New Command: Know Love Of Christ For One Another

Good morning. We are continuing in a different kind of series than we normally do. We're looking at the different love one another passages. There are five very specific ones. We're gonna be considering four. We're in our third one. First John, previously we've been in John 13 and John 14 where Jesus himself taught us this command. The next two will be in 1 John, where that apostle applies it directly to the church in a very similar manner. If you're with us, I've decided we'll choose some song lyrics from our culture to kind of serve as a foil, kind of set aside against what Jesus says. It's fun because we can consider what the poets of our day are saying that represent our culture and then analyze how true it is of us or how true it is in general. Last week, we looked at meatloaf. I will do anything for love, but I won't do that. A little more contemporary, the previous time, I'll love you as long as you love me. Well, this one is the most contemporary I think we'll be looking at. The lyrics go, I can buy myself flowers. I hear the murmuring, I hear the murmuring already. I can buy myself flowers, write my name in the sand, talk to myself for hours, say things you don't understand. I can take myself dancing, I can hold my own hand, Yeah, I can love me better than you can. What an amazingly honest lyric. How honest. Now obviously inferior in every way to don't tell my heart my achy breaky heart. That's more of a breakup song of suppression of pain. Here a girl is telling a dude, I don't need you. We can get kind of past the feminist movement here of, I don't need no man, and really get to the lie, I can love myself better. I don't need anybody else. I am sufficient in myself to love me in every way that I need. This song really represents our independence, or the lie that we believe is our independence, that we are self-sufficient, that we don't need others. Even if you think about the ways in which she expresses the need for not needing others, I can hold my own hand. What a sad, lonely picture that is. This morning, praise God, His word gives us something much, much better. Again, we're looking at love one another. We're in 1 John 3, we'll be looking at 11 to 24 And John's letters are somewhat difficult to organize. He just kind of comes in and out of ideas, but I think we'll see three main points. I'll have four points in the outline, but the first is love one another. We'll just look at what that command is first in verse 11, and then we see three specific qualifiers that he gives to the command, love one another. First, love one another without anger, that's 12 to 15. What is prohibited as we consider what this command looks like. Secondly, love one another in deed and truth, that's 16 to 18. So prohibiting and then directing, and then love one another with confidence before God, 19 to 24. Verse 11, just to kind of set the the table and get us back to where we've already looked at a little bit. Let's look at the key command that organizes all of what he is saying here. For this is the message you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. Now, an important question, from what beginning? At what point did we start hearing this and who is he speaking to? Love one another as Christ loved you was the new commandment in John 13. I believe that is the beginning of this command. It is not completely unrelated to love your neighbor as yourself, which goes back to Leviticus, but it is a new focus with a new measure. So I believe here he's saying you, church, have heard from the beginning. This is a central and important necessary teaching of the church. You've heard this, but now I'm gonna apply it. Love one another. John 13 is where Jesus introduces it. John 15, we looked at last time, where he explains it in light of him being the vine and us being the branches and a call to abide in his love. Now he writes again, love one another. In case we've forgotten or we weren't here, the call to love one another is focused in on A specific group of neighbors that we're still loving neighbors, those near us, those beside us, but the one at others, those are the other folks who have been loved by Christ and believe in Christ. This is a unique Christian love for other Christians. There's a way in which there's a prioritization and a focus in that there's a love we have together. that's shared, that's mutual, that is supposed to be significant for how we order our lives and our loves. Now, we'll see later on in the text, and we know from when it was first given, the love one another is as Christ loved us. That's the measure. We have been loved by Christ, therefore we love one another with that same kind of love. It's a high calling to receive the love of God. What a blessing. The invitation is to abide in that love. And to abide in that love means we've received it and we participate in it, we give it. Again, John's letters cycle through numerous messages. And the reason he says, for this is the message you've heard, he just ended one of his cycles, do not practice sin and love one another. And now he's going into one of his cycles of love one another. And so let's look at what he says. for us this morning. Love one another. First, without anger. First, without anger. It's helpful when someone gives instruction to say this is what it can't be. This is what it is. We have a negation and an instruction. We have a prohibition and a direction to go towards. way in which he articulates what it means to love one another is what it is not like. We should not be like Cain, probably one of the most infamous brothers in all of history. Cain, who was the evil one who murdered his brother Abel. