More unhypocritical love
A few days ago, I pointed out that unhypocritical (or sincere) love (Romans 12:9) includes the practice of “showing more honor” to one another (Romans 12:10).
But, Paul described “unhypocritical love” in other ways as well. He says unhypocritical love (Romans 12:11-13):
- is not idle in eagerness
- is burning for the Spirit
- is a slave to the Lord
- is rejoicing in hope
- is enduring troubles
- is persisting in prayer
- is contributing to the needs of the saints (God’s children)
- is pursuing hospitality.
I’ve translated these in a way that indicates a sense of continual action. What do you think?
Connection between love and unity
Joel at “The Double Edged Sword” continues his series on unity in his post “Gathering in Unity: Part 3.” One paragraph of this post is one of the best things I’ve read on the relationship between love and unity:
I believe part of our error has been we see love as weak. We think to love will surely make us a push-over. If we all only love, who will stand for what is right? Who will defend God’s end of things? Who will come against the scores of error and false teachings that are within the so-called “church”? I used to feel that it was my role in all circumstances. I’m learning that it is, in fact, not. I somehow felt like I had to seek out error, expose it and pass it on to everyone that I came into contact with (just peruse 50% of my older articles written over the past three or four years). In the midst of this season, I realized something that really changed my view. It’s the simple fact that I can easily judge and condemn, even “righteously” – it does not take much effort and absolutely no restraint. I did it for years. It comes “natural” to me. Error abounds in the Body and it only takes a few seconds to sit down and find a “ministry” to criticize and find fault with. Even a non-Believer with the ability to only read the Bible could do it properly. It is being loving, forgiving, patient and tenderhearted that requires patience, self-control and determination, for me.
I think Joel is on the right track… what do you think?
Love in deed and truth
I posted this on facebook, and thought I would share it here also:
Today, most people won’t believe you when you tell them that you love them. However, they will believe you when you show them, and show them, and show them, and show them…
I thought I would share a few passages from 1 John that suggests this kind of love:
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:18 ESV)
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20 ESV)
Let us love in deed and in truth… and keep on loving in deed and in truth… to demonstrate that we love our brothers and sisters and to demonstrate that we love God.
I’m not really here
I haven’t seen T. in several weeks. T. lives in “The Neighborhood.” We met here a couple of years ago when we started spending time there.
She’s been having problems with her teeth for a long time. Although she’s been to the dentist over and over again, they keep putting off doing anything about it. For instance, once she called the dentist, and he told her that everything was ready. When she got there, everything wasn’t ready. And, she’s still waiting.
Recently, things have gotten worse. And, she’s very self-conscious about it. She’s asked me not to come by to visit her until she gets some of her teeth fixed. So, we just talk on the phone.
Today, when I was taking her neighbor’s garbage out, I noticed that T.’s door was open. On the way back, I knocked on her door. When I heard her coming, I told her it was me, but that I wasn’t going to stay.
I said, “We don’t have to talk. I just wanted to say hello.”
By that time, she had opened the door, and I hugged her. I simply said, “I love you and miss you, and I just wanted to let you know.”
As I turned to leave, she said thank you and that she missed me, too.
Sometimes, when you can’t really be there, a hug says alot.
Real Unity – Is it possible?
In his book Your Church is Too Small, John H. Armstrong begins his argument for real, relational unity from Jesus’ prayer in John 17:
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20-23 ESV)
Early in his book, Armstrong says, “I knew that I couldn’t be satisfied with loving a concept of the church. So I set out to find God’s people, to get to know people outside of my own tradition.”
Concept… We love in concept. We’re united in concept. We’re family in concept.
But, Scripture doesn’t describe or exhort a concept of church, love, unity, and family. Instead, as we read about the church in the New Testament, we read about a reality of love, unity, and family. However, like Armstrong, whenever I talk to people about unity, I hear these kinds of interpretations (taken from Armstrong’s book specifically of John 17):
- We should never try to unite different churches or congregations. The union of churches or denominations is not in view here. Jesus is not interested in such unity.
- We should never engage in serious dialogue with churches that we believe to be unfaithful to the truth. We will become disobedient if we follow this course.
- There is no common mission that churches are called to engage in; thus there is no reason to work together to achieve Christ’s mission in our communities.
