Dennis Tuuri

We read in Galatians 5:13, “You, my brothers, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love.” We’re coming off of an interesting few weeks, including the celebration of freedom and liberty yesterday, and we are beginning today a new series of sermons. I’ll be doing nine sermons on basic community practices to build the church of Jesus Christ, to build the body of Christ, particularly in the context of a local congregation.

We’ll be giving three sermons each on affirming, sharing with and serving one another. Affirming, sharing, and serving. And this really can be seen in light of our liturgy. Our liturgy—God affirms who we are as we confess our sins to him at the beginning of the service. He shares knowledge with us through the preaching of the word and then he serves us at this table—and these are all to be models for us and what we do one to the other in the context of the church.

So we’ll be doing nine sermons altogether—three on affirming, three on sharing, three on serving—and it would be really good to teach your kids this sequence as preparation for this series of sermons. Now I’ll be interrupting this series in four weeks or three weeks from today. I’ll do the three on affirming and then we’ll do a sermon on homosexuality in the Bible just to make sure we have all our i’s dotted and our t’s crossed as we continue to engage in that part of our mission to the world, bringing God’s knowledge to them.

In a way, today’s sermon, beginning the three sermons on affirming one another, these sermons can really be seen as evaluating who we are as a church and evaluating if our liturgy works. Does our worship work? What do I mean? When we’re affirmed by God through the forgiveness of our sins, assured at the beginning of the service—the first of three of God’s gifts to us—and then when God shares with us his knowledge through the preaching of the word and then when God serves us at the communion table, the liturgy is intended to work if that sets up in us a pattern to be God’s emissaries and to affirm one another, share with one another and to serve one another.

So in a way these nine sermons once more are on worship and hopefully moves us to see, to evaluate where our worship is working and where it’s not working. We begin with praising God for his affirmation of us, his sharing with us, his service of us and then we become partakers of his divine nature, his communicable attributes by doing this with each other. So today we begin—excuse me—this sermon with, or this series with Romans 12:10.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Romans 12:10. “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love; in honor give preference to one another.” Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text. We thank you for your word. We thank you for your tremendous blessings to us in affirming us, sharing, Lord God, an understanding of our world, and in actually serving us through this service, and particularly serving us at the Lord’s table. Bless us, Lord God, as we begin this series of sermons that we might all be challenged and recommit ourselves to the basic building blocks for Christian community that is your mission in the world. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. In times of trouble, we go back to the basics. You know, though the world may change its fashion, one of the lyrics from Father Long Before Creation goes, “God doesn’t change. And what he calls us to do really doesn’t change either. And so what we’re to do is to focus on the basics and specifically building Christian community. We continue the same work today that we’ve been doing for thirty years, and that’s manifesting the kingdom of Christ in our homes, in our lives, in our church, and in the world we’re called to live in the context of. So these basic building blocks—while it wasn’t my intention to begin my first sermon after the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage and after Brad Avakian placed a gag order on members of the Christian family here in Oregon—we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. Here we are in the light of very difficult times and we go back to the basics. We continue to press forward by working on the basic community-building practices that the scriptures affirm to us. So that’s what we’re doing today.

Now, this text from Romans 12—remember, and we’ve said this over and over again, but you can’t read these texts without a little bit of understanding of the context. When he tells them to honor one another, right? In preference, giving honor to one another. He is talking to two radically diverse groups. We have a church composed of all kinds of different people, right? Well, the first century church was composed of lots of different people too, but very specifically the epistles are written because you’ve got Jews and you’ve got Gentiles—completely different cultures, completely different perspectives. And even if you have Gentile God-fearers, now you’ve got new Gentiles coming as well.

So if you think that we have a difficult time building community and unity of the family of God in our day and age, think of what it was like then and recognize that this division, this difference between Jew and Gentile was God-ordained, right? For over a millennia, God had intended to have different cultures—not for them to hate each other, but to keep them separated by even what they ate, a difference of diet, for instance—until the coming of the Messiah who would produce the unity of the world again in obedience to him. So you know Paul’s got lots of work to do in his epistles to these churches to give them basic community-building practices bringing together into a working unity the one body of Christ composed of Jew and Gentile and all kinds of other differences as well.

This text is about honor and it’s about the honor we’re to give to one another. So we’re going to talk about affirming in three ways. Today we’re going to talk about affirming by giving one another honor. The word is value. It’s a word that belongs first and foremost to God. Throughout Revelation, the song of the angels is that God is worthy of glory and honor. Jesus Christ is worthy of honor. And the Bible tells us that God’s honor is shared with us as we’re united to God through Christ, the Father through Christ.

