The Royal Inclusio – Love (2)

 

 

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13).

 

Earlier in the Upper Room Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just 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 the measure of our life in Christ Jesus, this is the essence of life.

 

“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).

 

We see this again in 1 John 3:16: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

 

How do we think and speak of something which is beyond our comprehension? I suppose it is like going to the ocean, while we can’t comprehend it in its fulness, we can get in the water and experience it. It is like the Grand Canyon, it takes our breath away, and there are so many ways to experience it, it is never ending. The people who most appreciate the endless nature of the Canyon are those who know it best, those who have spent the most time in it, those whose souls are indistinguishable from the Canyon.

 

We are to love others as Jesus Christ loves us, and the central characteristic of His love is that He laid down His life for us. He lived a life of giving up Himself for others, and this life led to the Cross. The life of Jesus Christ was the fruit of the Cross and the Cross was the fruit of the life and love of Jesus Christ. This is to be the Way we live.

 

Paul writes, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Ephesians 5:1–2).

 

The Cross is rooted in eternity, it appears in time and space, and it returns to eternity. Jesus is the Lamb foreknown and slain before the foundation of the world, and He will ever and always be the Lamb whom we worship, adore, and follow. (1 Peter 1:17 – 21; Revelation 5:1–14; 13:8; 21:22–22:5.)

 

The Nature of our life in Christ is to lay down our lives for others in love. This ought to be the nature of our marriages, our families, our congregations, our vocations, our civic life – it ought to be the essence of all that we do – to love as Jesus loves, to love in the pattern and shape of the Cross of Christ.

 

In case you haven’t noticed, this is not a safe way to live, at least not safe in the eyes of the world; yet in the eyes of our Father it is the safest Way to live – for in such living we abide in the Vine. We are called to die that others may live (John 12:24–26; 2 Cor. 4:12).

 

O how I recall a morning in January 1967 when I stood before the faculty and student body of a Bible college and shared a devotional from John 13:34–35. O how I was nervous. I had been asked to do this only about an hour ahead of time; the student scheduled to speak was ill and could not attend chapel, so two of the upper classmen came to my dorm room to ask me to fill in – foolish boy of 16 that I was, I agreed. But what passage to speak from?

 

As I turned the pages of my Bible in my room, John 13:34 – 35 arrested my attention. But what to say about it?

 

I had been a Christian less than a year, for it was around late winter of 1966 that a coworker at my after-school job, Howard Wall, shared Jesus with me. Now I was standing before the student body and faculty of the school from which my two pastors had graduated. I was by far the youngest student in the Bible college.

 

The essence of the brief devotional was, “Jesus gave us this new commandment so that we might obey it. Yet we cannot obey it on our own, After all, we have enough trouble loving people of our own color, but we are to love all people; red, yellow, black, brown, purple, green. All people. On our own we cannot do this. However, Jesus Christ living in us and through us will fulfill this commandment, in Him we can obey this new commandment, to love one another as He loves us.”

 

I was expelled for this a few days later, along with my older friend George Will, who was deemed a bad influence on me and others. While I did not know this before I arrived at the school (why didn’t my two pastors who recommended the school tell me – why did they send me to such a place?), the school was segregated. The administration took what I said to be a challenge to their policy of segregation.

 

Within a couple months it will be the 58^th anniversary of my expulsion – a merciful and gracious blessing from our Father. However, as I think back over the years I wonder how many places I’ve been that actually believe and teach and live out John 13:34–35 and 15:12–13. How many of us are laying down our lives for one another?

 

How many congregations are laying down their collective lives?

 

How many denominations and movements?

 

If such love, if such a Way of living, is one of the two marks of a Christian, is one of the two marks of the Church (the other being Trinitarian unity, see John 17:20–26), then is the world able to identify us because of this love? Are we that City on a hill? Are we, in Christ, the Light of the world?

 

Where is the cruciform love of Jesus Christ in our lives?

 

How have we come to substitute politics and worldviews and economics and naturalistic and humanistic hermeneutics and communication for the Person of Jesus Christ and the life and love that can only flow from Him? How have we come to construct entertainment parks of so-called prophetic teachings and ignore the holy Lamb of God, who we are called to follow wherever He goes?

 

If the cruciform love of Jesus Christ is not our heartbeat, is not the essence of our life, is not the defining characteristic of our churches, is not the unambiguous mark of the Church in society – then what do we really have?