Alright, if you can turn your Bibles with me to Romans chapter 12, I'm going to read from verse 3 to 8 again, and this is sort of a continuation of last week's sermon. Romans chapter 12, verses 3 to 8, reading the ESV, "For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we though many are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them, if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in serving the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness." Let's pray.

Gracious and holy Father, we thank you so much for today, and as we've been studying justification and the sacrifice of Christ and how that restored our relationship with you, and as we continue to dive into our work of sanctification, how you've placed us in the body of Christ, that we may use our gifts to build it up, Lord God, for the sake of your kingdom.

I pray for wisdom. I pray, Father God, for the power of your word to make a deep impression in our mind and heart that we would move, that we would be more than just hearers, but doers of your word. We thank you, Jesus, and we pray. Amen. You know, typically, when we look for a church that we want to get plugged in, and I know some of you guys have been here for a while, some of you guys are just making your way in, one of the key things that most people look for are, when they come into a church, are there people like me at this church?

Do they look like me? Are they in my age category? Are they, do they have similar backgrounds? Are these people that I can share my life with? And it's understandable, because we want to be able to relate. Community is extremely important. But one of the beauty of the body of Christ, of the church, is that if you look at the early church, they didn't have two separate churches where if you speak Greek, you're in part of this church, and if you speak, spoke Hebrew, you're part of this other church.

If you happen to be slave owners, you are part of this church, and if you happen to be slaves, you're part of another church. If you were a Gentile, you're part of this church, and you're Hebrew, you're part of the other church. The early church didn't have these options.

They got together, and they were all part of one particular church. So you can imagine the kind of problems, spiritually speaking, socially speaking, that they must have had. So imagine having a former slave that you, maybe you were the master, and they're sitting in the same congregation, and sometimes they were the ones who were leading the church.

You had a Pharisee who studied the Bible, knew all the nuances of the Old Testament law, and he's sitting there learning under a guy who spent most of his life cheating his own people, these tax collectors of money from the business that they were running. Humanly speaking with them, well, that's disaster.

I mean, people who just maybe a few months or years ago hated each other, were eager to just end each other's lives, all of a sudden sitting together and calling God their Lord and brothers and sisters in Christ, sharing things, selling property and giving it to one another so that they can support one another.

And so if you look at the early church, humanly speaking, the formula would have been, should have been, disaster. And in some cases, a lot of these things that you would expect, a lot of the problems that you would expect in the early church, we see it in the letters.

In fact, James, if you've ever studied through the epistle of James, one of the primary things that James addresses in the book of James is this division between the rich and the poor, where the rich people who were honored in the society when they were coming into church, the people who didn't have the money were putting them in honorable seats and looking to them and coveting what they had.

And so if you read the book of James carefully, the underlying theme of that is this prejudice for or against rich or poor people. So clearly we saw that in the early church, they had these issues. The book of Galatians is written because of the difficulty they had with the former Jews who converted, the Judaizers who couldn't let go of their culture.

And also the Greeks who became a Christian came in and they had their own baggage, where they came from idol worshiping and they knew nothing of the law. And all of a sudden they come together and they were calling each other brothers and sisters in Christ. And the Galatians deal with that issue.

And so again, they're dealing with the issue of the true gospel. But again, the problem that they had in the early church was this mixture of the Jewish and the Gentiles coming together, where for centuries they wouldn't even sit in each other's homes. They wouldn't walk on the same roads, let alone eat together and call each other brothers and sisters in Christ.

Philemon is a letter written to a former slave owner, introducing the runaway slave back to his former master, now as a brother in Christ. So the early church had all kinds of issues because of that. So humanly speaking, we would say maybe it would have been wiser. I mean, that could have been predictable.

All of these issues that the early church had, it could have been easily predictable if we just had different churches. We had one church for this group, one church for that group, which in a lot of ways, that's what our churches today look like. As soon as it becomes uncomfortable in a certain neighborhood, you pack up your stuff and go to a neighborhood where it's safer.

And then again, even the way that we choose churches, we go in to see, are there people like me? People that I would be friends with, people that I want to live with, people I want to take trips with. Are those people in this church? And then if we don't see them automatically, maybe God's not calling me here.

But God in his wisdom deliberately placed us together. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 1, 10 through 14, it says, "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united with the same judgment.

