Do Christians love one another?
'And they'll know we are Christians past our love, by our love, yep they'll know we are Christians by our love.'
So we sang in the belatedly 1970s, in a culturally appropriate stone carol idiom, and very real information technology seemed at the time. I came to religion in an evangelical Anglican tradition which had been shaped by the charismatic renewal motion, and a key sign of this was an authenticity of relationships which had been absent from the starchy formality of much church life.
Information technology was, in fact, a key office of my own coming to faith. As a struggling teenager in a large all-boys school, I was keenly enlightened of the competition to exist accepted—to be absurd—and also aware that I wasn't doing very well at it. By an odd serial of 'coincidences', I met people from the youth group of the local Anglican church, and over almost 9 months decided that I wanted to be part of this Christianity thing. For some time I had thought that what appealed to me near Christian faith was that it was well thought through, that it made sense. It was only when I had to tell my story some years after as part of a mission week in another church that I realised information technology was love that had made the difference. It was the acceptance of me as I was, without having to prove myself, that drew me to faith—and pointed to the loving credence of God.
As I look back, all this was very real—simply it was also relatively easy. We were genuinely concerned for one another, simply that wasn't difficult because we were by and large similar to one another. As I moved to new contexts and met new Christians, oftentimes from backgrounds quite unlike from mine, I learned something new about Christian love. Loving the other meant just that—loving people who were 'other' than me. One of the hallmarks of truthful 'church' is that it includes people who would not otherwise acquaintance together. If we run into to worship with people who nosotros would like anyhow, and then it is not the love of God which has fatigued us together. As Stanley Hauerwas has commented, 'The kingdom of God is a party with a bunch of people with whom we wouldn't be defenseless dead spending a Saturday night had not nosotros too been invited.'
I recently heard a church leader talking nearly some of the tensions in their congregation betwixt a estimate who attended and ex-convicts who also came. The judge was finding information technology quite a claiming to worship alongside people that he had sent down! It's the kind of claiming that God's love poses us.
Merely it does not end in that location. Having learnt the importance of love over the years, and that true love means honey of the 'other', I was stopped in my tracks a few weeks ago by a text I was due to preach on. I retrieve it must be the most extraordinary verse in the New Testament, and it is one most love.
'My love children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…' (Gal four.nineteen).
Paul is proverb something theological hither; the image of the 'pains of childbirth' is an Old Attestation metaphor for the sufferings of God's people as they await deliverance from their oppressors and freedom to worship God without fear. (There'due south a theological pun here—they are waiting to be 'delivered' from birthpangs—gettit?!) For Paul, this deliverance has come to his people in Jesus, and each person experience the promised 'new creation' in him (two Cor 5.17).
Only Paul is also saying something profoundly personal. His dear for these Christians is such that he is caused physical pain until they achieve the maturity that is theirs in Christ. He is in pain and discomfort until they attain what he himself longs for—'the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus' (Phil three.14).
I call up I have learned to love people, even people quite different from myself. But to so long for the best for others that I am in pain until they have attained it? That is another whole kind of love. It raises the bar style to a higher place anything I have reached. It is a love that might change the world—but I am very clear that it is a beloved I cannot piece of work up in myself. Information technology is a love that must be the gift of grace from God, formed in my past his Spirit. Peradventure it's just the kind of love by which 'they'll know we are Christians…'
This article was first published at Christian Today
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