Through today’s sermon, I pray that we would all remember our charge as disciples of Christ, to be growing into greater Christlikeness, which includes the work of discipling others. We come to Christ, we are being conformed to Christ, we should commit to helping others do the same.

Part of the challenge is that the language is familiar. We just wouldn’t give much time to those who professed to be Christians but not disciples, or to those who say the Great Commission is to make disciples doesn’t apply to us. Being disciples and making disciples is common church language, as common as seeing the sun in the sky.

But as with most things there is a way to use the same words and get to a different destination.

So when we come to Christ, as we are conformed into His image, and as we seek to help others do the same, what does it look like? There’s not a singular answer in the New Testament, but it can be summarized. Here’s one summary that Paul told Timothy:

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5)

In context Paul contrasts his charge with other teachers who were getting stuck in “vain discussions” (verse 6), stuck in the swamp of subjects that promote speculations (verse 4). Paul’s ministry had something more profitable in mind. And the assertion in verse 5 also works as a positive statement, general enough for all ministry and discipleship. The telos (ultimate object or aim) of the charge is specific: love. That love is qualified as clean (from a pure heart) and fitting (so leaving a good conscience) and without any pretense or hypocrisy of faith (faith is sincere).

Consider the kind of person who nears the telos level of love.

Telos love is the fulfillment of the Great Commandment, and the second, and actually a fulfillment of the “royal law” (James 2:8). Telos love means we would be like Christ, whose love for the Father is without fail. Telos love means we’d be filled with the Spirit, whose first fruit in us is love. Telos love means the end of anxiousness; perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). Telos love means great joy, partly because love of the lovely is its own satisfaction, and for that matter, so is loving the unlovely into greater loveliness. Telos love means that we would have perfect hatred for evil (see Psalm 97:10), and a full heart, courage (which means full-heartedness), for fighting the wicked. Telos love also means we would have compassionate bowels/hearts for the lost and broken and weak. Telos love means we would know the way forward as certainly as gravity teaches a rock the way down; abounding love approves the excellent (Philippians 1:9-10). Telos love would make us lovely, it would give us gravity, it would make us jealous-able. Telos love reflects and glorifies the God of love.

Telos level love means that there wouldn’t be satisfaction with sin, or succumbing to people pleasing and fear of man. Being full of such love keeps people from being manipulated, from being unhopeful or irritated or resentful (as 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 clarifies). Love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), so it is not easily offended. Love is big, it has big concerns, not petty complaints. Love doesn’t obey grudgingly. Love doesn’t run out.

A loving parent knows when to help and when to lay back, let it go, or at least can be patient while figuring it out. A soldier with true and proper loves knows who the enemy is, and the cost of battle, and the need for it to defend his love. A loving shepherd protects against wolves and guides the sheep. A loving farmer weeds and prunes for more fruit.

There are obstacles to the telos, of course. In the last days Paul prophesied that people will be lovers of self (2 Timothy 3:1), and half-hearted lovers. We are sentimental lovers. We are cheap lovers. So a preacher and pastor has plenty of work to do. But the telos is that every man be presented perfect in Christ (Colossians 1:28), abounding in love (Philippians 1:9), and glorifying God.

A number of years ago I was convicted and humbled to realize that, though I would have used the words, I was not pursuing this sort of life of love. I’d made a virtue out of another end, which is only a subordinate end.

God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might be received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God’s glory doesn’t glorify God so much as he that testifies also of his approbation of it and his delight in it. (Jonathan Edwards)

It’s as if love was the great commandment all along.

So here are some very important implications of this telos of love.

The goal isn’t for a church, for our church, to get bigger. As the gospel increases, it is possible for the number of lovers to increase; the gospel bears fruit (Colossians 1:5-6). And if a group of lovers has gravity, then yes, the flock may grow. But size and attendance can’t be the end.

Neither is being a brand. They will know we a Christ’s disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35), not whether we are of Paul, Apollos, or Kuyper, or whomever. I am all for nicknames, but a Kuyperian Dispensationalist, or a Calvinist, or a Baptist, or a Reformed person, must see all the marks moving toward the end rather than an end.

