Christian, meet “As”.
As is the one word that separates Christians from all other human beings. In fact, As is the way people recognize that they are in the presence of a follower of Jesus Christ.
Imagine that! God has hard wired the entire human race to know when As is in the vicinity. People have a built-in As Geiger counter. It begins beeping very loudly when As shows up.
So what is this As? Jesus talks about it 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 everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
There are a few things I want you to notice about As.
- As is not love.Rather, As is a certain kind of love. The issue here is quality. Everyone loves. The entire world is obsessed with love. Even Hitler had a girlfriend he loved. But the love of Jesus Christ is qualitatively different from all other kinds of love. This is why Jesus says that his followers will be identified as such when they love As he does. Or to put it a different way, Satan could care less whether or not Christians love, so long as we do not love As Jesus Christ did.
- As is not Like, as in “Love one another, Like I have loved you.” And it’s definitely not Kind Of Like, as in, “Love one another Kind Of Like I have loved you.” As is As, as in, “Love one another Exactly The Same Way As I have loved you.”
- As is not impossible.Difficult? Yes. Extremely difficult? Sometimes. But impossible? No. Jesus wouldn’t command us to do something that is impossible. Loving each other As Christ has loved us is a matter of the will and obedience.
- As is not primarily about marriage and family. As is primarily about believers loving each other As Christ has loved us. Yes, As certainly applies to our marriages and to our families. But the first application of As is to fellow believers, i.e., the church.
- As must be observable to the public. As is a community of believers loving each other As Christ has loved them in front of the world. Jesus’ intent was to leave a group of his followers behind who really know how to love each other as an example to the world (John 17:20-23). Believers enjoying fellowship with each other only at church behind four walls is not As.
- As was the primary way the early church evangelized the world. As is so powerful and so profound, the New Testament commands us to practice it over forty times. How many explicit commands in the New Testament are there to evangelize? Three.
- As has immediate practical application for the neediest in any church. If a church ignores the pressing needs of the weak in its midst, it has violated As (1 John 3:16-17; Titus 3:14). As is why the early church took the complaint by the Hellenistic Jews about their widows being neglected so seriously (Acts 6:1-7).
For the church, then, As is all about quality control. We need to be giving constant thought and attention to the kind of love we are showing each other. One way to do that is by paying attention to the the canary in the birdcage: our widows and single mothers.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
A Simple Ministry Concept with Profound Implications
Teams of four men serving widows, single moms, fatherless children and others with long-term pressing needs in their churches and communities.
