Friends of Christ

After Jesus discussed abiding in His Love by keeping His commandments, He summarized: “This is My commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.” His Love is not dependent on the way you treat Him, but the way you treat Him does have consequences. Jesus loved by completely obeying the Father’s commandments and abiding in His Love. This is the way we are to love others, not the way the world loves. This type of love requires complete obedience to the Father. This Love is not manipulative or forceful but pure and true.

In order to love the way Jesus loved, you must look at His life and observe how He loved. Most people accuse others of not being loving because they do not like the way someone loves. Many would have thought Jesus was not loving when He did not rescue John the Baptist after John had been put in prison (see Matthew 4:12) or when He took so long to go to Lazarus when Lazarus was sick (see John 11:1-44). Jesus obeyed the Father, and by doing so He loved everyone at the same time. The way Christ loves is not the same as the way other people love. The love of Christ does not satisfy selfish desire but glorifies God!

The best way to love like Jesus is to abide in His Love by following His commandments in the same way He followed His Father’s commandments (see 1 John 5:2-3). This means having an honest heart before the Lord by repenting of any known sin. You will love others with the Love of Christ when you lay down your life and walk in the Spirit. Those who do not follow Jesus, view His Love as hate.

The purpose of the Love of Christ is to lead those who do not love God into peace with God. When you choose the Love of Christ, it causes conflict in the lives of those who want to live their own way. Such people will accuse you of being unloving. The world teaches that in order to love you must accept everyone without any standards. This is not biblical, and it certainly is not the Love of Jesus. When you accept the world’s ways over God’s Ways, you are not loving people. All you are doing is avoiding conflict.

I, Alison, did not become a believer until I was 26 years old. Up to that time in my life, I had no knowledge or understanding of the Word of God. However, when I became born again, God placed a strong hunger in my heart for His Word. When the time was right, He led me to Northway Church in The Woodlands, Texas where I met Kerry. God assigned Kerry to disciple me and help me grow spiritually. This is where Kerry’s walk with Jesus was very critical.

If he had not been faithful for all those years to keep his heart in the Love of Christ, he would not have effectively loved me enough to properly disciple me. I am forever grateful to Kerry for his faithfulness to Jesus over the years because God was able to use him to teach me. This is the Love of Christ. When you choose to faithfully walk with Jesus and abide in the Love of God, you will love others the way Jesus loves you.

The Love of Christ is not earned but freely given. However, you will experience it based upon your obedience.

Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture,“Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.” Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, “The stone which the build-ers rejected Has become the chief cornerstone,”and“a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed.

1 Peter 2:6-8

To the Pharisees and those who rejected Jesus, His Love was confrontational and challenging. But to those who surrendered to Him, His Love was comforting and freeing. The ones who surrendered saw their own sin and knew they needed a Savior. The ones who rejected Him were too prideful to see their own sin and, therefore, did not believe that they needed a Savior. Jesus never strayed from the Truth because He is Truth. The purpose of His Love is to “save His people from their sins” (see Matthew 1:21). If you do not believe that you have sin, then you have no need for Jesus. But whether you believe it or not, you do have sin and need a Savior. Every human does.

In this passage, He taught His disciples, the ones who followed Him, how to love each other as He loved them.

Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith,

1 Timothy 1:5

Love from a pure heart requires nothing in return. The Love of God gave His Son for all who would believe in Him, this includes those who persecuted Him. He did not give His Love in order to receive, but He gave it as a ransom. This is the purest form of Love.

Being a friend to Christ and to others is loving and obeying Him. Your spirit will not serve others if you are simply acting friendly. An acting heart will make the least efforts in order to appear loving. A pure heart will care more about others than its own image. Jesus did not care about image. He helped those who the Father guided Him to help regardless of what the religious leaders thought about Him. In order to evaluate whether or not you are following Jesus’ command to love others, you must ask, “Is what I have with this other person the same kind of bond that Jesus represented when He taught about loving others as He loved us?

Your heart will never be pure as long as you focus on other’s differences instead of Christ’s Love. You must stop looking at differences in this world. It does not matter that one is rich or poor, has the same political views as you, or lives in a similar neighborhood as yours. What brings two believers together in Christian friendship is love and obedience toward Christ. Money, politics, social standings, and education cannot produce the unity that is only found in Christ.

Alexander Maclaren, a Baptist lay preacher from Scotland wrote in the mid 1800’s,

Where the heart is right the conduct will be right. Love will soften the tones, will instinctively teach what we ought to be and do; will take the bitterness out of opposition and diversity, will make even rebuke, when needful, only a form of expressing itself. If the heart be right all else will be right; and if there be a deficiency of love nothing will be right. You cannot help anybody except on condition of having an honest, beneficent, and benevolent regard towards him. You cannot do any man in the world any good unless there is a shoot of love in your heart towards him. You may pitch him benefits, and you will neither get nor deserve thanks for them; you may try to teach him, and your words will be hopeless and profitless. The one thing that is required to bind Christian men together is this common affection. That being there, everything will come. It is the germ out of which all is developed. As we read in that great chapter to the Corinthians—the lyric praise of Charity,—all kinds of blessing and sweetness and gladness come out of this, It is the central force which, being present, secures that all shall be right, which, being absent, ensures that all shall be wrong.

There is no better friend than Jesus. The only way to experience a friend on earth like Jesus is to know someone who loves God with all his heart, soul, and mind. A deep friendship does not come because two people are from the same background or have the same interests, skills, hobbies, or personalities. If two people love God intensely, that love overcomes a multitude of differences. This bond between two believers is much deeper than any bond between two people who have like interests in this world.

 

From John: True Belief Brings Joy (Book 3) by Alison Veazey and Kerry Skinner.