Many times and in many ways, we have been taught the “one anothers” of Scripture. Every time we focus on one or two and their biblical passages and seek to understand how that might apply to our lives. Whether it be to love each other, be at peace with one another, or to bear one anothers burdens, we listen, we read, and we try to apply the principle to our daily interactions. My question is this:
Are we applying the one anothers to our lives and living them out with people (a common question asked), or are we, as the body, applying them with each other for the purpose of displaying God, glorifying him, and making his name known?
Me to you, and you to me, together; seeking to fill the purpose Scripture calls us to obey for. That is, to make God’s name known, to bring glory to him, and to display him to the world. I think more often than not, we apply these things to our individual lives, and there is good in that, but we are missing the point. They are called one anothers for a reason.
I was talking with a friend of mine, Kyle, the other night about life and our need for guidance in it. We agreed that most Christians do try to seek God’s guidance in their lives, and even do this in the most powerful way, prayer. But as we discussed the different aspects of a Christian’s search for guidance, we noticed that more often than not, we pray for guidance in the things we are already doing or seeking after. Our prayers go something like this: “God, money is tight right now but you seem to have given me an opportunity to do this or that (read, ‘you have shown me personally something to do that has not been shown to everyone else yet). God I need your guidance, whether I should go here or here, and I need your provision to do so. Please allow me to listen to your Spirit’s guidance.” Kyle and I mused for a second at how selfish we pray this, with our own ends in mind, our own plans to fulfill our lives and do it in a God glorifying way. It is as though we tack God on the side of our lives. We realized that there is already a purpose we are here for, there is already a direction we are to head. That direction is the mission. The mission of God to display his glory, to make his name known, bringing salvation and eternal hope by the Gospel, the Story of God. Kyle and I both prayed, noting the difference between praying with ourselves in mind, and praying with mission in mind. Our pursuit of guidance will never, and ought never be the same.
With the one anothers, it is a similar story. We turn them into a checklist to make sure we are ‘good’ Christians. We lose sight of the fact that there is not only a purpose we do them for, and an extremely specific way we ought to go about doing them.
John 13:31-35 is the ‘New Commandment’ passage. This is the one that says we should love one another as he loved us, and by that all people will know that we are his disciples. What we normally don’t notice is the beginning of the passage. “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.” Jesus goes on to say that we can’t follow him to where he is going, but he gives us the commandment as a means of fulfilling the end that he established in the first two verses. We love one another, as Christ loved us (which is deep in and of itself) and all the people will know that Christ was legitimate, and that we are his disciples, and that by fellowship with us, together, we have fellowship with God, bringing glory to him. 1 John 1:1-3, 4:7-21 aids in this understanding, explaining that as we love one another, we abide in God and him in us (corporately) thereby bring him glory. By loving one another, not only do we display him but he abides in us, and we glorify him, making his name known by displaying his love.
A common response to this that I have had is one of obligation. I tend to think that my obligation as a Christian is to love my brothers and by that, God does his own thing. I proceed to apply the principle by making sure I am giving a genuine concern to the people I talk to as I leave the service, I go home and try to make sure I am loving everyone. I believe and firmly commit to you, that this application is a few marks lower than complete. We are not to individually and superficially love our Christian brothers and sisters, not allowing for intimate relationship because of fear of confrontation by keeping our relationships on the surface.
Even still, were I to develop a deeper relationship with a few and confess to them my sins, I have only made my ‘12′, neglecting the fact that I am supposed to live life daily, all day as a part of the body. We want to be like Christ and we forget that he lived his life on earth 24 hours a day with his disciples, and we give the Body a measly 3 hours Sunday morning, with an optional extra credit lunch session. The commandment is not a submission to make ourselves a little vulnerable and then to pat ourselves on the back. The commandment is for us to leave our ‘thrones’ and descend to the earth below and live life together. To live daily life together daily, to share not only the deepest part of ourselves with each other but to wrap our lives around the Body, not the Body around our lives.
Time for a little story. Over a year ago, I went to Vietnam with a team of 8 others to teach English to High School kids. We spent two weeks in training, spending all day together, learning how to teach, communicate, and love one another as a team. When we got to Vietnam we started teaching almost immediately and were teaching 6 days a week. We were 9 American college students in a very foreign country and we had to rely on each other to survive, encouraging each other in our mission, our work, reminding each other of the importance of our work and that as we suffered from not being in our home, we would be home one day and for now, had work to do. We ate together, we prayed together, we studied together, we worshiped together, we went everywhere, together. One day, I had made plans to go meet with a student for breakfast. I forgot to let 6 of my team members know and when breakfast came around, the flow of their day was altered, they missed me, they were a little worried, and did not know what to do. This would have been the case if any one of us were to do the same. The reason was that we were functioning as the body, and part of the body seemed to be momentarily cut off. This is how we ought to be everywhere, we are in a foreign world, we are supposed to be living as intimately as this, where our seemingly trivial decisions actually affect one another. That is crazy, and hard, and so… Anti-American, but it is what the bible calls us to, everywhere, all the time, on mission overseas or on mission in our neighborhoods.
We, as Christians, need to realize that we are no longer our own (nor have we really ever been), we are God’s, and not as individuals but as His Body, His temple. We are a Body, and I am a part. I am the finger. The finger does not say to the hand, “I am touching here, here and here, and you need to bless me in that.” The finger is absolutely incapable of moving without the hand moving first. That is how we ought to live our lives, and as we take a deeper look at the one anothers of Scripture, we ought to recognize the big picture.
Everything is for God’s glory. As an individual, I have a personal relationship with Jesus, God, but I can only function as a part of the body. Jesus is where we find our identity, and that identity is a corporate identity. As we live our lives, WE are living our lives.
by Malone Dunlavy