weekend Broadcast

How to Love those who are Different, Part 1

From the series Love One Another

Have you ever wished that someone would look behind the smile, the makeup, and the clothes, to see who you really are - and accept you just as you are? We all long for that, and in this message Chip shares how Jesus taught us to love one another.

This broadcast is currently not available online. It is available to purchase on our store.

Chip Ingram App

Helping you grow closer to God

Download the Chip Ingram App

Get The App

Today’s Offer

Love One Another Resources on sale now.

PURCHASE

Message Transcript

I don’t think there’s anybody here who would deny that the greatest teacher that ever lived, the person who has impacted history more than all others is the person Jesus.

Not just by how He lived, and not only by the resurrection, but His teaching. And the last night before He died, He summed up His teaching. And He said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, so love one another. By this all men will know that you are really My disciples.”

The trouble with words like “love” over centuries is little by little by little they watered down. So, we want to talk about what it looks like, day in and day out, to love one another in His body, the supernatural community?

Someone sent me an email this week and let me share it with you. It’s a story, a true story, of a situation in a church, has to do with loving people. His name is Bill. He has wild hair, wears a t-shirt with holes in it, jeans, no shoes.

That was his wardrobe for all four years of college.  He happened to be a very bright young man, kind of esoteric, very, very smart. And while in college, on a major college campus, he became a Christian.

Across the street from the campus was a very well dressed, very conservative church and they wanted to develop a ministry to college students, didn’t know exactly how to go about it.

Well, one day, in his t-shirt with holes, no shoes, jeans, and wild hair, Bill walked across the street and decided he’d go to church. It was a popular church, good things were happening in it, as Bill walked in, the place is absolutely packed. It’s a church from a higher tradition so that there was nice carpet, people were dressed in three-piece suits, all the ladies had very nice dresses on, many had hats on. Sunday best.

Bill came in toward the back of the auditorium and he looked and he couldn’t find a seat. And you can just visualize in your mind, he’s walking down the middle aisle toward the pulpit, looking for a seat, looking for a seat, can’t find one. He gets all the way to the bottom, he is now at the first row, right in front of the pulpit, this place is packed! This is exciting!

And so Bill did what he did at the college fellowship, he looked around, wasn’t a seat, got right in front of the first pew, and sat down on the floor and crossed his legs.

Now, as Bill was walking down that aisle, he caught the notice of a few people. Wild looking hair, holes in his t-shirt, no shoes. He is a brother in Christ but they don’t know that. And most people didn’t come to this church dressed like that. It wasn’t Santa Cruz.

And so there is a stillness that comes over the place and they are wondering what is going to happen, who is going to step in, what should we do, what’s going to go on?

And an old deacon in the back, eighty years old, silver hair, three-piece suit, pocket watch complete with chain, elegant, godly, sterling reputation in the church. He is eighty and all you can hear, dead silence, is him walking down and the click of his cane. Walking down and the click of his cane.

And everyone is thinking, “Well, you know, he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. I mean, this is understandable. I mean, this guy obviously doesn’t know, he’s never been here, he doesn’t know what we do and how we do it. You can’t sit on the floor, you know?”

So the pastor gets up to begin teaching and he realizes, “You know, until this little scenario in front of me gets solved, I can’t, I can’t preach.”

So, everyone is waiting. Click, step, step, click, step, step. He finally gets to the very front and you can actually hear people breathing it’s so quiet. And this very, very old, godly gentleman reaches over and whispers something to the man on the floor. And he slides over, and the man, with great effort, takes his cane and puts it down, and then with even greater effort, makes his way, and sits on the floor next to him. And said, “I didn’t want you to worship alone.”

The place was just stunned, emotionally. The pastor had the good sense not to try and start his message the way he should have, or had planned. And he looked down at the front row and he said, “What I’m about to teach you will all forget. What you have just observed you’ll never forget.”

Why? Wait a second. What is so unusual about that? Didn’t Jesus say, “Accept one another?” Didn’t Jesus say, “Love one another?” Didn’t Jesus welcome prostitutes and sinners and tax collectors? Yeah, He sure did. But somewhere along the line in the Church of Jesus Christ, when people act like Jesus and do exactly what He said, it looks pretty weird, culturally, doesn’t it?

See, the culture of the average church and the culture of the average Christian has somehow, over time, eroded the most basic truth of the gospel. How in the world can you be connected? How can we be a community? How can you love people if you can’t look beyond the outside and accept them right where they are at and care about them?

Larry Crabb in his book Connecting, I mentioned it earlier, puts it this way, I’ve got the quote in the front of your teaching handout, you might want to pull that out and follow along.

As he tries to get his arms around, in his psychological jargon, which he uses, which is great, and he describes genuine, biblical acceptance in this way. He calls it “connecting.”

He said, “Connecting is a kind of relating that happens when the powerful life of Christ in one person meets the good life of Christ in another.” That’s what happened on the front row. “What every Christian can pour into another is the powerful passion of acceptance.”

If you’ve got a pen, underline, “What every Christian.” Not some Christians. Not super Christians. What every Christian can pour into the life of other Christians is the powerful passion of acceptance. Where does it come from? “A passion that flows out of the center of the gospel, a passion that fills the heart of God.”