And so we’re going to talk today about affirming one another by honoring each other. And we’ll talk about what that means. Then next week, we’ll talk about affirming one another’s gifts. So today I’m not talking about affirming each other for what you think they bring to the table, but just affirming them because they’re part of the body of Christ, okay? And next week we’ll talk about affirming their gifts. And then after that, we’ll talk about affirming them through affection—through affection. And we’ll talk about the holy kiss in a couple of weeks.

So that’s where we’re going with this affirming thing. But really the bedrock, the bottom line, is this first sermon. You won’t even get to an appreciation of gifts and you certainly won’t be affectionate toward one another if you don’t have honor and esteem for each other just because we’re all part of the body of Christ today and part of the family of God. So this is really the foundation. This first sermon of this series of sermons is really inspired by some study by Tim Keller, I think in the Gospel and Life series, but I’m changing the order a bit. I’m riffing at them a little bit and changing how I’m doing this. He puts this sermon second; I put it first because I think it’s absolutely foundational to then appreciating each other’s gifts and being affectionate-minded toward one another.

So that’s where we’re going today—building off of this idea that we’re to honor, give value to each other, the honor that God is delighted to share with his people. So the idea here is to affirm. Now what I’m going to do here is we’re going to talk a little bit about this verse. So we’ll talk about this particular verse. We’ll look at its context—that’s number one. And then secondly, we’ll look at some supporting verses with the same idea. And then after that, we will look at some truths that these verses teach us—four particular truths—and then we’ll end with application. So we’ll start with this text, then we’ll move to a few other texts, then we’ll talk about truths that we can articulate from these verses, and then finally, what does it mean? What are some ways we can apply it?

So first we have the text itself: to affirm one another. And notice in this text a couple of things. First of all, it says—oh, that was a mistake up here—so it begins with a couple of other statements before it says to honor one another, right? “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love.” Well, the brotherly love is a theme that we all kind of think of at this time of year because of Philadelphia, right? Fourth of July. And we—a lot of us who have read our Bibles for any amount of time—know that this brotherly love term is Philadelphia. That’s the Greek word for it. It’s philo, you know, and then the word for brother. So it’s brotherly love, which is a term of affection for family members.

Well, the same thing is true of the word being kindly affectionate toward one another. The word there means with a particular kind of love called storge or stoga in the Greek. And again, that’s a term that in the Greek language at the time was reserved for family members. So it’s the kind of affection—the two things we’re told before give honor—and connected to it in the text are words that affirm that we’re in one family together, okay. So that’s the kind of affection, that’s the kind of love—family love and affection. And that’s related then to the honor that we’re to show to one another in giving preference to one another.

Let me read a couple of other translations of this verse. First, the ESV: “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” So that’s one way to read the text. Maybe not the best way, but outdo one another in showing honor. The New American Standard says: “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Give preference to one another in honor.” Okay. So the idea is to put other people—have a priority to them—and specifically by honoring them. And I think that’s really the import of the text.

The NIV says it pretty good. It says: “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” So you seek the honor or respect of one another. And so the text, by the way, has two different occurrences of “one another,” right? So this is a text that’s written to the body of Christ. It’s written to you. What are your obligations to the person sitting next to you in the pew—or better, the person sitting three or four seats down or three or four rows back—not just your family members or your friends that you’re sitting with? You have an obligation to behave with family affection for them, to have family love for them, and to esteem them, to honor them, to affirm them is the word that we’re using in this series. You have an obligation one to the other to affirm one another.

Calvin says—”This is really important stuff because there’s nothing much worse in life than not being affirmed or rather in thinking that people despise you.” Calvin says this: “For there is nothing more opposed to brotherly concord and unity than contempt, right? Than contempt. And contempt, he says, particularly arises from hotness when each one neglecting others advances himself. So the best full mentor of love is humility—which everyone, when everyone honors others. That’s what Calvin said. And he said this as well: “There is no poison more effectual in alienating the minds of men from the thought that one is despised. There’s nothing more corrosive to what the scriptures say is the foundational level of building kingdom, this kind of community relationship-building work we’re doing. There’s nothing more corrosive to that than contempt—than for people to think that you despise them, don’t like them, don’t want anything to do with them.

