Loving the Family of God

In my last article, I pointed to Jesus's claim that loving God with all of our heart, soul, and mind is the most important commandment, but what does that look like in real life? Well another scripture points us to one way that people would know that we love God, 1 John 4:21 says, "And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." So showing love for our brother is one primary way that you love God well. But then we have to ask, who is my brother?

Jesus gives us a more clear definition in John 13:34-35 saying, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Here we learned that our brothers are fellow disciples of Jesus, so we can show our love for God by loving fellow Christians.

Why does God highlight the importance of loving brothers and sisters in the Lord? Ultimately it is because when we become Christians we are adopted into a new eternal family of God, and these people who also know and love Jesus will spend eternity with us. If we cannot learn to love those people with whom we have an eternal connection, then how could we expect to love anyone else? Furthermore, because the offer of salvation is open to anyone, the family of God is going to include lots of different types of people, many of whom may not share our interests and some of whom may rub us the wrong way. Just like in a natural family, we need to learn to love those people regardless of our differences.

This starts in our local churches, where we should make sincere efforts to take care of one another, to reconcile disputes, and to reach out to new people who join us so that they can feel welcomed. But it goes beyond the local church and includes all believers. Locally in Oakland we had a wonderful fellowship of churches, where we often join together in joint ministries that highlight our unity in Christ.

We also show God's universal love by loving those Christians from all cultures from all around the world. The picture of all the peoples of the world worshipping around the throne of God in Revelation 7:9 is something that we can start to live out now by recognizing our kinship with and love for all peoples.

By loving all of God's people we learn to break down barriers in our hearts. We don't just love those people that are easy to love, rather we even learn to deepen our understanding of love by reaching out to those who are hard to love. Furthermore, by loving those who are different from us, we break down barriers between cultures and nations and show that God's love is for everyone.

Sometimes in the past the church has been known as a place of judgment and infighting. Rather than the world seeing a safe place where people can come and find love, they experience it as a harsh place. Therefore, if we can learn to love the whole family of God well, others outside of the family will desire to get to know Him and experience His love as well.