We are not just truth-tubes, gathering and filling our minds with more facts about the faith. Teaching is a part of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19). Teaching is part of presenting others complete in Christ (Colossians 1:28). The pastor must teach (Ephesians 4:12), elders should be apt to teach (1 Timothy 3:2), they save themselves and their hearers by paying attention to their teaching (1 Timothy 4:16). Catechesis, doctrine, the Word, must be studied (1 Timothy 2:15) and proclaimed (2 Timothy 4:2) and defended (Jude 3).

And truth causes growth, and growth is in love, till every one of us are doing our part in the body “so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16).

Truth should be less like chemicals we’re trying to mix appropriately in our science lab test tubes and more like rain that nourishes us as plants in a garden, with drips falling off our leaves that nourish other plants around us as well.

This also means that teaching, as verb and noun, is not the end of our telos. Teaching is not the terminal spot. It is a way to it, but not it. It is inescapably important, like a map, but not itself the treasure.

For example, I’m committed to the principle that school should be a part of a student’s life, it should be for a student’s life, but it should not be their life. That requires that our teachers have a life that is bigger than school. The aim of our charge is bigger than better standardized test scores.

Our Lord’s Day liturgy reflects it. There is exhortation, preaching, meditation. There is call, reading, and charge. But those parts of worship drive at loving praise, loving communion, loving God and obeying.

This means that we desire a flock full of lovers, not a flock full of the insecure. The aim of our charge is mature disciples, those who are growing in faith and building up a body of loving parts (Ephesians 4:16).

There is such a thing as a first love for the Lord (Revelation 2:4). There is childlike faith and love. Those are appropriate, because there is a beginning to love, and there is immaturity in our life as disciples. Then we learn and learn to love more and more deeply.

We shouldn’t pooh-pooh first love, we should be able to recognize it, give God thanks for it, and then know what to do if it is “lost.” We shouldn’t criticize immature loves, we should nurture them and strengthen them. We also shouldn’t limit them, or fear them, or try to control them.

Can you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, too much? How can “all” be too much? If your love is out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith, can you overshoot the telos? As if we would hear God say, “I didn’t mean that much.”

The job security of pastors in the world does not come because they maintain control by questioning and criticizing the love of the saints. Their authority should be used to inflame the love of the saints, and not for themselves.

There are too many Christian teachers who position themselves as needing to be needed, and that is part of what provokes competition. It’s also what keeps the saints argumentative about truth yet timid to be wrong. I believe this is a visible difference between a truth-loving Teacher and a loving-by-truth Discipler. Too many teachers try to keep their place, whereas a good discipler from the start knows that he should be replaced. A certain sort of teacher wants to be the source rather than a resource. In its worst form the teacher needs to be needed rather than needed less and less.

And if the aim of our charge is love, then the teacher you follow isn’t enough, because you must love God, he can’t do it for you.

Pastors have job security because they are going to die and they will have run in vain apart from reproduction and reinforcements. They have security because, by the evangelization of children and neighbors, there are a spring of newbies to be raised to know and love the standard Giver.

The fruit of your maturity isn’t seen in teaching a Bible study per se. The fruit is that your Bible study strengthens your love for God and others.

Conclusion

This has application for parents with their children, small group discussions and fellowship, and even for baptism, more on which next week.

We are not aimed at getting you to call yourself I lover, as difficult of a hurdle as that may be, we are calling you to commit to learn to love like Jesus.

Somehow love is both energy and rest, love is both ballast amidst the crosswinds and also wind in the sails of obedience. Love is powerful, and poetic.

Is your love growing? Can you see how you are growing in love and connection with others, or are there other things, perhaps even good things, that are distracting you from moving more toward the telos?

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Charge

Beloved, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. May your heart be singular, may your conscience be clear, may your faith and love be strong.

Benediction:

Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. (Ephesians 6:23-24, ESV)