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Some things need to come before other things. Children have to learn to crawl before they walk. They walk before they run. They use Velcro before they tie their laces. Caleb Howard teaches math at Resurrection School, and he tells me that we have to learn addition before we learn multiplication, because multiplication is really just a fast way of doing addition. And we have to learn multiplication before we can learn how to raise numbers to a power, because that’s another form of multiplication.

· Love God: A mature disciple actively loves and serves Christ with all their heart, soul, mind and strength.

· Love the Family of God: A mature disciple actively loves and serves the family of God starting with your own family.

· Love the World: A mature disciple actively loves and serves those who do not yet know Christ’s love.

These three priorities have a certain order or progression to them. Just logically, a person has to come to faith in Christ, has to love Him, before they are even in the family of God, before they can learn to love the family, or love the world God has placed them in. Then as soon as we are born again, we discover that we have siblings—lots of them. We have been born again into God’s family, and we have lots of brothers and sisters. And just like a human family, we have to learn to get along with these people who we did not choose. You choose your friends; family are just given to you, whether you like them or not! That’s true in the family of God as well as our biological families. And then you discover that God has called you all to go out into the world together to share His love and His truth with those who are not yet in His family. So there’s a certain order to these three priorities. That’s why we list them in the order we do.

But there is also a sense in which, once we are in the kingdom, we have to do all three of these things simultaneously, all the time.

We can’t wait until we get each one in the progression perfected before we move on to the next. A child doesn’t wait until he can walk perfectly before trying to run. He will fall, of course, many times, but that doesn’t deter him. He just gets up and tries to run again.

Typically, the piece that we tend to leave out is the last one, loving the people in the world. One of the great mistakes many Christians make is to say, well, I need to work on loving God with all my mind more before I try to love my neighbors or my co-workers, because I need to have more answers ready for the questions they might ask me. Or we’ll say, My life isn’t what it ought to be; I’m not a very good example of a Christian. I better just stay quiet until I’ve cleaned up my act a little more.

Or, we just get trapped in the Christian bubble. We discover that our Christian brothers and sisters are really nicer to be around. They don’t smoke or chew, or do drugs, or get drunk. They don’t swear or tell dirty jokes. They are more forgiving and patient. They enjoy the same kind of entertainment we do. So we just settle down in the family room with them and never get out into the world.

This is a huge mistake. Here’s what I mean: How many of you have been a Christian for more than 10 years? Now keep your hand up if you have more than 5 very close friends who are not Christians. You see what happens? We get into the family of God, and if we are not careful, we begin to lose our friendships with people outside. This isn’t usually a conscious thing; it just happens. But it often happens pretty quickly. Within 2 years of becoming a Christian, most people have lost many or all of their non-Christian friends. I remember getting a call one day from Monna Stirling who had become a Christian a few months before. She said, “Before I met Christ, I used to go to the bar with some girlfriends, and now they are calling and asking me to go with them again. Can I do that as a Christian?” I said, You better! You may be the only Christian they know. If you stop hanging out with them, who will tell them about Jesus? So it is essential that right from the very beginning, we work hard at maintaining our friendships in the world, or at developing some new ones. We have to do all three priorities simultaneously, all the time.

And we have to keep them all in relative balance with each other. We don’t want to become very strong in one or two of these areas, and much weaker in another.

A weak relationship with Christ will impoverish every aspect of our life. It will turn our spiritual fellowship into nothing more than a social club; it will cut the legs out from under our evangelism. And it will rob us of the joy Jesus said He came to give us. Life will just be “blah”.

A person who has no meaningful relationships with other believers, who is not practicing the “one anothers”, will be lonely, isolated, stagnant in his faith. God puts us in the

Body for a reason, and if we do not take our place in it, contributing our part and receiving from others, we will never become all we can be.

Sometimes we mistakenly think that we have to have a good answer for every conceivable question anyone might ever ask us before we say a word about our Christian faith. But the Bible puts it just the other way around. Philemon 1:6, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” When we are active in sharing our faith, it will force us to go back to the Bible to discover what it is we really believe, and to find answers for people’s questions.

