strategies or human effort. A feel good sermon with a strong call to action will never teach anyone how to abide in Christ. Is spiritually useless. A feel bad sermon of punishing guilt is no better. Christ Jesus taught love, not rules. And there was no gauge attached, because he's the producer, not you. Oh, but my church teaches that we're fully saved, and we know we'll go to heaven. This is by faith alone. But we can't do whatever we want. God has to deal with sin still. He's a holy and just God. The error in this theology is proven all over Scripture, but one passage brings down the whole house of cards with hurricane force. In 1 John chapter 2 we read, He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. It's important to note here that there are no additives to this. We don't see any words before propitiation, such as positional or in the future heavenly realms only. Christ fully satisfied the wrath of God on our behalf. Throw away any doctrine that tells you that God's wrath is still involved in our Christian lives. We don't need gospel additives, we need the pure blood of Christ. Love is not a goal or a standard. If we imply this, we make it about us. This is about Christ living in us. He didn't just love us positionally. Positional sanctification is conditional sanctification. We're not called to love one another conditionally. We're called to love like Jesus. This is love without condition or bias. This is perfect love. If we make this a goal or a standard, we ruin the whole thing. This is a faith. It's a hope that Christ can and will love through us. We have confidence in this, just as we have confidence in our salvation. We have hope that we can do this now just as we hope that we are good enough for heaven. When you set a bar on this love, you make yourself and those who follow your teaching useless. You become that Christian who is just a sinner saved by grace. Once you make your identity in Christ not good enough, you make Christ not good enough. You've misplaced your dependency. It's not our love that we're depending on, my friends. It's the love of Christ. Do you believe it? Do you desire to love like Jesus? I'll ask and it will be given, he says. We just learned all about depending on Christ in Messages sixty five through sixty nine. You can love like Jesus because he loved you first. You know his love, but know it more. The more we know, the more we understand. Similarly, the more we understand, the more we love. Our identity will never be not good enough. We have everything we need to live a holy life. We just need to live believing that and desiring that from the vine. I'm gonna try something different today. I'm gonna expose bad doctrine strictly by reasoning through it. I may need some scripture, but we'll keep it light. Let's see how this works. The doctor I'm going to target is one that once had me in a state of bondage. I could only bounce between not good enough, self-righteous, and ignorant. Looking back, this wasn't a place of spiritual growth. I was stuck. I'd never be able to be as good as those guys at the pulpit. Why even try? But it was when I saw their hypocrisy that I was able to be healed of the damage their teaching had done to my heart. My heart wasn't right, my thinking was just way off. The truth was in there somewhere, our heart is made right with God after all, but I needed a major mind renewal. I didn't know how to live a life truly pleasing to God. The heart I received at salvation had become useless to me. In the area of Illinois that I live in, this teaching is predominant in Protestant churches. It's just what we have out here. You gotta take it or leave it, I guess. They all follow the same script, they all use the same formula. One church says you have to be a disciple, another says you have to maintain fellowship, and yet another says you have to love like Jesus. There's one common ground with all these teachings. They involve a standard and a goal. Christ is the standard. The goal is being as good as Him. When we fall short, we're out of fellowship. We need to ask for more forgiveness or try harder at loving. Can you see the problem yet? This teaching tells you to put your name in the place of the love in these passages. Let's give this a try, shall we? Corinthians thirteen three. If I give away all I have, and I deliver up my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude, does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Okay, so how are you doing so far? You failed, didn't you? We know that Christ Jesus commanded us to love. Are you keeping his commands? I can answer that for you. No, you're not. We don't even have to go through Matthew five through seven to condemn the church, do we? If keeping Christ's commands is something we have to do to be right with God, we all failed. And we fail every day. Even worse, the man at the pulpit becomes the blind leading the blind. Ask them how much love it takes to be right with God, and you'll hear love more or do the best you can. That's not a command we get from our Lord, is it? No, there's nothing like that in the words of Christ. He calls us to a perfect love. If our leaders at the pulpit judge themselves by their own standards, we'll find that they're not disciples. They're not in fellowship. They don't love the Lord. They're not even worthy of leading. They're just wretched hypocrites. It's them that need to repent and be saved. But this is not because of their behavior. It's a result of what they believe. They've made themselves the ultimate hypocrites by teaching a standard that they themselves can't even keep. Is this not just as bad as mixing law and grace? Is the result not the same? Pride, arrogance, ignorance, hypocrisy, condemnation, distress. We don't see conditional fellowship, discipleship, and love in the true context of Scripture. Instead we have a faith that is free of hypocrisy. Let's stop trying to earn our way and live the abundant life that were promised. In John twelve twenty six, Christ says, If anyone serves me, he must follow me, and where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. Do you think Jesus had to try super hard to live for the Father? Well, he was God. It had to be easy, we might say. That's not the reason it was easy. That's not what he left us to model our lives off of. Jesus was fully human and fully God, but he didn't depend on himself for anything. His supernatural power came from another source. John five nineteen says Jesus said to them, Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. Then in John 5.30 Christ says, I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me. In order to love like Jesus, we have to depend like Jesus. It's not the thought of being punished by God that drives this love. It's not repenting and asking for forgiveness over and over. This kind of legalism is damaging. It produces an endless cycle of hypocrisy. The love of Christ is so far above any condition that you can meet, and we need it to rise above our struggles. If we want to work hard and struggle, keep trying to get right with God. If you want supernatural love, be right with God and depend on His power. The Holy Spirit doesn't give us power to do it on our own, it gives us the power to depend and respond. Supernatural gifts ended in AD seventy, but not all of them. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love. Before Paul spoke on this love, in 1 Corinthians twelve thirty one he wrote, but earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way. Do you desire the greatest supernatural gift ever given to man? You already have it within you. All you have to do is depend on the Lord to produce it in your life. Pray for the love. This is the only power that we need. Put Jesus' name in front of the passages we read in 1 Corinthians 13 3, and be guided by His love, freely and without hesitation. Be healed by the love of Jesus. Don't be burdened, his yoke is easy, his burden is light. There's no law against love, Galatians 5 23. Don't follow a law that enforces it. Don't wait for the heavenly realms to enjoy the benefits of your salvation. You're already saved. And don't abide in your love performance. Abide in Christ. Be transformed by the love of God, not put into bondage by a hopeless standard. Love is the fulfillment of the law, not a law of its own, Romans 13. The law of Christ is freedom. The intellect of man will never defeat or surpass the love of Christ. It was never meant to. Now go out there and love like Jesus, will you? We'll see you next week for some more grace. Talk to you then. The content of this message can be found on my blog post at wakinguptograce.com. My writings include linked references and visual aids, which will give even more valuable insight, and it's always free of charge. The comment section below each message is a place where we can share mutual encouragement and insight with one another outside of the social media net. My blog post is always the click away.