Revolutionary love.
John 13:34-35. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved, so you must love one another. By this all men shall know you are my disciples, if you love one another.
Here we have Jesus in his upper room prior to his crucifixion and resurrection and he wants his disciples to grasp the great importance of Christian love. He conveys three important aspects of Christian love:
Firstly it is a command to love one another ... Secondly He desires that Christian love be a copy of his love.
And thirdly Jesus confirms that through the practical outworking of this love, others will be convinced that they are His disciples. Although here He is speaking directly to his disciples yet this command is as relevant to us as it was to them back in the 1st century we are 21ST century disciples of Christ. So lets unpack this revolutionary Christian love.
1. COMMAND TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Love one another
The command to love one another was it a new command? YES AND NO! No in that God law already stated: Lev 19:18. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.
But YES it was new in the way that Jesus was commanding us to love one another.To love others as Christ loved was and is revolutionary!
a) TO LOVE OTHERS IS GOING A STEP FURTHER THAN THE NORM
• The woman from Samaria, who Jews looked upon as half breeds, they would not even associate with Samaritans but Jesus does in fact he goes out of his way to minister to her. Here is a woman who was immoral and she knew it coming out at the heat of the day to draw water, a string of husbands to her name, and the man she was now living with was not even here husband. YET Jesus demonstrates great love meeting with her and pointing her to LIVING WATER.
Then those people with leprosy, others would not even touch making them walk around ringing a bell announcing they are unclean even banishing them away to colonies. Yet Jesus moved amongst them touching and healing them.
The deaf,the blind,the paralysed were all ministered to and loved by Jesus others would have considered them cursed by God, yet Jesus shows they are actually loved by God. Is not this type of love revolutionary?
I believe there are people in our community who are 21st century untouchables but are in the direct need of the revolutionary love of Jesus. And we as followers of Christ are the ones called to engage in this revolutionary love towards others:
People in our community who are gossiped about and even shunned by others ... There will be men in our community who are violent physically / verbally towards their wives, both need help yet the community remains silent. There will be couples who are at the end of themselves and their relationship is in tatters heading for divorce but nobody is prepared to step in and build lasting relationships. There will be a sons/daughters of people in this community who are heroin addicts whose lives are being wreaked, whose parents have nobody to speak to and nobody to help. There will be alcoholics in this community who have lost family and jobs who cry themsleves to sleep at night. Families with sick children who need our support and love, there will be a men/ woman in this community who have been sexually abused as a child and as a result hates themselves and is self harming. There is youth element in this village that people are fearfully about. Are we going to cross over and engage with this youth? Shouldn’t we above all people, as Christians be engaging with these people, with the revolutionary LOVE OF JESUS? Are we going to become like Jesus and cross over into the lives of these people whenever we have a real opportunity? Are we prepared to make a difference? Can we at CBC turn this community upside down with the radical love of Jesus?
Can we become the hands, the voice the ears and eyes of Jesus. Lets reach out to a hurting community, let us continue to strive for ways of crossing over the barriers into the lives of others who are disenfranchised from our community and demonstrate the unconditional love of Jesus towards others.
b) TO LOVE EACH OTHER ALSO.
But here we see that Jesus is actually calling us to love each other – we who call ourselves Christians – sometimes when I look at the Christian family not only here but everywhere I think what a Joke. I have never seen such a group of messed up people.
It’s into this framework we are called to love each other – if we are going to be going out into our community with the love of Jesus Christ it needs to be practiced here, if we are not practicing it in here we certainly won’t be showing it out there....
2. A COPY OF HIS LOVE TO US. As I have loved you
Don’t be mistaken Jesus does not want to see some sort of superficial love amongst us, we are to love, as He has loved us, and that love was demonstrated at great cost 24/7 right up to the cross and beyond. A superficial love it was not. Sadly that’s what we see in the Church today so often propagated. A Church where no one ever gets upset with one another, a place where everybody pleases everybody,a place where there is always a smile and never a problem, with a thin veneer of love, Jesus is not calling for that! You know the type where you recieve the regular evangelical smile yet underneath fire and brimestone is being called down from heaven.....
What He is talking about is a supernatural revolutionary love.
Jesus love is revolutionary love : unconditionally love towards his disciples despite individual flaws. Consider this bunch of mixed up disciples on the night of the Passover found arguing amongst themselves in the upper room arguing about who is the greatest in the Kingdom, confused and disturbed about Jesus departure:
Consider Thomas the sceptic - yet Jesus was patient and finally revealed himself to him. Simon Peter emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper, and would even deny Jesus v38 and Jesus knew it – yet Jesus loved him and accepted him despite his flaws and was used as a leader in the Church. James and John the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above loyalty and were prone to being too judgemental, yet John was called the disciple that Jesus loved and both became pillars of the Church – Philip was always questioning Jesus - Levi associated with the enemy Rome yet to all of these men Jesus invested his time, his energy his love pointing them in the same direction.
Why? Because Jesus could see the finished product – he saw not what they were but what they would become.
Jesus invested three years of his life with these men, despite their failing he loved them unconditionally, he never ran out on them - because things weren’t working out, or somebody said this that or the other. He persevered with this mixed up bunch of disciples loving them unconditionally. And the ultimate action of that love would be demonstrated as he hung upon that cross dying for their sins and our sins.
