“Lastly, some practical advice, not a command, to you today is this: If you have children or family that you have not seen for some time because you have been so busy with ministry, please go home and hug them. Tell them that you love them and that they are more important than any mission, that in fact they are the mission; your mission is to love them with the love of Christ.” – http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/07/16/sophomoric-musings-my-dream/

“When we redefine love then we disconnect ourselves from reality.”

I think that I see your point; that we shouldn’t abstractify and convolute something so simple and basic to humanity and yet also so profound. Whenever I start to complicate the matter, I personally find it refreshing to appeal to Paul’s short discourse on love in 1 Cor 13. After reading some of the, shall I say, uncharitable comments by our recent posters, I thought about this verse:

“If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast [or to the flames], but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

In this context, some commentators have said that Paul is referring to boasting about potential martyrdom, which some Christians at that time were wont to do. I’m speaking from my personal experience when I say that whenever I tried to defend UBF as an organization or certain individual members, I had a martyr’s mentality and, deep down, I also felt as though I was getting extra browny points from God for defending his enterprise. But ironically, I can say that the times that I was doing this, I was actually largely ignoring the real hurt and complaints of those who were railing against the ministry. I lament the people that I have hurt in this way; I was acting out of a twisted view of love. I hope that some UBF defenders will consider whether or not this is the case with themselves.

Anyway, my wife and I have been watching quite a few films lately after putting the kids to bed just to de-stress. It’s been a good exercise in stretching my mind and heart to see what people outside of the church long for, rather than just slamming an idea as secular and thus useless.

When we redefine love then we disconnect ourselves from reality. When we claim to have the “true” love we hinder the pathway of the gospel. To advance the kingdom is to clear a path for the kingdom; it is to remove the barriers or climb over the barriers that hinder us.

Yes, love comes in many flavors and love is nebulous at times to define. This is because love is higher than what words can express. God is love. We cannot fully know love with words alone. We need to see, to feel, to express and to receive love to know what it is and how to recognize when we are being loved and when we are not.

I fully agree with what you said here, David, “I have a hunch that it will not be understood through the church alone (as sacrilegious as this may sound), that in these times we will have to venture out into the world and interact with the rest of humanity in order to understand this.”

Jesus said that the love of many will grow cold. I am saddened that I see that in churches more and more being true, especially as the debates around gays and muslims continue to intensify. What you said also helps to think about the time Jesus spent with “sinners” in a new light. In UBF it was almost always put in the context of him serving his mission. But I think that speaking about it in that way takes away his humanity and divinity and turns him into a kind of mercenary. Does loving other people having to be put into another context of a mission? I don’t think so and this may be one reason why the Jewish leaders could not understand what Jesus was doing. Not that they thought he should be serving a mission, but they lacked the love of God in their hearts (as Jesus once said to them). Love is where the divine and the human come together. So I’m also trying to venture more into the world without a mission, but to interact and to be a human among other humans and to love.

Answering the question of what Christlike love is or looks like is a task that the church needs to put at the forefront of its endeavors, in my opinion. In so many places in the gospel accounts and the epistles the supremacy of love is made abundantly clear. Even Jesus looks back to the Torah and says that it can be summed up as love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Certainly, even during the apostolic age of the church, sifting out the details of how this was to be practiced was a messy process, but from what is recorded in books like Acts, Romans and Galatians (specifically in regard to the interactions between Jews and Gentiles), it seems as though the church was beginning to get a grip on it. Though from church history, there were still many, many hiccups along the way.

For instance, in the early church, deeply schismatic and sectarian behavior was taking place. The Donatists, particularly come to mind. They refused to allow those who had made some concessions while undergoing persecution to administer the sacraments of baptism and communion, which comprise the centrality of the outward marks of a Christian. I know that these issues are not so straight-forward and I don’t necessarily want to paint a picture of hypocritical or unloving intolerance, but such events in early church history give me pause. But again, I understand that the church was going through extreme birth pains at that time and things needed to be brought out of a place of chaos and disarray.