Now, okay, so hopefully that’s gotten your attention because in any community of people, including any church, you’re going to have people feeling that way. And our job is to go out of our way in an effort to make sure people don’t feel alienated, isolated, not honored by you. We all have an obligation to bring this honor is what this verse is telling us.

We all properly seek honor. You know, we’re not supposed to say, “Well, we don’t care if people honor us or not.” In Romans 2:7, we read that “to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life.” So he doesn’t condemn people for seeking honor. As Calvin says, if you know, if you don’t have that—there’s really not much more you can do. You can’t really—if I don’t honor and respect you right in Christ, if I don’t affirm you, not for what you can do, but for who you are—I’m probably never going to get to affirming your gifts, okay? Because I’m not going to see them because my mind is turned off to you and your presence and anything you do, I’m going to read in the light of the absence of honor.

So this is basic community-building stuff. Now this is preceded immediately by verses 8 and 9 where Paul is talking about body life. And we’ll go back to this text next week because this is talking about differing gifts and how we need all these gifts. So he says: “He who exhorts and exhortation, he who gives with liberality, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness. So he’s saying how you’re to minister the gift that God has given to you. And verse 9 says, “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.”

And then he gives us today’s verse about brotherly affection and love and showing honor to one another. Now this—you know, we can’t just grab verse 9 out of the context. I think verse 9 means it is not just not good. It is evil to refuse to honor and affirm one another within the body of Christ. Let me say it again. I think this text is saying that is the evil that God wants you to avoid—that would be the hypocrisy of saying you’re a member of the body of Christ when another member of the body of Christ in this church—acknowledged by this church as a member of this church—and you don’t esteem them or honor them as part of your extended family. That is evil. That is hypocritical. That’s a practical denial of the Christian faith.

I’m not saying you’re not saved, but you haven’t got the idea. You don’t understand the grace that God has called you to. There’s something involved, or something is off. So that’s the importance that the verses just before this show. And then the verses just after this are equally easily taken out of context. Verse 11 says, not even starting a new sentence: “Not lagging in diligence, but being fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.”

So see, this is a verse. And I think I might have preached on this verse or at least used it in several sermons I’ve done over the years on sloth and diligence and how diligence is to be a mark of the Christian life, which it says that we’re not to be lagging in diligence—we’re to be fervent in spirit serving the Lord. But the immediate context says that the first thing he doesn’t want you to be slothful or lazy about is showing honor, affirming your brother and sister here in this church.

So the text gives us very explicit instructions. It gives us warnings that a failure to heed this instruction is evil and hypocritical and a denial of your affirmation of what Christ has called you to be. And it’s something we’re to actively apply ourselves to—not lagging in diligence. And the immediate context of that is affirming one another, not for what you have, not for what you can give me, but for who you are—called by the Lord Jesus Christ like the rest of us—as a brother and sister in the Lord.

So we’re to affirm one another and we’re affirming one another’s equal importance in the body of Christ, okay.

Few other verses: Romans 15:7 says this well. One paraphrase says: “Accept one another therefore just as Christ accepted you.” Now let me give a little bit of context to that. Verse 5 of Romans 15: “Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be likeminded toward one another according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore receive one another just as Christ has received us to the glory of God.”

Our affirmation of each other, our receiving of each other, our relationship with each other is based upon how God has received us in Christ. So it is a gospel fact. The gospel is that God has received us in Christ. And if we understand that, then we’re to be the same way in receiving others. We affirm each other because God has affirmed the other members of this body in Christ.

And notice that I read the verse just before this because it says the purpose of this affirmation is that we might all glorify God. Remember—this is Jew and Gentile stuff primarily, but applies to us as well. He goes on to say this in Romans 15: “Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written: ‘For this reason I will confess to you among the Gentiles and sing to your name and again: Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people and again: Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, [and] all you peoples [praise him].’

So the requirement to affirm one another, give honor, accept is placed in the context of bringing us together by grace, by the gospel of Christ, for the purpose of worshiping him together. Who you sit in the pew with and worship God with—this is the designation of this particular body, this particular family—that God says you must accept one another. You must affirm one another, not because of gifts or abilities, but simply because God has affirmed that person. God has honored that person through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Romans 15 tells us the same thing. 1 Corinthians 12:26 says: “have equal concern one for one another.” He says in verse 25: “that there should be no schism in the body but that the members should have the same care for one another.” Okay, same thing. We have an affirmation of one another. And if we don’t have that—whether we acknowledge it or not, whether it’s open or hidden—we have schism. And schism is the opposite of what Jesus Christ is about in terms of his people and calling us into the body of Christ.