Years ago, a man who had been a member of the Communist party in England during World War II became a Christian, and wrote a little book called Dedication and Leadership. He described the way they trained young Communists like this: As soon as someone had made a commitment to the cause, they gave them a stack of Communist newspapers, The Daily Worker, and sent them out on the street corner to sell them. Of course, there were very few Communists in England at the time, and the young converts typically got a lot of flak and questions they couldn’t answer. But then they came back to the party meetings full of questions and a passionate zeal to find out the answers. They were the best students, because they had a reason to learn that stuff. This is just the opposite of the way we do it as Christians, and I think they had the better plan.

It is not true that if we do the first two priorities well, the third will naturally follow. Evangelism seems like it ought to be the natural overflow of worship and fellowship/ discipleship, but it is not. The world, the flesh, and the devil all conspire to keep us from reaching out. Our busy schedules, our fear of rejection and failure, our lack of compassion, and many other things get in the way. I know of no church that is successfully winning many people to Christ which is not intentional about it. So we have to consciously put our efforts there, perhaps even more than on the first two.

The only reason God leaves us on earth after our conversion is so that we can evangelize the world. We can do the other two priorities much better in heaven-- our praise will be pure, and our relationships will be perfected. We can only spread the good news as long as we are on earth. If we fail to do this, we will have missed the reason we are still here.

Here’s another way to see the need for balance, but I’m going to change the image. Think of the Christian life like a wheel. http://tinyurl.com/ovz6t (This is an illustration the Navigators have used for years.)

Christ is at the center of our life. He is first in everything; everything is related to Him; we love Him more than anyone and anything. The rim is where our life meets reality, where the rubber meets the road. Here we live out our love for Christ in practical and obedient ways.

There are two vertical spokes: The Word and Prayer, which are the primary ways we relate to God, and two horizontal spokes, Fellowship and Witnessing, which have to do with our relationships with other people.

As you can see, all three of our priorities are there, because we have our love relationship with God at the very center of our life, which then gets lived out in obedience to Him. That primary relationship is cultivated through Scripture and prayer. We have our love relationship with the family of God in the Fellowship spoke. And our love for the world is shown in our witnessing.

Another way to think of the need for balance is that the spokes all have to be the same length. If they are not, if for example, we are long on Bible study, so the bottom vertical spoke, “The Word”, is longer than the rest, it would be like riding on a cam shaft, rather than a wheel. Up and down, up and down, very bumpy, very uneven, very inefficient.

IV. Personal Spiritual Development Plan

Last week I gave you a little table to use as you think about your life in Christ and what it will mean for you to be on the highway toward spiritual maturity. A couple people mentioned that they didn’t understand how they were supposed to use that, and it’s probably because I didn’t explain it. Let me try again. This is on the back of the sermon outline.

This is a personal Spiritual Development Plan. The first priority of the Christian life is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s the first column. So on the left, think about what you need to know in terms of your love relationship with God. If we are to love God with our minds, then what should you, personally, know about Him? For example, maybe you say I don’t know the Old Testament very well, so my goal will be to read through the Old Testament this year, and take notes on the major themes. Or maybe you’ll say, I wish I had more Scripture memorized. Or, I have questions about predestination and election that I need to research. That sort of thing. What do I need to know that has to do with my love relationship with God?

Then, still in the first column, what do you need to do in terms of your love for God that you are not yet doing? Are there some habits, such as a daily Quiet Time, that you need to work on? Jesus said that the way we handled our money was essentially a matter of our relationship with God, so how are you managing your money? Are you tithing? If not, and you see that you need to, put that in that box.

Then drop down to the last box in that first column. What should you be as a disciple of Christ? Read through the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, or the qualifications for church office in Timothy and Titus, and ask God to show you where you need to be focusing your attention. I see that if I were more loving, I would be more sensitive to the needs and interests of others than I am to my own. Maybe you see that you need to be more patient, or you need more of the joy of the Lord in your life. These character issues are much harder to get at, and it takes longer for them to change, but we can pray about them, and ask the Holy Spirit to produce these things in us as we follow Him.

