Episode 19: Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

00;00;02;16 - 00;00;22;13
Brenton
This is further a weekly show for the people of Harmony Bible Church, where we seek to revisit and expand on Sunday sermons with the goal of growing deeper in biblical truth that transforms our lives. Welcome back to Further. I'm Brennan Graham and I'm here with Chris Carr. Thanks for coming in today, Chris.

00;00;22;14 - 00;00;26;24
Chris
Yeah, great to be here. I think we've got an exciting episode ahead. Looking forward to it.

00;00;26;26 - 00;00;49;00
Brenton
One note to you guys before we get started today, Summer is almost here and schedule schedules are getting busier and so it's likely that these episodes won't be as consistent as they have been. In fact, we're going to take a break next week. So the next episode will be released on the 21st instead of this next Wednesday. So keep that in mind.

00;00;49;00 - 00;01;09;16
Brenton
But we will still keep these coming. So let's jump into this. In the spirit of defining common terms from last week on Sunday, you said the essence of love is giving. Can you expand on that and maybe give us a definition of the word love in the way Paul means to use it?

00;01;09;16 - 00;01;35;02
Chris
Here is pretty interesting when you look at some of the background here for this word love. The Pope uses hero in chapter five. And we see throughout the New Testament. But in the Greek language of Paul's day, it was pretty rich in words for love. So, for example, there was star gay, which referred to affection, particularly for family members.

00;01;35;04 - 00;01;58;02
Chris
There was philia which referred to the brotherly love or love between friends. So that's where we get the name of the city, Philadelphia, known as the City of Brotherly Love. Although I grew up not too far from there, and it was anything but a place that you wanted to go for love. Yeah. So just a side note, and most people don't care about this.

00;01;58;04 - 00;02;20;09
Chris
The Philadelphia sports fans are just absolutely brutal. And, you know, if you're you and well, like the Eagles right now, everybody is in love with you. Although, you know, they lost the Super Bowl and so they were so upset at their defensive coordinator who did a fantastic job that he's basically like, I want out of here. So he took another job somewhere else.

00;02;20;09 - 00;02;44;15
Chris
Anyway, that has literally nothing to do with this, I guess, but. So there's Philip, Sergei, and then there's Eros, of course, that refers to sexual love. And there are a number of other Greek words for love. But when the New Testament writers were looking for a word to describe the love of God and none of these common Greek words was really able to fully express what they were looking for.

00;02;44;15 - 00;03;10;10
Chris
And so they took the word without any close associations and essentially redefined it in some ways. They literally created a new word for love, and that word is a copy, its basic meaning is goodwill and benevolence. But the New Testament authors go further and define love as faithfulness, commitment and the act of Self-Giving. There are many passages that we could go to in order to see this.

00;03;10;10 - 00;03;41;19
Chris
I just point out three real quick. In addition to Romans five, there's John 316. We all know it for God's to love the world that he gave me, his love, you know, led him to give his only son. We've got first Corinthians 13 known as the Love chapter. And if you read that closely, you'll see that the things that Paul uses to explain what love is all have to do with things like faithfulness, commitment and giving of ourselves.

00;03;41;22 - 00;04;00;03
Chris
And then there's Ephesians two, four and five where Paul says, God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been saved. So because of the great love with which he loved us, what did God do?

00;04;00;03 - 00;04;24;04
Chris
He made us alive together with Christ. How did he make us alive? Together with Christ? Will By Christ dying and then coming back to life again. So that through faith in Him, our sins are forgiven. We're given new, new life. And so pretty much everywhere that the Bible talks about God's love in the New Testament is a love in which He is giving his son in our place.

00;04;24;07 - 00;04;50;05
Chris
And then we also see that we're called as his followers now to Agape love to and that Agape a love you again you go to first Corinthians 13, maybe the best place here or, you know, Jesus talks that in the gospel. John tells his disciples, you know, love one another's, I've loved you. It's always this self giving. It's a sacrificial it's.