For it has been reported to me by close people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers." What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

So two of Paul's longest letters, 1 and 2 Corinthians, is addressing this issue that he just states in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. This issue of immorality in the church, issue of chaos in worship, even communion. The rich people were coming and they were eating and taking part in the communion bread and then they would completely ignore the poor people.

And so Paul rebukes them in 1 Corinthians 11 saying, "Is Christ divided? What you are doing is not the Lord's table." So this division in the church led to all kinds of chaos that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. But the root problem of it was this division in the church.

And it wasn't a division between worldliness and godliness. It was a division between who they preferred to follow. We see that in Philemon, Philippians chapter 4, 2-3. There's a church that Paul calls a model church. A church that he would put on a pedestal and say, "This is what we ought to shoot for." This is one of those churches in Macedonia that begged Paul in his letter that despite their own famine, despite the problem that they had financially, they begged Paul to give them an opportunity to serve God and give money.

Paul actually said, "No, you take care of yourself." And he says, "They begged him." So this is that church. The Philippian church. The model church. And yet, they had a problem with these two prominent ladies, Euda and Sintich. In Philippians chapter 4, 2-3, it says, "I entreat you, Euda, and I entreat you." In other words, he's begging them to agree in the Lord.

"Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life." This was causing so much chaos and problem in the early church.

Paul actually begs them and he asks other people to get involved to help them. Titus chapter 3, 10, it says, "As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him." So this idea of unity in the church was so important that Paul actually says to treat him like an unbeliever if he is deliberately trying to divide the church.

And then his harshest criticism in 1 Corinthians 3, 16-17, he says, "Do you not know that you are God's temple?" And the word "you" here is in the plural. So he's not talking about "you" as in singular "us." He later says this, uses the singular form in chapter 6.

But here, the "you" is in the plural, referring to the church as a whole. He's saying, "Do you not know? Do you not know that the church is the temple of God and God's spirit dwells in you?" Again in plural. If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him for God's temple is holy and you are that temple.

So what specific problem is he referring to? Is this division that he mentioned in chapter 1. And the ramification of that, that he will again continue to exposit throughout the rest of 1 and 2 Corinthians. We could have predicted, humanly speaking, that they were going to have problems. Of course, you put a tax collector as one of the apostles and you get these, you get, you know, that former Pharisees and Sadducees sitting there, converted, learning from them.

You could have easily predicted there was going to be issues there. You put a former slave owner and a runaway slave into the same church calling each other brothers and sisters in Christ. At some point, their flesh is going to get involved and you could have predicted there was going to be a problem.

Understandably, the Jews and the Greeks coming together, I mean, these are people who hated each other, wouldn't even go through, walk through each other's towns and they're together. They're going to each other's houses. They're selling their property, giving to each other. At some point, you could have predicted that there was going to be some kind of division in the church and we see that in the early church because almost every single letter written in the early church addresses this issue of division in the church.

But here's the thing. It was not a mistake. It wasn't because they didn't have options. God places us together in the body of Christ because in order to reflect His kingdom, it is a vital part of our sanctification that God has placed us where we are deliberately. This morning, I want to address the three issues that I believe that the imagery of the body of Christ.

It teaches us about true unity, what God desires of us. So I'm going to call it the BLTs for you to have an easier time remembering. Not bacon, lettuce, and tomato, but belief, love, and task. Belief, love, and task. True unity in the church requires unity in belief, unity in love, and unity in task.

First service, I didn't get to the third part, so I may not. I'm predicting that I'm not going to get to the third part, but at least for the first two, belief, love, and task. First of all, belief. What unites us first and foremost is not uniformity, meaning we walk in, they look like my age, similar socioeconomic background, maybe same college, you know.

We have similar kids, in similar age, and say, "Okay, now I can run the race with these people." That's not what unites the church, because if that was the case, the early church would have looked very different. What unites the church is what we believe, and that's the beauty of the church.

That on the surface, we may look at it and say, "Why would these people spend any time together? There's a bunch of people at church I would never interact with if it wasn't for Christ." And I think if you look at the early church, it gives us a glimpse of the priority in the church.

If you look at Acts 6, verse 1, it is the first church-wide problem that they have. When the church began to grow, they started having this issue, and it says in Acts 6, verse 1, "Now in those days when the disciples were increasing in number," and again, I think any church, when the church increases, it kind of exposes the weaknesses of the church.