So we’re to affirm one another. And the context for this in 1 Corinthians 12 is that some people have what he says greater gifts, some have lesser gifts, but we all are of equal importance in the eyes of God, right? We’re all members of the same body and therefore we’re to have equal care for one another, right? We don’t pick favorites. We don’t select people we’re going to affirm or not affirm. We have a general obligation to fervently and diligently affirm one another just because they’re part of the body of Christ and particularly the body of Christ that God has selected—not you—for participation in this particular body.

Last verse: 1 Peter 5:5: “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” As Calvin said, you know, there’s no—worse than—there’s no more powerful opposition to this than pride—pride of place, pride of our particular gifts, pride of our social class, pride of our money, pride of our abilities, pride of our physical appearance, whatever it might be. We’re told in 1 Peter 5 that we’re to get rid of that stuff and to clothe ourselves with humility. That’s how you’re going to go about affirming one another—by dumping pride out the window.

So he tells you—and this is in the context of verse 5, it goes on to say: “Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, be clothed with humility.” Actually, one more verse: James 2:1. “Don’t show favoritism.” Verse one in full says: “My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality.” You remember that in the context in James he’s talking about rich and poor. He talks about other things too. We’re not to show favoritism. It doesn’t mean you can’t have, you know, a certain subgroup of friends, but overall we’re called to affirm without favoritism everyone in the body of Christ—honor them for their participation in the work of the Savior, for being joined to him.

We are to refuse to let distinctions that we would otherwise in the flesh—let cause distinctions among whom we’re going to hang with or who we’re not going to hang with. That’s not to be that way with us. We’re the children of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have one father, one Lord. We’ve all been received one baptism and we’re to honor and to affirm one another, okay.

Here’s some—here that’s the review of the text. Now four truths from the text—and the first one I’m going to spend more time on. I’ll lay them all out here to begin with. First of all: The church is a family, not a club. This is basic ABCs of community-building practices that we need to reaffirm as we build the kingdom in spite of whatever change of fashion the world might have engaged in itself. The church is a family, not a club.

Secondly: We’re to have an active, not passive affirmation of one another, right? We saw that just in the text. Third: It’s a lay, not just a clergy, obligation. “One another, one another”—twice in the text. So you know, it’s a family, not a club. We are to be active in affirming one another. And to affirm one another and to honor each other is a lay obligation. And then finally: It’s a gospel obligation because it manifests an understanding of the gospel of Christ.

All right, going back over them and particularly beginning with this first one—it is a family obligation. The church is a family. The church is not a club. You know, the beginning of one of the most important points to remember in this is the church is non-selective. We don’t set up a church for a particular kind of people. We don’t select who we want to be members of this church and deny others. On any—well, there is a selection. The selection is relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. God has called you into union with him and you’re here in this body.

Well, that’s it. We don’t get to select what kind of people we want to hang with. You know, this is why the community groups are primarily set up by regions because they’re to be a reflection of this basic affirmation of one another in Christ—not a handpicked group of friends. And when a community group becomes a group of selectivity and selecting each other and not wanting other people, that’s a problem.

Now there can be some of that going on, but the point is everyone here is to be assigned to a community group, and community groups reflect the diversity of the sorts of people that the church does. And so the community group bottom line for building a community group is this truth: It is to affirm and honor each person that’s been assigned to that group whether they’re showing up or not. That’s your job.

So the church is non-selective in the same way that your family—apart from the origin of selection of husband and wife—but beyond that, a family you don’t get to pick, right? You’re born into a family. I was born here and I’ll die here against my will. It wasn’t your will to be born into a particular family and it wasn’t the parents’ will that they would choose what baby they had. I know we’re headed more toward that direction, but a family is not selective in that sense, right?

You’re all here right now and you’ve got extended families and you didn’t pick them and you don’t decide whether you’re going to let them be in the family or not—unless there’s some gross sins going on, in which time they’re booted out—similar to excommunication of the church. But the church is a family. This issue is one of family bonding by actively affirming each other. This word, as I said, the words that are used here are family terms first and foremost. They’re not club terms. They’re not a selective group term here.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves. And this storge word—he talks about this particular word, this being kindly affectionate toward one another. And here’s what he says: “Storge is not discriminating. Friends and lovers will say they were made for each other, but the special glory of storge is to unite those who most emphatically are—even comically at times—are not made for one another. In a way, they were of course, right? In the providence of God it doesn’t appear that way to us.”

