I apologize ahead of time if this post gets confusing or heretical =)
In church yesterday, Clay read from John 15. Jesus is talking to His disciples and He uses the whole vine/branches analogy to explain, in one sense, our relationship with Him. Everyone in that time would be real familiar with the analogy and the pictures that it would bring to mind.
It's a fairly logical thought progression that Jesus walks them through. God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. As healthy branches connected to the vine, we should bear fruit. How do we bear fruit (whatever the fruit may be)? By staying connected to the vine, drawing our nutrients and life-giving sap from the vine. How do we "remain" and "abide" in the vine? How do we stay connected to Jesus' life-giving fruit-producing... vine-ness? Jesus says we do that by obeying His commands. Okay. My first instinct is to switch into super-christian mode, ready to tackle the long list of do's and don't's... Jesus instead sums up the essence of the commandments and says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." Love each other. This keeps coming up lately in my thoughts, in snippets from books or articles, in sermons and conferences, and conversations... We've really done a bang-up job of distracting ourselves from what Christianity is supposed to be about. We're missing something deep. At least, that's how I feel. It isn't about being really upright and moral; it isn't about believing a specific set of proclamations. It is about loving each other. And I'm not talking about a 60's hippie love fest sorta thing. I'm talking about self-less, sacrificial, unconditional love and compassion for everyone and each one around us. The gospel of Jesus at its core is not simply, "Believe that Jesus died for your sins so He can forgive you and you can go to heaven". It seems like the gospel, the "good news" and the core commandment of what it means to follow Jesus, is to love each other. The impetus for loving each other, the source of that command is Jesus' sacrificial love for us on the cross. I don't know if I'm articulating this well... The cross enables us to live the life of love that Jesus calls us to. It is completely necessary. Crucial. But it is not the end point, like I feel most evangelical churches seem to teach and focus on. Just believing that Jesus was the Son of God and died for our sins is not enough. I don't mean we need to do something to earn our salvation... I'm saying our individualistic salvation is not the main point - we are called, saved, rescued and adopted into God's family to live like Him, to love each other and advance His kingdom of love in the midst of a spiritual kingdom of darkness and sorrow and pain and heartache. The cross puts to death in us all that separates us from the Vine, IN ORDER THAT we can become part of His movement of love, as corny as that sounds.
I am, in no way, suggesting we can earn our salvation by loving people enough. I'm simply saying that our salvation is not for our own selfish consumption. God has saved us INTO something grand, not just our own selfish little ticket out of hell. In saving us, through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, God has called us into His kingdom, to love each other. Not simply to sit back and relax now that we aren't on the boat that's going down, you know?
I'm not convinced that I explained my thoughts there well. Really, what I'm saying for my own life, is that I see a shift happening. The way the gospel of Jesus is lived out is by genuinely, selflessly loving the people around me, "one face at a time".
And, hold onto your seats, this has got me thinking about the concept of sin. We Christians typically think of sin as right/wrong, black/white, do/don't. It's a sin to get drunk. It's a sin to have sex outside of marriage. It's a sin to steal. It's a sin to murder. Et cetera. I am wondering... what if the essence of sin is anything that is unloving? In John 15, Jesus says, basically, if you love me, obey me (and I know He says that again somewhere else in the new testament...). What if that is a GOOD thing? At first glance, it sounds tyranical. If God loved me, why would He order me to do something? You know? BUT what if our view of love is so skewed, so tainted by original sin or whatever, that we are missing the very truth about what love is? If we loved each other, we would submit to each other, and serve each other and meet each others' needs willingly with affection and joy. Maybe our resistence to obeying God's commands in general is a sign that we don't actually love Him? Maybe that's what Adam and Eve's deal in the garden of Eden was rooted in - they didn't obey out of their love for God. They let something else motivate their decision.
It just seems so crazy and simple to me... Jesus' sums up the entire law and the prophets and commands, in this: "Love each other, the way you've seen Me love you." Sin, then, is being unloving towards God and the people around me.
And if we truly want to be close to God, to remain in His love and experience it and roll around in it, He says we do that by loving each other. We experience Him when we selflessly love people.
And that's all for now. That didn't feel very coherent... But I wanted to write these thoughts down. Maybe I should have broken it down into chunks... Oh well. Goodnight. Intentionally love someone tomorrow.
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