00;04;50;07 - 00;05;22;07
Chris
And I say this a lot of times when I'll do weddings and talking about love. Love is not ultimately a feeling. It's not ultimately even affection. Love is actually an action. Love's a verb. Maybe that would be the most helpful thing. I saw a noun, it's a verb, and verbs are action words. And so it's love in action.

00;05;22;07 - 00;05;31;13
Chris
Love is action and and. Yeah. So hopefully that helps to give a little bit more. I put a little more meat on the bone there.

00;05;31;20 - 00;06;09;06
Brenton
Yeah, that's good. And it's helpful. I think kind of, kind of goes back to our last question last week about studying, studying the word. And I think that, you know, love is is used a lot of different ways in scripture. And I think even when we look at like first Corinthians 13, like you mentioned that that text can be used, I think maybe a little out of context sometimes like when we use it at weddings, it's not necessarily what Paul's talked to talking about there, but we those thing just kind of get used because they sound nice in certain contexts.

00;06;09;09 - 00;06;19;27
Brenton
But. Right. Just just to keep that in mind that there are a lot of different ways that the, the New Testament uses that word and it's good for us to study and look at the meaning behind them.

00;06;20;00 - 00;06;47;21
Chris
Well, the context. Thanks for bringing this up for scrutiny and certainly got to read 12 and 14. And the Corinthians are fighting and arguing over things like spiritual gifts and all kinds of different issues. And and so Paul's, you know, not not saying, hey, here's a great passage for your wedding ceremony. He's actually saying you're part of the body of Christ and you need to love one another in the midst of your differences.

00;06;47;24 - 00;07;07;13
Chris
And here's what that love looks like. And so certainly the first one, the in 13 applies to marriage for sure, but that's not primarily what's in the you there. It's the love that we're supposed to have for one another based upon the love that Christ has shown to us. And I want to I do want to clarify that here.

00;07;07;14 - 00;07;30;03
Chris
I'm not saying that love does not you know, have to do with emotions, feelings and affection. All those things, those those things are are true. And I think we've been keen to go back to Ephesians two, four or five where it says that because of the great love with which he loved us, that's an affection. He set his heart on us.

00;07;30;05 - 00;07;38;11
Chris
And because of that, what did he do? How do we know it? Well, he demonstrates his love for us and that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us.

00;07;38;14 - 00;08;06;09
Brenton
No, no, it's good. In both verses six and eight in our passage, we see in our state when Christ died, for us it says that we are both sinners and we're weak. You mentioned on Sunday that the weak actually means spiritually weak or more accurately, spiritually dead. And so can you expand on what you mean by spiritually dead and what are the implications of this?

00;08;06;12 - 00;08;06;27
Brenton
Sure.

00;08;06;27 - 00;08;34;02
Chris
So the spiritually dead language comes from the Ephesians chapter two. I just called it four and five. But if you if you go back up earlier in the passage leading up to four and five, Paul says that we were dead in our transgressions and sins. And so because of that, then, you know, John, chapter three is is a really key passage here where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus.

00;08;34;02 - 00;09;04;03
Chris
So Nicodemus is a wealthy man, a well-respected man, a religious man, a morally upright man, all the qualified nations that we would think would get you into heaven would make you right with God, but indicate that God's favor is upon you and Jesus just totally pulls the rug out from underneath the negative mess. And he says, If you want to enter the Kingdom of God, you have to be born again.

00;09;04;05 - 00;09;22;02
Chris
And Nicodemus has no idea what he's talking about. And he says, Is Jesus, are you saying have to go back into my mother's womb? Again, it gets really awkward. I have to believe that point. And Jesus is going like, you're the teacher of Israel and you don't know what I'm talking about here. And he says, You have to be born again.

00;09;22;02 - 00;09;42;26
Chris
But or born, another way to translate is born from above. And then he talks about the spirit and how this has to be. We have to be reborn. We have to be given literally spiritual birth from from above and it's very clear, like none of us had any thing to do with our first birth or little or physical birth.

