July 6, 2025 Sermon Notes

Christ set us free not for ourselves, but to serve one another in love. So what

does that look like when a brother or sister in our church family stumbles?

Paul isn't talking about defiant rebellion, but the unintentional missteps we

all make. Our first instinct might be to judge or to look away, but God calls

us to a higher, holier task. He calls us into the restoration business. As Billy

Graham famously said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to

judge, and my job to love.”

With that posture of love, our mission is to restore a person gently, like a

surgeon carefully mending what is broken. But this sacred work has a

prerequisite: humility. Before we look out the window at their speck, we must

first look in the mirror at the plank in our own eye. We must remember that

we are all people in constant need of grace, and we are all still under

construction, each with our own blind spots.

Only then, with a humble heart, can we truly fulfill the law of Christ, which is

to carry each other’s burdens—the weight of their struggle, their grief, and

their pain. We are the Body of Christ, and we were never meant to do this

life alone. Like a human body, when one part is injured, the other parts rally

to support it, sharing the load until it is strong again. God uses these

moments not to break us, but to build us, because He is always more

interested in our character than our comfort. These struggles are the gym

where our spiritual muscles of love, patience, and forgiveness get stronger.

Therefore, let our mission be clear. Let us be restorers, not critics. Let us be

humble, not proud. And let us be burden-carriers, not finger-pointers. In this,

we become a church where grace is stronger than gossip, where healing is

our greatest aim, and where love always has the last word.

Level Cross