If you could turn your Bibles with me to Romans chapter 12, I'll be reading from verse 9 all the way to verse 14. Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal.

Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you and bless and do not curse them. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we want to praise you and thank you.

You are worthy of all that we have. You are worthy of our praise, our affection, our very lives, Lord God, as you've purchased us for the purpose of declaring your glory. We pray that your word would help and guide us, Lord God, to shape our thoughts, our mind, our will, our life.

May it be sanctified, Lord God, because we are confronted by it. I pray that the preaching of your word would be a proclamation of the voice of Christ, and your children will hear his voice and follow him. So we ask for your anointing over this time. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. All right, so as you guys know, Romans chapter 12, we started a new section in the book of Romans where he's talking about the ramification of believing in justification. How should justification look like in the life of a Christian? Again, I know it is a broken record, but for whatever the reason, there has been a heavy emphasis on justification, especially in the last maybe about 10 years, and we've benefited from it.

And I think it's crucial, it's fundamental for every Christian to have a deep understanding of justification. But along with the emphasis on justification, there's also been a confusion as to what does it mean to be justified. And so there are some discussions going on, again, in some circles where they think justification should be the only thing that we talked about in the church.

Sanctification somehow leads to legalism and burden, where again, it is a false dichotomy when we understand that somehow sanctification and justification are two separate things, and as long as we are justified, sanctification may happen or may not happen, it doesn't matter as long as we're justified, which is absolutely wrong.

And this is nothing new in the church today. All throughout church history in the 2000 years, there's always been a fringe movement to nullify sanctification, because it's easier. It's easier to bring people to church, it's easier for people to keep the people in church, it's easier to live a life where you're living in the world and at the church same time when you get rid of sanctification, because if you get rid of sanctification or de-emphasize sanctification, basically you have a group of people who are at church who are embracing Christ for his love, and you take away all the struggle of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

I mean, you can humanly understand why that would be attractive to any generation. You focus on the love of Christ and his free gift and eternal salvation, and then all the struggles, all the wrestling, all the difficult things of being a Christian, you just wipe that clean. And you can, again, you can easily see why that type of teaching would be attractive to so many people.

Let me say right off the bat, Christianity is a very unnatural religion. It's very unnatural. Christianity is not something that you can practice in your flesh, because it goes against the very nature of the core values that we are taught in this world. To say that the greatest in the kingdom of God is the one who serves and not the one being served, think about the fundamental teaching behind what that says.

Our whole life, we study hard, we get good grades, we work hard to get ahead so that we can have a better life and make something of ourselves. When Jesus says, before he goes to the cross, if you want to be great in the kingdom of God, you need to learn to be the servant of all, it goes directly against.

It's not just a little bit skewed, it's the complete opposite of what you and I have been taught since we were very little kids. Why we were taught to study, why we need to get good jobs, why you need to go to a good university, why you need to get good grades, it goes directly against all of that.

Think about all the difficult things of sanctification. And I think at the core of the message that if you really think about it, that would be very difficult to accept, is this salvation by grace alone? That in and of itself, it flies directly against everything that you and I naturally believe in this world.

All of it is completely unnational, by faith alone. Because you and I are taught if you're good, you get rewarded. And if you're bad, you get punished. And then the gospel message comes in and says, that's not it at all. In fact, if you add works in any part of our salvation, if you add works to any part of our justification before God, you're a heretic.

That is not the gospel. In fact, the whole book of Galatians is written for that purpose. Because the Judaizers were trying to say, you need to believe in Jesus, and then you need to do all these other things, get circumcised and celebrate these festivals. And he says, no, that's heresy.

If anybody preaches you a different gospel, a skewed gospel, other than the one I've already preached to you, let him be absolutely anathema. And he says it twice in verse 18 and 19, in chapter 1. So that idea-- again, think about where else do you practice that? Do you ever tell that to your kids?

Whatever you do, it doesn't matter. Outside of teaching them the gospel, do you ever say that to your kids? It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you believe. Outside of the belief in gospel and entrance into the kingdom, have you ever said that to anybody? To your coworkers?

To your coworkers? If you're a schoolteacher, do you ever mention that to your kids? It doesn't matter how hard you work in the classroom. You get an A or an F, it doesn't matter, because it's not about your work. I want you to work, but even if you don't work, it doesn't matter.

