Charity And Its Fruits Notes - Chapter 3

Chapter/sermon 3 is called "The Greatest Performances or Sufferings in Vain Without Charity" and goes into more detail on 1 Corinthians 13:3.

Edwards starts out by showing that it is possible to perform "religious deeds" or to suffer for one's faith without having any Christian love. His prime example of external performances is the Pharisees, who fast, tithe, etc. without an ounce of love within them. Likewise, people can feed, clothe and house the poor out of a desire for fame or to gain the applause of others.

Edwards also shows that people can suffer for reasons that have nothing to do with love of their fellow man. In an especially timely example, he points to the Crusades, when both Crusaders and Muslims sought death in combat thinking it would ensure their entrance into heaven/paradise.

Even when these performances and sufferings are done for spiritual and not temporal reasons, they usually involve some sort of attempt to earn the performer's entrance into heaven. The performer's purpose in doing the deed is not out of love for God, but rather to earn entrance into heaven on his own merit. In some cases (as was my own condition when I started my walk with Christ) the real motivation isn't so much getting into heaven as avoiding hell.

Edwards points out that such performances/sufferings are useless without love, because:

• God looks not at the external deed but at the motivation behind the deed.


• Love is what adds sincerity to our gifts. Without love, everything we do is merely an attempt to bribe God.


• Love is the some total of all that God desires. To withhold our love is to deny Him the only thing He wants.


• Religious deeds done with out love are hypocrisy, and amount to lying to God.


• Performances/sufferings done for any temporal purpose (gaining fame, public acclamation, etc.) amount to idolatry.

The application to today's sermon is a call to ensure that our performances/sufferings are done with a sincere love for God. A glass of water given in sincere love is more treasured by God than a multi-million dollar donation made without love. And, in a reverse application to the idea that "a little leaven leavens the whole lump", Edwards tells us: "Though there be a great deal of imperfection, yet, if there be any true sincerity in our love that little shall not be rejected because there is some hypocrisy with it."

Edwards lists 4 things that belong to the nature of sincerity:

Truth
Freedome
Integrity
Purity

Truth is present in our acts when our hearts contain what we show in our outward actions. In this case, truth is defined as the opposite of hypocrisy.

Freedom is present when we perform our acts out of love instead of a feeling of obligation or legal obligation.

Integrity, as Edwards describes it, is really whole heartedness.

Purity is present when our acts are "without spot before the throne of God." Bible study on my lunch hour would be pure, Bible study when I'm "on the clock" would be impure as I am robbing my employer.

A second application is that we should impress upon the unsaved how little good their good deeds will do them when they stand before God. This is probably even more true today when we are surrounded by people who think they are "good enough" to get into heaven.

And the final application is that we should exhort everyone to seek godly love with dilligence and prayer, and to seek it from God and not ourselves.