I suppose I am pointing toward the fact that we are still very entrenched in that type of process today. Organizations like TGC come to mind (sorry TGC lovers and btw I don’t hate or dislike them). They seem more interested in determining who is ‘in’ or ‘out’ rather than inclusively loving others. It’s as if Calvin is seen as someone who had such theological precision that to go against what he deemed was the faith is akin to becoming apostate. But perhaps organizations like TGC ultimately see this kind of delineation as love; if you don’t know whether you are in or not, you might be liable to suffering hell fire. But this kind of delineation presents too many strictures that would disqualify numerous people. Adherence to the doctrine of the trinitarian nature of God for instance, is one boundary. Believe this or else you are heterodox and, not to mention, a false teacher if you happen to be a pastor. But I wonder how many Christians even understand that aspect of God and practice it in a way that is indicative of his nature. We also alluded to total depravity. This doctrine has been used to essentially relegate all nonbelievers as spiritually dead people who are incapable of being morally upright and moreover who are hostile to God. I find that many of this ilk are more worried about verbally adhering to the ‘correct’ doctrines more so than practicing what is truly important to Christ, which is embracing the idea of divine love. Anyway, this is starting to become a rant.

At any rate, I wonder how we can nail down what gospel love is and how to practice it. I have a hunch that it will not be understood through the church alone (as sacrilegious as this may sound), that in these times we will have to venture out into the world and interact with the rest of humanity in order to understand this. I believe that God’s Spirit is at work in unexpected places.

In response to your questions: I have many of the same concerns as you. In my opinion, it is unwise and unrealistic to believe that nonChristians are unable to show Christlike love. All love that is love ultimately comes from God, because God is love. All people who are made in the image of God are capable of godly love. Christlike love should be especially present in the lives of Christ-followers, because Christ is alive in them and the Holy Spirit should be actively working through them, bearing the foremost fruit of the Spirit which is love. But that is hindered when people think of salvation, justification, sanctification, etc. purely in in individual terms. The Holy Spirit descended corporately on the Church on the day of Pentecost, and it is in the body of believers (especially the relationships among them) where the love of God should be appearing in supernatural amounts.

Sorry for rambling. But the relationship between gospel and church is very important to me right now. This lies at the root of what I have been wanting to say to UBF leaders for the last couple of years but couldn’t find the words. The gospel I learned in UBF was a church-less gospel. We (evangelicals) need to enlarge and renew our view of the gospel to understand what church is and how integral it is to God’s salvation plan. Once we do, it becomes possible to create structures and policies within an organization that are consistent with that gospel vision. But without that understanding of gospel and church, we are just groping in the dark, with no idea of how to identify or fix problems.

In the first article, you said:

“Self-effort cannot bring our dead souls to life; God must do it. Similarly, self-effort cannot bear good fruit in our lives; God must do that as well. Just as we receive from God our justification from sin as a free gift of grace, we must also receive any good works that we do from God as a free gift of grace. This understanding of how to receive good works, rather than merely do good works, is notoriously difficult to describe. But it is not a minor issue. It is a fundamental principle of Christianity. Without it, the gospel isn’t really the gospel.”

And in the second article:

“The essence of the Christian life is not found in adhering to any list of external behaviors, but in truly loving God and loving other people. Sinful people are not naturally filled with love. The kind of love needed to live the Christian life requires nothing short of a supernatural, miraculous transformation of the inner person. Anything short of that is not authentic Christian spirituality; it is playing games and trifling with God.” – http://www.ubfriends.org/2011/04/26/bringing-reality-to-the-spiritual-life-part-2/

I’ve been grappling with statements like these lately. What I see in relationships outside of the church, that is, those of non-believers, I find that people still display qualities such as unconditional love and genuine empathy and compassion. We could chalk this up to God’s prevenient grace I suppose and the fact that everyone is made in the image of God. It appears as though the Christian should have an advantage over or more insight into the concept of love than their non-believing counter-parts, but in practicality, I don’t often find this to be the case. Any thoughts on this?

http://www.ubfriends.org/2011/04/15/bringing-reality-to-the-spiritual-life-part-1/

As for testimony writing, I’ve always had a disdain for it. It’s forced and manipulative. Sharing them publicly on demand led to performances, competitions, at times just very strange musings, and so on. Most students who came to a testimony sharing meeting who grow up with a Christian background had a similar first response: the meaning of the word “testimony” was completely different from what they saw in other churches. Instead of people talking about Jesus, they were talking about themselves in, oftentimes, strange ways. For years I tried to remove testimony writing/sharing times from conference programs. You can image the reactions I received. Apparently, without those times students just won’t receive the word of God in a meaningful way.

“The danger is in using it to appear holy, to shallowly consider it to keep face, or to hear someone’s heart cry and try to change them through manipulating their testimony.”

