The Apostle John says that God’s love is never comfortable (abiding) shut up in our hearts (1 John 3:17). What God’s love always wants to do is mature (have its end) by overflowing into love for others (1 John 4:11-16).

It seems there are two benefits of not suppressing His love within us.

First, our love for one another provides seeable proof of the unseeable God we serve (11-12). This is an amazing and wonderful possibility for any follower of Jesus. No one has seen God at any time, but when we love one another with His love, people see His presence on earth! This is exactly what Jesus predicted in John 13:34: They will know you are my disciples by your love.

Second, as others are seeing God’s presence in our love for one another, the Spirit is confirming His pleasure with the sure understanding that God is abiding in us (13-16).

The Priority of God’s Heart

Picture your church on a Sunday morning and all the “things” and “stuff” we focus on to attract others to Christ and prove to doubters that God exists: facilities, music, preaching, programs, bulletins, friendliness….

God’s heart is crying out for a different priority—love one another!

“Love one another,” John says, “and everyone watching will know that God is real. It is the only way they will ever “see” Christ here on earth until He shows up.”

That’s my prayer for you, for me, and for the precious Bride of Christ.

If you agree, you may want to tell your Father right now:

Father, please mature your love in me so that my life, my family, my church provides the most convincing evidence possible to a watching world that you are—my love for other Christians. Help me, please, to love others with the love you have loved me.

Looking for a friend?

If you’re looking for that friendship that is totally fulfilling, you need to know that you won’t find it this side of heaven.

On the other side of that barrier is the only One who will not disappoint you, the only One who is always thinking about you and never of Himself, the only One who doesn’t need you.

His name is Jesus.

Friendship:

Since no one thinks about you much,

Unless they need you.

Relate deeply to Jesus;

Expect Him alone to meet your deepest needs.

Question: How do you sometimes put pressure on your friends to “be Jesus” for you?

Like the Lonely Jesus

I know the song doesn’t go that way, but it helps me when I think about friendship. Jesus was the leader, the Master, the One they all looked to. He always met their needs, cared for them, answered their questions. He was the friend of sinners; they were the sinners who needed a friend.

The Lonely Jesus

The one time when Jesus needed their friendship in the garden, they fell asleep. How could they be so insensitive? So self-centered? So uncaring? So weak?

How could they not be? When a friendship is defined by what one friend is always doing for the others, that’s just the way it is.

Strong people know this. Leaders know this.

Friendships for them are about  other people, not about them.

It’s lonely. Most of the time you walk alone, except for the One who’s always your Friend.

His name is Jesus.

The Text

I’m fascinated by God’s timing; always have been.

A few years ago my study of Mark brought me to chapter 9:30-37, a fascinating conversation between Jesus and His disciples concerning greatness. As they passed through Galilee, Jesus taught them again concerning His impending death and resurrection. This time He added the discouraging news that all of this will happen because someone will betray Him. They didn’t understand; it was just too much for them, and they were afraid to ask Him to explain further.

What they did understand were the prophecies that someday Messiah would rule and reign over His Kingdom on earth. Still clinging to their insistence that Jesus should be that Messiah—the ruling and reigning one, rather than the Messiah He was telling them He was—the One who would first suffer, die, and then rise from the dead, they did what everyone does when they are around someone they think has power and status: They postured for position in His Kingdom. They were about to learn Jesus’ definition of greatness—His radical, counterculture, counter-flesh, measure of greatness in His Kingdom: If you follow Jesus, He will ask you to serve everyone—especially the weak.

It’s an upside-down measure of greatness for most people. It’s not the number of people who serve you that matters to Jesus; it’s the number of people you serve.

The Life

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We Can’t Know What We Don’t Know!

Many years ago Judy and I were facing our most traumatic and hurtful trial of faith. Our world as we knew it was falling apart, and there was nothing we could do to put the pieces of our lives back together again.

Kevin Butcher and his wife Carla helped us through with words of encouragement, counsel, and their usual warm friendship. As two of our closest friends who understand the challenges and heartaches of local church ministry, their support comforted us greatly.

Four years later, Kevin and Carla faced the exact same crisis, the exact same heartache in their own church. I’ll never forget Kevin’s words to me in the middle of his own battle, “Ed, I never knew. I just didn’t understand. I wish I could have helped you more, but now that I’m going through it myself, I get it. There’s so much more I should have said, so much more I could have done.”

