Living a Life of Mutual Love

Driving home: rhetoric must always be subject to the dictates of God in his word.

Martin uses the analogy of a preacher facing a two-and-a-half-hour sermon to explain why he sometimes has to split passages, prioritizing fidelity to the text over rhetorical unity, and 'spitting in rhetoric's face'.

The only way to be true to the grammar, to the Spirit-wrought emphases of the passage is to go from here to here. is to go from here to here, but it would take you two and a half hours. And you know it's not right, for a number of reasons, to preach for two and a half hours, and you have to split the thing up. Well, it means there are times when in splitting it up, there will be something that will suffer from a rhetorical standpoint, and at that point, as I tried to teach the men in the academy, rhetoric must always be subject to the dictates of God in his word.

14:48 - 15:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Since the new birth has landed you there with this brotherly affection, now he lays upon them this duty, love one another from the heart fervently. You have the beginnings of that brotherly affection. Let it rise to true…

He uses the analogy of bold, italicized, underlined, or colored text in computer documents to explain how Peter's phrase 'above all things' functions as a strong emphasis, making the command stand out.

When Peter turns from the fundamental and foundational, issue of the believer's vertical relationship and starts to address the horizontal, he writes above all things. Whatever's coming, Peter says, I want you to know this is a first class concern. This is not a second class concern for you computer whizzes. Here you push the buttons to make sure the type comes out bold, in a bigger font, italicized, and underlined. And when you pick up a text and the thing is in a bolder print, bigger print, italicized, and underlined, you say the author's trying to get something through to me. That's what Pe...

16:39 - 17:40 Read in full sermon

Driving home: In the vast mountain range, of Christian duties that have to do with our horizontal relationships, love of one another in the family of God is the Mount McKinley among all the other mountains.

Mutual love is described as the 'Mount McKinley' or 'Everest' among the 'vast mountain range of Christian duties' to illustrate its supreme importance.

Nor does he say, as a substitute for all other things. No, he says, above all things. In the vast mountain range, of Christian duties that have to do with our horizontal relationships, love of one another in the family of God is the Mount McKinley among all the other mountains. It's the Mount Hood among all the other mountains.

20:32 - 20:57 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Love is a passion that's seeing what the object needs, is willing to move toward that object and meet that need at great personal cost to itself.

The word 'ektenes' (fervent) is illustrated by a horse stretching its neck at the finish line or an athlete straining muscles, conveying the intensity and full exertion required for this kind of love.

But by the adjective that he uses, it is to be this kind of love, ektenes. And this word means to be stretched out, to be on the stretch, to be strained. We're told that in the secular writers of Peter's day, if someone were describing what happened at a given horse race, when a certain horse in the last part of the race marshalled all of its powers and all of its ability to win the race and stretched its neck out at the finish line, this is the adjective you would use. If you were describing an athlete whose muscles were caught in straining under some athletic feet, this is the adjective you ...

27:20 - 28:05 Read in full sermon

The point: Have fervent love among yourselves and that love will be constantly acting to cover each other's sins.

The experience of marriage, where intimacy reveals both virtues and previously undiscovered vices, is used to illustrate how close church fellowship inevitably exposes a 'multitude of sins' among believers.

It is a missing of the mark. And Peter says, in the context of the people of God, and here's his pastoral realism, he says you're going to see each other's sins, you're going to see a multitude of them. You see coming into real vital church fellowship in many ways is like marriage. There's not a person here who's been married for longer than six months that will not agree with me when I say, I don't care how long you courted.

39:09 - 39:35 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second activity of mutual love is 'using hospitality one to another without murmuring.' Martin explains that this refers to opening hearts and homes to fellow believers…

A humorous anecdote about a preacher who overstayed his welcome and was subtly prompted to leave by his hostess offering extra eggs for a 'long trip' is used to illustrate why Peter adds 'without murmuring' to the command for hospitality, acknowledging the potential for ingratitude.

And he saw that in some instances where people were hospitable, those to whom they were hospitable took advantage of their hospitality. They never even grunted or snorted like a pig will do when he sticks his snout in the flock. He at least snorts. And they've put themselves out for people who don't even snort.

49:11 - 49:34 Read in full sermon