You're all going to get an A. You're all going to get scholarships. You're all going to go to the elite schools. Where else do you even think of applying that? Outside of the most important thing in our life, which is salvation. Eternal salvation and reconnection with our God. So at the core of the gospel message, it is absolutely unnatural in the flesh, not only to understand it, but to even practice it.

You can't. That's why the scripture says it is spiritually discerned. You can't even begin to understand the gospel until there's a regeneration that takes place. The Word of God wouldn't make any sense. A natural person who studies the Word of God in his flesh would absolutely reject what it says.

And it's a wonder in the flesh why so many Christians accept it without ever truly believing it. Of all the things that we can talk about that is unnatural for people to accept and to even practice, I think that the most difficult, the most unnatural of all the things that Christ commanded us to do is to love.

And even though as fundamental as it is, and even though we do see it, even a non-Christian practices love to a certain degree, but this call to love as he loved us, it is so unnatural. And just as we don't teach anybody outside of the gospel message itself that your good works doesn't matter, we would never say that to anybody else outside of the context of justification.

What Jesus tells us to do, to love as he loved, as he loved, not just any kind of love, not the love that the world we naturally practice, but the love that he tells us to love, it is so unnatural when you really understand it. It is impossible to practice in your flesh.

Imagine what he says. Look at in verse 13, just as a quick review. He says in practicing love, he says, "Contribute to the needs of the saints." Contribute to the needs of the saints. We talked about how that is talking about partnership. A few people are naturally generous, a few.

That's been my experience. There are some very generous people in our church. And you can't tell because they never tell people. People who are like, they're very frugal with their finances, and when they go out to eat, they get the cheapest stuff, and you see it. They're always frugal with their money, but when it's time to give, when they're really convicted, man, a fat check comes out.

But that's very few. Few people are just naturally, or maybe unnaturally, very generous. Understandably so. Understandably so because your money represents your time. Your money represents hard work. Your money represents a good chunk of your life. And there's a reason why God says to demonstrate lordship through finances because finances are very dear to our hearts.

We treasure it. You may never get money and just lay it around the house. You treasure it. You lock it up. You put it in the bank. You earn the proper interest. No human being is completely reckless with money. If you are, you'd get into trouble. So the very first thing about contributing to the need of the saints, again, this is not something somebody can just naturally, just normally do.

The second thing is even harder. When it says to show hospitality, remember we talked about hospitality is not just getting your friends over to your house and hanging out late and you just love to have events at your house. It's not talking about that. Hospitality is philozenos, which means to love strangers, people that you wouldn't normally have at your house, people that you may not know well, simply because they are in need.

Hospitality, a lot of people, even within the church, they fantasize about hospitality like, "Oh, we want to feed the poor. We need to be concerned about all these poor children, all these countries who don't have water and these orphans who don't have parents." And it's easy to stir people up because there's need and we want to be benevolent.

When the rubber meets the road, this is probably one of the hardest things to practice because hospitality basically, it doesn't mean to write a little check and send it over and clear your conscience and feel good about yourself. Hospitality is to pursue, remember? He used the word pursue, go after, and to bring them near to you.

I remember years ago when Esther and I, we were heavily involved with the homeless ministry and there's maybe one or two people in our church that may remember because it was a long time ago. And I became friends with a few of the guys out on the streets and then we were trying to help them get off the street.

And then so we brought them to church. And so there were at least two guys who I met on the street, we got them off the street, got them an apartment, got them a job. And so they were a regular part of our church. And one guy for maybe a year and a half and another guy, he came maybe about three months while he was on the streets and then another two years after he got off the street, he was part of our church.

And again, not Berean, it was a previous church that I was at. But I remember the frustration that I felt because everybody was so excited that we got people off the streets and we all, you know, and when we say we, we're talking about the church, right? And they were so excited, "Our church helps the homeless, our church does this, our church," until they actually came into the church.

And then they have to go eat and they don't have money, so they always have to pay for them. "Go play basketball." They don't have shoes, so we had to get them shoes. You know, and it only lasted for a couple of months before people started feeling uncomfortable. It's another thing to have them in there, but to be in the regular part of the fellowship, you know?

And then I remember there was a guy that we felt comfortable enough, this is before we had kids, we felt comfortable, this guy was struggling. His name was Michael and he was really struggling, but it's a guy that I've spent a lot of time with, probably six, seven months doing Bible study with him and he was hooked on crack.