We’re going to talk about what it means to accept one another. We can’t love, we can’t be connected, we can’t be a supernatural community, we can’t be a testimony of the reality of Christ in Santa Cruz county, unless we accept one another. And so I want to spend all of our time actually talking about what it looks like to accept one another.

Now, by way of an aside, here’s what I want to do. We’ve got people at all different levels. Some of you just walked off the street, some came with a friend, and it’s like, “Okay, I like the horns. Enjoyed the music. This is different.”

Others of you have been in the faith for a long time and as an aside, when you take a word like “acceptance” or if you want to look at the word “love” and you want to do a Bible study on it, what I want to do is model for you some practical methods of how to study the Bible.

And so as you open the handout, notice it says, “What does it mean to accept one another?” When you want to study something in the Scripture, first start with the meaning of the word. And I’ll give that to you, I did a little “word study” is what it’s called.

The way you do that is you get a good Bible dictionary, if you’re just starting, Vine’s would be a good one. If you’re down the road, you might look at something called Colin Brown, and if you’re a real scholar, there’s a work called TBNT and you can look at it in the original languages. But you want to study the meaning of the word.

Next, then, now you know what this word means, then you move and you study the word, the meaning from the context. In other words, this comes out of Romans chapter 15 verse 7. “Accept one another just as Christ accepted us, to bring glory to God.” And so you want to look at what do verses 1 through 6 say before 7 gets there?

The next level you want to go to is you want to move and say, “How is this word used in the New Testament?” And I’ll do that for you. And then finally, after you have a broad scope of what the word means, what it means in the context, what it means in the New Testament, then you take it and you place it back in the text where you’re looking at it and say, “Okay, what does this mean, right here?”

Now, I’d like to say that we could take about thirty or forty minutes and I can walk through this very slowly, it would be a lot of fun, and we do that in some of the Tuesday electives and some other classes and Bible study courses.

What I’m going to do, though, is I’m going to skip all that and I’m just going to give you the fruit of my study. And so I’ll just highlight what I learned. But I want you to understand, this is how to go through the process. It’s a phenomenal way to study the Bible, and a great way to really get a grasp on what God is saying.

So, let’s start first with the meaning of the word. The meaning of the word “to accept,” literally means “to receive.” It’s only found grammatically in what is called “the middle tense.” And that has to do with a little prefix on it, and it’s found in a tense that means that we actively are to receive another person.

And so it has the idea of “to warmly welcome someone,” not just generically, but warmly welcome them to yourself. I summarized all the different words and things I could do by this concept. “To grant admission into your heart.”

When the Bible says “accept one another,” what it really means is: Look beyond any preconceived notion, look beyond anything physical in appearance, look beyond just a superficial nod intellectually, and to accept them means to admit admission, receive into your heart. You are willing and open to build relationship. That’s what that eighty-year-old man did with the hippie on the front row.

Second, the meaning from the context. As you would read chapter 15, in fact, you can open your Bible, I’ll just read through the first six verses. Listen carefully as I read. And what you’ll see is the context is about edification, it’s about building up one another, it’s about the source of encouragement, it’s about perseverance in the Christian life, it’s about unity, and then it crescendos in verses 5 and 6 about worshipping God.

And then what we’re going to learn is that all those different things that are happening and are to happen, relationally, are contingent upon verse 7, which is acceptance.

It says, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings,” or the weaknesses, “of others, and not simply to please ourselves,” verse 1 of chapter 15. “Each of us should please his neighbor for his good,” why? “to build him up,” or edify him. “For,” here’s our example, “even Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written,” quotes Psalm 69, “‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen upon Me.’ For everything that was written in the past,” Old Testament, “was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

Then he prays for them, “May the God who give endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus,” purpose

- why? “so that with one heart and with one mouth you may glorify God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, I’ve got it in the NIV and so there is a little phrase left out. There’s a “Therefore,” or a “wherefore,” right before “accept one another just as Christ has accepted you, in order to bring glory to God.”

So, what I want you to understand, this idea of acceptance is to have admission, to warmly receive another, and to be an active participant, to draw people into your world. It doesn’t mean you agree with them, doesn’t mean you approve of what they do, but it means you accept them. That’s the meaning of the word.

The context, it flows out of the life relationships in the Church, of encouragement and perseverance and of our worship and it says, “It can’t happen unless we first accept one another.”

In the New Testament, it shows up in a number of different places and the reason you need to do this is because it’ll give you little pictures because it’s translated “acceptance” here but, for example, Romans 14:1 to 3, the issue is about Christians getting along with one another, that come from different backgrounds.

And the idea will be used to teach them, this word “acceptance” has to do with literally admitting others into the fellowship who think differently about the faith than you do.

In Acts 18:26 it’ll have the idea, “to welcome into your heart and into your home in order to build upon the grace and the goodness that you see in them.” In that case, it was Aquila and Priscilla who saw this new Christian Apollos, and as soon as he got done speaking, they accepted him, took him home, built upon the goodness and the grace and the gifts that they saw.