00;09;42;29 - 00;10;07;24
Chris
Like we didn't get any choice in the matter. It just happened. And that's the in some ways, the analogy that that Jesus is making there is that we we cannot do it on our own. And so you go from John three to Roman, chapter three, where Paul says, We've already seen this. No one seeks after God. So sometimes, you know, and we can have a long discussion about this, but sometimes we have this, we hear this.

00;10;07;24 - 00;10;34;22
Chris
And in fact, sometimes churches develop their whole ministry kind of philosophy on, you know, we're going to go after people who are spiritually sensitive and who are going to seek out or seeking after God. And it's very, you know, plain. Paul says, nobody seeks after God. The only way that we seek after God is if God first seeks after us and gives us, you know, starts working in our heart and draws us to to himself.

00;10;34;24 - 00;10;55;20
Chris
John 644 Jesus says that no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. And it's just so interesting to me sometimes that people just they it's very clear what Jesus says there. And yet people like, no, you know, people can come to God on their own and people are going after him and Jesus is very clear.

00;10;55;23 - 00;11;22;04
Chris
Nobody can unless God is doing the work. And then I also throw in for scrutiny as to where Paul says we're unable to understand spiritual things without the spirit, like unable to do so. So no one can have any understanding of the gospel. This is why we could go to the university of Iowa or Iowa State or, you know, throw you, you and I in western Illinois, people in there and try to hit as many people as possible.

00;11;22;06 - 00;11;49;23
Chris
And you have a religion professor who will know like the New Testament, backward and forward, and he or she will be dead as a doornail spiritually. It's because they without the spirit, you can you can know the facts, but you can, you know, not be actually alive unless the Holy Spirit comes in and gives you life. Yeah. And so, you know.

00;11;49;25 - 00;11;50;10
Chris
Yeah.

00;11;50;12 - 00;12;17;19
Brenton
So yeah. And I think what you're talking about there is the doctrine of regeneration, right? So, so the spirit, it's, it's necessary for us to have any kind of bend toward God, that it's necessary as a, as a precursor to that, for the Spirit to come and regenerate our hearts. How we see in the Old Testament that the spirit takes out the heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh.

00;12;17;25 - 00;12;40;25
Brenton
And so us making any kind of step toward God requires the Spirit to work in our heart. And so you even see that. And in John 644, you kind of you kind of see the beginning of of salvation for us and you see the end. He says, no one can come to come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

00;12;40;25 - 00;13;07;17
Brenton
And so this is kind of the whole the whole gamut of salvation in this one verse that that salvation is purely a work of of God. And so doesn't necessarily and I think this is where things get a little confusing if if it requires a man's will in what way? But that's a that's a conversation that gets very nuanced.

00;13;07;19 - 00;13;40;22
Chris
Sure. Well, it doesn't mean that we don't have a legitimate choice. Sure. And again, we'll get to this in Romans nine and ten. And I think we get into trouble when we fail to again reckon with the nuance and in the text and also where we refuse to be, allow ourselves to be uncomfortable with the tension that for us is apparently there in some of these these different things.

00;13;40;22 - 00;14;05;23
Chris
But I do think it's really important to emphasize what you just said a minute ago and that salvation is a work of God from beginning to end and that we cannot save ourselves, we can't contribute to our salvation in any way. We simply receive it through faith. And Paul tells us in Ephesians two that even the faith that we have is a gift from God.

00;14;05;26 - 00;14;27;12
Chris
And so that's Ephesians two eight and nine. And because so that no one can boast. And so at the end of the day, none of us can, can claim that we did anything in regard to our salvation except for to be in a state where we desperately need it. Yeah.

00;14;27;14 - 00;15;00;14
Brenton
Yeah. And I think like you mentioned earlier, when, when churches kind of build their theology around this thought of making it accessible to people that are seeking, I think that's why this this term or this this doctrine is important that people are spiritually dead. I think that we if you if you build the church up around culture and try to make make it attractive to people, you're you're you're not winning them with the gospel.