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Well, this is quite the instruction regarding love one another. It's first set apart the opposite of what it would look like to love one another. Don't be like Cain. The church, if you're not familiar with the Bible, if you go into Genesis one, that's the very first book of the Bible. You see God's goodness in his order and creation. You see Genesis two, where he establishes man and woman in the garden. And then Genesis three, we see how all that goodness and order is unraveled by sin. And Genesis four, which flows from Genesis three, the first offspring, Cain murders his own brother, Abel. It says here he did it because his own deeds were evil and he was evil. They were evil over against his brother's righteousness. There's a way in which Cain, he brings some of his offering of grain and Abel brings the first fruits of the lamb and God accepts Abel's offering. He does not accept Cain's some offering. At some level, this anger, this murder was based upon a jealousy how God accepted Abel's right offering. But it begins with Cain not having a right relationship with God. It begins with Cain having evil deeds and having a heart turned against God. This is the beginning of our humanity. The first offspring after sin has set the pattern of how we are hateful hated, and therefore murders. Pretty simple. If this is all the command to love one another was, don't kill each other, that'd be easy. But it goes further. There's a little bit more dissecting as to what that really means. And what's significant about the instruction here in 1 John is how he sets apart, there's really only two ways to live. We have a strong dichotomy of characteristics or a binary. You've got evil, death, destruction. You've got righteousness, life, and love. And I hope we see this constantly throughout where he's setting apart an either-or argument. First is, do not be like Cain, who murdered his brother. Verse 13, do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. That's how we live and enter into this world. We'll come back to that passage, but I want to draw attention first to 14 to 15. We know that we have passed out of death into life. Why? Why do we know that? Because we love the brothers. There's a certain assurance that we actually love, because we love one another, we've passed from death to life. Well, there's evidence that you're still dead and that you're full of hatred and murder. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Again, death and life are contrasted. Hatred and love are contrasted. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Again, this contrast is what's so clear. That's the tool John is using to help us see how important this is. He's setting apart two different ways to live. Now 15 is where it really gets helpful for us. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. This isn't new to John. This is what Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount. That when we have anger, when we entertain anger, when we entertain hatred, when we express hatred, that makes you as guilty of murder. There's a way in which you're seeking to oppose someone and to destroy them. There's a stark contrast. Life and love, they produce life and love. Death and hatred, they produce death and hatred. I was thinking about this. How is it we might experience hatred within the church? How might we let this kind of hatred creep in in a certain place? I have two different ways to consider this morning. One is with our presence or posture. There's a way in which hatred seeks to isolate ourselves from somebody. We don't move towards them in love. Instead, the hatred is kind of pulling back from them. Now we might justify that by saying, I'm not hurting them, I'm not throwing words or intentionally acting against them, but to pull away is an act of hatred because you're choosing to withdraw, to isolate. It's easy to justify, they don't deserve my love, so I'm just gonna kind of pull back, maybe even give a cold shoulder. The schoolyard way to do this is to ignore someone or to make sure they're not included. So our presence and our posture say a lot about our loves and also could say a lot about our hatred. The other way we would express our hatred would be with our words. Most significantly when destroying somebody with slander, with gossip, how we represent somebody, how we would speak to them, how we declare things to them and about them. Again, the schoolyard way is to make sure somebody looks bad so we look good. We make fun of them. How do we use our words? Are we speaking truth in love or are we actually speaking in hatred with loss? It's important as we look at this passage, being hated and hating others is a significant part of what it means to be a disciple that denies himself. There's a whole realm of affection, emotion, and behavior that are now prohibited because you've received life and love. God has made it clear these behaviors, this is out of bounds for the Christian to be hateful, especially among the brothers. Now, going back to verse 13, Do not be surprised that the world hates you. Brothers, those who have received life and love, do not be surprised the world hates you. And the world here, John uses it in different ways. Sometimes it's the created earth, sometimes it's the people, sometimes it's the system of rebellion led by Satan, full of the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life. I believe here he's speaking of that ladder, that system of evil led by Satan that has been hating God and hating his creation and hating his goodness and order. Well, brothers, if you've been invited into life and love and that world has been opposed to God and his life and is loved, don't be surprised they hate you. God promised in Genesis 3.15 the seed of Satan would be at enmity with