But he became a part of our church, he would play basketball and we'd hang out with him and he just like, he'd be doing fine for three, four months. And then he would just drift off and disappear for a week and then he showed up, show up and he got caught up in crack for a week.

Sold his shoes or bike that we got for him and then he would come crying and, you know, felt bad for him. So we tried everything. And in the end, nothing worked. So eventually, in order to keep him accountable, I brought him into my house. So he stayed with us for about three months, you know?

And I remember when that happened, you know, obviously it was very uncomfortable. Again, I didn't think I was making a huge risk. I already knew him for about a year before we did that and this is before we had kids. And Esther would be gone most part of the day, so she doesn't come back until I'm home, so she was never alone with him.

But I remember during that period, the various responses I got from people, you know, and initially it's like, "What? What are you doing?" And he's like, "Peter, I know, you know, you're being irresponsible. You know what I mean? You're being irresponsible. That's your wife in there. What if, what if?

He's on crack. What is he going to do?" And I remember being thoroughly discouraged during that period, you know, because majority of the response was, "It's good that you're doing homeless, maybe to church, but to your house? Are you crazy? Right? It's something you're, you got to screw loose.

You need to be a better husband. What is that?" You know, when we talk about pursuing strangers, pursuing strangers, just even from the response, it's very unnatural. It's not normal to give away your comfort for somebody that you don't even know. So what Christ is asking us to do by our own effort is extremely unnatural, maybe even burdensome.

But up to this point, even the world practices some of that. You have people like Greenpeace, right? A lot of non-Christians contribute to their brothers and sisters, right? They're generous. You hear a lot of athletes, they become millionaires, and "What's the first thing you did?" "I bought my mom a house," or "I brought my brother, paid for his tuition." And so non-Christians practice that.

Even giving to strangers. You hear about, whether it's Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and these millionaires are sports stars or movie stars, or even not movie stars. The lot of non-Christians practice, even though it's difficult, they practice going after strangers, homeless, give to the orphans. But what he calls us to do in verse 14, in verse 14, outside of Christianity, I've never even heard of it.

I've never even heard of it. This is, the other two, as difficult as it is, what he tells us to do in verse 14, "Bless those who persecute you and do not curse them." The word for persecute here is the same word that he uses in verse 13, to pursue.

He says to pursue the strangers, and the word for persecute here is the one who pursues you. Immediately, I think of Apostle Paul when he was persecuting the Christians, where it wasn't enough for him to persecute the Christians in Jerusalem. He got permission from the leaders of that time, and he got a small army and chased him all the way to Damascus.

You have to understand the distance between Jerusalem to Damascus would have been about three days' journey. He took an army, and he heard that they were over in Damascus, and he committed his time, his money, his energy, his life to go get them. So the idea of persecutors are not just simply just people who are just passive, saying, "Oh, I don't like that guy," "Oh, I don't like Christians in my neighborhood." He's talking about people who have determined to bring you harm, and he's committing to come after you.

That's who he's talking about when he says to bless these people. Now we hear, this is not new to Paul, Jesus himself says that. In fact, that is taught all throughout Scripture. To bless those who are actively committed to harm you. It's one of those commands that are so difficult to practice, or impossible to practice, that we don't even think that Jesus is serious.

We just automatically think, "Of course he doesn't expect that. Come on. It's hard to even love people around us. Sometimes it's so hard to love our family members." And then every once in a while you see people who are going after strangers, it's like, "Wow, that's a saint. He committed his life to help people that he doesn't know." But to bless those who are actively committed to harm you?

Impossible. So a lot of times the way we respond is we don't even try it. Because clearly that's not what he means. It's one of those superlative things when Jesus says, "If you're struggling against sin and your hand causes you to sin, cut it off." He didn't mean to cut it off.

Gouge your eyes out. He didn't really mean to gouge it out. That's not what he means, right? He couldn't possibly really want us to practice this. See, at the core of human nature, at the core of human rebellion, at the core of our sin against God, is self-preservation, self-gratification, self-glorification.

So an individual who is actively pursuing to harm you is your enemy because he is actively trying to prevent you from self-gratification, self-preservation, and self-glorification, whether through their words or whether through their action. So this command to bless those people, not to curse those people who are actively pursuing and to bring you down is as difficult and as strange as you can possibly think, what the Scripture is telling us.