- There is no concern in this prayer for the worldwide church, at least as seen in a visible form, since this will lead to ecumenism, a great twentieth-century enemy of the gospel.
- We must always keep in the forefront of our practice the serious biblical warnings about compromise and false teaching (see Deuteronomy 7:1-6; 2 Corinthians 6:14; Revelation 18:4). These great truths always trump concern for visible unity among churches and Christians.
How would you respond to the five objections above? Yes, no, why, or why not?
And more importantly, how do we as believers move forward toward unity, and how do we encourage churches to move forward toward unity?
There is something fundamental about fellowship
So, I seem to be on a “unity” kick lately, huh? I’m probably thinking more about unity because I’ve been reading John H. Armstrong’s book Your Church is Too Small. But, actually, I’ve been thinking about and writing about unity for quite some time.
Three years ago, I wrote a post called “There is something fundamental about fellowship.” This post casts our unity with one another in the language of fellowship. Our fellowship with one another (or lack of fellowship) is a demonstration of our fellowship with God (or lack of fellowship).
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There is something fundamental about fellowship
Fellowship… There is something about fellowship that makes it fundamental to the church. When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, he answered:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40 ESV)
There are at least two amazing things about this passage. First, Jesus did not stop with the commandment to “Love the Lord your God”. It would seem that commandment would be enough. Instead, he said there is a second command that is like it. Similarly, Jesus said that the Law and the Prophets depend on both of these commandments. Again, the Law and Prophets do not just depend on “Love the Lord your God”. The Law and the Prophets also depend on the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself”.
There seems to be a fundamental connection between our relationship with God and our relationship with other people. John said something similar in his first letter:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8 ESV)
This seems very simple. If we love God, we will love others. If we do not love others, that demonstrates that we do not love God. The two are fundamentally connected.
In the prologue to his first letter, John also discussed our relationship with God in terms of our relationship with one another:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us – that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship (κοινωνία) with us; and indeed our fellowship (κοινωνία) is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:1-3 ESV)
When we have fellowship (κοινωνία – koinonia) with one another, we are demonstrating our fellowship with God. Verse 3 could even be translated as follows: “… that you too may have fellowship with us, and that fellowship of ours is truly with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ.”
We cannot separate our love for God from our love for other people. We cannot separate our fellowship with God from our fellowship with other believers. Fellowship is fundamental in the life of a believer and in the inter-connected lives of a group of believers.
But, just as we cannot create love for God and others, we cannot create fellowship either. Instead, the Spirit creates a bond between His adopted children that humans cannot create on their own. The fellowship (“sharing”) that we have in common is the presence of the Holy Spirit. And, this fellowship exists between all believers. Certainly relationships can be deep or shallow, intimate or surface-level, but fellowship between believers is created by the Spirit, not by our interaction with one another. Relationships that are based on this Spirit-created fellowship should be nurtured, strengthened, encouraged, and sought through continued interaction. But, those relationships must be built fundamentally on Spirit-created fellowship.
What does it mean for fellowship to be fundamental to believers and the church? Here are two examples:
Discipleship depends on fellowship…
When we recognize that discipleship is more than simply teaching facts to someone, then the fundamental role of fellowship becomes clear. Discipleship requires sharing life together. Without fellowship, discipleship is reduced to the transfer of information, which is not true discipleship at all.
Discipline depends on fellowship…
When a brother or sister is living in unrepentant sin, we are taught to disassociate with that brother or sister. In modern times this has been reduced to preventing attendance at certain activities. However, if there is true fellowship involved, then discipline requires the rupture of vibrant relationships: like divorce in a family, back when divorce was not an accepted option.