So that’s the way you can use this table. You don’t need to have something in every box—in fact, that would be way too much to think about and work on at once. But you might try to fill it in as best you can, and then ask the Lord what’s first on His agenda for you. Where does He want you to start?

The great value of this sort of exercise is that it gets us thinking consciously about our spiritual progress, rather than just drifting through life—what Paul called “running aimlessly”—and then wondering why we’re not growing much. It gives us a goal to press on toward.

Probably the most crucial question in all this is “Why?” Why would we do this? Why are we trying to improve in what we know, and what we do, and who we are as a person and as a Christian? Why do we care about being balanced in the Three Priorities? What’s our underlying motive? The answers fall into two categories, and only one of them is right.

Many churches and Christians can give the right answer, but they don’t live it. They act as though they believe that God will love them more if they fill in their chart, and work really hard at getting better. It all becomes a performance, measuring up to some standard so that God will approve of them, accept them, etc. They wouldn’t say it this way, but they are trying to earn God’s blessing. I had a woman come to me one time and ask, “What can I do to deserve God’s grace?” I said, ask me that again, and think about what you are saying. She did, but she didn’t see it. I asked her to repeat her question again. And again. I think it was four or five times, and she still didn’t get it. Finally, I said, You can’t deserve grace. By definition, grace is undeserved favor from God. If you could earn it, if you could deserve it, it wouldn’t be grace. All you can do is accept it. But a lot of people are right where she was in their thinking.

They set up all sorts of rules for themselves (and others in their church). Every church has a different set of these. In some churches it is acceptable to drink in moderation; in others it’s not. In some churches, as we have seen recently with the Lutherans, it is acceptable to be actively gay and ordained, but in others it is not. Some of these rules are biblical, and others are not, but in all cases, the rules tell you what you have to do, or not to, to be accepted. At the first level, that means to be accepted by the fellowship of which you are a part, but if you don’t measure up, they will inform you you have to do these things in order to be accepted by God. And they have proof-texts to prove it.

If you were to approach this matter of spiritual growth with this attitude, then everything you put down on your Spiritual Development Plan would become a law in the biblical sense. A law is something you have to do to be approved by God, to earn His favor. It’s a “have-to”.

The Bible says, and I know from painful personal experience, that “the letter [of the law] kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). I took a very good thing—a daily Quiet Time—and turned it into a law that crushed the spiritual life right out of me. While I was in seminary, I defined an acceptable Quiet Time as one hour long. The first half hour should be inductive Bible study, preferably in Greek. The second half hour should be intercession for others. Every time I had a Quiet Time like that, I felt like I grew closer to the Lord. But every time I didn’t have a time like that, I felt like I moved farther away from Him. I was trying to run up the down escalator, and if I didn’t perform properly, if I didn’t have the right kind of Quiet Time, I stood still and the escalator carried me farther down, away from God. Guess how many times I had the “perfect” Quiet Time. Zero. So every day, when I had a chance to draw closer to the Lord, and enjoy His presence, and soak in His love for me, instead, I felt like a failure; I felt condemned; I was depressed. The law kills.

That’s what will happen to you if you approach your spiritual growth like that. I guarantee it.

But there’s another way to think about it that makes all the difference. Rather than doing these things “so that” God will accept you, do them because He already does.

B. “Because…” John 14:23
The legalists are afraid that if we tell people they are already accepted and loved just as they are, they won’t be motivated to obey. Those folks don’t understand the power of love. When we really ”get” God’s love; when we really grasp, as Paul said, “how long and wide and high and deep is the love of Christ;” when we “know [in our experience] this love that surpasses [mere head] knowledge”; then we will be moved to respond with acts of love. We won’t be content to just enjoy His love and acceptance; we will want to show Him how much we love Him for loving us first.

If you’ve ever been in love with another person, you have some idea of what this feels like. One day it dawns on you that that very special person you think so highly of actually likes you. They say they love you, and you are starting to believe it, as hard as that is. When that realization breaks in to your consciousness, you can’t just sit there; you have to do something to show them how much they mean to you. Suddenly, all sorts of possibilities pop into your mind, and you can’t wait to serve them, to love them back, to do whatever you can to show your love.