And so what happened was, in these days, when the church was increasing, "a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution." Now, just to kind of give you a background, the Hellenists were also Jews, but Hellenists were people who integrated into the Greek culture.

So whether they were second or third or fourth generation, they spoke Greek as their primary language. Even though they're Hebrews by heritage, but by culture and by language, they were Hellenists, they were Greeks. So they were considered kind of like compromisers by the Hebrews, because the Hebrews are the ones who retained their heritage.

They're the ones who were probably very active in the synagogues. They were the ones who probably went to the temple during Passover, and they primarily spoke Aramaic. So you had people who genetically came from the same heritage, but you had a distinction in the early church, because these are the first groups of people that came to faith.

First, the Hebrews, and then they were closely connected to the Hellenists. So what happened was, when the church was increasing in large number, the initial group who converted were probably the Hebrews, those who spoke Aramaic, because the gospel started in those areas where it was saturated by Hebrews, not Hellenists.

So when they first converted and came in, you have to understand that this problem that they're dealing with was not a small problem. There was a division in the church within the two, and they were probably considered lesser Jews, because they compromised. They became Hellenists. They integrated into the culture.

It's kind of like when King Cyrus allowed Israel to come back into Jerusalem, a few of them, a remnant came back to Jerusalem to build a temple, and the rest of them stayed in Persia, because they integrated. So that's how the Hellenists were looked upon. They were compromisers. And yet they converted, they come in, and when they said that the Hellenist widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food, basically they weren't eating.

It wasn't like they weren't getting coupons to get boba. It wasn't something insignificant like that. They weren't eating. So this was a legitimate problem, these widows, and if the church didn't feed them, they had nowhere to go. So if they didn't deal with this problem, it could have completely split the church.

They could have had the Hellenists rise up and say, "Hey, if we don't deal with this and our widows are not being taken care of, we're going to do it ourselves," and they might have just taken up, and immediately the first church would have been divided into two. Instead, the disciples, and you can see the way that they deal with this problem, they said, "It is not right for us to neglect the preaching of the word and prayer in order to serve tables." Now, the apostles were not saying that because they're apostles and leaders that serving is beneath them.

That's not what they're saying at all. In fact, Jesus teaches exactly the opposite. He who is greatest in the kingdom is the one who serves. So they're not saying that if you're a leader in the church that you shouldn't be serving, it's beneath them. The emphasis here is the neglecting of preaching and prayer, the priority of the word of God.

Because what brought them together in the first place was the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if that gets neglected, you may have uniformity, you may have superficial unity, you may feed them and everybody might be happy, but there's no true unity. Because true unity, what brings us together from different backgrounds, different culture, different economic status, and even different spiritual maturity is our connection to Christ.

In Ephesians 4, 11, 13, it says, "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." If you notice the office of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, every single one of them, their primary responsibility was to disseminate the word of God.

And so he says they need to do their job to equip the saints for what? For the unity, that we may come to the unity of the faith in the knowledge of the Son of God. What unites us is our individual connection to Christ. And again, Ephesians 1, 22, "And God placed all things under his feet, appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." When our unity in the church is superficial, meaning that these are people that I like, or I get along with these people, these people, you know, happen to have these qualities, and these people like to go ice skating, these go mountain climbing, these are Angels fans, these are Dodgers fans.

Human relationships are so fickle. I mean, it is so fickle. There's one thing that I've learned throughout the years, is just human relationships are unstable. It is absolutely unstable. I mean, I've seen best friends sever their friendship because they're getting married and they can only have one maid of honor or one best man, and they would choose one over the other, and then the other person doesn't get along, and then they're dead, they're done.

They just couldn't get over it. I mean, that's how fickle it is. One misunderstanding. Something happens, you did something, they didn't understand it, and it doesn't get reconciled, the end. If our unity in the church is based upon something superficial as human connection, it's just a matter of time, something happens.

You don't like somebody, I mean, sometimes you like them and sometimes you don't like them, you get along with these people now, but then next year you don't get along with them. But the unity of the church ultimately is not based upon our friendship, who we get along and who we don't get along with, who are people who are like me that I want to go camping with these people and I would love to be a part of this church for that purpose.

