When someone hurts my children, I take that personally, and I can’t just pretend like it’s no big deal. To put it another way, I can’t be good friends with someone who isn’t good to my children. If you want to be close to me, you have to treat my children well because I love them dearly.
According to the Bible, your relationship with God contains that very same principle. As God’s child, if you want to have a close, friendly bond with him, you must show love to your brothers and sisters in Christ. The way you treat them will either help you get close to God or it will hinder you from doing so. In fact, as we’ll learn today, we cannot truly say that we love God well if we do not love his children.
This truth may rub you the wrong way if you are inclined to think of your relationship with God as an intensely personal sort of thing. It can be tempting to view our intimacy with God as being the sum total of nothing more than how much time we spend in prayer and how much time we spend in Bible study. If that’s true, then our relationships with other people don’t even factor into that equation.
But the Bible forces us to factor other people into our relationship with God. Your relationship with the Lord certainly does have its personal elements, but what I hope you will see from God’s Word today is that it also has its interpersonal elements.
Allow me to clarify one thing before we begin to look at some passages together. Some people have interpreted these passages as tests that you can use to measure whether or not you are truly born again. I do not interpret these passages in that way, and I would encourage you not to do so either. I think that interpretive approach has too many theological problems to be a good interpretation. Rather, I think these passages help me as a born-again person to measure whether I am walking in close friendship with the Lord or not. I would encourage you to keep these thoughts in mind as we proceed.
To Love God, You Must Love Others
The Apostle John tells us in his characteristically blunt fashion in 1 John 4:20-21: “If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
To John, the issue is cut and dry – if you think you’re loving God well but you hate your brother in Christ, you’re lying! You may not be trying to deceive yourself or anyone else, but that is the reality because loving your brother is part of what it means to love God. In the same way that staying faithful to your spouse is part of what it means to love them, loving your Christian family is part of what it means to love God.
Now why does John place so much emphasis on sight and love? I think it’s because for John, love is truly expressed through the tangible sacrifices that we make for each other. I show love to you when I make a tangible sacrifice to meet the needs that I can see that you have. Notice what the Apostle wrote back in 3:16-18: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
Also, the fact that we are physically together gives me extra motivation to love you. We’ve all heard that old phrase, “Out of sight, out of mind.” It’s easy to forget to think about someone if you don’t see them. But since I see you often, I can see it in your face when you’re sad about something, or I can see it when you might be in need of something that is necessary for life. The fact that I can see your needs should tug at my heartstrings and draw out the love that I am supposed to show to you.
So I simply cannot claim that I am loving God well if I am not loving you well. This is easy to understand by comparison with our biological families. If I am causing pain and anguish for my siblings, how could I say, “I’m being a great child toward my parents?” That claim doesn’t fly with our biological families, and it doesn’t fly in the family of God either.
So we must love each other, and also…
We Must Forgive Each Other
When we took a look at The Lord’s Prayer two weeks ago, we read these words from the Lord Jesus: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matthew 6:14-15).”
In our day and age of cell phones, we’ve all had the experience of having poor reception. Perhaps we’re in an area with a weak signal, or something else might be causing interference. Whatever it is, when someone tries to get in touch with us, their call doesn’t get through because we have poor reception.
Well, according to Christ, unforgiveness in my heart causes my prayer to have poor reception with God, so to speak. My behavior toward you has created a barrier in my interaction with God. It’s not enough for me to just faithfully follow my Bible reading plan or faithfully work through my prayer list. Until I correct my behavior toward you, that barrier will remain in my relationship with God.
We saw the same kind of idea a few months ago when we were studying 1 Peter. In his instructions to husbands, Peter wrote this: “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered (1 Peter 3:7).”
So from these passages, it should be clear – your relationship with God is not just a private matter between you and the Lord. Certainly, some parts of it are, but the way that you behave toward other people also factors into that relationship and affects the degree to which you enjoy a close friendship with God.
So if we want to have a good relationship with the Lord, we must also have good relationships with other people by loving them and forgiving them when need be. When we will do that, we will find not only a greater unity with the Lord, but a greater unity with each other as well, and that unity will serve as a powerful testimony to the world that the message we proclaim about Jesus is true.
The Power of Unity for Our Proclamation of Truth
Did you know that Jesus literally prayed for you and me on the night before he died? Christians who weren’t even alive yet at that time – he had us on the mind, and he prayed for us. Notice what he said in John 17:20-23: “I do not ask for these only [meaning the 11 disciples, minus Judas], but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” That’s you and me and all believers who have not seen Jesus in the flesh but have believed in him through the apostles’ testimony in the Bible.
And what was his desire for us on that night? “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.” Jesus prayed that we would have unity – the same kind of unity of mind, desire, and purpose that he has with God the Father.
And why did he desire that unity for us? What purpose would such unity accomplish? “So that the world may believe that you have sent me.” When we live in unity, our fellowship has the power to convince people that Jesus truly is the son of God, sent into this world to save mankind.
Can people learn that by reading about Jesus in the Bible? Certainly they can, but sadly, people have all sorts of ingenious ways of evading the plain truth that they read from these pages. But when they see us living in love, with a unity that our world has never achieved, they will not be able to deny that Jesus has the power to change the hearts of mankind, and the only way that he could have such power is if he is the Son of God.
Jesus continued his prayer for us: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” How will we ever convince the world that we have been saved by a supernatural love if we cannot get along with each other? If they see us bickering and fighting with each other, why would they ever believe that we represent the God who is love itself?
But if we show them godly unity and love, we give tangible proof of the truthfulness of the Gospel message that we proclaim. So when we love each other, not only do we enjoy close friendship with God, not only do we enjoy close friendship with each other, but we also draw others into the same kind of relationship with God that we enjoy. For we who have received the love of God, should we desire anything less than to see others enjoy that love as well? May we display the unifying power of God’s love in our lives today!