Another—Bob—I just finished a biography of Bob. But there was a song he did—series of dreams—and he talks about a dream in which the hand—a hand is still not worth playing unless it came from another world. You know, we look at we look at the cards and we could have a card set of every couple hundred people here—different cards. And some look like jokers and some look different. And you know, you think, “How can this hand that God dealt us do anything?” But the point is it’s dealt from another world. It’s dealt from the sovereign Lord, the father of all of us. And he has selected who to bring together into this body, into this family—not us.

And so Lewis is right, but ultimately, of course, actually we are made for one another. And that’s kind of the point. You either believe that or you don’t. You believe in the sovereign God and his gospel or you don’t. You either honor and affirm each other or you don’t, right? And this text today tells us that’s the basic building block. Forget, you know, the corrosion that SCOTUS brought to families—pales in comparison to the corrosion that we can bring to the family of God by having bad attitudes toward one another, by not honoring each other, by not affirming each other. Believe me, that’s far more corrosive to the very vitals of the Christian faith, the body of Christ, than anything the Supreme Court or Brad Avakian can do. That stuff pales in comparison to the sort of corrosion that we have in our minds when we fail to affirm one another in Christ.

So Lewis says, you know, these are not people that we think that we’re called. These are not the people that we would choose, but he said it exists between people who, if they had not found themselves in the same household or community, would have had nothing to do with each other frequently, right? He went on to say: “Growing fond of old so-and-so simply because he or she happened to be there—because you’re thrown together in the same family or the same platoon or the same ship. There’s a wonder about that. A wonder from God. Though she is not my sort of person, yet she’s really very good in her own way. You crossed a threshold, a frontier,” he says, “when you begin to think that way—a good threshold you have crossed into obedience to God. It means you’re getting beyond your own idiosyncrasies, right?

And that’s what God is calling us away from our own idiosyncrasies, our own limitations. He’s enriching us actually through affirming people that we would never choose to be part of the same club with or same family with. And that’s the way it is in families too. You know, you didn’t choose it. Lewis goes on. There’s lots of things we could read from Lewis’s quote, but you know, it’s quite obvious, I hope, what he’s saying. And what this first point we’re drawing forth in this text is the church is not a club. It’s a family.

And like families, unless they’re dysfunctional, but like families, we should honor one another. The last thing you’d want to do is hear somebody being critical of a member of your family. And the last thing you should want to hear is somebody being critical of a member of this church because of their differences. Now sin’s a different matter. That has to be addressed, but we’re talking about basic affirmation and honor.

Martin Lloyd Jones—famous Welsh preacher of the twentieth century, very vital part of the reformed faith in England. He became a minister later in life. He was originally a physician. So when he gets to his adulthood, he’s already a doctor, but then he becomes a minister. And he talks about the tremendous change that happened to him when he got his first call because he ended up ministering at a church that had a bunch of blue-collar people in it that he would never have associated with—completely out of his social circles, out of his normal friendships, club, whatever you want to call it.

And he talks about the value that brought to him and the richness of it. And so this was a big deal, this honoring and affirming one another—to Martin Lloyd Jones in his ministry. And he’s actually preached a number of sermons on this sort of thing. And he got to the place of recognizing that this really was an affirmation of the gospel. And when he saw himself beginning to honor and affirm members of the congregation that he was called to in ways that he never would have as in his own life, he saw in that the affirmation from God that he was a Christian, that he was operating according to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When we don’t honor and affirm members of the body of Christ as fellow members of our family, the family of God, then we remove that assurance of our own salvation to some extent. Lloyd Jones saw it in his life and took great joy in it and developed as a person—he said—largely because that’s what he ended up doing, that’s what God called him to do, and he engaged in that, and he developed.

Why is this true? It’s because we are a family. We are brothers and sisters in the Lord. We have one father. We’ve been made partakers of one life. There’s one birth of baptism, so to speak, right? By faith in Jesus Christ we’ve all received the right to be children of God. And so in a very real sense we’re part of the same family.

Again, all the text is calling us to do—and this bottom, this foundational level of community practice—is simply acting out what we know in truth is the reality—that we’re to affirm one another with brotherly love, with family affection.