It is when we are vitally connected to Christ that I may have nothing with you in common in the world, but as soon as we begin to talk about Christ, as soon as we begin to pursue Christ, I can have fellowship with a 19-year-old or a 70-year-old because we're talking about the same thing, we're pursuing the same thing.

Our unity is not based upon something superficial. And again, sad to say, even in the way that we talk about how to produce church, if you want to tap into how people come to church, give them something that they can latch onto, and that's sort of using human wisdom to bring people to the church.

But how superficial. But the kingdom of God does not look anything like the world because what binds us together is Christ and Christ alone. That's why the very first part of our church covenant, of the 10 covenants that we have, is that each member has to be a confessing believer of Jesus Christ.

And that our unity comes in the context of pursuing Christ together. If our frustration is we're not united, I don't feel connected with these people, why we're not passionately pursuing Christ, the problem is not the people. The problem is that what unites us doesn't interest us. And so we're looking for something superficial to connect with.

First and foremost, the church, what connects us is our connection to Christ. Secondly, what connects us is love. Is love. Under the banner of understanding of love, I mean of belief, that this is who we are and this is who we pursue, the second understanding, even though Paul doesn't mention the word love in this text, it's understood.

Because in Ephesians 5.29, Paul says, "For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church." And he uses the illustration of husband and wife. As Christ loved the church, he says the husband is called to love his wife and he says he's part of your own body and nobody hates his own body.

It's assumed that if you understand that this is your body, that you are to love it. In fact, Jesus himself says the greatest commandment is love God and second is like it, to love your neighbors as what? As yourself. It is assumed. It is assumed that you spend a lot of time loving yourself, which we do.

Whether you have high esteem or low esteem, you have high esteem because you love yourself too much. And you also have low esteem because you love yourself too much. It's understood that we love ourselves. We spend all of our time, first and foremost, taking care of ourselves. So when he says to love your neighbor as yourself, it's assumed.

So when he says that we are one, you are part of this body, this is your body, it is assumed that there is a love that we are to practice with one another. See 1 Corinthians 12, 18-26, it says, "As it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose." Again, let that sink in.

You know, we may think that, well, if we want to really keep the unity, if everybody had the exact same gift, maybe we wouldn't have this coveting or this competition or misunderstanding. But he said God did that. God in his wisdom arranged the members of the body, each one of them, as he chose.

He did it on purpose. If we were all single members, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again, the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." He deliberately made it so that you're only a piece of that body.

Meaning, he made it so that you are dependent upon the other members of the body. He deliberately did it that way. We would think, like, well, it'd be much easier for church planting if all the gifts were in one person, then we don't have to worry about other people.

Just one person can do it, can do it all. But that's not the way he made it. And he said, even if you don't recognize, even if you say you're a toe and you say, "Well, I don't need the hand," you may say that, you may even believe that, but it wouldn't be true.

Because God didn't make you that way. It is our pride that causes us to think that I can be independent of the church and still survive and be very fruitful. He says, no, God deliberately arranged the members as he chose fit. He says, on the contrary, verse 22, "The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." He deliberately placed weaker members in the church.

Now, the weaker member could be spiritually weak, and in the church we have spiritually strong people and spiritually weak people. We don't weed out people. If you are a genuine believer in Christ and you're walking with God and you don't meet a certain standard, you're out. Because in the body of Christ, we have everybody.

As long as you are a genuine believer in Christ, we have young believers and we have more mature believers. Weaker also could mean people who are not of honorable position before they became a Christian. That there are some people who may have been runaway slaves. There are some people, economically, maybe they were challenged.

And there were people who didn't have a lot of clout or honor before they became a Christian. They're also in the church. He says, God placed all of them in the body of Christ. And they are indispensable. The people that we may think at times, because of our frustration, because of their weakness, because sometimes of their constant failing, may think that maybe the church would be better without them.

But he says they are indispensable. And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow greater honor. We bestow greater honor on the part that locked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same, what? Care for one another.

It's not just another way of saying so that we may have same love for one another, so that we may practice love. He said he deliberately put in the body of Christ people who are different, people who may be harder to love, people who are weak, and we are not to reflect the society in our world.

Whatever club, whatever golf club, whatever different organizations that you're part of, there's something that is different in the body of Christ that ought not to reflect the world but the kingdom of God. We know that we're not going to get there fully until he comes. But until then, we are to strive the kingdom that Christ established in the church.

