Relationships
June 22, 2003
Dear Friends,
Jesus says in John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” What was so new about this? Hadn’t the Law commanded the people that “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.” (Lev. 19:18)
Yet, this was dramtically and unequivocally new. Just loving someone as well as you loved yourself wasn’t good enough any longer. You had to love your neighbor MORE than you loved yourself. You had to love them as Jesus loved us. This is a love which compelled Jesus to die on the cross for us. This was a completely self-sacrificing love which was more concerned with another person’s spiritual well-being than any personal considerations.
Jesus uses this love as the litmus test of discipleship. He could have chosen a doctrinal point as the test. There are a lot of good doctrinal points that would suffice to single out his disciples. Nevertheless, Jesus uses the Greek word agape or love as the true test of discipleship.
The love of Christ (meaning the love that Christ had, not simply us loving Jesus) is the final manifestation – “the whole package” so to speak – of discipleship. You have to have right doctrines to have the right faith to bring about the love of Christ. But the sum of all these parts – faith, knowledge, hope, and so forth – are greater than the whole when they culminate in the love of Christ.
In many ways we can say that the Gospel culminates in our relationships. It culminates in the relationship we have with God and with Christ. It culminates in the relationship we have with our brethren. It culminates with the relationship we have in the world. It is the spiritually immature mind that thinks of these relationships as incidental.
Think how important relationships are to ecclesial life. Who is the best person to talk to someone who is going astray? Would it not be the brother or sister in good standing who has the best relationship? Think about how you would feel if someone approached you about a particular problem by two different people. The first is someone who is as close as a brother. They have stood by you through thick and thin. You know that they love you and respect you. They are someone who you both like and respect. They know your likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. They are someone who has taken the time to get to know you. The second person is someone you don’t know very well. They seem nice enough, but you haven’t really had many conversations with them. You see them at meeting every Sunday but the interaction stops there. You don’t know much about them nor do they know much about you. If you had a problem that you needed help with, of the two people, who would you want to approach you?
Ask the majority of people how they came to know the Gospel and they will tell you that it was through a personal relationship. For most people, it wasn’t through a book or a web site or even personal study, it was through a friend – probably a close friend.
The point we are trying to make (and which we hope to continue next week) is that relationships are vitally important to so many aspects of God’s truth. They are so important, that we should spend time cultivating them and become better students of the nature of relationships.
Have a great week!