How can we even begin to entertain applying this? See, this is not something that you and I could do in our flesh. We are called not only to bless them but not to curse them. You know, the word for bless is where we get the word eulogy, right? Good word, that's what it literally means.

So when it says to bless them, he's basically saying to get on your knees to pray for them. You and I are not the final authorities. We don't go around saying, "Bless you, I bless you. I don't have holy water to bless people that I don't like." Basically what he's saying is put in a good word to get on your knees to pray for them.

And then to not to curse them is to check your heart, right? Desiring to bring harm. And isn't that the first thing that we do when somebody hurts us? It comes out of our mouth. "That guy's like this, that guy's like that." And it's so hard to control because our natural tendency when somebody harms us is vengeance.

So if you look at all the Old Testament laws, some of it is very harsh. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, you know, limb for limb, you know, life for life. And it seems harsh, but it was actually God being very gracious because he knows that our natural tendency is not justice, but vengeance.

If somebody slaps me deliberately, is it enough to slap them back? Probably not. Would your anger be appeased if he like that and you had, "Well, how dare you?" And then, you know, your anger has been satisfied because you did to him what he did to you. No. Because our natural tendency is when we're angry, he hits me, I punch him.

How dare you? You do it again, I mean, something more serious is going to come because our natural tendency because we can't just, you know, we're not satisfied with righteousness. We want vengeance. So if you look at the Old Testament laws, it was actually putting parameters to our anger to temper our natural tendency for vengeance.

Let's be honest, that's who we are, right? When our anger comes up, it's not easily appeased by, "Well, you took $5, I'm going to take your $5," "No, you took $5, I'm going to take your car." Is that too much? You understand what I'm saying. So for God to call us, not only to like to withhold anger, but to actually bless them, to come before God and plead on their behalf.

If there's anything that you cannot practice in the flesh is this, you think prayer is hard? You think you can't sit with somebody that's actively trying to harm you? You think giving is hard? You know, finances, you think that's difficult? Try to practice blessing upon somebody who's actively trying to harm you.

You and I have to admit and be honest, it's impossible. It's impossible. The best that you could do is to not punch them. The best that you might be able to do is to keep your mouth shut, even though anger and vengeance is in your heart. So how do we understand this?

Why does he even command this, knowing how difficult it is, knowing how impossible it is in our flesh? When he says to bless and to curse, immediately a Jew would have probably thought in his mind the Old Testament covenant, because the Old Testament covenant was about the blessing and cursing.

So when Paul says to bless and not to curse, the imagery immediately for a Jew would have been at that mountain when God says, "If you trust me, if you obey me, here's the blessings. And then if you don't obey me and you break my commands, here's all these curses." When we read that, I don't know about you, when we read that, it's like, "Wow, that's intense.

All that cursing. All that judgment that's going to come down on them because they weren't obedient." And when we think of that as a party just kind of looking in from the outside, it's like, "Wow, that was really harsh." The only reason why we think that is because something else has been ingrained in our mind, which I'm going to get to later.

But naturally, we all think that that's righteousness. Naturally. If you work hard and you stayed up all night, memorized all the stuff, you should get an A. You don't go out and stay out and watch movies all night and hang out with your friends and then you drink, you know, did whatever you want and show up and then you get an A.

So that's not fair. The people who worked hard and obeyed and did the right things, they should be rewarded. And the people who disobeyed and then did whatever they wanted, they should be cursed. So immediately, that fits well with how the world functions. All other religions practice that very principle.

If you're good, outweigh the bad. There is better life for you. There's reincarnation. Every religion outside of the gospel teaches that because it fits right in with our sense of justice. So a Jew would have understood, you know, to bless them, not to curse them. They would have thought, "Wait a second.

God told us." You're supposed to bless those who are good to you and curse those who aren't good to you. But what Paul is saying is not of the old covenant. The old covenant passed. And that's what the whole 11 chapters of Romans was about. Whole 11 chapters was basically to teach the old covenant of blessing and cursing has now passed.

Now you're living under the new covenant of His grace. And so now when he comes in chapter 12 and he's telling not to curse those people who deserve the curse, it's something that we cannot understand with the old covenant mindset. In our flesh, we cannot understand it. We think, you know, we would think naturally that that's righteousness until we recognize we're the sinners.

And I was thinking about, you know, we have several lawyers in our church and we have some prosecutors, you know, and then we have some people in the DA's office. And then if you're the public defender, those of you guys who don't know what public defender is, public defenders are state mandated or given attorney to represent people who are in trouble, you know, whether they're drug dealers or you stole or you did something and then so they can't afford a lawyer so the attorney is given to them from the state.

