Each of us will one day give an account not only for what we do individually with what God has entrusted to us, but, I’m convinced, also for what we do to work together with other members of the body we are connected to, for what we do to contribute to their growth, and for what we do to maintain the unity of our local church body.
In other words, the reward I will receive from Jesus doesn’t just hinge on my being an individual disciple, but on my being an individual member of his body, contributing to the whole and building others up. This, the power of our relationships, is intrinsically part of both the mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
By “power” I mean an internal dynamic or force at work in us and through us. Our relationships, therefore, are an internal dynamic and force at work in the church, either fortifying it or weakening it. The source of that power is, I believe, in the words of Jesus, “love”. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)
To be fortified, then, we must always bring back to our mind that the standard of our love for one another is not our love for each other, but Jesus’ love for us (John 13:34). If the standard of our love for one another were the love we expected in return, every single one of us would always fall short. None of us are capable of bearing up under the weight of loving unconditionally. And, yet, we all want that kind of love.
It is only when I look and see the unconditional love that Jesus had for me—“that he loved me and gave himself for me,” (Galatians 2:20) “that he died for the ungodly…while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:6, 8)—that I see the poverty and weakness of my love compared to the riches and power of his. In so doing my heart is enlarged and my love is enriched and empowered.
To be fortified we must also always keep before our minds that when Jesus says that God so loved the world (John 3:16), he’s talking about a world that is marred and scarred by sin. As sinners we are hideous, as it were, in the sight of God, and yet God loved us still. No, it’s not that we were lovely, lovable, easy to love. It’s that we were unlovely, unlovable, haters and enemies of God. The measure of God’s love for us, then, wasn’t our love for him. Rather, the measure of God’s love for us is the measure of his love for his Son.
The love of the Father for the Son is without measure. No height or width or depth could contain it. No power or might or authority could conquer it. No created thing in heaven or on earth or below could express it. And God so loved the world: he gave his one and only Son. In the giving of Jesus for the world we see the most simple, clear, concise, full, and pure expression and demonstration of God’s love for us.
The heart of the gospel is not that God is love (1 John 4:16). The heart of the gospel is that God gave his son. If we take away the cross, we rip the heart right out of God’s love. But if we embrace the cross, our hearts are transformed and we are “born again” with a new kind of love for God and for others. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).