Demonstrating our love for one another is the best
advertising the church can have. Jesus prayed for this very thing:
·
"My prayer is …that all of them may be one,
Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that
the world may believe that you have sent me…May they be brought to complete
unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you
have loved me." (John 17:20-23)
If we
want to show the world that Christ is the Savior, we have to demonstrate this
fact in our midst. The best way to prove that God has loved us is to
demonstrate that we love one another.
This
is not a radical idea. It lies at the heart of our faith. Jesus gave his
disciples a renewed and amplified commandment:
·
"Love one another. As I have loved you, so
you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples,
if you love one another." (John
13:34-35)
We live at a time when many scorn the idea
that we are truly the disciples of the Savior of the World. Often, they don’t
see it because we give them scant reason to see it. We fail to exhibit a
sacrificial love for one another.
The reason for this failure is sin –
bitterness, unforgiveness, arrogance, jealousy… Sin is life-controlling. After
experiencing years of anti-Semitism, I was a walking land-mine, waiting for
someone to innocently step on me. All of the six million Jews who had
been exterminated in the Holocaust – they were me. With the many who perished
in the Inquisition, I perished along with them. In all of the thousands of Jewish
exiles, I was there at their side.
Forgiveness
was a foreign word to me. Hatred was my closest companion. Vengeance was my
guiding light. I became vigilant about who was a Jew, and who was a Gentile,
because I knew that the Gentile would reject me. I had Gentile “friends,” but
they forsook me when the anti-Semitic remarks and fists began flying. I became
convinced that they too were anti-Semites. If they couldn’t kill us Jews, they
would convert us into something else. I detested them.
Hatred
runs deep. I also became convinced that Gentiles had a different odor. I didn’t
like getting on the elevator with too many of them. Their presence nauseated
me. Besides, in my book, there were all Christian.
I was
also a lonely kid with little attachment to anyone else. Consequently, I formed
my bonds with Israel
and the historical experience of Jewish people. I reveled in the fact that
although only ¼ percent of humanity, our people had won 30% of the Nobel
prizes. I might be despised, but I belonged to a people who were in a position
to despise others. The knowledge of our achievements enabled me to confidently
despise the world that despised me. I became an ardent Zionist and vowed that I
would never return to the USA.
The nation of Israel
would now be my reason for being.
Incredibly,
by His mercies alone, I am now a believer in Christ, but this didn’t mean that
all of my blindness, arrogance, unforgiveness and hatred suddenly disappeared.
Sin is powerful and deceptive. It is so deceptive that it leads us think that
whatever we do is right (Proverbs 21:2: 16:2). We rationalize away all of our
sins, and convince ourselves that we are really doing what is right. No wonder
Jesus taught us to first remove the self-righteous log from our eyes so that
we’d be able to see clearly enough to correct others (Mat. 7:1-5).
Jesus
called unbelievers “children of the devil” who live according to his dictates
(John 8:41-44). The devil poses as an angel of light – as the very essence of
righteousness – and so do his servants (2 Cor. 11:14-15). Consequently, we are “experts”
regarding the sins of others but are conveniently in denial about our own sins.
Jesus
told a parable about two men – a Pharisee and a sinner – who entered into the
temple to pray. The Pharisee was in denial, trusting in his own virtue.
Consequently, he looked down on others and his prayer was focused on himself
and his own moral superiority (Luke 18:9-14).
We
are all Pharisees! Our thinking is sinful. Instead of striving for the unity of
the Body of Christ, we undermine it. We see the faults in others but not in ourselves.
We see the faults in the other racial groups but not in our own. We are like
the Corinthian church, which broke up into factions, each convinced that they had
a spiritual monopoly. Paul explained that their problem was that they had gone
beyond what was written in Scripture (1 Cor. 4:6).
We too
have gone far beyond what is written, and our focus is not on the Lord. Our
politics are geared towards self-justification. Blacks regard whites as racist,
while the whites regard blacks as racist. Blacks claim that whites have
profited off their backs and owe them, while the whites claim that the blacks
are seeking a “payback.” Blacks claim that the white church doesn’t care about
the poor, and the whites claim that the black church doesn’t care about
forgiveness. Meanwhile, we are blind to our own logs and have forgotten the
prayer of our Lord for unity. We allow our earthly perspective to trump His
heavenly one. Our prayer is not:
·
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your
kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew
6:9-10; NKJV)
Instead
of seeking His Kingdom and His righteousness, we are nursing old wounds.
My
old wounds blinded me. It was hard for me to attend a church service for the
first time. For quite a long time, I “perceived” that everyone there was a
hypocrite and an anti-Semite, but I put too much trust in what I “saw,” not
realizing that my eyes perceived through the distorted lens of unforgiveness
and racial pride.
This
doesn’t mean that everything that I thought was mistaken. There certainly might
have been hypocrites, racists, and even anti-Semites in the church, but there
was also something greater there – the Body of Christ and a Savior who groans
deeply and longingly over His church (Rom. 8:26).
What
is the answer? We need to humble ourselves and cry out:
·
Lord, make us into the church that You have intended. Help us to see the
things You want us to see – that we
belong to one another and that each of us has a vital role to play. Expose our
sins that we might confess them to You and trust in Your healing and
forgiveness. Give us the desire to honor You
above everything else – to seek Your
glory above our own. Help us to see the beauty of our oneness in Christ, and
give us a heart that will seek to maintain this unity even above our own
immediate comfort or welfare. Lord, start with me!
What
an honor it is to serve our Savior. Therefore, let us humble ourselves to His
concerns and as He did for ours:
·
Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if
any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by
being like-minded, having the same love, being
of one accord, of one mind. Let
nothing be done through selfish
ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better
than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also
for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal
with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. (Philip. 2:1-7, NKJV)
Lord, let your mind be in us in every respect! Let us die to
ourselves and live for You!
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