I assured my friend that he had not failed us in any way and reminded him of a truth we often have to rehearse: “I can’t know what I don’t know.” There was no way Kevin could have drawn wisdom from an experience he had never known personally.

Jesus Knows!

When I hung up the phone, I thought of Hebrews 4:14-16 and immediately thanked the Lord Jesus for this precious promise. Because of His willingness to come to earth and to experience life as a man, He now sits in heaven with personal knowledge of what it feels like to be me. Every heartache, every trial and even every temptation.

Kevin’s friendship means so much to me. But there are times when even he has to say, “I just didn’t understand all that you were going through. I couldn’t know how you felt, how terrible it was, how much it hurt or how alone you must have been.”

But there is another Friend. A friend of sinners, who sits at the right hand of the Father. His name is Jesus, and I will never hear Him say, “I just didn’t understand.”

“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16).

My organizational communication training was decidedly non-Christian. As a young man I cut my leadership teeth as a squad leader on an elite firefighting crew for the U. S. Forest Service, the Fulton Hotshots. After college, I served as an officer in the United States Army in various leadership positions in a tank battalion. The communication was often crass, even profane, as you might imagine.

What it was not was unclear, vague, or mysterious. Firemen and soldiers have a refreshingly distinct way of telling you exactly what they think about you or the organization. They tell you…exactly what they mean!

What Do Christians Learn to Tell You?

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“Those who seemed to be something added nothing to me, gave me the right hand of fellowship, [and] desired only that we should remember the poor.”

(Selected from Galatians 2:6-10).

In 49 AD a delegation of Judean religious teachers came to the predominately Gentile church at Syrian Antioch and started teaching the Christians that those who were not circumcised as followers of the Law of Moses could not be saved from their sin by simple belief in Jesus (Acts 15:1). They were part of a conspiracy to undermine the Gospel of grace sending emissaries of the lie to the daughter churches planted by the church at Antioch (Acts 15:23).

The most vulnerable to the lie were the fledgling assemblies of the Roman province of Galatia. Paul and Barnabas had planted these churches on their first missionary journey (Acts 13-14). One historian describes the inhabitants of Galatia: “Fickleness is the term used to express their temperament. Their religious tendencies were marked by passion, ritualism, and mysticism.” (Lightfoot, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians)

Paul’s response is swift and strong. He will not tolerate this false gospel—that works are essential to salvation—to take root in the lives of these new Christians and churches. On the eve of the Jerusalem Council, Paul writes his most passionate letter, reminding the church of the real basis of our salvation.

In the first section of the epistle proper (1:11-2:21) Paul defends his apostleship. He begins by vindicating his gospel. The source of the gospel he taught was divine, not human. Paul received his gospel and the commission to preach it directly from the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus (1:11-24). When Paul did consult with the apostles fourteen years into his ministry (2:1-10), they affirmed his refusal to circumcise Titus to make Judaizing legalists happy because that would have undermined the Gentiles’ understanding of the gospel. They added nothing to his gospel, but they did heartily endorse his ministry, as long as he didn’t forget the poor:

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The phone rings and it is a Christian friend. He or she is upset because the leaders of the church chose someone else to lead a ministry team they wanted to lead. As you listen to the angry voice, something causes you to become uncomfortable. This just doesn’t feel right; your stomach hurts and you want to say something. Then, not wanting to be awkward or judgmental, you decide, “They just need to vent a little.”

Read 1 John 3:10-15 to discover what God thinks of their spiritual envy!

3 Reasons Spiritual Envy is Wrong

In vv 11-13 John gives us three biblical reasons why spiritual envy that leads to unloving anger and hatred of other believers is not in any way an expression of righteousness. Three reasons we can know with absolute certainty that not loving a fellow Christian is never from God

1. Not loving one another breaks Jesus’ foremost commandment (11; 2:3-11; John 13:34).
2. The most famous example of brother-to-brother hatred, Cain’s murder of Abel, was the devil causing spiritual envy between brothers (12).
3. The world, Satan’s evil world system, hates Christians (13; 2:15-17; John 15:18-19).

Questions: Where do you struggle with spiritual envy? Who is that person you feel is being exalted instead of you, and it makes you envious?

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Really?

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