Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn to Galatians chapter 5, as we begin with Sermon series over these next seven weeks called the Third Way, series about love. Back on them, March 2, 1959, when I was not yet 10 years old, a guy was a soul singer, a pop singer named Sam Cook, sang a song that was a huge hit. It's called what a wonderful world. And as soon as I begin to recite the opening lines, the tune will go through most of your minds. Don't know much about history, don't know much biology, don't know much about a science book, don't know much about the French I took. But I do know that I love you, and I know that if you loved me too, what a wonderful world this would be. That was a huge hit. It was later recorded by Hermann's Hermann's out of the United Kingdom, Otis Redding, and then Art Garfunkel sang it along with Paul Simon in North Carolina's James Taylor doing the backup vocals. Believe it or not, it was re-released in England in 1986 and made it to number two on the United Kingdom singles chart. It was a huge hit, probably with high school kids who didn't care much about history or geometry or science or French. And I remember thinking, you know, I don't know much about those things either, science and trigonometry and French and so forth. I would add geometry. I don't know much about geometry. That's why I married a geometry. I just want to marry a math teacher because she can answer all the questions about life that I just cannot understand. But I do remember one thing, and it was very difficult to figure out. I guess it was actually trigonometry. It wasn't geometry. It was my senior in high school. We were trying to determine, through a formula, which I can't remember, something called force vector. I don't know if you remember those. That's the force in a triangle that is exerted by the convergence of two signs at the angle of tangent. So when the two sides come together and touch in physics, there's a force that's exerted. And in those three triangles, those forces are called force vectors. Now, if I got an engineer up here tonight, he'd explain that to you, but you'd all be asleep in about two minutes. And with me, you'll last at least three minutes before you fall asleep. Well, you know, in the spiritual realm, there are force vectors. There are three sides to life in the spiritual realm that converge at different points and that create a force vector in our life, pushing us one way or the other. If we put it in a formula, it would look like this. L1 plus L2 is less than L3. L1 legalism plus L2 lawlessness is less than L3, which is love. Or to put it in theological terms, legalism and or lawlessness cannot accomplish what love does. Love is the third angle of life, the third way, the third force vector in our souls and in our lives. The interesting thing is that you and I are living in a triangle of those three force vectors. We really are. And lovelessness is being manifested through the self-absorption of lawlessness and through the legalism of self-righteousness. I know this sounds odd, but it's true. Legalism and lawlessness are both on the rise. Now, we don't usually think that way. We tend to think that the opposite of what we are is controlling the world. So if you're conservative, like you and I tend to be, we tend to think that it's the liberal people who are overtaking our culture and ruining it. But what is sometimes fascinating and often amusing is that when I listen to liberal people, they fear that it's the conservatives who are taking over everything and ruining our culture. I don't know anyone who's not encountered these things in our lives. Legalism sometimes it's referred to as fundamentalism, although that's not a true synonym. But for the sake of the illustration, fundamentalism is on the rise around the world. We can see this in the rise of fundamental Islam, radical Islam, or the fundamentalism of Kim Jong-U in North Korea. It's amazing that that man continues to survive and to thrive, but he does. The fundamentalism of Barack Obama's liberalism or the rising tide of fundamentalism in the Tea Party movement in the Republican Party. Two things that have caused good luck in our country. There's the resurgence of fundamental Hinduism in India and believe it or not, the growth of fundamentalist or conservative Christianity around the world. At same time, lawlessness is on the rise and we would be spiritual ostriches with our heads in the sand if we denied the rise of the homosexual agenda and same-sex marriages, the embedded reality and the fact that the thinking in the Western world that abortion on demand is a civil right that every woman is entitled to. The rise of radical libertarianism where each man does what is right in his own eyes. Feminism's triumphs in the sexually active self-asserting single woman who's now a solo mother on purpose. The riots in our streets, indicating still a sense of anarchy at the root of the American soul, the rejection of Christianity by young people in the West and growing numbers and the rights of the individual over the the wishes and the welfare of the community. So the triumph of the individual has come in our own day and age. It's conservative versus liberal. It's orthodox versus progressive, it's religious versus secular, faith against science, fundamentalism against existentialism and these forces like magnets that cannot be brought together, therefore, as they exert the force vector, force the angles, the gap will farther and farther apart. No one does a better job of explaining this than Tim Keller does in his book Reason for God. Belief in an age of skepticism. You would bear with me. I want to quote at length what he says when he says that most people are surprised that these two things, fundamentalism and self-assertion, self-discovery are on the rise in the world. There was a great gulf today between what is popularly known as liberalism and conservatism. Each side demands that you not only disagree with but disdain the other side as at best craze your worst is evil. This is particularly