So their work is to try their best to get the best deal for somebody who's been convicted of something. So when we think about a public defender, it's like, ah, this guy is letting, you know, criminals out of jail. And then we think of the DA as the one who's representing righteous and bad guys in jail.

That's normally the response, natural normal response that we would get because bad guys should be in jail. We want bad guys in jail. We don't want them running around. We don't want them harming and getting into our homes and selling, we don't want that. Until you get in trouble.

Until somebody you know that you care about get in trouble. And all of a sudden the public defender is Jesus. All of a sudden you get a complete different picture of who is good and who is bad depending on where you stand. If you are righteous and you are in God's seat, blessing and curse is actually righteousness.

But when you are the sinner and you are in need of someone's forgiveness, all of a sudden the public defender represents Christ. He's merciful. I know I deserve punishment, but I need mercy. But the command, the New Testament command to forgive the sinner, naturally, I mean, again, it's hard for me to understand people who've been raised in the church who proclaim to be Christian who don't wrestle with this thought.

A righteous person who's never done anything wrong was killed and tortured for somebody who's constantly doing wrong. You hear stories about how recently there's been stories about police officers getting shot and they're getting killed and a lot of times it was deliberate. They're responding to a call in a bad neighborhood and some of these guys who need help maybe drug dealers in the context of dealing drugs, something went wrong and there was a gunshot and the guy who was sitting on the ground with a gunshot wound that he's coming to help is a bad guy.

And then it's in that context that they come to this bad neighborhood and they get shot and they get murdered. And we look at that and we say, "Wow, that is not right. Why even go and try to help that guy?" In what context would you and I think that a righteous person giving his life for the unrighteous is a good thing?

Naturally, our response would be, "That should not be. We should never practice that. How can that be? That's not fair." There should be a natural response, not to the blessings and curses, but what Paul is calling us to do is unnatural. What Jesus did for us is absolutely unnatural.

That's something that you and I should be contemplating. Why would the righteous, the Son of God, why would he give his life for me? The practice of love that he is telling us to practice with one another, it is central to the redemptive message. What he's telling us to do is, verse 14, it is at the core of the new covenant.

It is not just one of many commands. It's at the core of the new covenant. He tells us to do what he did for us. And it is difficult for us to understand, "Why would these perpetrators in my life, why do I have to care for them? Why do I have to pray for them?

Why do I have to not curse them? That seems unrighteous. That seems unfair." But every time we ask that question, we have to ask the bigger question of, "Why did he do that for me?" He asks us and he commands us to do this because it is at the core of the redemptive message that you and I sing about, practice, study, memorize, meditate, and share.

Verse 14 is the gospel message at its core. But here's the question. If that's the core of the Christian message, the old covenant has gone, the new covenant has come, then who's our enemy? Because I don't know of anybody who's actively pursuing me. You know, think about all those poor people in the Middle East.

You know, the persecution in India, when we first started going just five years ago, four or five years ago, they were on number 27 on the list of places that are hard to live as a Christian. They jumped to number 11 just in two years, two or three years.

And it's climbing fast. We say, "Well, thank God." You know, that's the one time a year that we go, you know, we get to kind of get a glimpse. And we don't really get persecuted there. It's just the idea of getting persecuted kind of, you know, kind of makes us feel uneasy.

But we don't have that here. We don't have persecutors here. Who are our enemies if no one is actively trying to get us? And I really want you guys to focus your attention on this part because the reason why this is so significant and important is because the enemies are much closer than you think.

And there's not a single person in this room that doesn't have one or many. Think about the fall. As soon as they fell, right, and because the rebellion on the surface seems like a very small trivial act. They disobeyed God and ate fruit that they weren't supposed to eat, right?

And from our perspective, it's like, "Wow, the whole judgment of God came upon mankind because of that?" You know, it wasn't simply about the fruit. It was about a willful rebellion saying, "Lord, I'm going to do what I want to do." It was expressed in this eating of the fruit, but at the core of it, it was a rebellion against God, a willful rebellion against God.

This willful rebellion against God, what was the very first fruit that came out of it? They have children. Adam and Eve have children. And what happened? Who was the first perpetrator? Who was the first enemy? Cain killed his brother. Cain killed his brother. So Abel's first persecutor was his brother, home brother.