the seed of Eve, and that has played out with Cain and Abel, and then it continues to play out today. Don't be surprised. You've been brought out of death and out of hatred and into life and love. Don't be surprised if the world hates you. This could be complicated in the sense of we should see this as, especially in contrast when the world hates you, those neighbors that hate you, they're your neighbors and God's command to you is love them. One of the unique things of the Christian ethic is you love your enemies. You love your neighbors as yourself, even when they are your enemies. Because they stop loving you or they hate you, it doesn't give you a justification to return it. No, you've been saved from that. You've been redeemed from that. The place that might get confusing is that our Western society, our culture, has borrowed much capital from the Christian worldview, and love your neighbor as yourself is one of those things that used to be part of the bedrock of our society, and it just isn't anymore. It's a luxury belief that they borrowed, but it doesn't seem to be in play anymore. So here, when the world hates you, what a good word. Don't be surprised. Love your neighbor. The concern about being surprised is it puts us on guard or off posture, not ready to love in return. We don't return hate, we return hate with love. So when they mock, don't be surprised. Love your neighbor. When they promote sin, don't be surprised. Love your neighbor. When they misrepresent you, don't be surprised. Love your neighbor. When they attack you, don't be surprised. Love your neighbor. They murdered our Lord and master. Don't be surprised if they hate you. The reason don't be surprised is important, that we need to make sure that we're serious, sober-minded, and sincere in our high calling to obey Christ. John continues, he has told us what is out of bounds, hatred. Now, he's going to tell us what love one another looks like. There's instruction as to where to move forward, what steps to take towards what love one another is. And this is 16 to 18. By this, we know love. And notice that and tells us these two things are what tell us what love is, one, Jesus laid down our life for us. That is the definition, the greatest love according to Jesus himself in John 15 that we saw last week. We know love because God has told us what love is. We know what love is because God has given us himself in love and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. Now, 16 to 18 is telling us how to move into what love is and it first begins with the great standard of Christ, who though we were sinners, though we hated and were full of hate, chose to love us in a way that was costly. He laid down his life for us while we were still sinners. And therefore, we ought to lay down our lives for another. There's an importance here of that and because it's he's loved us this way and we ought to do the same. John 15, Jesus himself told us this is how you abide in my love, by receiving it and obeying it. Here we gotta make sure we don't separate these two. You've received the greatest love and there's an ought to. Christians are afraid of that language, ought to. It's Holy Spirit inspired, inerrant, infallible, wonderful. There's ought to's, and the ought to's should actually lead to doing. So as we've received that Christ, we seek to demonstrate it, we seek to give it. This is where the love of Christ, it helps us in that we abide in it, we practice it, and that it doesn't remain some kind of abstract idea. So Christian, do we know the love of Christ that he laid down his life for us and that we have that forgiveness, we have the, the comfort of being an adopted child, being invited into His love, and we also know what it means to share in that love with others. It's a way to more fully enjoy the love of Christ. And it's important as we define what that love is, it is sacrificial, it's costly, it's promise-making, it's promise-keeping, it seeks to benefit others. The other kind of love we might practice is what is transactional love. I will love you because I think I'll get this out of it. I'll love you when you do this. We oftentimes practice this kind of love, and this is a love that's oftentimes modeled. We decide to love because we know what, or we think we know what we'll get out of that loving relationship. It's transactional. I'm waiting for you to do this, and then I'll do that, and it becomes kind of a, I'm gonna keep score as to how much love I give based upon how much love I think I'm getting or how much other love I get. As I tell my children weekly, if you keep score, you lose the game. The transactional love model is a lose-lose model of love. There is a promise of what you get from the love of God and participate in that love. We looked at it last week, Jesus says you'll be filled with joy. But you're loving someone not because of what you think you're going to ultimately get from it, it's because you know the way you abide in Christ. Verse 17. We know love because he laid down his life and we ought to do the same for our brothers. Verse 70, but if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? That rhetorical question already assumes the answer. There's no way that God's love could abide in somebody who sees another brother in need and closes his heart. Again, the contrast John builds is really clear. Notice if you see another brother who has the need and you close your heart, how could God's love abide in your heart if you have a closed heart? If God's opened your heart, how can you close your heart is another way of saying this. An open heart is represented with an open hand. Closed hand represents a closed heart. Hearts grow callous, hearts grow hard, hearts grow cold. We've been given a new life and a new heart to love God and one another more. If you're a believer and you can see I actually have some calluses, I need some heart work. Turn to the passages and I will, Ephesians 1, he lavished his love upon us. James 1, if you ask, he who gives generously will give. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father above. We oftentimes grow cold or calloused or closed because we don't believe in a God who's generous. And that leads to us not being generous. the cure is to start giving away to cure your heart first and foremost, is look up to God who is so generous. He has everything and he's given himself for us. This kind of callousness usually begins with a fear of not having enough or needing to love ourselves the way we think we will without trusting God to take care of us. Jesus says, look at the lilies of the field. Do you accuse your father of not knowing how to care for them? Does he not love you more? Has he not demonstrated his love more? A flip side of this is we should have an open heart that wants to love others when we see a need. Church, we need to make sure that we also love one another in telling others our needs. It's hard to love somebody who doesn't help us love them. It is sometimes difficult. We can make ourselves difficult to love by not telling somebody this is how you could love me. A little marriage tip there. We have to make ourselves easy to love. We have to make sure we let people know how they could love us or how we need. I praised God this past week in an example. A member of the church told us there's a great need, need housing because of a somewhat of an emergency. We would ask another member who didn't even know the folks, yes, we would love to help. They know each other now. They're living under the same roof as the one in need expressed with humility the need and the one who had expressed a desire to love and praise God, they now can rejoice together in the way God provided. We too often wanna not share difficulties because there is a vulnerability, but the call to love means we must do so. Verse 18, again, has a significant contrast. Continuing the same idea, little children, let us not love in word and talk, but indeed in truth. Now, what we say is oftentimes the most significant part of the way we love. Speak the truth in love. Here, the contrast is saying I love you without ever committing to the promise I love you. The fear of only in word and talk is lip service, empty words. Again, love is a promise, love is a commitment, and this would be a promise you're just ready to break, a promise you don't take seriously. Here, if we had three words we're gonna put together, From 1 John 3, it's life, love, and truth. I'm really into these barnhouse signs, right? Last week was love, joy, love, love, joy. Here it's life, love, truth, the whole idea you live by loving according to the truth. That means we're making the right promises and we're keeping those promises. What we do must be done in word and deed. If you think of the contrast of love and hate, I do want to remind us there's many places in scripture where the ideas of love and hate are not an emotional language, it's more just prioritization. I'm going to choose one or the other. That as much of what we do with our life is making a choice, what am I prioritizing? How do I order my loves to make sure I'm setting them on the right thing in the right way? I encourage you, Don, earlier in the pastoral prayer, he prayed from our church covenant. It's the laminated piece of paper in front of you. Consider those promises. Are those just words we say, or is there deed and truth with them? I believe those promises summarize what would make up a healthy body of Christ that loves one another. There's many more things we could say, but we're present with one another. keeping homes sacred with one another. We're walking through life together, grieving. We're walking through life together rejoicing. The covenant is a helpful first step to think about verse 18. Are we making promises and keeping promises? Are we stewarding our word and our commitment? The last point, verses 19 to 24. Hatred is out of bounds. Love is as Christ modeled. Love comes from a heart that has the love of God in it, and love is in word and deed, making the right promises and keeping them. And now John brings us into the main point of the letter he's written, or the sermon he's preaching. Because he keeps cycling through different ideas, but the main thing that's driving all of these different ideas is confidence, assurance. So 1 John 5, 13, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know you have eternal life. And he's going back and forth through a variety of different ways in which way you know you have eternal life. You've confessed Jesus to be your savior. You've not practiced sin, and the key word there is practice sin. You've also not said you don't have any sin to confess. And now, one that he keeps repeating and cycling to is you love and are part of the brotherhood. So now love one another because it builds a confidence before God. It builds a confidence before God. Verse 19, by this we shall know that we are of the truth. Same idea that he said in 5.13, that you know you have eternal life. You wanna know you are of the truth, that is the way, the truth, and the life, Jesus Christ. And we are reassure hearts before him, that is God. There's a confidence we gain. We confess our sin before Jesus, knowing he's good and faithful to forgive us. We do not practice sin, we love one another. These are the ways in which he's telling us there's an assurance. If you wrestle with doubt, if you battle doubt, these aren't the only ways we think about assurance, but this is a significant letter written so that we might know. Here