00;15;00;14 - 00;15;24;26
Brenton
You're winning them with with these things. And and I think we need to recognize that that the only way that people are going to respond and actually create or to repent and believe in Christ is if we win them with the actual gospel. And that's that's I think what what we want to do in the first place.

00;15;24;29 - 00;15;53;16
Chris
Yeah, that's really good. And that's why it's so important that we preach this. You know, Paul says the whole Council of God, which includes the fact that we are weak, that we are enemies of God, that we're godless, that were hostile to him, and that we could, on our own, do nothing to deserve salvation. And it makes us uncomfortable for sure.

00;15;53;16 - 00;16;23;01
Chris
And it's not popular. But until someone recognizes that they're not saved, they cannot actually be saved. Now. And the only way we actually come to realize that is is through the spirit, that the spirit works through the Word of God. And as the word is preached, the Holy Spirit takes that word and convicts hearts and opens people's eyes to see.

00;16;23;01 - 00;16;47;23
Chris
I love Paul talks about in Second Corinthians four to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and how, you know, before we He also says, you know, the God of this world has blinded the mind of unbelievers so they can't see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's what's happening where there's another way to describe it.

00;16;47;24 - 00;17;08;09
Chris
We're blind and can't see. And if we're going to see, God's got to take the the blinders off her eyes or like we saw on the road to Damascus, the scales have to to come off. His eyes have to come off of our eyes so that we can look at Jesus and we can see that he is the glory of God.

00;17;08;09 - 00;17;21;06
Chris
And that that's that is how we come to know God's glory and how we ultimately will come to experience and reflect that glory as well. Yeah.

00;17;21;08 - 00;17;27;11
Brenton
That's good. That may have just opened a can of worms for you guys, but we will. We'll get back there in a few weeks.

00;17;27;14 - 00;18;00;10
Chris
I'm sure we'll just. Yeah, but be good. Just, just be patient and I just encourage you that a lot of times people hear the things that Brant and I have just been talking about and they, they, they take it or go in a way that I just shouldn't go in that, that way, that there's, there is a way to understand that that what we're talking about that comes in does address the the other side of the coin, so, so to speak.

00;18;00;10 - 00;18;09;10
Chris
And in regards to everyone that Romans and everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And we've got to we've got to take all of this together, and we're going to do that here later in.

00;18;09;10 - 00;18;33;23
Brenton
ROMANS Yeah, yeah. On Sunday. You mentioned that the last several years you've understood the weight of your sin more and as a result, have experienced more grace. And first of all, I just want to say thank you for for being honest in in hard things. I think that it's really encouraging to to our people and to to myself.

00;18;33;23 - 00;19;02;02
Brenton
But I think what you're talking about here is progressive sanctification and the idea of progressive sanctification is that the more we grow in our faith, the more we understand the holiness of God. And in light of that, we more clearly see the weight of our sin. And so can you talk about the role of sanctification? What what role is that had in your life?

00;19;02;04 - 00;19;57;01
Chris
Sure. Welcome at this a couple of different ways and I'll try to be as succinct as possible. Sanctification is a passion of mine and something that I could talk about for a long time. I will say that from a, you know, kind of a basic standpoint, the more that I study the word and the more time I give myself to the spiritual disciplines and sitting under my own self, the preaching of God's Word, just the more and more he refines me and and grows me and shows me the changes that I that I need to make and what I've found that happens and I think a lot of people who've been believers for for years

00;19;57;01 - 00;20;26;03
Chris
and years find is that the the the more mature you become, the more your eyes are open to how far you have to go. Yeah, that makes sense. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Is that it's kind of counterintuitive, but the more holy me I give them, the more holy you become, the more you realize how unholy you actually are.

00;20;26;04 - 00;21;12;05
Chris
Yeah. So those have been a couple of things that I'll add there. Maybe the biggest thing for me in the last several years is that I have come to realize and this has been through not really, not through my my own insight so much is the help of of other believers is just to recognize that in order to to really go forward in my life, I've had to go back and I've had to look at the things that had been done to me, been done around me and done by me and how they have impacted me.