It was in his house. It was not another continent. It wasn't another family, another tribe. It was in his own house. It was his own brother that drank the same milk, ate the same food, received the same love from the same mom and dad. It was his own brother.

And then, think about Adam and Eve. What do you do with that? I mean, if some persecutor comes and kills your child, you want vengeance. You want to kill him and his family to make sure that doesn't happen again. What do you do? Because it's your other son. Your other son did this to the other son.

And now they have to live the rest of their life watching their son being punished. One son killed, the other son punished. It's a lose-lose situation. The persecutor was in their own home. Our enemies are not in foreign countries. They're in this room. They're the people who are sitting right next to you.

Oftentimes, it's your mother or father. It's your brother or sister. Because at the core of our rebellion is self-preservation, self-gratification, and self-glorification. Another sinner who is living by that same principle is going to encroach upon your life at some point. It's going to encroach upon your reputation. It's going to encroach upon your happiness.

Another sinner who is living by that principle is going to get in the way of your life purpose. And they are not in foreign countries. Oftentimes, it's in your own homes. I remember early on in marriage, I've been married 26 years now. Going on 26 years. I remember early on in marriage, majority of the time, I would say 90% of the time, it was great.

Esther was my best friend. I married her because I'd rather spend time with her than my goofy single friends. So I wanted, and I was happy 90% of the time. And 95%, I was happy. But whenever we had a problem, it would never get resolved. Her and I are just as polar opposite as you can get.

The way she communicates, the way I communicate. I communicate like I'm on the pulpit, which is not good when you're talking to your wife. Thus saith the Lord, the passage says, you know. It just doesn't work with your wife. And Esther is Esther. A lot of you guys don't even know what she looks like.

She's at the core so introverted, she hides from people. And so her and I are like, I'm up here, and she's in some room somewhere hiding. That's how polar opposite we are in our personalities. So whenever conflict came, her first instinct was to go hide. My first instinct is to deal with it today, not five minutes later, like right now.

So you can imagine how frustrating this was for both of us. And I noticed it in the beginning, but after a while, the frustration started building and building and building. And I remember, I think it was maybe about five or six years into our marriage. You know typically when husband and wife fight, they fight.

Esther never argues with me. It's usually me giving my three-point message. And then she would turn her head, try not to make eye contact with me. And then the more animated I get, the more she would just kind of disappear. The more she disappeared, the more angry I would get.

It would turn into a four-point message, a six-point message. And then we're just like, there's no resolution. It was like, okay, okay, just calm down. And then there's no resolution. Wake up, and then you're not as angry. And then you just forget, and then you don't want to bring it up.

Because I don't want to do that again. So you just kind of tiptoe around that situation, and then, oh, everything's good. I'll take something else, snaps, and then boom, we're right back to where we were. Six years of that, right? And I remember I came home. It must have been like from a mission trip or something.

And she had a, you know, like angry face. Or at least that's how I interpret it. I came home, and she looked angry. I'm like, what? What did I do? Again? And I just lost it. And she's like, what's going on? And it was at that point. And I remember thinking to myself, I understand why people get divorced.

I'm a pastor. If I get a divorce, like, it would ruin my life. Everything that I believe, everything that I teach, everything that I sacrifice for. But I began to understand why people would do it. Because it's just that painful. You know, to have conflict outside your house is one thing.

To be in the home, on your bed, every time you turn around, and it's nonstop. And it's constant. And I was at my wits' end. And it wasn't like she was doing anything particularly wrong. It wasn't like I was sitting against her. It was just, I just could not understand her.

And then she was making me miserable, and I was making her miserable. And I remember just sitting, just sighing and praying, Lord, help me. And then I started memorizing a passage that I memorized when I was in high school and college in Galatians 2.20. I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live now, I live in the faith of the Son of God who loves me and died for me. And I started memorizing that over and over again. And I started to tell myself, Peter, die first.

You die first. And I know, like everything in me is like, no, but it's not fair. Look at what she's doing to me. I'm trying to serve God, and she's making it difficult. And, you know, she needs to change. It's like, no, Peter, die. Die to yourself. Die to yourself.

And I started thinking like, well, how do I do that? Well, approach her like you would approach your daughter. You know, like imagine, you know, at that time, faith was probably like an infant or maybe one at most. And I said, if faith did something to me, what I thought and I believe with all my heart she was wrong, I wouldn't go and just to punish her.