Okay, secondly—so that’s the first one: The church is a family, not a club. Secondly: It’s an active, not a passive affirmation. You need to walk away from here saying, “Does the liturgy work? Did it work for me? Did the affirmation that God gave me—because I’m part of the body of Christ—at the beginning of the service, assuring me of my participation in eternal life through the assurance of forgiveness? Did that work? Am I letting that determine my attitude, my heart, my estimation of all the members of RCC?

Go down through the directory. Which one haven’t you affirmed? Because the text—the immediate context of this—says, “Don’t be lacking in diligence. Be diligent to affirm and honor one another.” I’ll talk a little bit about some ways to do that practically, and the next two sermons will as well, but it’s an active, not a passive affirmation.

Third, as I said: Don’t think, “Well, you know, Tuuri and the elders—sure, they’ve got to get with people and they’ve got to affirm people.” No, it’s your job. This is what the “one another” text—used twice, that phrase in Romans 12:10—is all about. You have the obligation to affirm each other, not based on gifts, but based simply on the fact that they’re members of the family of God through the gracious work of Jesus Christ. And that’s really an affirmation of the gospel.

Okay, let’s talk about application. And let’s first see what time it is. My watch broke. Doing okay. Application—and what I’m going to try to do, I may or may not (don’t hold me to account)—what I’m going to try to do as we go through these things is think about application in several different ways. I want to make application to, as I’ve already done a little bit, community groups, to marriage in different ways. And we’ll try to do that today.

So I want to first in the application of this put a restriction. Help you to see what we’re not. What the verse is not saying. The verse does not say that we’re to affirm everybody. You know, the verse doesn’t—the verse is talking about within the body of Christ, and he’s talking to a particular church or to a city church. So first and foremost this honor that we give to one another—this affirmation is within the church.

That’s the point of this series: community practices in the church. Now there’s a general honor that we give to people because they’re image-bearers of God, right? I mean, there’s a sense in which we all have the same father. The whole of mankind has been created by God the Father. So there’s a general affirmation of people as image-bearers of God. But the text is really calling us to a subset of that—which is the affirmation of those who are called through the gospel of Jesus Christ into union with the father through the son.

So there’s a general affirmation. But even within the church or in the world, we don’t want to go away saying we’re supposed to affirm everybody. That’s what pastor said—because we don’t affirm people in their sins, okay? That’s not what I’m saying. And in fact, that’s precisely why we have the problem we have today with the SCOTUS ruling from two weeks ago, right? That’s why Tony Kennedy ruled the way he did. He wanted to affirm people that he knew and loved in their dignity and yet who were engaged in homosexual sin. He wanted to affirm them. And so because he wanted to take this beautiful biblical truth of affirmation and apply it in a way that it means to affirm sin—that’s not what’s good. And that brings complete chaos and destroys the building blocks of culture.

So be careful. I’m not saying to affirm one another’s sins. And in fact, you affirm and honor people by helping them to deal with their sins. I know they won’t think that at the time, but that’s what you’re doing. This affirmation is really this affirm—avoiding a general affirmation of sin—is quite important.

Of course in Romans 1 we all know that homosexuality is a judgment of God upon unthankfulness and worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. It’s good to remind ourselves of that: that God isn’t going to judge us because of homosexuality. That homosexuality and the affirmation of it is the judgment from God for the problem—which is unthankfulness, right? And worshiping the creature rather than the Creator.

What does that mean? Wanting to affirm people—whether they’re sinning or not—more than affirming the honor and glory of God as found in other people. And so we have this improper sense of affirmation that’s provided the problem today.

In Romans 1:32, at the end of that chapter, it says: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but listen, they also approve of those who practice them. They affirm those who practice them.” That was the problem of the Supreme Court decision. They affirmed the practice of homosexuality. They use the affirmation that we’re talking about today in a way beyond what we’re talking about—to affirm sin.

And we have, you know, a local church that some of our old members go to now in downtown Portland affirming people who are affirming the court’s decision and affirming those engaged in transgressive sexuality. The Supreme Court didn’t get that way on its own. The church generally—many churches—affirmed people more than honoring God and ended up affirming sin. And that’s why the judgment of God has come upon us. That’s what I think, okay.

So let’s be careful. You know, I want you to affirm and honor each other, but that does not mean to affirm and honor sin. In fact, it’s the very opposite of affirming someone. That doesn’t help them. That doesn’t love them. To affirm them in their sin is not kind to them. It’s not useful to them, okay? You may be made to feel guilty because you don’t, but that’s okay. You know what the word of God says. You know how to help people and how to hurt people. And we hurt people by affirming their sinfulness, okay? We also hurt people by addressing their sinfulness without talking to them about it, right? By just letting it somehow color our mind so that we despise them.