true when religion is an issue. Progressives cry out that fundamentalism is growing rapidly and non-belief is stigmatized. They point out that the politics of our country has turned toward the right supported by mega-churches and mobilized orthodox believers. Conservative is on the other hand endlessly denounced the fact of what they see as an increasing skeptical and relativistic society. Major universities, media companies and elite institutions are heavily secular, they say. And they control the culture and how we think. Which is it? Is skepticism or faith on the ascendancy in the world today? The answer is yes. The enemies are both right. Skepticism, fear and anger towards traditional religion are growing in power and influence. But at the same time, robust orthodox belief in the traditional faith is growing as well. The non-church growing population in the United States and in Europe is steadily increasing. The number of Americans who answered no religious preference to one pole after another have skyrocketed, having doubled or even tripled in the last decade. But even as more and more people identify themselves as having no religious preference, certain churches with supposedly obsolete beliefs about an infallible Bible and miracles are growing in the United States and exploding in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Even in much of Europe, there is some growth in church attendance. In short, the world is polarizing over religion. It is getting both more religious and less religious at the same time. Because doubt and belief are each on the rise, our political and public discourse on matters of faith and morality has become deadlocked and deeply divided. The culture wars are taking the toll. Emotions and rhetoric are intense, even hysterical. Those who believe in God and Christianity are out to, quote, impose their beliefs on the rest of us or, quote, turn back the clock to a less enlightened time. And those who don't believe are, quote, enemies of truth and, quote, purveyors of relativism and permissiveness. We don't reason with each other. We only denounce. We have come to an impasse between the strengthening forces of doubt and belief, and this won't be solved simply by calling for more civility and dialogue. Arguments depend on having commonly held reference points that both sides can hold each other too. When fundamental understandings of reality conflict, it is hard to find anything to which one can appeal. And that's where we are. Legalism and lawlessness are both on the rise in the world that you and I live in. Now, neither Keller and I are decrying either one of them quite frankly. There are certain fundamental things, some ABCs about science and law and grammar and psychology and religion, including Christianity, that people must agree on in order to know the truth. And certain self-expressions are good for us. We need to discover for each and every person life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These basic human expressions of the common grace that God gives to mankind. What we believe, Keller and I believe, as missing, is a third way. A third force vector that stands at the apex, the top of that triangle, and closes the gap and holds it together. And that third way is love. Now, it shouldn't surprise us that this is happening because Jesus said it would. Jesus warned us about the loveless way of legalism. But will you Pharisees for you tithe mint and rule and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God? These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You search the scriptures because you think that in them, you have eternal life, but it is these that bear witness of me. And yet, you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God in your souls. He also spoke against and warned us about lawlessness. For they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated on my account by all the nations, and then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many people astray. And because lawlessness has increased the love of many will grow cold. But rather than just acknowledge the rising tide of legalism and lawlessness that press in on us like two uncomfortable force vectors, Jesus offered us a third way. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and show myself to him a new commandment I give you that you love one another just as I have loved you, that you are to love one another and by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. For this is my commandment, that you should love one another just as I have loved you. There is the third way and it's the only way through the danger of the competing forces, these vectors in life that press in on you and our denomination the PCA, it seems like for the last decade at least, have been debating about legalism and lawlessness in the PCA. Well I'm going to be honest with you folks, I don't know any true legalists in the PCA, I don't know one minister in all of the hundreds that I know who truly believes that they will find favor with God, earn their salvation and maintain God's grace by their performance of religious rules and rituals and I don't know anybody in the PCA who is truly lawless who doesn't believe that we ought to love God by keeping his commandments. I do know people who are performance driven and they tend towards a moralistic approach to Christ, to the Christian life, to doing church and I know that there are people who are the opposite, they are not very concerned about sanctification and so we throw these labels around but what is really lacking in the PCA is this third way, the way of love. Paul addresses these same issues, we're going to be looking through that great chapter called the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong and a clanging symbol. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give way all that I have and if I deliver my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and doers all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know in part and we prophesy in part but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child and I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face. Now I know only in part, someday I shall know fully even as I have now been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide these three. But the greatest of these is love. Before we look at this third way, I want us to turn to Galatians chapter 5 and see how the Apostle Paul explains how these three force vectors work in the Christian church, in the Christian life, and in the Christian soul. He'll talk about legalism, he'll talk about lawlessness, he'll talk about love. And he first talks about the way of legalism because quite frankly, that is what is most natural to religious people, the way of legalism. Galatians chapter 5 beginning in verse 1. For freedom Christ to set us free, stand firm therefore and do not submit again to Yoke of slavery. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ. You who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace. For through the spirit of by faith we ourselves eagerly await for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus need the circumcision, the un-circumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little 11, 11's the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty whoever he is. But if I, brother, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettled you would emasculate themselves. Here, Paul reminds these Christians that the reason Jesus Christ died was to set us free. It was for freedom that Christ died. He said for freedom, Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. That yoke of slavery, obviously, in this first paragraph is the yoke or the bondage or the slavery of legalism. Manifested in the belief that people had to be circumcised first, before they could be baptized in Christ, that they had to keep the Jewish law as well as believe in the Christian gospel in order to go to heaven. Legalism according to Paul, and he's the one who invents this category and defines it, is the attempt to earn favour with God through one's own merits, arrived at by works righteousness steeped in obeying religious rules and rituals. For the Galatians, this was Judaism. In fact, they probably weren't called this in Paul's day, but Bible scholars call them now the Judah Isis. They came along professing to be believers in Christ and perhaps they were, I don't know. But I know that what they were teaching Paul condemns. And they said, you know, it's good to believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, but that's not enough. The cross of Jesus Christ cannot take care of everything you need in order to be accepted by God and to go to heaven. So you first have to be circumcised into Moses and the way of Judaism, before you can be baptized into the way of Christ. And in addition to having faith in what Jesus Christ has accomplished, there are certain things that you have to do, certain kosher dietary laws you have to keep, and certain rituals that you have to engage in, and certain ceremonial cleansings, and certain kinds of holidays and holy days that you must keep. Paul, almost in all of his epistles, references this tension in the church, and Paul says, you know, that is legalism. Now, Paul is not making reference to the moral law. Paul never teaches that the moral law is antithetical to the gospel, but rather it's complement. In fact, he would say in robins that the law is good, if it's used lawfully, as a tutor to lead us to Christ, as a moral restraint in our conscience that kind of holds back our natural incarnations to be lawless, and as a way of teaching Christians how to love God and other people, it's a good thing. Can't replace the gospel. It's really not equal to the gospel, but it's not a bad thing. What he is condemning is man made rules and regulations that we have to keep in order to be good enough for God. Paul makes it perfectly clear that three things are happening here, and there are important things, folks. First of all, he says in the opening of this epistle, that people who think this way are introducing a new gospel that is not good news at all. Flip over to chapter 1. Look how Paul introduces this letter, and this issue of legalism that the Galatian churches were being challenged with. He says in verse 6 of chapter 1, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Jesus Christ. But even if we are an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel, contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel, contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I was still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. This idea that we are saved by trusting in Christ and a performance mentality is a false gospel. In fact, he says, it's not a gospel at all because it's not good news. In fact, it's depressing news. The second thing he warns us about is these people who introduce legalism into our way of thinking and living really do it to exalt themselves and make us feel like second-class citizens in the kingdom of God. Looking chapter 4, verses 16 and 17, Paul asked this probing question, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? They, that is these people who are introducing this works righteousness along with Christ, faith in Christ, they make much of you but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you will make much of them. In other words, they want to create a performance-based acceptance that they know you can't meet because you're not Jews, you're Gentiles, so that you will always feel like a second-class citizen and they will always feel superior to you. That's why he asked in chapter 1, am I trying to please men or God? There's ultimately folks, there's the the Achilles heel of legalism. It's always based upon a performance meant to please other people, to look good, to be good, to have the right answer, to appear superior to other people. It's horizontally man-based where the gospel takes us vertically up to Christ. And he says, these people want you to think this way because then you'll feel