there's a way in which we're reassured before God. Abiding in him means we're fruitful, that comes from John 15. It means we're keeping his commandments. It means we're loving one another. Christian, if you tend towards regular doubts, it's unhelpful to love others by inviting them in and receive love from others. There's all kinds of different doubts. There's intellectual doubts and there's all kinds of great books that have lots of facts and details that help believers wrestle with that intellectual doubt. Who wrote it and what was it and what kind of ways in which we can know these things are certain. There's emotional doubts. There's I don't feel a certain way. I want a certain kind of feeling. This might be what he's getting at a little bit with our hearts condemn us. There's also volitional doubts if we're intentionally not repenting when God can fix us. Doubts come when we decide God could do better. Doubts are invited in when we decide I don't need everything God is telling me, I think I can do better on my own. There's something wonderful about this text in that we know we are of the truth and our hearts are reassured before him. The grand assumption here is that God created us for himself, to know him, to belong to him, to know his love and to love him, to be with him. And our sin is what has kept us from him. And the beauty of what Christ has done to lay down his life for us is to bring us to God, to be near him, not distant. to have confidence to go into the presence of God because of Christ and because we are being obedient in Christ. Now, I've wrestled with 20 and 21. We know we're the truth, our hearts are reassured, and he then sets up two different kind of issues, if your heart condemns you or if your heart does not condemn you. wrestle with this and so I'm going to present what I think it might mean where your heart condemns you in two different ways. It could be that your heart is rightfully condemning you. It could be you know that there's a conviction of sin and that you've not repented and that your heart is cutting against you because you have not been putting on Christ and putting off sin. You are not fully convinced of Christ and his love because you've decided to reject him partially and seek sin. There's a way in which we lose confidence in Christ when we stop obeying Christ. And John addresses this situation for us in 1 John. Know that he is faithful to forgive us when we confess. If you believe your heart condemns you because there's real sin to confess, it's not vague, it's not something where Satan's just accusing you and you don't know how to get past the guilt, but it's you know you haven't truly confessed and repented. Oh, be sure of this. You are no more a sinner today than the day Christ died for you and the day you first believed. Your sin is not greater than Jesus. You confess your sin and he is able and faithful to forgive, to bless you with forgiveness. The foolish Christian says we don't keep confessing. The whole life of the Christian is repenting. So if your heart condemns you, it's what sin are you not confessing? What way in which you're not trusting Christ with your life? Confess sin. The second way this passage could be addressing this is that it's a wrongful condemnation. You have a sensitive conscience. You tend to just beat yourself up because you know all the different commands and you know you're not doing them. You get overwhelmed and you beat yourself up and then you overcommit and then you can't do it because it's unrealistic and you go through this painful cycle of self-condemnation. If your heart is condemning you in this way, you look up and confess, I don't trust you enough, Christ. But notice the word here, for whenever your heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart. He knows everything. There's a way in which we just look up to God. He is able to speak a word better than your heart. He's able to correct your heart if you're wrongly condemning yourself. He's able to speak the truth of the heart. If you are rightfully convicted, you're forgiven. He knows everything. He is greater than our own hearts. We go to him. We are convicted or confused about who we are and what Christ has done for us. Notice verse 21. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. What an incredible promise. To have confidence before God. You want confidence. That's the confidence. If you have confidence before God, there's no other confidence you should want. And that confidence will give you confidence in every other realm of the world because confidence before God is a true, sane humility that emboldens you and empowers you to do all that you're supposed to do. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, if we have sought God, if we believe in Jesus Christ, if we've obeyed Him, if we've confessed our sin, if we are not convicted, if we don't have a heart that does condemn us, we have confidence before God. God our Father is inviting His children to His dinner table. It's an invitation of love, it's an invitation to life, it's an invitation to truth, to participate in His life, to participate in His truth, to participate in His love. You know, if you ever visit someone else's house for the first time, you maybe don't know them well, you don't really know what the customs are at the house. So you kind of wait and watch, right? You don't know if there's a normal seat around the table where like mom, dad, you know, kids sit. You kind of wait and you're trying to figure out like, how do I fit into the dinner table? You've been welcome, but you're You have a hesitancy, you're watching, you're not quite sure how you belong. But when you're at your own family's table, you know where you sit. You know the customs of the father and