God's ordinary means of grace ordinarily produce extraordinary people.
1 John 4:11-17 (NIV)
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 29: The Marks of the True Church
The true church can be recognized
if it has the following marks:
The church engages in the pure preaching
of the gospel;
it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments
as Christ instituted them;
it practices church discipline
for correcting faults.
As for those who can belong to the church,
we can recognize them by the distinguishing marks of Christians:
namely by faith,
and by their fleeing from sin and pursuing righteousness,
once they have received the one and only Savior,
Jesus Christ.
They love the true God and their neighbors,
without turning to the right or left,
and they crucify the flesh and its works.
Though great weakness remains in them,
they fight against it
by the Spirit
all the days of their lives,
appealing constantly
to the blood, suffering, death, and obedience of the Lord Jesus,
in whom they have forgiveness of their sins,
through faith in him.
Summary
Often times a person's physical appearance makes their recent activities obvious. Someone who's soaking wet standing next to a pool has likely been in the water. A kid who smells of smoke and has sticky marshmallow residue all over probably just came in from a bonfire. A woodworker likely has sawdust in his hair.
So it is with Christians, John writes here. "God lives in us, and His love is made complete in us." That means that we as Christians literally exude God's love in our words and actions, and these actions in turn make our testimony tangible. In other words, these actions are the evidence of faith.
Notice how Christian faith is never just expressed in actions, no matter how loving and noble those actions are. God's love is made complete in you, John indicates, as you "testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the whole world." John continues, "if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God."
This formula of action + testimony + acknowledgement is what "makes love complete among us. And as much as this combination benefits the world around us, you are the primary beneficiary of it! God's love being made evident in you is designed so that as you are like Jesus, you will have confidence on the day of judgment.
Dig Deeper
Article 29 of our Confession is well known for the three marks it gives for identifying the true Church that we looked at last week. But it's critical to understand that those three marks never exist isolated in a vacuum. If a church is faithfully preaching the full counsel of God's Word, participating in the sacraments and lovingly disciplining her members, there will be tangible evidence of this in the way the congregation looks and lives. A true church will build up and equip true Christians.
Ordinarily, at least. Ultimately the Church is nothing more than a tool in the hands of our Sovereign God. Some of history's finest Christians came out of churches that did a lousy job meeting the aforementioned marks, while other churches who live out these marks in an exemplary way sometimes produce congregants whose faith is as dry as toast.
That's why these marks are often referred to as the ordinary means of grace. God can certainly work however He likes (as He did in Paul's miraculous conversion), but ordinarily He works in ordinary ways (as He did in raising Timothy in a Christian environment). He's commanded His Church to follow His instructions, which are summarized in our three marks, and He ordinarily rewards the Church's efforts in doing so with Christians who have the attributes we'll look at this week.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who no one has ever seen, but whose love is made evident in those who testify and acknowledge Him and His Son;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that your churches efforts in preaching, participating in the sacraments, and disciplining will result in members who have true faith;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: Titus 1
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