With One Another – Forever!!! (8)

 

 

From eternity past, hidden in God, was the Father’s eternal purpose to bring about a family through His Son Jesus Christ, that He might be the “Firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:10 – 11). This is One Family, not two – for the middle wall of partition has been broken down once and for all (Eph. 2:11 – 3:13; 4:1 - 16) (why do some of us attempt to rebuild this wall?).

 

Paul writes that “the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things: so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to rulers and the authorities in the heavenlies. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord…” (Eph. 3:9 – 11). The outworking of this is “…one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6) and a Body in which we need each other to grow and live and “grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ” (Eph. 4:15).

 

Are we to think that having come to know one another in the deep eternal purposes of God on this earth, that we shall not know one another in our fulness in Christ in the ages to come? Are we to think that the holy bonds of friendship, forged in the vicissitudes of this challenging and often painful life, shall not continue in greater glory and thanksgiving in the ages to come? It is in these very relationships within our Father’s Family that the universe beholds the immeasurable glory of the Atonement and the reconciliation which Jesus Christ has wrought – for in being reconciled to God in Christ we are reconciled to one another and no longer see and understand one another “according to the flesh” (2 Cor. 5:14 – 21).

 

When Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13), He calls us into a holy way of life with one another in Him – it is a tragedy that we don’t see this – and all our religious glitz and glitter and self-help preaching and feel – good teaching can’t make up for our failure to obey His call to love one another as He loves us.

 

One of the first things I learned when I began pastoring, much to my surprise, was that people who have gone to church for years do not really know each other. Sitting in a pew together, being in the same Sunday school class, belonging to a men’s or women’s group, does not mean that we really know one another.

 

As, by God’s grace, we began home groups, as we introduced retreats, as our church leadership meetings became more about Jesus (I hope) than “business,” people began to discover one another. Folks who had been sitting in church together for decades learned things about each other, important things, that they never knew – I’m talking about joys and sorrows, I’m speaking of character, hopes and fears and challenges and giftings. And friendships began to take hold, while in other cases friendships deepened; koinonia in Jesus Christ sprang forth in glory, streams of living water flowed in what had been dry and thirsty lands.

 

I heard, “I never knew,” from folks who were discovering the joy of friendship in Jesus Christ, the joy of relationship in the Body of Christ.

 

O dear friends, God has given us treasure in one another. The Scriptures reach a glorious crescendo in the portrayal of this treasure in Revelation chapters 21 and 22 – for we are the New Jerusalem with the Father and the Lamb at its very heart – with the Light of God and the River of Life and the Tree of Life.

 

What glorious delight we have to look forward to; in the Father, in the Son, in the Holy Spirit…and most assuredly, most certainly…in one another.

 

Amen.