the beauty of this confidence is you know you belong. You know you belong because God has invited you. You've learned to set your life in his patterns. You've learned to come into his presence with joy and confidence. But it's important, we know we belong not just because of what Christ has done for us. We know we belong because we have also been obedient. We know we belong because we have Received Him and obeyed Him. Notice this 22. You have confidence before God and whatever we ask we receive from Him. Again, prayer is a big part of this confidence. But the confidence is because we keep His commandments. We do what pleases Him. What a picture of Christ's work. We know we belong and obedience is a big part of that. When I was a child, we lived in a kind of tobacco road in North Carolina, and we lived on a small farm, hobby farm thing, and had a long driveway. My memory says it's over 100 yards, but who knows? I was a kid. And on the days I would get in trouble at school or in trouble with my brother, that driveway felt really long, as mom had told me, wait till your father gets home. Seeing that car come up the driveway was this painful moment of my heart sinking and sinking as it seemed to get closer. What was amazing about my father, he was never a harsh man. He was incredibly patient. He was always clear with me. The best disciplines were the ones where we didn't have a discussion. He just gave me the spanking. The discussions were excruciating. I remember these so vividly from my early childhood, maybe because I was there a lot, but sitting on my dad's, the end of his bed, looking at his dresser because I couldn't look him in the eye. I never doubted my father's love for me. His dissonance was real. He had a personalized maid paddle just for me. But I never doubted his love. He was clear, he was not strict. Incredible vivid memory. I remember this discipline so well and so clearly. And the shame I felt, the pain I felt, it was right because I had disobeyed my father. And I can now look back and say it was good. Another really clear memory I'm thankful for is I never felt unwelcome at the dinner table. I always knew where I was supposed to sit and that's where I was supposed to be. It might have been hard to sit down sometimes. But it was my disobedience that caused shame before my father and his discipline was necessary because he loved me and his love always meant I knew where I belonged. We have a hard time capturing all that with God. He loves us. We must know we belong to him. And our disbelief, our disobedience does cause a certain shame that he does discipline and that does not ever communicate we don't belong. It brings us closer to knowing him and love by obedience. The great gospel of Jesus Christ is we are forgiven for our disobedience. And the way we abide in Christ is by obedience. And there's a right and good place of that shame and discipline that helps correct us to know we belong even more. Brothers and sisters, our Father in heaven is good. He loves us. He's proven that love. He disciplines us when we love because he loves us. Because he loves us, he gives us good commandments. We are called to be in his presence and love. Read the passage again from the beginning, verse 21. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. We know we belong. We know we can go into the presence of God. We can pray, we can know him and be known by him. And when we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. The confidence is based upon our behavior. And notice the command. We believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ. Confidence begins with Jesus. It can never remove obedience from first believing in Jesus and love one another just as he commanded. We too often wanna separate these two commands. These two must go together just as it did in verse 16. John concludes, whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him. Again, this is borrowing language from Jesus himself in John 15. If we abide in him, we are seeking to know him and knowing him means we keep his commandments. And by this, we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. Now this is going to introduce a whole section of the spirit, What John tells us about the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit is the one who tells us who Jesus is, to believe in him who came to save us. The Holy Spirit is how God indwells us and how abiding takes place to love us so we can love him. The Holy Spirit blesses us to first confess Jesus Christ as our savior, to convict us of sin so we can confess it. The Holy Spirit helps us know him, to enjoy him, to obey His law. The Holy Spirit points us to Jesus to know the Father in truth. The Holy Spirit helps us love one another. The beauty of that is we're loving one another who are all indwelt by the same Spirit, saved by the same Savior, loved by the same Father. Will you pray with me? Father, we come before you praying that you would give us confidence to come in the name of your Son who has come to us to be like us, to die for us, to rise again on our behalf, to give us life, who's ascended at your right hand, and now we come before you, Father. Cleanse our hearts. Purify our consciences. Lord, help us see the sins that we have hidden away or that we're not aware of that keep us from enjoying the confident fellowship you have designed us for. Help us, Lord, to know how to be obedient so that we aren't shamefully coming to your table, but repentant, obedient. Confident not just because of what Christ has done, but because we know we are walking with you. Thank you for your spirit. May we confess Christ to be our savior. Help us, Lord, to love one another as we know more of his love. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.