00;21;12;07 - 00;21;56;03
Chris
And so just the experiences like the way that people had hurt me, circumstances in my life, suffering difficulty and then choices that I made. Some of those choices very early on in my life that just had all three of those things had formed me and formed ways of operating, functioning, living that were unhealthy and prevented me from actually being very self aware and through again, through through people, through circumstances and through challenges.

00;21;56;03 - 00;22;24;18
Chris
And I mean all listening in a good way, especially in the last five, five years or so, the Lord has just made me really aware of how all of those kind of things had had produced things in my life that I wasn't even aware of. The way that I was was functioning and operating the way that I view God, the way that I viewed other people, the way that I view myself that were pretty and pretty unhealthy.

00;22;24;18 - 00;22;48;19
Chris
And again, I was sinning against God. I was hurting other people. So sinning against other people in some ways was even hurting myself. And so we could do an entire podcast, not just an episode of podcast on what I'm talking about here. And it might be valuable at some point for us to do a number of different episodes or something like that.

00;22;48;19 - 00;23;34;20
Chris
But we're really talking about his emotional health and the fact that I'm very intellect a person, So I try to think my way into and out of everything, and that will only get you so, so far. And we are emotional beings. And as long as we're willing to kind of understand our emotions a little bit and to know what to do with them and how to express those in a healthy way, our sanctification is going to reach a reach a ceiling, so to speak.

00;23;34;20 - 00;24;00;08
Chris
And that's the way that that it was for me for sure. And I think that's the way it is really for everybody. And we don't necessarily, you know, like to do emotions. And a lot of us have grown up in the church where, you know, don't don't trust your emotions, don't trust your heart. And I would agree that we shouldn't necessarily you know, we shouldn't follow our heart.

00;24;00;10 - 00;24;31;12
Chris
But that doesn't mean that what we should ignore our heart either. And and so I just willing would encourage everybody that especially people who've been in the faith for a long time and that there's there's a whole I'm finding that there's a whole nother level to sanctification that is only going to be found if we're willing to understand what's truly going on in our in our heart, not just in our head.

00;24;31;14 - 00;24;55;18
Chris
Yeah, but it's not just enough to know the truth of Scripture and affirm the shoes of Scripture. That's good. It's important. Essential, you know, But there's there's a whole nother element of of why do I feel this way? Why does my heart go this way? And digging into that is kind of the I'd say for many, it was probably the next level of sanctification.

00;24;55;20 - 00;25;24;11
Brenton
Yeah, that kind of reminds me of last week when we talked about suffering and our need to to not try to avoid that, but to embrace it and to rejoice through those things, because that is a lot of times how God grows us. That is a big form of sanctification or a big kind of vehicle for for sanctification in our lives.

00;25;24;11 - 00;25;53;24
Brenton
So it's good, it's helpful. One side to this I see is it's super counterculture. You're right. I mean, yeah, the the culture would want you to to move away from those things to, like you said, follow your heart to to do what we need to do to have high self esteem. And what we're saying is no, your, your self esteem is, is pride.

00;25;53;27 - 00;26;10;00
Brenton
And we need to we need to reject those things and see see ourselves in light of not the world, but see ourselves in light of God's holiness. Sure. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a hard thing to do and it's something we're discouraged against a lot, right?

00;26;10;02 - 00;26;33;10
Chris
And I well, I completely agree with you. That's one side of the coin here. Here's the other side of the coin. We also have to be careful that we. We do remember that God loves us so that we are precious and that we are valuable. Absolutely. And and that we're not just, you know, we're terrible or horrible people.

00;26;33;12 - 00;27;00;08
Chris
And as believers, we're sinners and we're saints simultaneously. And it's not you know, it's not one or the other. It's it's it's, it's both. And and so I do think it is important for us to come face to face. And that's what Paul is very clearly doing. And. ROMANS And we're not done yet by a long shot of where he's going to keep hammering home is like you, you're you're more evil and wicked than you know.