And he deliberately placed different people with different gifts for different purposes, all for what? To practice love. Isn't that the greatest pursuit of any Christian? Isn't that the greatest goal of any sanctification? You know, when we think of sanctification, we can easily think about, you know, being disciplined and obviously we need to take the word of God seriously.

We need to be more in prayer. You know, we need to be concerned about the people who are around us and people who are poor and feeding the homeless and all this stuff. All these things are great. But you can do all of that and be weak in love and all of that means absolutely nothing.

Isn't that what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13? Even if you give your body to be burned in the flame and even if you're martyred without love, it means nothing. So the greatest commandment is to love God. And second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. If Jesus said, when the outside world looks at us, how will they distinguish us from the rest of the world?

It's like, well, because we're more moral? I mean, hopefully we're more moral, but because you're more disciplined? Because you're smarter? Because you have more honor and you've achieved more? And we have a gathering of a lot of smart people? No. Absolutely not. He said what distinguishes us from the world is the love that we practice with one another as Christ loved us.

See, everybody practices love. Everybody practices love if they're lovable. But what distinguishes us from the rest of the world is Christ saw sin and instead of running the other way, he ran toward us. Not for his own sake, but for mine. Because I needed it. Because the natural way that we practice love is if we walk into a room and we see sin, our natural reaction is disgust.

I don't want to be around these selfish people. I don't want to be around this guy or her. I mean, my life is short. My life is hard enough as it is. I don't want to engage with these people. Our natural reaction is to run the other direction. And that's the kind of love that the world practices.

But God, in his wisdom, places us in a part of a community where we can't run from sin. We're a part of a covenant relationship, just like there's a covenant relationship between husband and wife, and you don't see the ugliness of your wife and your husband and say, "Ew, I don't want that." And then you walk the other way.

That's why it's a covenant relationship. The greatest part of our sanctification is to learn to love, especially when it's difficult. Not to love certain kinds of people, not to love people my age, not to love people who are mature, but everybody in the body of Christ, because he loves them.

And I shared with you that when I was back in college, I was part of an apartment training, and our apartment at Biola happened to be a little bit more intense than normal because the guy who led our apartment was only about three years removed from the Korean military.

So as you can imagine, the Korean military is intense because they're always at that border and they're always on the verge of possibly a war. So they're trained to be very physical. So he tried to apply that in our apartment training. So every apartment training, woke up, did quiet time and did all this physical stuff, but he kind of took it to the next level.

He ran it like a military. So whether we fell asleep at 10 o'clock or fell asleep at 3, 5.30, you're waking up. You wake up, went to Biola, we ran the track. Then after that, we would have devotion, memorize scripture, eat breakfast together, go out, go to the classes, come back.

I mean, it was just crazy. And I benefited tremendously from that, from the disciplines. Wouldn't let us watch TV, no movies, no... Like he wouldn't even let us hang out with friends. Most people would not have wanted to be a part of that, but I was already headed into ministry and I thought it was beneficial.

And I was discipled by my former youth pastor, so I thought this is great training. So I was getting training in the Bible at school and I was getting in personal training at the apartment. And it took me a while to realize that the real training at this home was not the discipline.

Discipline was just a superficial part of it. And I remember about a year and a half to two years into it, I started having this animosity toward one of my roommates, which I never showed. On the surface, I never showed. But you know how it is. Those of you guys who ever have roommates or are married, if you live with somebody close enough, you know like everything that they have gets exposed.

And a lot of times it's like the church. You know, you first come in, you only see the surface and then you stay here for a while, after a year, two years, after the honeymoon was over and you see all the cracks and you see all the selfishness and whatever it is, the weaknesses, and you see all of that.

Eventually, we see all of it after you break the first, you know, the honeymoon period is over. About a year and a half, the honeymoon period was over and I started seeing certain different personalities, you know. And this one particular guy just rubbed me the wrong way. He would never help out.

You know, we would always eat and he would always eat the most. You know, we would eat and he would eat the most and then he's done. He puts his plates in the faucet and then he's gone. When you're playing basketball, it's like we're always there cleaning up to him and he never says thank you, you know what I mean?

And then after a while, like even the way he brushed his teeth bothered me. You know what I mean? When he went to sleep, how he folded his bed, you know what I mean? When somebody bothers you, like everything about them bothers you and it kind of got to that boiling point.