“Personally, I’d like to see the reflections just be part of Bible study. they have power when they initiate real dialogue.”

I never realized how vulnerable a person was making themselves through testimony sharing until much later in life. Listening to someone’s intimate thoughts in a constructive and healthy way takes a great deal of training and anyone could benefit from consulting professionals on this matter, such as counselors. I wish that in UBF, there could be more serious discussion about this.

As to the second point, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shared something in a testimony that was essentially begging for meaningful dialogue in my fellowship. Again, it’s difficult to process people’s intimate thoughts, but that never seemed to be the goal of testimony sharing meetings anyway.

“When they did so without a ministry goal or pressure, the students really enjoyed learning more and sharing what they learned.”

Simply beautiful.

Also, would love to hear/read your message.

Don’t worry, we have an Irish Pub in Heidelberg, too. I like Guinness sometimes, but of course German beer is even better – when you come to Germany, we can test both and you will certainly agree :)

It’s funny, in my chapter I was the first to really relish in writing testimony. It gave me a chance to really apply myself to the bible passage. It started the trend and became a burden in many ways, honestly.

But I still believe that part of UBF’s power comes from the simple fact that when we do meditate on the Scripture, it can really work in our hearts and set us straight. The danger is in using it to appear holy, to shallowly consider it to keep face, or to hear someone’s heart cry and try to change them through manipulating their testimony.

Personally, I’d like to see the reflections just be part of Bible study. they have power when they initiate real dialogue. The problem is that testimony has become an idol and a standard that people measure themselves by, instead of Christ (no matter what some people say).

Interestingly, one of my family’s former Bible students who left our ministry engaged a couple teenagers in her church and encouraged them to study Genesis. When they did so without a ministry goal or pressure, the students really enjoyed learning more and sharing what they learned. This family now has weekly bible studies in their house, and when it gets too big, it splits and others start doing it in their houses and so on. All on their own free will and time spent. A beautiful offering to the Lord. I think UBF had this for a time, here and there, and likely still has it. But if so, it has changed.

I suspect that nothing compares to German beer though.

The bad news is that Guinness comes from Dublin, Ireland.

The good news is that Germany has countless local and regional beers that are better than Guinness.

“Real life gives us enough opportunities to practice Biblical teachings, we don’t need to burden us with many additional meetings and missions.”

My plate is pretty full with simply living life. Plus, I don’t have the energy and stamina of a 21 year old anymore to attend meetings and do x,y,z and life has gotten more complicated with a growing family and the demands of work. So I’m trying to see God at work in the places where I am already at and appreciate the people I am with on a regular basis. I wish that I was taught this way of viewing life as a Christian much earlier instead of a compartmentalized, almost schizophrenic type of existence. So much unnecessary pressure there which almost completely turned me off to Christianity.

And similar to your story about the young missionary, I happen to have a good friend who is a younger missionary (in his mid thirties) and we love talking to each other about family and work. We were at an Easter conference one time and we spoke together for a long time and laughed so hard about what we encountered in our day-to-day lives. That authentic time together is the only thing that I vividly remember about that conference. We stepped outside of the bounds of church activity for a moment and ironically experienced profound communication on a deep and substantive level.

If I ever come to Germany, I’d love to hang out. Btw, my wife and I are both fond of Guinness beer :) Is that actually popular over there or is it simply an Americanized German product? (We do something similar with Chinese food; for instance, General Tso’s chicken is not a legit or authentic Chinese food product.) And we’ll definitely check out “You’re not You” when we get a chance; we love movies like that.

In reference to Mark 10:45, you said: “We shouldn’t try to do everything he did (how can we give our lives as a ransom for many? O wait, smells familiar . . .) but allow ourselves to be changed and find value and direction in serving and loving others”

I say a hearty “amen” to this. There is something to be said of an almost purely spiritual/unseen exercise such as contemplation. If done rightly it will eventually lead to an outward display of fruit (such as good character and compassion for others). However, when this is short-circuited the intended fruit comes forth in a forced manner and the emphasis always becomes some kind of seen product such as more disciples or a more impressive ministry. What if God’s ultimate intention is simply to be with us and minister to us and what if the real fruit is more love engendered between he and man? Just thinking out loud. At any rate, God bless your message. I’m interesting in reading it (perhaps as a post on the site? :-)

Have you read NT Wright’s most recent book, Simply Good News? In the last chapter of that book, he shows how the Lord’s Prayer encapsulates all the main teachings of the gospel, and he also explains why this gospel is so easy to overlook and miss, not just in the Lord’s Prayer but in all the sayings and doings of church life. He goes through the Lord’s Prayer line by line, but in reverse, starting at the end and moving toward the beginning, recounting the gospel as he goes. It’s a beautifully written chapter, and it helped me to appreciate the Lord’s Prayer all the more.