In Mark 8:32, the word is used and it’s translated “taking aside,” it’s a negative passage. It’s where Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes Him. His message was wrong, his method was right. He was accepting, he was protecting, he was guarding the dignity of Christ and he thought, Jesus maybe had had a little too hard of a day.

And this stuff about going to the cross and, “I must suffer.” So Peter accepts, takes Him aside in private and he tells Him, you know, “Lord, you just had a bad day. This stuff about the cross, that’s not it.” Now, his message was really bad and Jesus did not take him aside. He publically rebuked him.

But what I want you to see here is that this concept of accepting goes well beyond an intellectual ascent to, “Oh, I accept them where they’re at.” It’s to admit them, it’s to be active, it’s to care, it’s to move into their life. It has to do with whether we’re going to have real unity and real fellowship and real love for one another.

Finally, when you look at the meaning of the text and right in chapter 15 verse 7, notice that the first portion is a command. This isn’t like, “Do this if you’re a super Christian.” It’s a command: Accept one another.

Secondly, notice how it’s to be done. Now we take the import of the meaning of that word and you are to do it and I am to do it just the way Christ did. And as you study the life of Christ, you know what you learn? How did Jesus accept people?

Jesus accepted people unconditionally and indiscriminately. Jesus was a human relational magnet! Everywhere Jesus was, people were drawn to Him. It didn’t matter what their gender was, it didn’t matter their race, didn’t matter their political persuasion, it didn’t matter if they were the worst of sinners. He was a magnet. Why was He a magnet? Why did everyone want to be around Jesus? You know why? He didn’t judge them. He didn’t condemn them. He didn’t hear from other people and make opinions about them.

He warmly welcomed sinners, letting them know that they mattered and yet telling them truthfully, “Your sin is not acceptable.” He cared. Even though Jesus was better, you know? You ever heard that phrase? You know, “He just thinks he is better than everybody else.” Jesus was.

He was better than everybody else but He never treated anyone like He was better than them. He made every single person that came in contact with Him feel like they really mattered, even though they didn’t believe they mattered.

See, if you want to learn how to accept people, study the life of Jesus – unconditionally.  Now, did He approve of it all? No. Did He agree with what people were saying and doing? No. But He always accepted.

He admitted them, warmly, into relationship with Him and then He spoke the truth in love. That’s what we are to do.

Now, let me stop here for just a second and say, “Why?” Why is that so important? This phrase says, “Jesus did it in order to bring glory to God,” what is glory to God? That’s literally to enhance someone’s reputation.

How did Jesus bring glory to God? You know, the average person in that day, and the average person in our day, really thinks God has His arms crossed, is mad at the world, tapping His toe, waiting for people to mess up so He can bust them on the head. Really! The average person doesn’t believe God is on your team. The average person believes that you’re not worthy of God, you have done… of course He knows everything about you.

Jesus brought glory to God, and gave people an accurate picture of the Father

- how? Very simply. He treated them the way the Father feels about them. Total, unconditional, indiscriminate acceptance.

In a day when, if you were a woman, you were a second-class citizen. If you were a slave, you were subhuman. In a day where, if you were of this race instead of that race, they wouldn’t even talk to you. In a day where a Gentile and Jew wouldn’t even eat in the same house. In a day when prejudice was rampant like it is today. Jesus unconditionally, indiscriminately accepted each person and said, “You matter to God.” That’s what He wants us to do.

Now, let me throw up a thought for you. Just relax here for a second. I don’t know about you but my observations of my heart and my observations of people are that we spend untold amounts of energy, finances, and effort to get people to like us. Don’t we?

Don’t you get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “Okay, now, I’m going to be in this group and I’m going to go here,” and maybe not consciously but at least unconsciously, “I need to wear this so they will like me.”

We spend incredible amounts of money and time to please other people. What are the seven worst letters in the English language? Rejection. We hate to be rejected. We have people in our society that will willingly get beat up on purpose so they can get the acceptance of a group. What’s the group called? A gang.

We have people who will spend money they don’t have to get - what? Acceptance from a group that if you drive this or wear that, then you’re in. Now, let’s look at this just carefully, because this is big.

If you desperately need acceptance, and I desperately need acceptance, if we long to be loved and accepted for who we really are, and not what we project or what we think people might think, and if God says, through the person and the life of Christ, that we are one hundred percent accepted because of God’s character and His work on the cross.

And if you’re a believer you are completely forgiven, you are completely secure, so you are accepted by God, and then if He commands you, and commands me, to accept each other the way we have been accepted and I know everybody in the room needs it, I know I need it and I got it from Christ and I am commanded to give it to you, here is the big question that puzzles me. Why don’t we accept one another? Right?

Why don’t we accept one another? Why do we judge by the exterior? Why do we have rankings? Why are we prejudiced? Why do we show favoritism? Why do we not accept one another if I know I need it, you know you need it, if we can just pull the lid off this thing then realize we’re all insecure, then it would seem to me that the safe environment that the Church could provide is we could just be ourselves accepted in Him, accept one another, and there could be a supernatural community where people could grow and get loved like nowhere else.