Love One Another

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, greetings to you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Reading through John 15: 9-17, the word “love” jumps right out to the text.  Then my brain started hearing songs;          “Love, love, love.  All we need is love” -   “Love is the Answer” -   “You’ve Got to Love somebody” -  “Love the one your with?” and so on…

We are inundated with the idea of love in popular culture, or at least everybody’s idea of love.  Obviously, they’re not all on the same page.  For Jesus, according to John, love is extremely important. The Gospel writer comes back to it again and again. Here he hits us with that incredible phrase that has come down through the ages in so many ways with so many pleas, its power and its conviction, its clarity as a command and its subsequent condemnation as we fail in living up to it, remain as crucial today as ever it has been.

1 Corinthians 12 speaks about Spiritual Gifts, and the necessity of differences and varieties within the body of Christ.  It speaks to us about all the different ministries of the church.  It points out quite clearly that we should indeed celebrate our diversity so long as we remember that we are to be unified in Jesus Christ.  But what I like the most about 1 Corinthians 12 is the way it ends, “and let me show you a still more better way.”  And then follows chapter 13, the “love chapter.”  All the other aspects of the church are important, but Love is more important than them all, and the better way of the church is to Love.

“LOVE ONE ANOTHER” there may be no other three words as powerful as these. No phrase could be simpler, yet, we are forced to ask, “what does it mean to ‘Love one another?’  Of course, it depends on what you mean by “love”.  We’re not talkin’ about the generic love that we throw around all the time, we need to understand this is a “sacred love.”  A love which sets us apart from the other ideas of “love”

It is a love that is reflective of God’s Love. We should love mankind, because God has loved us first. How can we not love that which was so beloved by God?  And how much did God love the world? God loved the world so much that God would sacrifice his own son for us.

As a father, it is difficult to even begin to imagine sacrificing my own child, it gives rise to so many feelings, and in the end, it is an idea that is repulsive to me.

Yet, that very same kind of love, the love that is willing to give so much ought to be reflected in the way we are willing to love one another. We are called to love with the same Sacrificial Love which enabled Jesus Christ to lay down his life for us.

But we must understand that this self-sacrificing love extends far beyond simply laying down one’s life. Sacrificial love is a love willing to sacrifice everything for the love of others. In sacrificial love, we are called to risk our dignity, our wealth, our time, our own wants, needs, and desires for the sake of another, any other.  Especially when it is the most difficult, after all, think how difficult it must be for God to love us at times.

Make no mistake, we are still subject to God and should not consider ourselves to be on par with God, for there is but one God.  Once again we see mystery of incarnation, the miracle of God becoming one of us. God lowered Godself to serve us and lift us up into something better, something more holy.  This is the ultimate act of humility, and that too is a part of loving one another.   

But it is also the ultimate act of discipleship, to love as Christ loves.  In response to God’s Love in Jesus Christ, we are called to Love just as Christ has shown and instructed.  Not look down on those who are “less than” ourselves, but to walk along side them, guide them, support them, encourage them, and again, love them.

The story is told that in later days of his life, the Apostle John needed to be carried to the gatherings of the faithful.  And each time he would be asked, “Brother John, do you have any words for us?”  His only response was, “Little Children, Love One Another.”

On night, one of the young men tasked with carrying the Apostle home, finally summoned the nerve to ask John, “Brother John, you were there with our Lord Jesus,  You walked with him, spoke with him, witnessed his miraculous power, heard his words.  When we ask you to speak, why do you only tell us to ‘love one another’?  John looked at him with loving eyes and said, “because if you could truly do that, it would be enough.”

Above all else, to Love as Christ loves, is the ultimate profession of faith.  If we claim to be Christian, if we claim to abide in God, then we have no choice but to love.  After all, Jesus made it clear, for his disciples and followers, love is not an option, love is not a suggestion, not simply good advise, to love one another as Christ has loved us… is a commandment.

May the peace and blessings of God, the joy of Jesus Christ, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit be with you all,

Mitchell Lee Miller.