The Church: Reflections – 4

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34- 35).

“This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” (John 15:12).

If God is love (1 John 4:8), then ought we not to expect that love is to be the distinguishing mark of the disciples of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? How is the world to identify the people who follow Jesus? When the people of Jesus love one another as Jesus loves them. This is a love with form and substance, a love of definition – it is defined by John thusly, “By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).

What is the nature of the church? It is the nature of God, and deep within the nature of God (speaking as a child of his Father, in a limited fashion) is love – for John writes, “God is love.” This is so much so that Jesus says that this is how His people will be identified.

I think this is too simple for us, which is to say that I think Jesus is too simple for us; we are too sophisticated for Jesus (I speak as a fool of course!). I do not think that Jesus understands that love is not enough to hold us together, love is not enough to attract others – we need more than the nature of God, more than His love. Can this really be? In a world with such tragedy and pain, how have we become convinced that there must be more to distinguish us than loving one another as Jesus Christ loves us? How have we been seduced to think that the nature of the Trinity is not sufficient for the life of the church?

How often do we try to be something we are not, and fail to recognize who we already are in the Trinity? Before someone says “Yes but,” I will reiterate that this love has definition, it is not nebulous. Jesus says (John 15:9 – 10), “As the Father loved me, I also have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” As we love we obey and as we obey we love; as we obey we love and as we love we obey. As we draw closer to the Trinity and closer to each other, love and obedience draw closer to one another until they meet and are joined together as to be indistinguishable – merged into the life of Christ, the koinonia of the Trinity where love and obedience are one in One.  

This leads to another mark of identification, “And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one: I in them, and you in me; that they may be perfected into one, so that the world may know that you sent me, and have loved them as you have loved me” (John 17:22 – 23). Again we come to the nature of God, for God is one. Is it any wonder that God’s people are called to be perfected into one? Our unity in Christ is essential for a credible witness to the world. How childish we can be with our divisions, how petulant, how arrogant (I speak from experience, perhaps you have been spared), how shortsighted.

I do not have an answer for the present state of division in the church, but it seems to me that recognizing it is a start toward wholeness. With all charity, I do think that as long as believers first identify themselves with a denomination (or non-denomination) or doctrinal tradition before they identify themselves as followers of Christ that there is little hope. I have pastored many fine people who thought of themselves as Congregationalists, or Baptists, or Presbyterians, or “other” before thinking of themselves (if at all) as Christians and members of the Body of Christ. I have found this true of pastors as well, and if pastors think like this we should not be surprised that entire congregations think like this.

Is it too much to say that if I find men and women professing Jesus as Lord and loving one another as Jesus loves us that I have found the church? Again, this is a profession and a love with definition – but it is Biblical definition, not my definition. Do we have enough patience with one another to allow one another to grow in Christ?

In Matthew 15:10 – 20 the disciples do not understand what Jesus is teaching about defilement, that it isn’t what we eat that defiles us but rather what comes from the heart and mouth that pollute us. Peter doesn’t understand and asks for an explanation. Later in the New Testament, after Peter has received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter is troubled at the thought of eating unclean meat (Acts Chapter 10), and even after the Lord speaks to Peter about there being no unclean food or unclean people, Peter still feels he needs to explain his presence to the Gentiles gathered in the house of Cornelius. Then sometime after his visit to Cornelius, while Peter is visiting Antioch (Galatians Chapter 2) he falls into the trap of acting as if some people are unclean to the point of not eating with them. My point is that Peter was in a process of maturation, a process which at Antioch revealed hypocrisy – this is the Peter who preached at Pentecost, the Peter who would die for his Lord Jesus. It took years for Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 15 to work itself out in Peter. Would we have given Peter enough room and patience for him to grow in Christ and in fellowship with us?

If Peter needed others to be patient with him how much more do I need others to be patient with me? If Peter had blind spots, what are my blind spots? A danger of overlaying the Biblical teaching of the mark of the Christian with other benchmarks is that our focus becomes the other benchmarks and we are blinded to Biblical teaching. I don’t think we can easily free ourselves from this propensity to complicate the simplicity of the teaching of Jesus Christ. The NT epistles speak to the fact that we are a people in a process of maturation, sometimes we find ourselves within the teaching and practice of the Bible and sometimes we don’t – we often seem to think that we know more than we do, we think that we know what “arrival” at maturation looks like when, as far as I can observe, we haven’t arrived yet – so how can we really know. The Biblical idea of “pilgrimage” can help us think about this – we are helping each other along the path of life in Christ.

Loving one another in unity in Christ – love and unity are intrinsic in the nature of God; they are the nature of the church.  Do I focus on this? Do I believe this?

My observation is that when God’s people meet each other outside the confines of their denominational or doctrinally distinctive wineskins that they often forget what they are “supposed to be” and naturally think and act and love as they are in Christ. It is analogous to children with different skin colors and accents and dress meeting and playing with each other on a playground – their natures as children are manifested – it is the adults who all too often look at the differences, the adults who will not eat with one another, marry with one another, enjoy friendship with one another.

My understanding of all of this is limited, I am on pilgrimage. I would like to learn to love others as Jesus loves me, as He loves you. I would like to be perfected into one with my brothers and sisters. I know less today than I did decades ago, but maybe what I know is more important – maybe loving one another isn’t really all that simplistic, maybe living in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3) really is worth pursuing with all my soul – I want to be like Jesus, to know Him, to touch Him, to love Him and be loved by Him…and in Him I want to love others and…yes…be loved by them in Christ.

What is the nature of the Church?