· Think about how crazy this is—the Creator and Master of the universe likes you! He says—and I know this is hard to believe, but He said it, so it must be true—He says that He delights in me…and you. How are you going to respond to that?

· He has loved you so much that He sent His Son to die on a cross to take His righteous wrath against your sin on Himself. How are you going to respond to that?

· He has sent His Holy Spirit into your life, calling you to faith in Himself when you were dead in your sins, and making you alive forever. How are you going to respond to that?

· He has given you His own love letter, a special revelation of His heart and mind to you, so that you can know Him better. He has poured thousands of good things into your life that you did not deserve. He has given you friends and family and food, clothing and shelter; He has given you an education and the incredible privilege of living in the United States. How are you going to respond to that?

· He has promised that He is coming back to earth to get you, to take you to live with Him forever in a truly perfect place. How are you going to respond to that?

          How can we not love Him for all that? How can we not show that love for Him? And what did Jesus say about how we can show our love for Him? John 14:23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.” There it is. There’s the practical way we can show Him we love Him for all His love for us. Love is the motive for obedience. Love is the motive for pressing on, for straining forward toward spiritual maturity.
          These two answers to the question “Why bother?” look very similar on the outside. “So that God will love me,” and, “Because God loves me” can look a lot alike. Two people may be doing the very same things, but their motives can be entirely different. They are either doing those things because they feel like they have to, or because they want to. And I am here to tell you that one answer, the letter of the law, kills, and the other gives life.

          There are two pitfalls here, and we have to find the way between them.

I’ve already described the dangers of legalism, thinking that we can somehow earn God’s favor by what we do. But the other danger is equally real, and increasingly so in our culture.

Our culture has rejected legalism along with all moral truth. If there are no absolute moral laws, then you’re not worried about keeping them. This attitude has seeped into the church in lots of ways. For example, unmarried Christians are sexually active about as often as non-Christians. Christians divorce at about the same rate as non-Christians.

So when it comes to our progress toward spiritual maturity, the tendency is to point out the dangers of legalism, and not to make any effort at all, because that would be trying to earn God’s favor.

But this is to fall off the other side. You see, if we go too far in one direction, we fall into legalism; but if we react to that and go too far to the other side, we fall into license, or at the very least indifference. This is the attitude that says it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. God will love us anyway; God is love! Just walk in the Spirit, brother!

This approach fails to take into account the fundamental dynamic of sanctification, namely that we should pray as though it all depended on God, and work as though it all depended on us. Both are true. Which is why Paul, the great apostle of grace, the great enemy of the legalistic Judaizers, could write to the Philippians, Philippians 3:12, “…I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 …Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize …” There’s a lot of personal effort involved there.

Spiritual maturity requires the work of the Holy Spirit—He’s the one who produces His fruit in us—and it also takes our discipline. So Paul could write to the Corinthians, who were very much on the side of license, 1 Corinthians 9:25, “Everyone who competes in the [Olympic] games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27 No, I discipline[2] my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

There are plenty of exhortations, even in the New Testament (!) for us to obey. Jesus issued statements that He called commands, not suggestions. The most common title for Jesus among His followers recognized His supreme position in the universe as Lord, with all authority in heaven and earth. We cannot omit this aspect of the Christian life just because we are afraid of becoming legalists. But neither can we afford to be ignorant of the dangers of legalism. We have to walk through the middle, between these two dangers of legalism and license.

Depending on what your background is, you need to hear one or the other of these cautions more strongly. If you were raised in a legalistic home or church, you need to know for sure that God loves and accepts you just as you are. If you approach life more from a laissez-faire, whatever-you-want-or-don’t-want-to-do attitude, then you need to hear the biblical exhortations to effort and discipline and obedience.

If we are truly balanced in our Christian life, we’ll be able to walk the tightrope in the power of the Holy Spirit and bring glory to His name.

[1] The one key component that I see is missing from this illustration is the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. He ought to be a part of each of the elements of the wheel, like paint or stain or something.

[2] NLT, NASB, ESV