By David ReayTuesday 9 Jun 2020LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” (NLT)
A church where members are at war with another is a church to avoid. There will always be disagreements and frustrations and all sorts of imperfections in any church, but if there is not also a sustained attempt to go on loving one another, then our witness is fatally compromised.
This is so, because a church preoccupied with internal tensions and disagreements will have no time or energy or motivation in reaching out to the wider world. Who would want to invite genuine seekers into a church engaged in ecclesiastical civil war?
It is also so because those outside the church can sniff out hypocrisy and failures in genuine love. With all the stresses of everyday life pressing on them, who is going to sign up for attending a church which simply adds another layer of stress?
Jesus’ point here is not that we are not Christians if we fail to love each other. Rather his point is that the watching world has the right to conclude we are not. We can protest all we like that this is unfair, but it is the reality. How we act and speak within our churches shapes our witness to those outside our churches. We can talk all we like about the love of God but if we are not somehow seeking to imitate it, it is just talk.
Blessings
David