Free to Love

Sunday Sermon
December 6th 2009
Rhema Community Church

Sermonic Skeleton

Sermonic Pericope: ESV Galatians 5:2-15 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. 7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. 11 But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. 12 I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! 13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Sermonic Theme: Saved & Set Free (The Doctrine of Justification)

Sermonic Subject: Faith working through love. (Saved by faith alone not works.)

Sermonic Tension: The works of the flesh.

Sermonic Sentence: Love set us free.

Sermonic Help: In Christian theology, the ability to love is a vital aspect of being created in God’s image and regenerated by the Holy Spirit’s power. In 1 John 4.7-11, we read, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this love of God was manifested in us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Love luv (אָהֵב, ’āhēbh, אַהֲבָה, ’ahăbhāh, noun; φιλέω, philéō, ἀγαπάω, agapáō, verb; ἀγάπη, agápē, noun): Love to both God and man is fundamental to true religion, whether as expressed in the Old Testament or the New Testament. Jesus Himself declared that all the law and the prophets hang upon love (Mt 22:40; Mk 12:28-34). Paul, in his matchless ode on love (1 Cor 13), makes it the greatest of the graces of the Christian life—greater than speaking with tongues, or the gift of prophecy, or the possession of a faith of superior excellence; for without love all these gifts and graces, desirable and useful as they are in themselves, are as nothing, certainly of no permanent value in the sight of God. Not that either Jesus or Paul underestimates the faith from which all the graces proceed, for this grace is recognized as fundamental in all God’s dealings with man and man’s dealings with God (Jn 6:28 f; Heb 11:6); but both alike count that faith as but idle and worthless belief that does not manifest itself in love to both God and man. As love is the highest expression of God and His relation to mankind, so it must be the highest expression of man’s relation to his Maker and to his fellow-man.

(John 3.16, 13.34-35; 14.21; 17.26; Romans 5.8; 1 Thessalonians 3.12; 1 Corinthians 16.14; II Peter 1.7; 1 John 4.18. See Matthew 5.44-46; John 15.12-13; Romans 13.8-10; Galatians 5.6, 22; 1 John 4.7-20; Revelation 3.19)

Sermonic Title: “FREE TO LOVE”

Sermonic Structure:

I. WE ARE SET FREE TO LOVE CHRIST COMPLETELY (V.2-6)

II. WE ARE SET FREE TO LOVE TRUTH CONFIDENTLY (V.7-12)

III. WE ARE SET FREE TO LOVE OTHERS COMPASSIONATELY (V.13-15)