From time to time here in Weekly Update, we’ll provide sermon outlines for the use of pastors and others in their preaching/teaching responsibilities. The outline below is from John Kossey, a GCI member in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you have a sermon outline you would like to share here, email it to Ted.Johnston@gci.org.

Sharing in God’s love for people

(Luke 10:25-37)

Introduction: Christians rightly focus on loving God. But what about loving people? In our culture, it seems that tolerating people has replaced truly loving them. In contrast, our Triune God, who is love, has through the atonement, made self-giving love of neighbor a new-creation distinctive:

• Because of his limitless love, the Father gave up his Son to the world to save the world, not to condemn it (John 3:16–17). Salvation is an expression of our Triune God’s love.>

• 1 John 4: 9–11 NRSV “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only 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 atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

• Jesus remains faithful to the Father even through death on the cross to “draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).

• Through the agency of the Holy Spirit, the Father raises the dead-and-entombed Jesus. That act—vindicated by the Spirit (1 Timothy 3:16, margin), displays divine oneness and togetherness as the standard for human oneness and togetherness:

• John 17:20–23 NRSV “I ask not only on behalf of those, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

• 1 John 1:3 NRSV “We declare what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

Body: In Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan, recorded in Luke 10:25-37, we’ll see how God’s loving gift of atonement relates to the lawyer who tried to provoke Jesus. Then we will integrate other passages to understand how atonement has both a “vertical” dimension with our Father and the risen Jesus Christ and a “horizontal” togetherness bonded by mutual love that is Spirit-led and empowered. (We can envision these two dimensions as cross-shaped.) [Read Luke 10:25-37]

• A lawyer tested Jesus about identifying actions for inheriting eternal life. Both the lawyer and Jesus acknowledge the priority of loving God fully and neighbor as oneself as a summary of the Law. The context is looking forward to eternal life. Loving God and neighbor is the essence of self-giving togetherness both in the world to come as well as here and now.

• Jesus responded to the lawyer’s question, “And who is my neighbor?” (v29), with the example of the merciful actions of a Samaritan contrasted with the hands-off avoidance of the priest and Levite. Society’s despised and rejected outcasts paradoxically set the pace in exercising authentic togetherness. According to the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8, NRSV).

• Much like the Samaritan, God exercises divine initiative in graciously giving up his Son, reaching out and touching humanity with his love to deliver humans from sin and death. The very possibility of everlasting togetherness begins with the Father’s outreaching love for the world.

• Jesus, for his own love of neighbor, bears the sin of the world to rescue and deliver humanity. Self-sacrificial love of Jesus brings about a new-creation reality of at-one-ness and togetherness.

• The Spirit leads those whom God calls into union—becoming one—with the risen Christ Jesus. And because we share solidarity and status of children of God and thus co-heirs with Christ Jesus, we also enter into a unity of togetherness with one another through the Spirit. Unity in togetherness and mutual love for one another witness the Gospel to the world. The Holy Spirit is the divine agent that advances communion, participation and togetherness—both with God and with neighbor.

• The Spirit of God (and of Christ as another Paraclete) acts to transfer retrospectively our life into transformed death and resurrection life we share together in union with our Lord Jesus Christ.

• The atonement does not conclude with the death of Jesus on the cross. Paul writes, “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). His resurrection life includes our living in and by the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8). We engage in neighborly love through the personal presence, leadership and fruit of the Spirit.

• Jesus learned obedience through suffering. He lived fully and authentically human because he was filled with and constantly led by the Spirit. Likewise, believers have the presence and power of the Spirit to keep growing in grace gifts that foster extended togetherness and oneness in the here and now. Communion of faithful, Christ-like togetherness constituted by the Holy Spirit does not indulge in exclusiveness or competition but reaches out to honor the poor, blind, rejected. According to Paul: “This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4, NRSV).

• “Communion of the Holy Spirit” instills vitality, boldness, and fire-in-the-belly passion in our self-giving, love-directed relationships with one another (2 Corinthians 13:13). Think of the Holy Spirit as a personal “soul mate” through whom the Father pours out his love to us (Romans 5:5) and enables that love to flow with our Spirit-empowered love to our neighbors.

• Left alone, humanity tends to be fractured, confused, hateful and self-consuming. The atoning action of God in Christ through the Spirit inaugurates a contrasting alternative of at-one-ness, neighbor-love, and expanding togetherness. In the words of Paul, life “in Christ,” “through the Spirit” is with and for neighbor—an outreaching, joint participation more than isolated individual perspective:

• “faith working in love” (Galatians 5:6)
• “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2)
• “new creation” life (2 Corinthians 5:17)
• “all one in Christ Jesus” and free from enslaving social boundaries (Galatians 3:28)
• “lived” and “guided by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25)
• “led by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:16)
• encountered “through the rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5)

Conclusion: The self-giving love of our Triune God, made evident in the atonement and in the humanity of Jesus, defines for us both the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of love. The Holy Spirit is at work, conforming us to the image of Jesus made evident in our love for people both inside and outside the church. Through the Spirit, we are drawn into, and thus enabled to share in God’s love for our neighbors. It is this love, made real for us in the humanity of Jesus, that fulfills the Law.