Saturday, October 25, 2008

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The Final Apologetic

"A new command I give you:  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, see 1 John 3:23).

Though I don't know exactly where I first heard it or even how many times I have heard the tale, the story is told of John the apostle in his old age standing up and preaching to his congregation a simple three word sermon, "love one another," and then taking his seat (I must confess that at times I have contemplated pulling this stunt but have never had the nerve).  In another version of the story, this frail old veteran collapsed after his first "love one another," but kept repeating those words over and over as he was carried away on a stretcher to be attended to.  Whether this story is true or not, I do not know, but it is clear that at the heart and center of John's, the beloved disciple's, message was the reality of the love of God and the call to love one another.

If you have been around the church for any length of time, I'm sure that you too have heard about the love of God.  You have probably heard and maybe even memorized John 3:16:  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son . . ."  And you have likely heard a message or two in which you were encouraged to love not only God but others as well.  We know that we should do this.  The question is:  How many of us really do?  And a further question is:  What are the consequences of not loving?  What is the impact of the church on the world when the church does not do as it was told?

I think that it is important to recognize that this was not just a "suggestion" or a "good idea" that Jesus had.  This is a command.  We must do this.  There is no other option.  We have no choice.  We are commanded to love each other.  And, this is not just something that John picked up on either.  We are to be devoted to one another in brotherly/sisterly love and honor one another above ourselves (Romans 12:10), we are to serve one another in love (Galatians 5:13), bear with one another in love (Ephesians 4:2), consider how we may spur each other on toward love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24), and love each other deeply, from the heart (1 Peter 1:22), to pick up only a few other passages.  The entire witness of the New Testament confirms what the apostle John, the one we believe was referred to by Jesus as "the beloved disciple," comes back to again and again.  Love one another.

In John 13, John is making the point that when we love one another, we are "proving" to the world that we are Jesus disciples, that we are followers of Christ.  Unless we do that, they have no way of knowing that what we say is really true.  Francis Shaeffer in his book The Mark of the Christian, goes even further, drawing at the same time from Jesus' prayer for the disciples in John 17.  Schaeffer says, "In John 13 the point was that, if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he is not a Christian.  Here Jesus is stating something else which is much more cutting, much more profound:  We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus' claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.  Now that is frightening.  Should we not feel some emotion at this point?"

Do we realize that when we fail to love one another and to demonstrate in the church the unity of believers that grows out of that love, our good news is no good news at all.  We will be judged and with justification by the world to be fake.  They will know that it is all just words.  They will know we are Christians by our love.  "Dear children," John writes, "let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18).  Our love must be real if it is to be believed.  We must really love our wives/husbands, our children and our families, our co-workers, our neighbors, and our brothers and sisters in the church if the world is to believe our message.  If we do not, they have no other option but to dismiss this good news as wishful thinking.  Love is the final argument, love is our final apologetic to the world.  Without that, they will never know that the gospel, that Jesus himself, is true.

"This is love:  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:10-11).

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