I'd have to come, because if I did, I would ruin her, right? If I get my full vent to my anger. And I started to tell myself like, okay, what would I do? Well, I need to correct her, but I need to correct her in a way that she actually is going to learn from that.

So I remove myself. Like what does, you know, if I'm supposed to be the Christ in this relationship, like what does she need of Christ, right? Not like what do I need, but what does she need? So I decided that I'm going to put aside all my anger and bitterness and frustration.

I'm going to put that aside and I'm going to kill it for the moment. And I'm going to approach her like her father and just hold her hand and say, "Are you okay? Like what's going on?" That's it. That was it. And so I went and I... Trust me, inside of me, I had an eight-point message that I had in my mind that I was like, "If you poke me, it will come out," you know, like, but I'm holding it in.

Like I'm holding it in. And I had like 15 verses that she needed to hear, you know, and then I'm holding it in. And so I just go in and I said, "Okay, just be there." And then I just held her hands, "Are you okay? Is everything okay?" And I could tell her response was completely different than all the other times I'd approached her.

She would normally... I said, "What's going on?" And then you could see her body starting to turn away from me. But for the first time, she started turning toward me and she leaned against me because she felt safe. And then, you know, obviously, she started crying and it's like, "Should I tell her now?" You know?

I said, "Be quiet. Be quiet." You know, and then I kept my tongue, kept my tongue. And then, you know, she would cry it out and afterwards, "Is everything okay?" And then I found out something happened. You know, like maybe the kids were acting up or she got a nasty phone call or something happened.

It had nothing to do with me. You know, I mean, at that moment, it had nothing to do with me. You know, but it was just so frustrating because she had such a hard time communicating with me because she felt unsafe. Because I was expressing my anger, she's encroaching upon my space, and then I'm encroaching upon her the way I'm reacting.

And I remember thinking like, "Wow, it's this hard." The reason why I share this story with you is that the sin that encroaches upon our lives isn't that far away. And the reason why Jesus says to practice this is because at the core of redemption, the core of the reversal of this curse, the most tangible evidence of this you will see in your own marriage with your own kids.

If you do not learn and to practice love with people who you don't think deserves it, you will eventually begin to see the fruit of that in your own marriage. You will begin to eventually see that with your own kids. You will begin to see that with your friends.

If you're in the practice of only loving people who are easy to love, you are probably already isolated from other people. Because basically, you cut off everybody that's difficult to love, and you find yourself that there's nobody worth loving but yourself, even within the own family. The ramification of the curse of mankind, you see it unfolding in the closest of relationships with your closest friends, with your coworkers, with your church friends, eventually.

See this call to love our enemies would be a cruel enslavement if he didn't give us the capacity to love. We are the recipients of this love in Christ. In Romans 5, 8, he demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet hostile, while we were yet sinners, he loved us.

The first and foremost, our motivation is that we ourselves have been recipients of this love. He pursued sinners, enemies, and he gave us an example to follow. Not only that, in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, he gave us a new heart. We are given a changed heart to be able to even receive this command.

The reason why you're even sitting here and any of this is even making sense to you is because God has already given you a new heart. In Romans 8, it says we have been given the Holy Spirit that is constantly interceding on our behalf, groaning with words that we cannot even begin to comprehend because God knew that we needed the Holy Spirit for redemption.

We are given the motivation as a reward that the harder it is for us to practice this love, the greater the reward in heaven. Agape love may seem at first to be the greatest burden, but the application of it at the core is the redemption and reversal of the curse of man.

I hope it really sinks in because he's not simply telling us what is impossible to do. What he's commanding is something that we cannot have. You cannot live without it. It is at the core of our redemption. It is at the core of redeeming our families. It is at the core of redeeming our children.

It is at the core of redeeming our friendship. It is at the core of redeeming mankind. What he did on the cross wasn't simply justification. What he did was an example for us. The only way that mankind can be reversed. How do you deal with sinful people? The only way that we know how is what Jesus did.

He ran toward us and not away from us. I pray that that truth would sink in, and I'm sure some of you guys can think right now of some people who are encroaching upon your space. Maybe it's your wife, maybe it's your husband, maybe it's your kids, maybe it's a friend at church, a co-worker.

Don't forget. Don't forget who we are. Don't forget what we have received. The preaching of the gospel must be more than just our words.