Fellowship… There is something about fellowship that makes it fundamental to the church. I want to learn more about fellowship. Perhaps others could share what they’ve learned about Spirit-enabled, Spirit-created, Spirit-driven fellowship…
Markus Barth on Ephesians 4:16
Last weekend, someone mentioned Markus Barth’s (son of Karl Barth) commentary on Ephesians. During the conversation, I remembered this great paragraph concerning Ephesians 4:16 –
(1) It is Christ, the head, alone “from whom†the body derives unity, nourishment, growth – but Christ’s monarchy and monopoly do not exclude but rather create the activity of a church engaged in “its own†growth and upbuilding. (2) All that the body is, has, and does is determined by its (passive and active) relationship to the head – but this (“verticalâ€) relationship establishes an essential and indispensable (“horizontalâ€) interrelation among the church members. (3) While Christ provides for the body as a whole and makes it a unity, and while the body grows as a unit – no individual growth is mentioned here – the distinct personality of each church member is not wiped out but rather established by Christ’s rulership and the church’s community. What Christ is, does, and gives, is appropriate “to the needs†(lit. “to the measureâ€) “of each single part.†If the only things affirmed in Eph 4:16 were Christ’s own activity, Christ’s rule over all Christians, Christ’s relationship to the community, then this verse would have been phrased more clearly in Greek and could be more easily interpreted in a modern language. But in this verse there are several accents, not just one: the church’s and each member’s responsive activity is not only recognized or tolerated but receives an emphasis of its own: “The body makes its own growth so that it builds itself up in love.†(Markus Barth, Ephesians: Translation and Commentary on Chapters 4-6, Anchor Bible 34a, Garden City: Doubleday: 1974, 446-47)
Distinguishing types of love
We may love the beloved (1) for the sake of the beloved, (2) for our own sake, or (3) for the sake of a relationship we have with the beloved. I call these love relations (1) agape, (2) eros, and (3) philia. Thus, I distinguish agape, eros, and philia by the phrase “for the sake of.” The one for whose sake we love determines the kind of love we have. This distinction lies in our intention, in the meaning the act has for us, not in any results of the act. Thus, it may well be that in loving others we do the greatest good for ourselves. But if we love others in order to do the best for ourselves, we are not loving them for their sakes. If another act that was better for ourselves was available, we might abandon them and perform that act. We we love others as a way of fulfilling ourselves, this love of others is eros, not agape. (Edward Vacek, Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994), 157-58.)
For better or for worse (but not about marriage)
Individual believers and churches demonstrate their love or lack of love by the way that they treat (for better or for worse) people who are different from them.
Individual believers and churches demonstrate their sevant’s heart or lack thereof by the way that they serve (for better or for worse) others when they are at their neediest.
Individual believers and churches demonstrate their fellowship or lack of fellowship by the way they share with one another (for better or for worse) when people are hurting and their lives are messy.
Individual believers and churches demonstrate their hospitality or lack of hospitality by how they share their possessions and time (for better or for worse) when they have very little to share.
Individual believers and churches demonstrate their unity or lack of unity by how they accept others (for better or for worse) when they are not accepted themselves.
Love ‘because of’ and ‘in spite of’
Recently, I watched a few episodes of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”… Yeah, I know, but it’s good to know what people are watching and thinking. Anyway, the theme song says something like this: “Falling in love is such an easy thing to do…”
In the show, teenagers fall in and out of love from episode to episode. I’ve noticed the same phenomenon among my children’s friends. Of course, adults fall in and out of love as well. (Now, the TV show equates love with sex, but that’s a completely different post.)
The problem is, this is not love – at least, it’s not the kind of love that God demonstrates and we’re to demonstrate in response.
“Falling in love” and “falling out of love” – or not loving someone anymore – is not love. Why? It is based on love “because of”… because of attraction, because of emotion, because of feelings, because of sex appeal, because of agreement, because of benefits.
This is the kind of love that Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount:
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? (Matthew 5:46-47 ESV)
As Jesus points out, even those who are not part of God’s kingdom “love” people who are lovable and who love them back. This is normal love… natural love… worldly love. It’s the kind of love that asks the question, “What can I get out of this?” It’s the kind of love that is extended “because of” who the other person is or what the other person does.
This is not God’s kind of love. It’s not the kind of love that he demonstrated toward us, and it’s not the kind of love that we’re supposed to demonstrate towards others.
Instead, we’re supposed to demonstrate love “in spite of.” That is, we are love people in spite of their unattractiveness, in spite of our emotions and feelings, in spite of disagreements, in spite of a lack of benefits. In fact, Jesus exhorts us to love those who cannot love us back. This is godly love.
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:43-45 ESV)
Godly love is extended towards those who don’t deserve it… it is extended “in spite of” who the other person is or what the other person does. This kind of love is unnatural… it is super-natural… it is spiritual.
It is extended “in spite of” who the other person is or what the other person does, and “because of” who God is and what God does, and “because of” who we are in Christ Jesus and what we do because of the indwelling Spirit.
The world love “because of”… we must learn to love “in spite of.”