Last December 2004, Joel Osteen’s “Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential” hit the number one slot on the New York Times bestsellers list. Personally, I have qualms about its “name it and claim it” or prosperity theology. That’s why I don’t endorse the book.[1] Publishers Weekly offered this critique of the book: “Houston megachurch pastor and inspirational TV host Osteen offers an overblown and redundant self-help debut… it’s a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals.”[2] The root of this questionable theology is a “me” instead of a “we” mentality.
Dr. Gene Getz called this “rugged individualism.” He wrote, “Because of our philosophy of life, we are used to the personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘my’ and ‘me.’ We have not been taught to think in terms of ‘we’ and ‘our’ and ‘us.’ … The personal dimensions of Christianity are difficult to maintain and practice unless they grow out of a proper corporate experience on a regular basis.”[3] This morning, we start a new series on the “One Another” commands, which occurs almost 60 times in the New Testament. Dr. Rick Warren wrote, “The Christian life involves more than just believing – it also includes belonging. We grow in Christ by being in relationship to other Christians.”[4] We experience our best life now when we shift from a “me” to a “we” mindset. We are to be other-centered, not self-centered. The title of our new series is “Our Best Life Now.” Today we are going to talk about “‘We’ instead of ‘Me.’” Let us pray first…
In his last supper with the disciples, our Lord Jesus gave this command: “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.”[5] This is the primary, most basic “one another” command.
First, let us look at our mandate to love. Verse 34 says, “A new command I give you: Love one another.” We are COMMANDED to love each other. We are to love one another and not hate each other. We are to accept and not reject. We are to serve people and not to use them. We are to listen and not ignore. We are to give and not get. We are to support people and not desert them. We are to encourage and not discourage.
Now how can Jesus call this a “new” command when He himself said that the second greatest commandment in the Law was “Love your neighbor as yourself”?[6] The Greek word for “new” does not really mean “different” but it means “fresh.” Remember that Jesus gave this command the night He instituted the communion to commemorate the New Covenant that he ratified with His death. “In that covenant God promised to enable His people to love by transforming their hearts and minds”.[7] We read in Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” The New Living Translation goes like this: “And I will give you a new heart with new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony heart of sin and give you a new, obedient heart.” God assured us that we can obey His commands because He changed our hearts when we accepted our Lord Jesus as Savior. Truly, when God calls, He enables. Before, we cannot love others. But, with the help of God, now we can love each other. So, when we find it hard to love one another, it is not because we can’t but we won’t.
Note also that we are commanded to love “one another.” In the Greek, “one another” means “a reciprocal and mutual work on the part of believers toward one another.”[8] That means you think of others and not yourself. Some people may ask, “Aren’t we suppose to love ourselves first before loving others?” They get that from Matthew 22:39. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But that doesn’t mean we must love ourselves. It is just another way of saying, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”[9] As Oscar Hammerstein wrote, “Love in the heart wasn’t put there to stay. Love isn’t love ’til you give it away.”
Second, let us look at the manner or how we are to love others. Verse 34 continues, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” We are to love COMPARABLE to Jesus’ love. God’s Word translation goes like this: “Love each other in the same way that I have loved you.” Another reason why this is a “new” command is that we now have a higher standard. Before, under the Old Testament: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But now, under the New Testament: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” We are to love each other just as Christ has loved us. In fact, this is the love that God the Father has for His Son, Jesus: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.”[10]
Out of the 37 times that the word “love” appeared in the Gospel of John, 20 times or more than 50% of the occurrences appeared in the context of the last night He spent on earth with His disciples. Note that Christ gave the command to love one another in this context. Let us look at how Jesus used the word “love” during that night. I summarized it in the acronym L-O-V-E. [Note: It is not in the bulletin]
It says in John 13:1b, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.” In the English Standard Version, it says, “he loved them to the end.” “L” stands for LOYAL. The love of Christ is loyal, not disloyal. Ray Stedman wrote, “He never gave up on them. He loved them as long as his love could do anything to reach them. And his love included even Judas. The love of Jesus reached out to all… it is a love without end.”[11]
“O” stands for OBEDIENT. The love of Christ is obedient, not disobedient. John 15:10 says, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” In John 14:31, Jesus declared, “I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.”