So that’s what we’re not supposed to do, right? We can’t affirm the rulers. Let’s see. The most market example of this is the decision which came after the Supreme Court decision by the commissioner of labor here in Oregon affirming a judgment of $135,000 against two members of the Christian family, Aaron and Melissa Klein, who we should have brotherly love and affection for and who we should want to honor. Well, they’ve been found fined $135,000 for not affirming a lesbian couple who wanted to marry.

It’s interesting. I saw a thing on in one of the lists I subscribed to and they said, “Well, maybe Jesus would say if they compel you to bake them a cake, bake them two.” And I thought, “Well, maybe Jesus would say, if they compel a pastor to officiate one gay wedding, then you should go ahead and officiate two of them.” But we have this clergy and laity thing. Well, that’s another issue. But Avakian—in addition to affirming the judgment against the Kleins—here’s what he wrote. It’s probably some of you know about this, maybe some of you don’t. The commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries hereby orders Aaron and Melissa Klein to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing, or displaying or causing to be published, circulate, or to be displayed any communication to the effect that any of the accommodation advantages, facilities, services or privileges of place of public accommodations will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination be made against any person on account of their sexual orientation.

In other words, what he said was not only do you have to pay this money, you can’t say publicly—you can’t say in your speech that we shouldn’t sell cakes or officiated at the weddings of homosexuals. Brad Avakian put a gag order on brothers and sisters of yours from saying what the Bible clearly states in terms of the sinfulness of homosexuality.

Now, that’s where we stand, okay? And one of the things that we’re going to have to figure out how to do in the next few days is how to honor and affirm the members of the extended body of Christ, Aaron and Melissa Klein, in response to this horrific judgment by our commissioner of labor.

So we don’t affirm, and they’re being punished because they didn’t affirm something, but we don’t affirm sin. However, we do affirm each other.

Now in terms of marriage, I’m going to run out of time, but in terms of marriage, right? Marriage is a sharing together of lives in service to one another in rejoicing. Lives—marriage moves through the three gifts of the worship service: glory, knowledge, life, okay? Affirm, share, serve. Life is service and joy. When people—when marriage couples come for counseling, it’s because they can’t serve each other. They don’t have rejoicing life together. And almost always what you have to do with married couples is get them to affirm one another again—to give that basic honor and glory to each other that this text is saying is due to all Christians. And certainly in the context of the bond of marriage, that has to be the place that it begins.

And specifically in 1 Peter 3:7, this same word honor is specifically used of husbands to honor their wives while they’re the weaker vessel, whatever that means. That husbands have an obligation in the marital relationship for this affirmation, this respect, this honoring of one’s wife. So so that’s big. So we’re calling you today to affirm one another, but apply it to your marriage. If you’re having trouble, go back to basics of community-building practices. Affirm one another. Do things that honor each other in the context of the marriage. And then you’ll have the context, the foundation, for discussions about this, that, or the other understanding of what life in community is supposed to be about.

So in community groups—as I said before—ask yourself in your community group if having one this week: How well do we do at affirming each other? Not just the ones that show up, but affirming all of our group. Hand out the list of people that are assigned to your group and ask them, “How do we affirm each other? Do we do it well? Do we—are we diligent in honoring one another? Are there bad attitudes that we might have toward each other that we’ve got to clear up? How well do we listen to each other?”

You know, listening is one of the most important aspects of affirming one another. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says this. He wrote this, I think, in Life Together: “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them. Listening can be a greater service than speaking. There’s a kind of listening—and impatient listening, inattentive listening—that is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus to get rid of the other person.

How well do you listen to other people in your community group here at church? That’s an indicator of your affirmation of them for who they are or not, right? So community groups: ask yourself questions about this community. We’re building community in community groups and it begins with honoring one another, affirming each other. And let me take it then to all of us. Let me just give you a quick way to remember this: You’ve all got a face, okay? And so the face—what do you do with your face? And let me just suggest some things you could do, things to do to affirm one another.

Your mind—up here behind your face, right? That drives it all—inside out. Control room up here. Do you affirm and honor people in this church or do you have people that you don’t affirm or honor in your head? Get your head straight. Get your head straight. Think proper thoughts, gospel thoughts—about how you’re accepted and how you’re going to accept other people. And then be attentive to people with your eyes.