But I was just keeping it to myself because I knew a lot of this stuff was superficial. Well, one day I got really sick and I didn't have health insurance and it got to a point where I felt like something's wrong. This is not just normal sick. I mean, so I asked my older roommates, "Hey, can you come and pray for me because something is not right, you know?" And so they come and again, you know, they're hyper charismatic.

So at that time, and so they had got all the oils ready and they were going to anoint my head and then they're going to cast out whatever sickness that I had and they were ready to pray for me. And then the guy who was personally discipling me, he must have noticed something in me that maybe I thought I was doing a good job hiding it, but he noticed it.

And he said, "Peter, do you have anything to confess before we pray for you?" I said, "Confess? I asked you to pray for me, you know?" And he said, "You need to confess." So, you know, like obviously he asked me to and he's my leader. So I said, "Okay." You know, and obviously the first thing, if I say this is going to be awkward, you know, and he actually wasn't there at that time, you know, so I felt a little bit safer to say it.

But once I say it, it's out and then, you know, I can't take it back. But he specifically asked me, "Do you have something to confess?" And so I sat there, you know, or I was lying in my bed and so I confessed that I've had this animosity and it was really bothering me, these things, and I know it shouldn't bother me, but it was bothering me to the point where it's just constantly like eating at me.

And he said, "Okay, good. I'm glad you confessed. We're going to pray for you." And right before they started praying for me, one of the guys who was sitting next to me said, "I have something to confess." And then I said, "Okay, what is it?" And then he basically said, "I have something against Peter." And then he started confessing why he had this against me and he doesn't like the way I brush my teeth, I guess.

And all this stuff started to come out and so it became really awkward, you know. And so they ended up praying for me and it really like, surprisingly, right after they prayed and they left the room and the fever broke. I was in my sickbed for about three days and the fever broke right after they prayed.

And I was walking around, even my roommates were looking at me like, "It worked." And I remember through that whole thing, obviously I was very thankful for their prayers, but I realized through that period that the real discipleship in that home was not the discipline. Discipline is very superficial.

Again, it's necessary. You can't say you know God and you don't read your Bible and you don't pray. We need to have that. But the real transformation is taking place within our heart, where the Holy Spirit is reaching in and seeing the pride and the hatred and bitterness and whatever it is that He begins to transform us.

And He deliberately puts us within the context of the body of Christ with all different kinds of people and our natural instinct is, especially if you're in a church, a larger church, where you can just like, "Here's my friends that I feel comfortable with and I don't like these guys." And so you can kind of live all your life, even as a Christian, keeping certain people that you don't like at bay, "Well, these are my friends and those are people that I just tolerate." And then you get married and you realize you can't run from these problems.

See, the greatest aspect of our sanctification that God calls us and commands us to is to love. It's the most important thing that we need to work on. It is the greatest thing that we need to work on. It has the most effect. It has the deepest transformation and it is also the most rewarding.

See, in any home, in any apartment, there's different kinds of roommate. And this is something that I've observed. If you've ever lived with a group of people or maybe even husband and wife and with your children, there's five different types of roommates. And you can kind of make the connection here, don't judge people, but you'll know right away which one you are.

So think about, ask yourself who you are. The first roommate is a dirty roommate and he's dirty also in the common area, meaning that he just doesn't have it together. You go into his room, it's messy. Wherever he goes, it's just messy. He uses the bathroom, it's messy. He uses the kitchen, it's messy.

And so he's always frustrating to other people, but he's unaware because that's just who he is inside and out. So we have people like that at church, right? And that's what we're trying to encourage and disciple and bring them along. But this person is just consistent everywhere, inside and out, that's just who he is.

The second person, he's dirty in his room, but he's clean in the common area. So he's more concerned about his friends. So he wants to make sure that everything is okay there, but his roof is a mess. You can't get in there, you know, like where is the bed?

You know, his laundry is always there, he's never clean. But in the common area, he's always clean because he's very concerned about what other people will think. Eventually that person will get burnt out, right? Because it's not consistent. The third roommate is the one who is clean in his room, but he's dirty in the common area.

Don't look around, you know. He's clean in his room, he's dirty in the common area, and he just can't stand the fact that his roommates aren't clean. And so he's always asking, like, why don't you clean your room? But he never lifts his finger to help out, other than to point it out.

