Love Christians, all Christians, likable and unlikable Christians,

mature and immature Christians,

carnal and spiritual Christians,

Christians who gossip about you,

Christians who let you down, Christians who frustrate you, Christians who disappoint you,

Christians who have some doctrinal differences from you, love all Christians, especially those that you

touch in your ordinary life with affection.

How do you love other Christians with heartfelt affection

when you don't have any good feelings toward them.

In this episode of Light and Truth,

John Piper turns to Romans 1210

to explain how God can enlarge our hearts to love with tender affection.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on June 4, 1995. 1995. In recent weeks I have talked about love your neighbor as you love yourself. Take your skin, pull your skin off, painful as it may be,

wrap it around another person, so you see yourself in that other person with all of your

longings, all of your needs, all of your cravings, all your

the pain and treat yourself

the way you want to be treated in that other person.

And we talked about loving, not just our neighbor, as we love ourselves, we've talked about loving not just our neighbor as we love ourselves. We've talked about loving our enemy.

Pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you, do good to those who

despitefully use you, do not return evil for evil, but good.

Now this morning, I don't know whether to call it harder or not, but for some of you it don't sound harder, for me, it sounds harder.

I want to call you to love the people in this room and other Christians that you know with tender, heartfelt,

...