You go around the agape today. Oh, by the way, isn’t that great—to affirm the gifts of other people that the Hangartner brothers and their wives have given us a new setting downstairs. It’ll be fun. Lots of good things happening around here. Lots of interesting new things. An affirmation of one another. It has to kind of be the glue that holds it all together.

So affirm as you go about doing things today. Look, look at people. Pay attention to them, right? Don’t let them think you might despise them. Go out of your way. Be diligent, fervent—not lacking in diligence—to affirm one another just by looking at each other, right? Now if I don’t look at you, it’s because I’m blind. So there are things that get in the way of that, but affirm one another with your eyes.

Affirm one another with your speech. Greet each other. Don’t just walk past and ignore each other. Say things to them. I know you’re self-conscious. We all are. You know, I know none of us are not saying things because we’re snobby. But be fervent. Don’t lack in diligence to speak words of affirmation and honor to each other without hypocrisy. That’s the verse just before the verse we preached on. You know, not being hypocritical. Your words will form your attitudes though. Use your tongue, your words, to affirm one another.

Use your ears to listen to one another, right? Listen attentively. Don’t just listen waiting for the next chance you get to jump in and ignore what they’re saying. We honor and affirm people by listening to them, by seeking out relationship with them—with our brains, with our eyes, with our tongues, with our ears, with our facial expressions. Don’t be derisive in the way you look at people. Be accepting, loving with facial expressions itself.

And you’ve got a nose. Don’t have it up in the air. I mean, not literally, but don’t be haughty, right? Get your nose down in there and be kind to people and honor them. So ask opinions about other people. Ask about their life. Focus on the gospel in your mind and use your face, your ears, your brain, your eyes, your mouth, and your nose to remind you to actively honor and esteem each other—not for what they have, not for their gifts. We’ll talk about that next week. But just for who they are.

Things to avoid—same thing, right? Don’t let slander and tale-bearing about you come out—about each other, rather—come out of your mouth. Don’t run people down, right, by talking with them and not apart from their presence—and dishonoring or shaming them. Don’t do it. It’s exactly the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing. Now like I said, sin is not to be affirmed, but their person—who they are, right? You know, the way we are when we don’t want somebody to like somebody else, we try to just, you know, in war it’s very typical. You refer to the enemies as creatures or beasts of some sort rather than human.

Remember, we’re talking about brothers and sisters in Christ—even when we’re addressing sin in the right way that we’re supposed to address it. So things to avoid: same thing with your face. Be careful with your tongue. You think SCOTUS did damage to this country. Your tongue can bring corrosion and destruction or at least get in the way of this community serving effectively as a missional community of the Lord Jesus Christ. Careful with your eyes.

When you’re talking to people about somebody else, don’t roll your eyes. Oh, you know the way that person is. Don’t do that. That dishonors people. It creates a more of a sense of dishonor toward people that you may not have great appreciation for. Don’t roll your eyes. Don’t say that other person—you know, you know the way they are. Don’t do that. Don’t categorize people. Don’t put them in a box of shame and dishonor. Don’t do that.

And don’t hear things from people. If people start doing this sort of thing, rebuke them or at least mildly say, “Hey, you know, remember pastor’s sermon. Don’t do that. Let’s not—let’s not do that about each other. Let’s not tear each other down with our speech or our attitudes here, okay?” Don’t agree with this stuff. So with your eyes, you know, don’t disaffirm people with your mouth. Don’t slander them. With your ears, don’t listen to slander. With your eyes, don’t roll them, et cetera. And then as I said, the key to this is humility before each other in terms of the proper use of our expressions and our noses, so to speak.

So get a hold of your attitudes. Practice this basic community-building characteristic that’s at the foundation of everything else. Refuse to hear slander. Use your tongues positively to affirm and support the honor of other members of the community here at Reformation Covenant Church. This is it. This is bottom line. This is the way the church will either be a community or not a community. And we can’t get to all the rest of this stuff if we don’t get this first step right.

The liturgy begins with this. It begins with God affirming us by telling us we’re forgiven, we’re accepted in Christ. If our liturgy works, then we’re going to affirm one another throughout this day and into this week.

Let’s pray. Father, we do pray that that would be the case. That you would continue to cause us, Lord God, to grow in our appreciation, love, and affirmation of one another. Help us to honor one another, to affirm each other because you’ve accepted them in Christ. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.