"Compelled to Love One Another"

John 13:34-35; 1 Cor.13

40 Days of Community, week 1

Good morning! Today we are finishing the first week of our 40 Days of Community campaign, and if you have been reading the daily devotions, I hope that you are beginning to get a sense of what we will be focusing on for the next five weeks. We want our congregation to become a community of like-minded believers, loving God, and working together to share God’s love with one another, our community, and our world. We’ll find that we do all things better together.

That’s what 40 Days of Community is all about. In the next few weeks we’ll be looking at how we are commissioned to reach out together, chosen to fellowship together, connected to grow together, called to serve together, and created to worship together. However, as you read this past week in your devotions, it all begins with this: We are compelled to love God’s family. Jesus said in John 13:34-35, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." Let us pray...

What joy to love the saints above when I get home to glory. To love below, the saints I know, well, that’s another story! To love mankind I always find to be a simple task. To have love for the man next door is more than one should ask! Love’s full and free when two agree; it isn’t hard at all. But easy it ain’t to love the saint who drives me up the wall! When someone’s kind, and has Christ’s mind, I love him with great ease. But one who hurts with words he blurts, don’t make me love him, please! If no one needs my loving deeds, I love unstintingly. But hungry saints with real complaints should stay away from me! But Jesus said, to those He led, "By this all will discover That you are Mine. This is the sign - that you love one another."

Friends, before we can ever work effectively together as a church, we must learn to love one another. It isn’t always easy, but love is the starting point for everything we do together. We read in 1 John 3:23, "And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us." God commands that we love each other. It’s not optional. Loving one another is a command.

Paul stressed the importance of this in 1 Cor.13:1-3: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

Let me pull out of this a few lessons for our church. First, if we don’t love one another, nothing we say will matter. If we could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but we didn’t love others, we would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a claiming symbol (vs.1). Words without love are just empty noise. It doesn’t matter how well we talk the talk; if we don’t love one another nothing we say will matter. Second, if we don’t love one another, nothing we know or believe will matter. We may have the gift of prophecy. We may understand all the secret things of God. We may have all knowledge. We may have a faith so strong we can speak to mountains and make them move, but if we don’t have love, we are nothing (vs.2). We may be right on doctrinally, we may know exactly what we believe, we may love to have Bible studies to learn even more, but if we don’t love one another, all that we know will be worthless. It really won’t matter. What we need to show the world is not more knowledge; it is more love. The starting point is to love one another.

Third, if we don't love one another, nothing we do will matter. No matter how much we give to the poor, no matter how sacrificial we are, if we don’t do it with love we will gain nothing (vs.3). We can be involved with the most wonderful ministries, we can give all that we can to help others, but if we don’t love one another, it won’t matter.

Let me personalize 1 Cor.13 like this: I can have the eloquence of an orator, the knowledge of a genius, the faith of a miracle worker, the generosity of a philanthropist, the achievements of a superstar, but if I don’t have love in my heart, it is worth nothing. What matters is that we love God and that we love one another.

Loving one another, then, is a commandment. We should understand, however, that loving one another is also a conduct. It’s an action. Love is something we do. The Bible says in 1 John 3:18, "Let us stop just saying we love people. Let us really love them and show it by our actions." Love is more than just talk. It’s more than just a sentimental feeling or a nice Hallmark card. Love is something we do.

If loving one another is something we must do, the local church is the arena where it must happen. In practical, every-day ways we should be looking for ways to love one another. It may mean that we look for ways to help someone in need, even if it is inconvenient. Loving one another may mean that we are willing to get involved with their lives, or that we will overlook unkind remarks, or that we will hold each other accountable as we grow together.

We call this "being family." Paul said in Romans 12:10, "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love," or as one version puts it, "Be devoted to one another as a loving family." We are to love one another like brothers and sisters. I hope that this week you are beginning to get a vision of our church as a real family of God’s people, a place where we are accepted, supported, and challenged to fully live out the purposes of our lives.

In our church vision statement, we say that we want to become a growing, committed, family of believers. What exactly do we mean by that? May I suggest that as a "family" we ought to show respect and care for all generations. As a family we should love one another unconditionally. We should want the best for one another and be willing to help one another achieve it. As a family we should be patient and long-suffering with one another. Since we are in this relationship for the long haul, we should want to be a group that eats, plays, works, and grows together. We should work to support one another through all the joys and sorrows of life, from birth to death and in between. As a family of God who truly loves one another, we should be willing to sacrifice for one another and to work to provide warmth, security, a sense of belonging, identity, shelter, sustenance, and for each member. As a family of believers, we should rely on the things that we have in common. We are all children of God, adopted through grace, saved through faith. Because we love God together, we should work together to share God’s love, forgiveness, and grace with others. All of that will happen when we are united by a love for one another that is stronger than anything that would try to separate us.

Finally, loving one another is a commitment. Listen again to John 13:34-35: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Just as Jesus was committed to us, so we must be committed to one another. We do that by loving one another. Friends, if you decide to get onboard with 40 Days of Community, you’ll find that it begins by making a commitment to love one another deeply.

You only learn to love one another in the context of community. You’ve got to be committed to some other people if you’re ever going to learn to be a loving person. That is one of the reasons why joining one of our Community Groups is so important. As you get to know one another, as you help one another in a small group, as you sometimes just put up with each other, you will learn how to love one another. It’s put you in a group who are not part of your family, who may be totally different from you, and you have to learn to get close to them. That’s how you learn to love one another.

1 Cor.13 ends with these words: "And now these three qualities remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." Why is love the greatest? Because it is the one that is going to last forever. When you get to heaven, you’re not going to need faith, because you’re going to be in the presence of God. You’re not going to need hope, because all your needs will be met. But you will still need love, because heaven is filled with love. That’s because God is love. Since love is going to last forever, let’s make a commitment to practice it now, by being a congregation that truly loves one another.