“V” stands for VOLUNTARY. He was not forced to love us. He did not wait for us to love Him. He did it solely because of His love. It was is choiHis cjhoiceHis His choice to love us. That night He washed the feet of the disciples, including that of Judas Iscariot. “He did not love people who were nice to love, as we do. He chose to love the unlovely: people who were rejected, difficult to love, looked down upon, held in contempt by society. He loved them, not because he wanted the good feeling of love, but simply because they needed love, and his love responded. This is the characteristic of his love. It goes out to people who need love regardless of what they are like, no matter how dirty, leprous, hurtful, proud or arrogant they may be.” [12]
Lastly, “E” stands for EXPRESSIVE. This is the love that is expressed in works, not just words. “It will not be mere talk about love, singing songs about love or calling oneself loving and not showing it. Love will be expressed in deeds.”[13] That called for sacrifice. The love of Christ is sacrificial, not selfish. John 15:12-13 says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
The question now is, “Do we live up to Christ’s standard for love?” Do we remain loyal no matter what or do we easily give up on people? Are we obedient by loving one another or are we disobedient because we could not even forgive a brother or a sister who have done something against us? Do we choose to love even the unlovable or do we only love those who deserve our love? Do we love both in works and words?
Lastly, let us look at the measure or the way people gauge us. Verse 35 says, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” We CONFIRM we are His followers with our love. The way the sentence is originally constructed in Greek shows logical connection. That means in the eyes of the world our love for each other validates our love for God. 1 John 4:21 says, “And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” The Message goes like this, “The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.”
When we show a “me” mentality, we deny with our works what we declare with our words. But when we display a “we” mindset, seekers conclude that we really follow Christ. It is illogical to claim that we are His followers yet we go for each other’s throats. That’s why Jesus prayed this way: “My prayer is not for them [referring to the apostles] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 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.”[14] Would you be an answer to the prayer of Jesus?
Let me end with an illustration from D. Martin Lloyd-Jones. Before a civil war broke out in Spain, people come in droves regularly to psychiatrists for treatments. Their worries and other problems push them to seek for psychological relief. Then the war came. “One of the first and most striking effects of that War was that it virtually emptied the psychological and psychiatric clinics. These neurotic people were suddenly cured by a greater anxiety, the anxiety about their whole position, whether their homes would still be there, whether their husbands would still be alive, whether their children would be killed. Their greater anxieties got rid of the lesser ones. In having to give attention to the bigger problem they forgot their own personal and somewhat petty problems.”[15]
Brethren, if we want to enjoy our best life now, we must shift from a “me” mindset to a “we” mentality. We make that shift when we obey God’s command to love each other in a way that is comparable to Jesus’ love in order to confirm that we are His followers.
Let us pray…
[1]This does not mean in any way that I question the person, his relationship with God or the motives of Rev. Joel Osteen.
[2]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0446696153/ref=dp_proddesc_0/002-0961250-0776015?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
[3]Gene Getz, Praying for One Another (Chariot Victor, 1982).
[4]From Turning Attendees Into a Part of the Family (http://www.pastors.com/RWMT/printerfriendly.asp?issue=225&artID=4137)
[5]John 13:34-35. All Bible verses are from the New International Version, unless otherwise noted.
[6]Matthew 22:39
[7]Dr. Thomas Constable, Notes on John (2000 Edition). Available from http://soniclight.com/constable/notes/pdf/john.pdf
[8]From http://mintools.com/bodylife4.htm#list
[9]Luke 6:31
[10]John 15:9
[11]Ray Stedman, The One Commandment, http://pbc.org/library/files/html/3867.html
[12]Ibid.
[13]Ibid.
[14]John 17:20-21, 23.
[15]D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier: An Exposition of Ephesians 6:10 to 20 (Grand Rapids, Baker: 1978)
