With One Another – Forever!!! (7)

 

 

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.” 1 John 5:2.

 

 

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:11 – 12.

 

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” 1 John 3:16.

 

John’s first letter is a Niagara of love, love in the Trinity and love for one another in the Trinity. It flows from the Gospel of John, including Jesus’ words in the Upper Room, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” John 13:34.

 

Does 1 John 5:2 make sense to you? Why is our love for God and our obedience to His commandments an expression of our love for one another? In other words, why do we obey God?

 

A child may say, “I obey God because I’ve been commanded to obey God.” Those are fine training wheels for the bicycle, but do we want to use training wheels for the rest of our lives? Would it not seem a bit strange to see a group of adults riding bicycles with training wheels, after having ridden bikes for decades?

 

Someone else might say, “I obey God because I love God. I am in a relationship with God and I want to please Him, to be one with Him, to live in koinonia with Him, and His commandments are not burdensome.” (See 1 Jn. 5:3). Here we have the mystery of our Nature in Christ, and as we learn to live in the Vine (John 15) and walk in the Holy Spirit (Romans 8), what was once external becomes internal (Hebrews chapters 8 and 10).

 

This also brings us to the realization that our brothers and sisters are integral participants in our relationship with the Trinity, for while we have not seen God in the flesh, we certainly see our brothers and sisters in the flesh.

 

“No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12). Note that God’s love is matured and completed in us as we love one another! We cannot love God in isolation from loving our sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ! In fact, our love for God and God’s love in us is brought to maturity in our love for one another.

 

“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20).

 

So then, back to 1 John 5:2, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.”

 

We can also say that we obey God because we love one another, just as John could say in 1 John 1:3 that to have koinonia with him and his companions would mean having koinonia with the Father and the Son. O dear friends, our lives matter to one another whether we see it or not, for we are members one of another in Christ, we are members of the Body of Christ (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4); we cannot be complete in Christ without one another.

 

Faithful parents often do things for their children and not for themselves. Spouses do things for one another and not for themselves. Friends do things for friends (true friends at least) and not for themselves. Brothers and sisters do things for one another and not for themselves.

 

Our faithfulness to our Father and Lord Jesus matters to others, whether they know it or not, whether they see it or not, for we are members of one another. Sadly, the professing church in America is imprisoned in a self-centered therapeutic prison that is all about the divine and sovereign “me, me, me.” My own personal holy wants and needs and feelings rule the day, not my Lord Jesus and certainly not those around me, not my brothers and sisters in Christ nor my neighbors.  

 

Yet, as John writes in 1 John 3:16, we are called to lay our lives down for one another – this is to be our way of life in Jesus Christ.

 

I have said more than once, that I have often been obedient to Christ not because I felt like being obedient, but because I knew it was important to others that I be obedient. My life is no longer my own; it belongs to Christ, and in Christ it belongs to His People.

 

O dear friends, our hearts are being “knit together in love” (Col. 2:2) in Jesus Christ, and having been so knit, we can be assured that our relationships will continue into eternity.

 

To be continued…