Do Christians stand alone?

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:1-11).

Suppose you are out driving one Sunday morning, when you come upon an unusual sight. Next to the road, there is a neatly tended green lawn, a paved parking lot, a row of trees, and a small cemetery just beyond. In the middle of the lawn, there is a large concrete slab, and all along each side of that slab stand rows of 2 by 4s, spaced 16 inches apart from each other. What is unusual is that these 2 by 4s are not connected to each other in any way—no base boards, no window or door sills, no beams to support any rafters. Even odder is that you see people seated on folding chairs inside the enclosure—and since there is a table with a cross and a speaker’s podium in front of them, it appears as if they are holding a worship service.

Curious, you stop and wait for the service to end. When the people start to leave, you ask one of them how long it will be before their church building will be finished. To your surprise, you are told that the church building has been finished for 15 years now; there are no plans for any further construction. You get back in your car and drive away confused; how can anyone worship in a building where nothing is connected together to protect from wind and rain and snow and cold? What are these people thinking?

And yet, many Christians participate in congregational life as if they were part of such a church. To illustrate what I mean, consider the words of Paul found in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 19-22: You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. Paul describes Jesus’ teachings, and the faithful witness of men of God who wrote the Bible, as the foundation upon which the Church on earth is built. Each Christian, then, serves as part of the building—some are floor joists, some are rafters; some are shingles, some are doorframes; some are siding, some are windows. The point is, every Christian is a part of the church building.

How can a building keep out the cold or stray animals if its pieces are not connected together? The answer, of course, is that it cannot. Siding needs 2 by 4s to be nailed to; shingles need plywood, which in return requires rafters. The parts of a building must be connected to the foundation or the structure will collapse, but the parts must also be connected to each other or the resulting building will not offer any better protection from the storms of the world than an old barn that has collapsed due to neglect.

Each of us is a part of the building called the Church. Each of us must be connected to the rest, or we fail to provide a place of shelter from the troubles of the world. In today’s Epistle lesson John tells us, Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. The strength of a structure comes from the foundation, and Jesus is our foundation; Isaiah 33:6 says, He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge. But the pieces of the structure that is built on that foundation must be assembled well, or snow will drift in when the wind comes up, and rats will sneak in through boards that are not tightly secured together. The strength that holds the pieces of the church together are the bonds of love.

Love is all about sacrifice. Love is taking actions for others at your own expense. Love is putting another person’s needs ahead of your own. When a Christian loves his fellow church members, that love calls for many kinds of sacrifice. Perhaps the easiest one is the sacrifice of money. When you love a Christian who is living in poverty, you give her gifts of food, of warm clothing, of transportation to medical appointments if her car is not working. When you are concerned about the faith of those who are going through hard times, one way to provide for their spiritual care is through your offerings that support the ministry of God’s Word to them through the church. Donating material things is relatively easy, because most of us can find something extra to share for the good of others.

A little harder is the sacrifice of time. Our lives are so hectic, trying to get everything done. But if you really assessed how important these activities are, how would they stack up against the inconvenience of love? How important is time spent with your son before bed, reading him a Bible story and listening to his prayers? How important is time spent making sure that your daughter and her good friend have a dependable ride to Sunday School? After all, Jesus said: "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it" (Luke 18:16-17).

A little more difficult is sacrificing the comfort of security. When Jesus ascended into heaven, His final command to us was, "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20). Yet many of us find this a difficult thing to do. We like to be "silent" Christians, people who believe but never speak of their faith outside of church. But how do we make disciples out of others, when we never speak about Jesus and the wonders He has worked in our lives? How do we teach others to obey His commands, when we refuse to speak against abortion or homosexuality or sex outside of marriage? What is the price of our keeping silent, to protect ourselves from ridicule?

Jesus said, "This is My command: Love each other" (John 13:34). But this command to sacrifice seems so hard to carry out; there are times when being a follower of Christ can make us feel very uncomfortable. When such fears come, we must look to Jesus for strength. Jesus did not lavish money on Himself; He was born to a lower middle-class family, and when He took up His ministry as an adult, He depended on the donations of believers to feed Himself and His disciples. Jesus did not even carry the group’s moneybag, entrusting it to another instead.

Nor did Jesus skimp on giving anyone His time. When Jesus wasn’t sleeping, He filled His hours with two activities—either He was working with people, freeing their bodies from defect and disease, and freeing their souls from ignorance of God and the guilt of sin; or He was praying to God for the strength to continue in His work among us until all our sins were paid for on the tree of death, the cross. Jesus spent all His time either strengthening Himself spiritually, or using that strength to care for others spiritually.

And Jesus was bold in His witness to the will of God. Jesus won many believers through His Words, but He also made many enemies. Jesus knew that standing up for God publicly would eventually result in persecution, death threats, and finally execution on the cross, but Jesus would not be intimidated into silence. He named sin for what it was wherever He came across it, but He always spoke with loving purpose; He always tried to draw men away from their love of sin and show them that to live in the love of God leads to a better existance, now as well as after death.

Jesus loved sacrificially, and it resulted in His death. He told His disciples, Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). This is exactly what Jesus did for us. Jesus died because He asked God our Father to divert the punishment for our sins from us to our Savior, and that punishment resulted in His grave. But Jesus was willing to sacrifice His life because it was the only way to save us from God’s fierce anger at our sins, and Jesus loves us too much to hesitate in any way from protecting us.

Jesus rose from the dead so that He could be our living cornerstone, the foursquare and solid foundation upon which we can build new lives, freed from the domination of sin. But our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8); so our Lord builds us together into a solid structure where we may find protection, the Church on earth. Jesus is our sure foundation, and He, the carpenter’s son, uses those skills to continue building His church with each new believer that enters the faith through the washing of Baptism. When Jesus nails us together through the bonds of love, we think of the nails driven through His hands and feet, nails that poured our His lifeblood for the washing away of our sins on the cross. Out of love, Jesus shed blood through being nailed to unite us together under His leadership; how can we balk at being nailed to each other in the mutual self-sacrifice of love by the Master Carpenter?

When you give unselfishly to others, there is often the nagging fear that eventually such giving might suck you dry. But we need never fear such a consequence, because we are being built together with others who are also sacrificing in love; when we begin to weaken in our giving to others, there are brothers and sisters in the faith at our side who Jesus has built into His church to give to us, to refresh us, to strengthen us, encourage us, and support us. We are not brought into the church as independent people; we are made interdependent on each other to keep the wind out and the wolves at bay.

Of course none of us are perfect, and our inner sin causes us to weaken in our connections of love and let the wind and rain find a way in to chill and sicken us. But when we fail to love each other as we should, we have the security of Jesus’ promise to forgive us, to renew us, and to make our commitment of love to each other strong once more. John writes, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). With our sins forgiven, we can share that forgiveness with each other and grow stronger in the bond of committed, sacrificing love. Forgiveness is love in action; it is what keeps us united together. And Jesus has promised that through His love, His Church will stand secure; He said the gates of Hades will not overcome it (Matthew 16:18).

Our Lord has made you a living piece of His Church. He has called you to faith and joined you with others to support your fellow Christians through the sharing of your material goods, the investment of your time, and the words of your mouth that condemn sin for what it is, while inviting sinners to find everlasting peace with God through His Son Jesus in the sanctuary of God's house. May the Lord make you a dependable member of His body the Church, that you may love sacrificially and in this way show the love of Christ to those who feel that they are all alone with their pain.