Love One Another

John 13:34-35 

Introduction

As we reflect on what it is that Jesus wants us to do, one of the verses that we should keep in mind is: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8) In this passage we see that love is a part of the essence of God and God’s people are expected to love. In fact if we do not love, we just do not know God, no matter how much Bible we have memorized, money we have donated to the church, or Sundays we have attended church. 

So for that reason, we can see that a large part of what Jesus wants from us is about love. Love for God and love for people. But which people?

We saw last week that Jesus taught us to love our neighbours as ourselves. We also saw that Jesus widened the definition of neighbour beyond people just like us and included even people we have thought of as enemies. That can be very challenging.

But there is another group of people that Jesus tells us to love. Both in the Gospels, and Paul in his letters emphasizes this as well, we are told to love one another. Who are one another? The church. Fellow Christians. Other Jesus followers. Now this may seem strange. We have already covered pretty much everyone with neighbours and yet we are also told specifically to love one another? What is the point of loving fellow Christians when we are already loving everyone? And what is the difference between this and the loving of fellow Israelites that Jesus expanded from? Is this not just a return to loving people who are just like us? And finally, how are you supposed to grow a church when we are focusing on loving one another, when there are plenty of potential members out there that might start attending if we start loving them?

I would like to speak to that final point. I have attended many seminars and workshops of church growth. Almost universally, they will say that the problem with the church today is that it is too insular. There is too much focus on church life and not enough focus on outreach. Members are here and should not require much attention. We need to shift everything toward the people who are not here. There seems to be some good logic here. In addition, there has been the question of whether the church should look like a cruise ship or a battleship? A cruise ship looks after those who are already present. A battleship goes out on a mission and the people onboard are there not to be served but to serve the mission. That sounds pretty compelling.

The only problem is that Jesus says that the feature that will mark us as being followers of Jesus Christ, is that of loving one another. Paul, when he applies this to his context, he over and over again stresses that we are to begin with our love to one another. Without denying that we are to love those outside the church, there is a certain kind of active love that Paul sees as important and even unique to the church community. You probably recognize these words:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) People often assume that this about the love within a marriage relationship but it is actually describing the ideal love within the church.

My suspicion is that people assume that loving people outside the church is hard but important and loving people inside the church is easy but unimportant. I would like to take a closer look at this.

Why Loving Christians is Difficult

I want to begin with whether or not it is easy to love Christians. It should be. We all love Jesus, so we should be able to sit together, hold hands and sing Kumbaya. And yet that does not seem to happen. Christianity is split between Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. Protestants are split between many different denominations. And then there are the Baptists! One website suggested that there were seventeen different Baptist groups just in Canada. And having been a part of two of those groups, I know that even then, there are deep divisions within Baptist denominations. This is the challenge within our Baptist denominations, when there is a disagreement, do we decide to split or agree to disagree? Then we get to the local congregations. I have been a member of one Anglican Church, two Pentecostal churches, and six different Baptist churches, and I can say that not everyone got along in any of those churches. Some were more united than others but all had their issues. 

We might look at this and grieve how far we have fallen from the pristine nature of the first century church. Well, we actually are not that different. There were many divisions within the early church. Paul share this: “For it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:11-12) And that was just divisions within the Corinthian church. There were numerous quarrels between congregations, some so intense that they seemed to threaten the survival of Christianity. 

Why is it so hard for Christians to get along? Christians tend to be people of strong convictions. This is not a bad thing, in fact it is a good thing. But what do we do when our convictions that are not part of the essentials of the faith come into conflict? Let’s address the elephant in the room when it comes to hot button issues. This is Pride month. Now me just saying that might have produced an emotional reaction. But within our Baptist denomination we have people that would want full inclusion of gay people from membership to leadership and others that would prefer that gay people not even come into our churches. Many people would be somewhere in between those points. I am not going to debate that issue but ask about how we love one another when we disagree on something that we feel strongly about. And this is the challenge for loving one another, we expect to disagree strongly with people outside the church, but it can be more personal when we disagree strongly with someone inside the church. I am not trying to be negative but we have to be aware that there are challenges to this. It is not impossible, even if it is more difficult because of the polarizing society that we live in which tells us that we should be outraged by those who think differently and to cancel those who are on the “wrong” side of the debate.

Why Loving Christians is Important

So if it is so difficult, why bother? We have options. We could keep dividing and subdividing until we are left with tiny communities where everyone thinks the same and we never disagree on any issue. Another option is to not even try to love one another. We could see Christians who think differently than us as the enemy and put all our effort into attacking their positions. One of the problems with that is that Jesus has also told us to love our enemies, that does not give us many options.

I would like to suggest that it is important for us to love one another and that there are a number of reasons for this.

One is that we learn by loving one another. If we love one another, we should be willing to listen to one another. Listening does not mean you have to agree, but rather it is a posture of learning rather than debating. For example, I had a Roman Catholic explain the intercession of the saints. I had assumed that praying to the saints was like praying to pagan gods. This person explained that it was like asking our friends to pray for us, but these friends happen to be in heaven and have more access to God. I am not likely to pray to the saints but at least I understood better what they actually believed.

Another reason that loving each other is important is that it helps us to operate as the Church. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the Church as the Body of Christ. The point of the body image is to promote both unity and diversity rather than uniformity. Our differences matter and they make us stronger. But loving one another helps those parts of the body to work together. Have you ever had a part of your physical body to refuse to work with the rest of the body? I have and it is very limiting. When we love each other, including respecting our diversity, the Body of Christ works much better together in terms of doing what we were created to do.

Finally, loving one another helps us to have a better witness to the unbelieving world. There was perhaps a time when squabbles between Christians or congregations or denominations were fairly in-house conversations. In our information-rich world, all of the conflicts and arguments that we have are on display to the world in real time. What is someone to think when we tell them to believe in Jesus as their Lord and then we turn around attack each other or be nasty to Christians we disagree with? You might think that our conflicts do not matter, all that matters is who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. Except to the seeker, it all matters. If we do not seem to be following Jesus, why should they follow Jesus?

Conclusion

I would say that Christians loving each other is not easy and unimportant but is actually difficult and very important. It is difficult because we are all so unique and we have strong opinions. Many people feel that if they tolerate a person who has very different views, we are somehow compromising our convictions. We don’t want to do that and so we dig in our heels and get ready to fight. But we do not have to. Part of it is a misunderstanding of tolerance. When we hear someone say “We all need to be more tolerant,” what many people hear is “We have to give up on absolute truth and celebrate that all views are equally correct.” That is not what tolerance means. Tolerance means that we hold to our convictions, while at the same time recognizing that another person can hold to their different convictions without hating them for that difference. Jesus calls us to take a step beyond tolerating one another, Jesus calls us to love one another. One of the most beautiful things I have seen is when two Christians who disagree with one author on nonessential issues, agree on that they both love Jesus and can accept one another as children of God.