The Apostle's Testimony To God's Love #love 05
According to Jesus himself, the way you will be able to identify his disciples is in the way we show love to our fellow followers of Jesus.
In my Litmus Test and What Jesus’ Church Is All About posts, I declared the primacy of God’s love as the foundational litmus test for faith in Jesus Christ.
This leads to a simple cause/effect idea. The way you practice your faith in Jesus is exemplified by God’s love: his love for you, your love for him, and his love flowing through you to others. The desire is that these aspects of God’s incredible love would be obvious in the lives of Jesus’ followers.
God’s love in it’s three facets - his love for us, our love for him, and love for others - is the foundation of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Because of God’s love, he sent Jesus to die on the cross and the kingdom of God has begun to manifest here and now on earth. Jesus is King, and one day his kingdom will be fully manifested here on earth.
In the meantime, his followers are busy with two charges:
- Love the LORD your God with everything you are.
- Love your neighbor as yourself.
Notice how the two Greatest Commandments that Jesus cited both begin with the word “love.” This is the unconditional, sacrificial, selfless, others-focused love that God has shown us. We love God and others in the same way, with the same love. It’s all God’s love flowing from him through us.
This is what Jesus declared in John 13 - that people would know his followers by how they loved one another. This visible love is an outward manifestation of the work of God’s love done in the individual’s heart (love for God), within Jesus’ community, and in the world (love for others).
It’s true that this emphasis on love is most prominent in John’s gospel. Some find this to be suspect - wondering why John's gospel is SO different, but I find it compelling. The Gospel of John is attributed to John, the disciple Jesus loved, the one who leaned against Jesus’ chest at the last supper. He was there, he knew Jesus, and he witnessed it all. The Gospel of John was the last Gospel written, with most scholars dating it later than 85 CE. Some believe the distance between the events John recorded (ca. 30 CE) and the later writing date results in embellishment and inaccuracy due to the amount of time that has passed.
I see the late writing date as compelling and encouraging. John had his whole life to think about the importance of the events he witnessed. He observed the early seeds of the Christian church. He watched Saul persecute this church and then be transformed into Paul. He saw his fellow disciples die, one after another, until he was the last man standing. Imagine the weight of his own struggles and his exile to the Isle of Patmos. He waited to write it all down.
It takes me years to write a symphony. I wrote the fourteen pieces for Journey To The Cross starting in late 2019 and completing the fourteenth station just before Easter in 2022. In part, this is because I compose in my spare time, but I think it might take that long anyway. Because, once I have a rough draft, I like to let it sit for some time as I think about, dream about it, and let it continue to marinate in it’s own creative expression. It takes time to get to the heart of an orchestral composition. The seed has to grow and branch out into my mind and heart before I can release it to the world.
This was John’s telling of the most important story of his (and our) life. He waited, and let the seed of experience of Christ grow and expand to fill his heart and his mind. When he finally put quill to parchment, he wrote a theological Gospel that was thoroughly anchored in God’s love. John had his whole life to think about what was most important, and the central theme of his Gospel (and his letters, FWIW) is God’s love.
That’s compelling to me.
But what do we see in the letters of the Apostles who wrote after Jesus’ ascension? As they tackled the key issues of the fledgeling Church, defended it from those who would turn it into something else, and did their best to lead in the face of government persecution, what did they have to say about love?
The Apostle Peter brings up the centrality of love at least three times in his short letter 1 Peter:
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1 Peter 1:22
Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.
1 Peter 3:8
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8
This last verse is unbelievably practical, and undergirds my belief that loving well is the most important attribute of any leader. You won’t be perfect, so love well so that you can nurture a culture of giving and receiving grace.
What about the Apostle Paul, who is credited with writing the largest number of letters in the New Testament? Paul has so many references to love in his letters that I chose to do a small representative sampling of his more famous comments on God’s love.
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Romans 13:8-9
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
1 Corinthians 13:1, 8
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39
This brings us back to the Apostle John from his letters:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
1 John 4:7
You could read all of 1 John, and see John’s essential treatise on the centrality of God’s love in what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.
2 John 1:5
This where people get excited that obedience is finally brought back into the mix. Love = obedience to Jesus’ commands. Now we have a new law, and we can get on with just doing the right things.
But John will have none of that. The very next verse:
As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
2 John 1:6
The summation of Jesus’ commands is “walk in love.”
From Church tradition, specifically Saint Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians, there is a wonderful story about the Apostle John as he aged.
The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, "Little children, love one another." The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, "Teacher, why do you always say this?" He replied with a line worthy of John: "Because it is the Lord's commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient."
How is it that we could possibly think Jesus’ Church is about anything other than God’s love flowing to us, back to Him, and through us out to others? How do we lose sight of such a dominant truth in the whole of the New Testament?
As you read this, what are you drawn to? What stands out for you?
What are you having resistance to?
What is God saying to you about his love and your participation with his love?
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