Real life gives us enough opportunities to practice Biblical teachings, we don’t need to burden us with many additional meetings and missions. For instance, my wife is currently helping a foreign woman who is in financial and emotional need, and she sometimes sleeps in our home. It just happened organically, not as something mission for a church or charity organization. Since I’m very busy and work part-time at home and love my peace and order, this feels sometimes like a burden, and I fail to say a friendly word, to see the face of Jesus in such people in need, and I fail to see this as the most spiritual and meaningful life. Instead, we always want to have this clean and abstract and academic spirituality, preferring hours of Bible study over simple Bible application in daily life.

Last week my wife and I watched “You’re not You” in the cinema. In this movie, a man cares for his wife who has a deadly illness. The way how he treated her reminded me of how we treated our “sheep” in UBF. He failed to see the real person (hence the title of the movie). In contrast, a messy college student who the husband considers unqualified to help is the best help for the woman, because she is able to see her as a person, not only as a nursing case. The German title of the movie is more positive: “The happiness by my side”. Seeing each other as persons is where happiness starts.

In this context, I’m reminded again of a key moment in UBF that I’ve already written about. The background was that I was required to attend the sogam sharing meeting of the male missionaries on Sunday evenings. This was after the whole Sunday program which kept me busy and locked in the center from morning to evening on Sundays. I often had headaches and sometimes asked if I could skip the meeting. My chapter director would then guilt trip me, saying that my attendance and listening to their sogams was a way of loving them, i.e. by not attending I would not love my brothers. However, in reality all these sogams were boring and scripted and did not tell me anything about the real-life struggles of these missionaries. One night, I was repairing a computer in the center together with one of the younger missionaries. We sat together a long time in the office next to the computer, waiting for a hard-disk to be defragmentized and reformatted, so we had time to talk to each other, with nobody else around. It was a great talk in which for the first time I started to see him as a person and a friend, understand his struggles and real-life problems. This helped me open the eyes about how all the artificial meetings in UBF rather alienated us from each other than helping us to see each other as friends, and understand each other’s needs and problems, and appreciate each other’s’ unique quirks. I also remember how in the early morning meetings our director required us to speak with a microphone and loudspeakers even though it was a small room, on a podium, 2 meters away from the table with our brothers and sisters, using words from a pre-written sogam. When I suggested it was more natural to sit normally and talk at the table, he yelled at me. Natural interaction was not considered spiritual. And then, we had to pray together on our knees against the “ungodly individualism”. No wonder we stopped to see each other as persons.

How you relate Paul’s discussion of the difference between God and the idols of the Athenians.

BrianK thought it was focusing more on idols than on the people’s salvation (at least, the way you talked about it).

But for me, it was really lovely. We make gods in our own image–but God made us in his image. Idols need to be served to be satisfied, but we in fact depend on God for life and breath and everything.

I believe this is compassionate for the hearers and their salvation . . . to lead them to see God for who he really is. I’m sure that was Paul’s heart, and his rhetoric is both lovely and edifying.

I’m going to give a short message tomorrow evening about Mark 10:45 and my thesis is, this is not about how to be great, it’s about how pitiful our greatness is (making everything in our own image, our idealized self that we worship so much but doesn’t exist) compared to the greatness of Christ. His greatness is in his service, yes, and his giving, yes, which we depend on, and which he gives freely to all. This greatness should impress itself deeply on us. We shouldn’t try to do everything he did (how can we give our lives as a ransom for many? O wait, smells familiar . . .) but allow ourselves to be changed and find value and direction in serving and loving others. Mother Theresa said, Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.

Good for Mark Yoon . . . although it’s still a peculiar question.

You picked out a part that I really struggled with writing:

* This statement takes my focus off the Messiah and paints a perfect picture of the church; it comes across as a bit self-loathing: “And believe you me; this was not the fault of the church per se, because if anyone knows me, I love lofty ideas. This is more of an internal battle or beef within me.”