00;27;00;10 - 00;27;25;03
Chris
And we need to we need to be willing to face that, accept it, and then at the same time not to give in to simply to despair, but to recognize is that this actually reveals to us how much God truly loves us. And I don't know if I got this across on Sunday, I kind of felt like I left this that left something here on the table here.

00;27;25;03 - 00;27;54;25
Chris
But it's when we own how evil and wicked and helpless we are that we can really see how much God truly loves us. And I, I, you know, I, you know, whether it's family or friends, show us they love us the most when we screw up and and when we don't deserve their their love for us, that's when their love is magnified.

00;27;54;25 - 00;28;12;27
Chris
And that's even more the case with God. And so that love that we're truly longing for, we truly want is actually not found. It's not going to be found or experienced as long as we want to pretend like we have it all together.

00;28;13;00 - 00;28;44;26
Brenton
Yeah, well, it's a message that Paul has repeated throughout his letters that we don't both in ourselves, we both in Christ. And so I think that's something to to remember that the state that we live in outside of Christ. GRACE Yeah, yeah. Has nothing to boast. And so the way you put it on Sunday was the degree to which we experience God's love is the degree to which we grasp how much we needed it and how undeserving we were of receiving it.

00;28;44;28 - 00;29;04;20
Brenton
So, so given that, how would you encourage someone to to kind of realize their state of sin before God, but but still like you said, with the with the caveat of we are we are loved, we are accepted and reconciled to God.

00;29;04;23 - 00;29;32;02
Chris
Yeah. So it's a really good question. I think it's it's a kind of a hard one to answer. One of the things I make my point is to here is that we have to really think again about Jesus and the cross and that arson was so great that only the the death of the Son of God could rectify it.

00;29;32;04 - 00;30;00;01
Chris
Yeah. Yeah. And this is why here's another big Bible document, penal substitution theory. Atonement is so important. Yeah. And I know that's a that's a mouthful though there, but we've really been talking about it in Romans penal substitution theory atonement that Jesus took the penalty in our place. So penal substitution area and then atonement is to make us right with God.

00;30;00;03 - 00;30;08;16
Chris
And there are a lot of whole denominations that, you know, are are, you know, throwing that aside in.

00;30;08;16 - 00;30;09;06
Brenton
A lot of ways.

00;30;09;06 - 00;30;37;21
Chris
Yeah. In in we don't like it in in all that kind of thing But but it's it's a it's, it's essential. It's that really if I can say the crux of the matter because what it does is it shows us that that only the the the death of the Son of God could save us. You know, that's that is how desperate a situation we are.

00;30;37;21 - 00;31;11;24
Chris
And that is what will show us how offensive our our sin is and not not just the big sins, you know, murders, stealing, adultery, but every sin because God is an infinitely holy God in. And so I, I know it again, sounds like this record is on repeat, but this is where you really have to understand the gospel.

00;31;11;24 - 00;31;33;29
Chris
And you really in particular, have to go to the cross and and understand everything as much as you can and grow in that of what really is going on at the cross. And so to go a little bit further, you know, I'll be real quick here and finish. But recognizing that on the cross, Jesus's physical suffering was indescribable.

00;31;33;29 - 00;32;07;16
Chris
But that's just that that's not the worst of it by a long shot. The worst of it is that he had all of our sin placed upon him and he felt all the guilt and the shame and that God's the wrath of an infinitely holy God was carried out on him. He experienced that and he was separated from his father, with whom he had had a perfect relationship of love for eternity.

00;32;07;20 - 00;32;30;19
Chris
Know. And my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And the course of we when Jesus says that we had to answer that question and the reason is because of our sin. Yeah. And so you start thinking about that and praying over that and meditating on that, that will help you to understand and realize the offensiveness of your sin.