What does this tell me? Firstly that Jesus wants to use each one of us despite our flaws – that he loves us unconditionally and that he wants you to invest your life as a copy of his into other people’s lives as he has into your life.
secondly what does this tell me? That love for one another is more than just some warm feeling we might have for someone we love but an attitude that reveals itself in action towards others : It’s a love in action towards others which acts despite the personal hurts received and flaws of others:
It can be seen in helping others when it’s not convenient, by giving when it hurts, by devoting your energies to the welfare others before yourself, by absorbing hurts from others without complaining or fighting back. By forgiving and moving on by supporting and encouraging each other this is what it means to have a copy of the Love he has first shown us.
To love one another does not mean being in a Church where everything is tickety boo, where nobody ever gets upset. if you thinks that’s what it means to Love one another your living in cloud cookow land. To love one another means that we will persevere loving each other despite our personal flaws , through the ups and downs we will be able to forgive, forget strive for love and unity, because we see not what we are but what we will be!
Have you ever noticed "The intensive care waiting room where nobody is a stranger. A place where they help one another. They grieve with one another and shed tears of joy together. There is no distinction of race or class. Vanity and pretense vanish. Everything focuses on the next doctor’s report or the next telephone call. Here in this anxious stillness it becomes clear that loving someone else is what life is all about. Why does it take the intensive care waiting room to teach us to forget our irritations and love one another?" Our Church needs to become like an intensive care waiting room.
Consider Jesus as I hung upon that cross as the abuse is hurled upon Him crying out to his Father in Heaven, “ Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.”
We all know of Christians who move around Churches because something has been said or something has been done , they’ve been hurt. The sad thing is that they have failed to practice the copy of Jesus love which he command us to practice a love which is able to forgive despite our flaws this is the real intensive care Church. A place where brotherly love increases . 2The 1:3. Pauls charge to the Church at Rome Rom 12:9 -16: Eph 4:1-2 . This type of people will turn the world upside down!
3. A CONVINCING PROOF TO OTHERS. By this all men shall know you are my disciples,
When we love one another like this it will enable us to move that love outside of these four walls into this community of ours and be a convincing witness to all.
Being loved is the most powerful motivation in the world. Our ability to love is often shaped by our experience of love. We usually love others as we ourselves have been loved.
The apostle John had experienced the immense love of Jesus towards him in fact he was known as the disciple that Jesus loved.
This gospel and his epistle has a great emphasis upon LOVE. John was a man who would witness to the love of Jesus Christ, because he himself had experienced it in a very personal way. And what is true of John is true of all Christians the Love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts – as a result of that the Love of Christ should compel us to be witnesses to an unloved and hurting world.
Notice what Paul wrote: 2 Cor 5:14 For Christ love compels us, because we are convinced, that one died for all and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
TRUE STORY: On the morning of September 11, Jeannie Braca switched on the television to check the weather report, only to hear that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center.
Jeannie’s husband, Al, worked as a corporate bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald. His office was on the 105th floor of Tower One. Al had survived the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and had even helped a woman with asthma escape from the building.
Jeannie knew that Al would do the same thing this time, “I knew he would stop to help and minister to people,” she said, “but I never thought for a minute that he wouldn’t be coming home!”
A week later, like so many others who were in that building, Al’s body was found in the rubble. Al’s wife, Jeannie, and his son Christopher were devastated!
Then the reports began to trickle in from friends and acquaintances. Some people on the 105th floor had made a last call or sent a final e-mail to loved ones saying that a man was leading people in prayer.
A few referred to Al by name.
Al’s family learned that Al had indeed been ministering to people during the attack! When Al realized that they were all trapped in the building and would not be able to escape, Al shared the gospel with a group of 50 co-workers and led them in prayer.
This news came as no surprise to Al’s wife, Jeannie.
For years, she and Al had been praying for the salvation of these men and women. According to Jeannie, Al hated his job and couldn’t stand the environment. It was a world so out of touch with his Christian values, but he wouldn’t quit.
Al was convinced that God wanted him to stay there, to be a light in the darkness, and although Al would not have put it this way, to be a hero!
Al was not ashamed of Christ and Christ’s words…and he paid the price of taking up his cross daily. Al shared his faith with his co-workers….many of whom sarcastically nicknamed him “The Rev.”
And on that fateful day…on September 11, in the midst of the chaos, Al’s co-workers looked to him—-and Al delivered!
At the same time, Al too tried to get a phone call through to his family. He asked an MCI operator to contact his family. “Tell them that I love them,” he said.
It took the operator more than a month to reach the Bracas, but the message brought them much-needed comfort.
“The last thing my dad did involved the two things most important to him—God and his family,” his son Christopher told a writer for Focus on The Family. “He loved to lead people to Christ. That takes away a lot of the hurt and the pain.”
SOURCE: compiled by Kenneth Sauer from "A Light in the Darkness" by Christin Ditchfield. Focus on the Family Magazine, September 2002.
IN CLOSING.... HOW WILL THIS LOST WORLD BE WON? AS THEY WITNESS THIS REVOLUTIONARY LOVE EMANATING OUT OF OUR LIVES - TOWARDS GOD - TOWARDS EACH OTHER AND TOWARD OTHERS IN OUR COMMUNITY.