I’m in a place where I’m trying to make a break from the organization that we all know so well. At this point, it’s somewhat healthier for me to just say, “you know what, I’m going through an internal battle that God is trying to work out”. I just don’t want to say anything negative (though there may be some validity to doing so; although I do kind of lampoon Western Evangelicalism a bit, so picking my battles I suppose) or even communicate to myself or others that I am shifting blame. It may not be accurate, but that’s where I’m at. But trust me, I’m embracing the battle with a kind of joy and excitement rather than settling into a state of self-loathing.

Yeah, while the theism/deism and Logos/logos concepts excited me, I could gather that some did not hold the same sentiment. I gotta talk about what excites me too, right? What can I say, I’m a sucker for fancy terms :)

I see what you mean about the idolatrous statues statement. Maybe my poor communication there. I certainly wanted to get across the idea that Paul reached out to the Athenians out of love and concern. I could definitely make that clearer by wording things better.

And oh yes, the Evil Survey is quite exquisite; I was beginning to write some articles on it, but got swamped by other things. Hopefully I can finish that series soon.

I’m glad you enjoyed it though. As I wrote about my family being the church and reaching out to obscure or marginalized groups, I thought about your story a lot. Your journey has inspired some of my thoughts about incarnational (or shall I say in-karcher-national) spirituality and ministry. Thanks! And man, I’m so glad that I didn’t get the infamous monkey with a banana rating.

You said, “The local church is supposed to embody the gospel so clearly in its social relations that people who observe the church will learn what the gospel is, even if the church members aren’t trying to preach at them.” This is precisely what I’m trying to foster in my own life. It’s beyond difficult but I just don’t think that there is any other way to do justice to the gospel.

I only rip apart 1 star and 2 star lectures :)

According to the Karcher Sermon Scale (which I totally made up) this is a solid 3 start sermon that I thoroughly enjoyed! My star scale does not say anything about the quality, but only gauges some critical sermon components that I’ve come to value. On a quality scale of 1 to 10, this is a solid 8 point sermon. Here are some further thoughts.

* This sermon has a lot of 3 star qualities. You have a strong gift for sharing the gospel. It is hopeful because you are asking questions instead of dictating answers. It is heart-moving because you share from your heart some personal impact and the key issues you wrestle with (such as how to connect to daily life). It is lively, as shown by the “cherry on top” comment.

* This sermon has a glimmer of a 4 star sermon since you are able to inspire your audience.

* This sermon has some 5 start qualities such as being vulnerable (your admitting not attending church) and a touch of humor (I love the “flesh out” incarnation comment!)

Here is what kept this out of the 4 star range:

* This statement takes my focus off the Messiah and paints a perfect picture of the church; it comes across as a bit self-loathing: “And believe you me; this was not the fault of the church per se, because if anyone knows me, I love lofty ideas. This is more of an internal battle or beef within me.”

* This section seems to stray from what I know of Paul’s heart. Was he concerned about the actual statues or the people’s hearts? The text says this slightly differently and I think that is important to look into: “Upon arriving in Athens, Paul is deeply bothered by all of the idolatrous statues in the city. I’m sure that Paul was alarmed by the fact that the Jews in Athens could possibly be syncretizing with the culture around them and thus missing the message of the gospel contained in the Holy Scriptures.”

* This is a great statement, and true, but I feel like you probably lost your audience here: “For instance, God is theistic rather than deistic and understanding our existence does not come from abstract wisdom (logos) but rather through knowing God the person in Christ (Logos).”

* This is nit-picky, but I was distracted by the use of “meet out” several times. Isn’t this supposed to be “mete out”? Not a big deal but that distracted me.

Here are some kudos:

Pointing out the problem of over-spiritualization: “We tend to both diagnose and treat our wounds in this way; we overly-spiritualize and try to superstitiously wish away our real hurt and pain.”

Pointing out the affirmation nature of Paul: “…his was actually a commendation, because he affirmed the fact that they were somehow seeking to worship or reach out to God. And also notice the fact that he addressed them as Athenians.”

Pointing out the God-idol: “He corrects the idea of man’s tendency to make God in his own image, thus fashioning idols and temples and so forth; he turns this notion completely on its head by saying that no, we are in fact made in God’s image.”

Pointing out the contextualization nature of Paul (which we should learn from more than his exact commands) “Through a comparison of the tenets of Epicureanism and Stoicism (link to ppt slide), we can see specifically how Paul contextualized the gospel to his audience.”