00;32;30;22 - 00;33;14;07
Brenton
Yeah, it's good. And I'm glad you kind of mentioned that the way denominations and individual people kind of the deconstructing movement, those people are all forcing this doctrine out because it's it's offensive. It's it's, it's honestly a hard thing to swallow. But I really appreciate you, given the importance of it, because without it, without Christ substitution and and the holiness of God and everything that came together in this substitution, without that, we don't have Christianity anymore.

00;33;14;10 - 00;33;36;27
Chris
Yeah, they give everybody one verse and then we can move on. But first, two things 122 to 24 for Jews to man science and Greek seeks wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to Jews and follow the Gentiles. And here it is. But the those who are called the Jews and Greeks Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

00;33;37;00 - 00;33;44;19
Chris
And it is an offense. It's a stumbling block, and yet it is the only way of salvation.

00;33;44;22 - 00;34;18;11
Brenton
So it's good. So quickly, maybe quickly. Let's talk about reconciliation. Um, one thing I've noticed from this passage is that we received reconciliation through Christ. And my question, I guess, does this help inform us on what human to human reconciliation should look like? I think it's it's common to think that it's the responsibility of the offender to reconcile when strife comes up between believers.

00;34;18;11 - 00;34;29;20
Brenton
But but here in this example, we see God, who is the one that was sinned against and take the initiative to reconcile. Sure. What do you think of that?

00;34;29;22 - 00;35;10;11
Chris
Yeah, my mind goes here to a couple of passages in the Gospel. Matthew. Matthew, Matthew 18. Jesus says, If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault. So in other words, and the goal there is for for your brother to very sort and Jesus says, if he listens to you, great, you've won your brother. And so in that kind of models, after how God reconciles with us and and the reality is, is that when somebody's sins against us, either we make them pay the price or we're going to pay the price.

00;35;10;13 - 00;35;56;12
Chris
You know, like when when I when I forgive someone and I don't hold them against them, I'm actually paying. I'm I'm paying the price, I'm absorbing the pain. I'm not going to make them take that pain for me. And and so that's and that's how reconciliation can take place. Now, on the effect, as I say, that the Matthew I think the better thing is for if if the for the person who sinned to actually go and ask for forgiveness and without you know, waiting around for the other person to to approach them.

00;35;56;14 - 00;36;29;13
Chris
But even still, even in that situation, that if the person does confess their sin, that that person who is receiving that confession, they still have to to to to pay the penalty, so to speak, and forgive if if reconciliation is going to actually take place. Mm hmm. So and then there's another passage in Matthew chapter five, where Jesus says, if you're offering your gifts at the altar and they're remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go first.

00;36;29;13 - 00;36;56;16
Chris
Be reconciled to it rather than come and offer your gift as a really interesting passage here. And I don't know that we can truly say, you know, Jesus seemed to say, if your brother has something against you legitimately or illegitimately, it isn't really clarify that. But he basically says, if you know that there's a broken relationship with another brother, don't don't worship, don't come and worship me, go get that.

00;36;56;22 - 00;37;04;04
Chris
I think what Jesus would say is do your best to get that relationship reconciled. And then you can then you can come.

00;37;04;06 - 00;37;12;04
Brenton
Yeah. So. Well, we also see that in the instructions for communion, too. Right. Right. And we need to. We need to fix those relationships first.

00;37;12;06 - 00;37;37;15
Chris
Yeah. So as you say, a lot of times it will go well hey, they, they were in the wrong. And when they decide that they want a you know, they want to make it right, I'll be here waiting for them and that. Sure, you can take that track tact I guess. But A that's not the way that God treated us and not the way he went about it.

00;37;37;15 - 00;37;46;13
Chris
And B, you're honestly, you're hurting yourself as much as you are hurting the other person, you know?

00;37;46;15 - 00;38;04;07
Brenton
Yeah, it's good. All right. Well, I appreciate all that. Um, I hope that this. This one's been helpful to you guys. And like I said at the beginning, going to be skipping this next week, so be looking for the next one on the 21st. All right. We'll talk to you then.