inferior to them in some twisted way, it will make them feel superior. It will make them feel better about themselves because it's certainly better than you. And thirdly, he says adding rule-keeping to faith was returning to a spiritual bondage from which Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us. For freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. He makes his marvelous statement in verse 6. It's really not circumcision or uncircumcision that means anything. But faith working through love, let me make that more general. It's really not the keeping of rules or the not keeping of rules that means anything, but only faith working through love. Some may ask, well pastor, what's wrong with a little rule-keeping? I mean, how harmful can it be? And Paul's answer is a lot. It can hurt us a lot. It's 11. Remember what Jesus said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Look what Paul says in verse 7. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view and that the one who's troubling you will bear the penalty whoever he is. But if I brother still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish that those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. In other words, he's saying in addition to religious rules and mandatory rituals and obligatory rubrics, why would you want to add the grace of all Lord Jesus Christ? If you have all you need in those other things, then why introduce the cross? Or conversely, if the cross is true, if all that Jesus Christ had done for us is sufficient, then why add these other things that hinder us from wanting the grace of faith, faith working through love in Jesus Christ. How does that happen? Well, such rules and rituals and rubrics replace faith working through love with self-righteousness, working through legalism. And he says, let's be logical. Look at verse 12, it's an offensive thing that he says, but he's making a point in hyperbole here. I wish that those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Little he says, I wish those who unsettled you would castrate themselves. And here's his thinking, let's be logical. If a little bit of circumcision, a little bit of cutting off of the foreskin helps make you more acceptable to God. Well, let's be even more acceptable to God and cut everything off. Let's just mutilate ourselves. Be the worthy, formed we are, the more attractive we will be to God. And of course, it's ridiculous. He says it will make the cross of Christ. Little he says in Greek and make it void for Jesus Christ died to redeem the whole man including our bodies in the form that God created them which are intended for a glory yet to be revealed at the coming of Christ. I testify again to every one of you accept circumcision that he is obligated to keep all of the Jewish rituals, every single one of them back to the Old Testament, forget grace and the new. Forget it. You were severed from Christ. You who would be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. This is a powerful statement Paul's making. As if legalism really is a real force of danger in the church. Now, of course, nobody ever comes along and says, hey, I'm a legalist. Follow me in my rulekeeping. They wouldn't get very far and they disguise it in different ways and we buy into it. That there are certain things we have to do in certain ways we have to believe and certain values we have to accept in order to be acceptable to God and to please other people, to please other people. For example, and I want you to look at verse 4, chapter 4, verse 16, as I say this, have I become your enemy by telling you what I'm about to tell you? We honestly believe in evangelical Christianity that all Christians should be Republican and that it's a sin to be a Democrat and you will get angry with Pastor Ross for challenging this truth. But let's take it to its logical extrapolation. If that's true, then I say let's do away with the Democratic Party. In fact, let's do away with all parties. Let's just make a one-party system in America called the Republican Party. Everybody will have to be a Republican. Everybody will have to vote the right thing. Isn't that freedom just like communism has a one-party system? Isn't that a great idea? Who will vote for that? But that's how we think. That's what we say. And so there becomes an idea that sure you could be justified by grace some Democrats are. Every Democrat makes a mistake and believes in Jesus once in a while, but they're really not quite acceptable to God if they remain in the Democratic Party. Or how about this one? Christianity is inherently constructed for white people and white suburban middle-class people. And other people are welcome, as a result of them not living the way we do, they will always be welcomed as second-class citizens in the kingdom of God. Now we wouldn't explicitly put it as bluntly as I am, but we live like that often, especially when we can't admit that racism is America's and has been America's deepest sin problem since our beginning, that these people who were in the Confederacy were not noble men and women fighting for state rights, get off that. They were endorsing slavery. They were not heroes of the faith. When we exalt them in the pulpit, that makes African-Americans and Asians and Hispanics say, what is wrong with these people? We don't hear in those statements what they hear, that they can come here, that we endorse as correct a world where white people are always on top. It can go as benign and as ridiculous as that the primary issues we focus upon are our preferences, homeschooling, our Christian schooling, or public schooling, or predestination, like you have to believe in that in order to go to heaven, or their music preferences. And eventually those people who disagree with us are not welcome to worship and grow with us in community. And we have become slaves again. Slaves to our political views, slaves to our personal prejudices, slaves to our own preferences. This happens to be the drug of preference among Republicans, conservatives, homeschoolers, Christian