So there are those roommates, and those roommates are very difficult to live with. But there's somebody even more difficult to live with than that person. It's the one who is dirty inside, and he's dirty outside, and he's complaining about dirt of everybody else. There's always that one guy, he's just completely oblivious, just how filthy he is.

And he's always complaining about the dirt of other people. And when that person lives with you, God will test you. He will test your patience, right? The best person to live with, obviously, is the one who is clean inside, and who's clean outside. And whenever that person is there, he's always helpful.

They got it together at home, and they're always good at it. And whatever they're involved with, they just help other people. And it helps the person who is dirty realize, "Oh shoot, maybe I should help out." And they inspire other people to do so. Every church, any community, has all five.

Has all five. Obviously, our goal is to become that person where we are disciplined and love the Lord inside and out, and just our presence in the church inspires and encourages other people to do the same. That's our goal. But the thing is, we walk into a church, and I will only attend a church that only has church people like that.

And that church doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. Because God deliberately places us in context so that you can grow in your faith to practice love. The greatest aspect of our sanctification has to first take place internally. And Jesus does that deliberately. Because He really wants us to grow. He really wants us to fellowship.

He really wants us to know His own heart. And we will never know that if we are running from everybody makes us feel uncomfortable when Jesus saw our sins and He came to us. See, let me wrap up with 1 Peter 4, 8. It says, "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins." Obviously, He's not saying that if you love one another, we can sweep all the sins underneath the rug.

That's not what He's saying. There's two applications of this. What does it mean for the love to cover a multitude of sins? One, love helps us to be gracious with shortcomings of other imperfections. The underlying commitment that we need to have one another is, "Do I love them?" If I love them, we'll be a lot more patient.

We wouldn't be as eager to expose other people's sins if we really genuinely love them. And the standard that I try to use, because sometimes it's hard for me to discern even my own heart. I could think that I'm doing righteous things and serving God and I have a Bible verse to stand on, but am I really practicing love?

Is the reason why I'm doing what I'm saying, is it motivated by love? And again, it's hard for me to even discern my own heart. So usually the way I try to apply it is, would I do this if this was my wife? If this was my mom? If this was my brothers or my children?

If I would be as eager to expose their sins if they were like my children? And that's the standard that I would use. So first standard is, if we genuinely practice the love that God calls us to love, we would be a lot more patient and a lot more gracious and not more willing to cover over their sins.

But that's only the first application. The second application we find in James chapter 5, 19-20 is that, "My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins." So not only will we be more gracious, we would be more righteous.

Because there are certain things that I would only say to my children because I love them. If my children are going down a path that I know is detrimental for them, I'm not going to say, "Well, I don't want to say this because I don't want them to not like me." I would be more bold in speaking up and being righteous because of my love.

And just like it says in Ephesians chapter 4, 15, "Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ." So sometimes when we practice grace without love, we just don't want to deal with sin. And sometimes when we practice righteousness without love, we just have holy vengeance.

When we recognize who we are and what God placed us in, and when we are affected by the love of Christ, the immediate application is grace and righteousness, both. So our primary pursuit in the body of Christ and in his wisdom and the way that he put us together, our greatest pursuit ought to be the greatest gift, which is what?

Of the three, there's love, faith, and hope, and of the three, the greatest is love. So I pray, again, and we're not going to get to the task part, I'm not sure exactly when we're going to get to it, but at least for this part of it, that when the immediate application of everything that we have been taught in the 11 chapters of Romans in view of this mercy to present your body as a holy and living sacrifice, which is your reasonable, logical act of worship, the immediate application ought to be, who do I love?

How do I love? I pray that that would be the case. Let's take some time to pray, again, as we ask our praise team to come. And again, we can hear the word and not apply it specifically, and not deliberately, but passively become hearers without doers. And so I want to encourage you, as it takes us time to pray, be specific about how should I apply this?

What are some things that need to be applied in my life? Are there people that I've shunned? Are there situations or groups that I've created within my circle because I feel comfortable with them and I don't want to be bothered with these people? And as a result of that, there are crucial areas of your life that are not being sanctified.

Let's take some time to come before the Lord and ask the Lord, "Search me and know me, see if there's any hurtful ways in me that I may apply the love of Christ in the body of Christ." Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us.