This is brilliant! “Several years back I developed something called the Evil Survey, where I simply ask students about the problem of evil.”

Nice! “If marriage teaches you anything, it’s that yes, you’re a jerk.

This is something great I learned recently too: “So my family has sort of been the church to me over this past half year or so.”

And kudos for having the guts to share this: “This is one of the most misguided sentiments I have ever heard. How are you going to love someone that you don’t like anything about?”

First, I have a minor question. You said, “Very interesting that Jesus would say this; there is nothing about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer…” The Lord’s prayer says, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Did you miss that? (I doubt it.) What were you thinking? In my mind, the Lord’s Prayer (and many other passages in the gospels) explicitly connect our willingness to forgive others with our receiving forgiveness from God. In some passages, the latter is conditioned on the former, which is theologically inconvenient for some but nonetheless it is what Jesus taught.

I have been wrestling with many of the same questions as you.

This tendency to spiritualize and abstract-ify the teachings of Scripture is strong in evangelical Christianity. I was struck by this as I read the recent post http://www.ubfriends.org/2015/04/23/a-response-to-joes-open-letter/

In that post, the author speaks eloquently about the church, and the glorious privileges of belonging to the worldwide body of Christ. It struck me as deeply ironic, because the gospel that I was taught in UBF was a church-less gospel of individual salvation and individual discipleship. And the practices of UBF actually cut me off from meaningful interaction with the church outside of UBF for 20+ years. As Brian pointed out, 49% of UBF chapters worldwide consist of one family. Let that sink in. 49% of UBF chapters worldwide consist of one family. Many of these “house churches” are in places where there are multiple Christian congregations nearby, but these single families believe that it is best to have little or no meaningful interaction with believers close to them so that they don’t compromise or lose their UBF identity. That thinking — which I wholeheartedly swallowed — is really screwed up. UBF members talk about being so blessed to be part of the body of Christ, when their actual interaction with the body of Christ is severely stunted.

This is not just a problem with UBF. From the beginning, evangelical Christianity (birthed in revivalism) was an anti-clerical and anti-church movement. The gospel that they proclaimed was essentially a church-less gospel, a severe reduction of what the apostles taught and the NT proclaims. I am generalizing, of course. There are some parts of evangelicalism with a decent understanding of church and some sense of the social dimensions of the gospel. But they are not the voices that we hear very often.

Two books that I have been reading lately have been helping me a great deal to understand the inseparable connection between gospel and church. Both are by Scot McKnight: Kingdom Conspiracy and A Fellowship of Differents.

Here is a great quote from A Fellowship of Differents that you might like. It is about the Apostle Paul.

A friend of mine once asked me what was the one thing Paul taught in all his churches. I thought the answer was, of course, the gospel. He said, “No. Check out 1 Corinthians 4: 16 – 17.” So I did. Here’s 1 Corinthians 4: 16: Therefore I urge you to imitate me. . . . That takes some chutzpah! But it takes more to say what follows in verse 17: Timothy [Paul’s best friend] . . . will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. Paul’s words are packaged tightly enough that we need to unpack them a bit. Here’s what he is saying, and I have arranged it so you can see how repetitive it is:
A What I teach in every church is
B my way of life.
B’ Because my way of life agrees with
A’ What I teach everywhere in every church.
Paul’s claim is that his life embodies the gospel so clearly one can learn the gospel by observing him — and he claims he teaches this everywhere.

McKnight, Scot (2015-02-24). A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God’s Design for Life Together (pp. 64-65). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

The point is that, as Christians, we are supposed to embody the gospel so clearly that people can learn and understand the gospel by watching how we act. That holds for individual Christians but especially for the local church. The local church is supposed to embody the gospel so clearly in its social relations that people who observe the church will learn what the gospel is, even if the church members aren’t trying to preach at them.

I’ve been thinking about this very aspect of our spirituality and how we are to relate to other people. I also commend you for juxtaposing David’s psalm with Jesus’ words on forgiveness and then moving on to what it is to love. I agree that David’s mention of sinning against God is not to be taken to mean that we do not or even cannot sin against others, and that if someone did sin against another person that it does not count to God. Jesus says without using figurate language in many places that how we treat others is not only a reflection of our relationship with him but an act towards him directly, whether good or bad. I believe now that Jesus’ teaching bring our relationships with others to very forefront of our spirituality, just as the one teaching that he called “a new command” is about how we treat others.

It’s also great to hear about Rhoel reaching out to you.