schools, people over the age of 50, and most reformed people. Tim Keller explains it this way in Prodigal God. The Pharisees of Jesus, they believe that while they were a people chosen by God, they could only maintain their place of blessing and receive final salvation through strict obedience to the Bible. There are innumerable varieties of this paradigm, but they all believe in putting the will of God and the standards of the community ahead of the individual fulfillment. In this view, we only attain happiness and a world made right by achieving some moral rectitude. We may fail at times, of course, but then we will be judged by how abject and sincere our repentance is in this view, even our failures must always measure up to a performance standard. What a horrible bondage to live in. Always having to be good and to look good and to have the right answer and be successful and achieve more rectitude in be judged by one's performance and pretend to be a word not how sad a way to live, but the opposite force may be even worse. And that is the way of lawlessness that he talks about in verses 13 through 21. For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. For the whole loss, the field, in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite into power one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh or against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit or against the flesh, for these are literally, for these are at war with each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, I warn you, as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Once again, Paul goes back to our freedom in Christ, for you were called to freedom brothers, but here's the second danger, that you would use that freedom as an excuse to sin, to give in to the flesh, to be lawless, licentious, as we say. You were called to freedom only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but here's love again. But through love, serve one another for the legalist, it's faith working through love, for the lawless, antinomian, licentious, freshly person, is through love serving one another because love is the fulfillment of the law. Jesus died, Paul says, to free us from sin, as well as from the Old Testament regulations of the Levitical Code. The more law is fulfilled by love, the first four commandments are how we love God, and the other six are how we love one another. In fact, if you look at even the Levitical, the Code of Moses, it was all predicated upon an effort to love God and to love other people and to love those outside of God and bring them to the faith. It was all motivated by love. Love is the fulfillment of all the laws. And there is a war he says going on inside of us, the Holy Spirit against the flesh, Paul's terms, what we would call the indwelling presence of Christ and our sinful nature, so that this conflict is constantly going on because the flesh does not want us to do the things that our spirit wants to do. He mentions what these things are, the flesh. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. And he mentions sexual immorality and impurity and sensuality and drunkenness and choral zings. And I want you to notice that all of this list of sins, all every single one of them is an abuse of our personal freedoms, an abuse of our self-expression, and abuse of our sinful preferences. Now, we don't call it lawlessness today, just as no one would come along and say, hey, follow me in the legalism, no one comes along and says, hey, I'm going to be a lawbreaker. Follow me in the lawlessness. No, it's called self-discovery. We have to discover ourselves. We have to discover what gender we really want to be. I thought God gave us one. We have to discover what marriages really intended to be. I thought the Bible said we have it. And you can go on and look at all these things of self-discovery. And they really become synonyms for lawlessness, asserting ourselves in our rights, self-actualization, living out who we want to be, self-absorption, my rights over every other demand upon me, Tim Keller. In this view, the world would be a far better place if tradition, prejudice, hierarchical authority, and other barriers to personal freedom were weakened or completely removed. The person choosing the way of self-discovery says, I am the only one who can decide what is right or wrong for me. I'm going to live as I want to live and find my true self and happiness that way, and no one can tell me I have to do otherwise. This is the way of post-modernity. No absolutes, no truth, no overriding story that makes sense of things, no common good, only the reckless self and pursuit of self-discovery. And it's the drug of preference. Let's be fair tonight. It's the drug of preference of the Democrats and liberals or progressives, of public schools, the unchurched people under the age of 50 and most evangelicals. Both this legalism and this lawlessness are sad ways to live. There are false approaches to spirituality and religion, and they are evil debilitating forms of bondage. For the more list, he's in bondage to the group. He cares so much about approval that he buckles under in conforms. And for the lawless man, he's in bondage to himself. He is so committed to self-expression and self-discovery that he's even willing to oppose God. The only way that will get us through the danger of these force vectors is a third way. The third L. Love. Verse six. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor un-circumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Verse 13 and 14. Through love, serve one another. For the whole laws fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Verse 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no legalism. There is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires, lawlessness, self-discovery. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envy one another. Love, love, love, faith working through love. Through love, serve one another. The fruit of the Spirit is love, blossoming into this full cluster of the very virtues and godly characteristics of the Holy Spirit and thus that counteract legalism and lawlessness. Look at the first four. Love is manifested in joy, peace, patience, and kindness, to offset the ravages of legalism, the joy of grace, the peace of resting in Christ, the patience of God as he works on our lives, and the kind of distorts other people who disagree with us and won't perform according to our standards. And the last four. Goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are there to offset lawlessness, goodness instead of immoral things and passions of the flesh, faithfulness to persevere and obedience, a gentleness or meekness that counteracts our prideful self-assertion and self-controlled against our tendencies to give into our desires and passions and preferences. Love is immensely relational. Legalism is cold and truly legalists love rules not people. And lawlessness is incredibly selfish. Truly lawless people love themselves but no others, but love cares for God, cares for other people, cares for the truth, cares for self. And I maintain that true love is the maturity of the true and satisfying virtue that neither legalism and its moral rectitude and lawlessness and itself discovery can provide. If we had time tonight, I could prove that by going to the second Peter where he says to your faith at virtue and to your virtue knowledge and to your knowledge self-controlled and to your self-control steadfastness and to your steadfastness and to godliness and brotherly love and to brotherly love agape, godly love. That's the pinnacle. That's when we become the people, God wants us to be. When we love God and love others, love the truth in a very biblical sense, love ourselves. How this love works, we're going to look at the next few weeks as we work our way through 1 Corinthians 13. But in our Western society, we have to face the fact that we are so deeply divided between these two approaches that we can hardly conceive of any other way. But there is a third way. I had a little Italian friend named Franco Maggioto. I mean, if he stood here in the pulpit, you wouldn't be able to see him. He was about this tall and about that big around. Just a little bowling ball of energy and power and grace, he was a Catholic priest who'd come to know the faith and he was reformed Italy. He died a few years ago and he always used to say to say to Janine me, God always has a third way and the third way is love. If you're Tim Keller and you live in New York City, then you live in the capital of self-discovery and self-expression. You live in an urban culture with progressives and liberals and free thinkers who hate fundamentalists and feel that they are ruining the world and the danger for Mr. Keller is not to play it safe and always preach against legalists because there ain't one legalist in all of New York City.
But Tim Keller is not doing that. He's calling those people in New York to a more difficult way to love. If you live in the world of Mike Ross over in suburbia, where everyone is conservative and anybody conforms, I mean, we dress the same kind of way and we drive the same kind of cars and we send our kids to the same schools. We are robots of conformity. It would be easy for me to talk about all those liberals and how they're ruining the world but that would be the safe message, wouldn't it? Because there's hardly a true liberal in this place or in Matthews. Not really. No one really to lawless. No, the more difficult thing is to call you to a third way which is love and that's the only way through this malaise, through this tension of these force factors, the way of love. Love is the third way because it's the third philosophy of life, the third great force in our world, it's the way of God among men. But love it, let us love one another for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest to us that God sent his son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love not that we have loved God but he loved us and sent his son to be the perpetuation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God but if we love one another God abides in us and his love was made mature in us. This is the third way. So now these three abide faith what the legalist is really looking for. Hope, but the lawless man really wants and love but the greatest of these, the strongest force of them all is the love of God for us and we for one another. Let's pray. Father this third way is always the most liberating way but always the most challenging. For it is our tendency as human beings as sinful men and women to replace the ways of Christ with a cheap substitute that are easier to abide in that far less satisfying as we grow through life. I pray you would open up our hearts and minds to what love really is and how it looks and how it lives as we study this great love chapter of the Apostle Paul. We would realize that the greatest of all things, the greatest thing in the world as Henry Drummond said is the love of God and that we would choose this third way. We who tend towards some moral rectitude, some performance driven paradigm for life or those of us who are more prone to self-discovery and self-assertion. We are not pretending tonight and we know these are legalism and lawlessness and we know that our culture is soft with both but we would be different. We would be your people and we would come to know Christ and have our faith work through love and through love to serve one another and to have the fruit of the Spirit which is love because this is the better way, this is the greatest of all. So we ask that you would help us as we study this marvelous chapter together as we pray for one another and bear with one another and encourage each other and forgive each other in this third way, the way of love, the way of Christ. But we would ask this not only for our good but for his glory, for the freedom that he died to give us so this Paul says the cross of Christ would not be made empty. And so we ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake, Amen.