We live in a love-saturated culture. People everywhere talk about, write about (as I am now), sing about, make movies about, paint about…love. All. The. Time.
But what we don’t live in is a Christian-love-saturated culture. Jesus tells us that there is a qualitative difference between Christian love and all other kinds of love. It is this difference that marks us out as his followers (John 13:34, 35).
One of the distinctive qualities of Christian love — Christ’s love — is the willingness to guarantee someone else’s well-being, even the well-being of someone who is not related to us by marriage or birth.
On God’s part, we see this guarantee that he has made for us expressed especially well in Romans 8:38-39.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In this passage, Paul tells us with supremely eloquent language that there is nothing, nothing, nothing, that will ever keep God from loving us believers and there is nothing, nothing, nothing that will keep us from experiencing it. Thus, our well-being, as expressed in God’s love, is guaranteed.
In human relationships, this uniquely divine willingness to guarantee the well-being of another out of inseparable love as expressed in Romans 8:38-39 finds a beautiful parallel in Ruth’s commitment to Naomi in Ruth 1:16-17.
But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”
Other Old Testament examples of God’s people guaranteeing the well-being of another out of inseparable love for them are Judah guaranteeing the well-being of Benjamin to his father (“I myself will guarantee his safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life” Genesis 43:9), and Jonathan in his covenant with David (“If my father intends to bring evil on you, then may the Lord punish me, and ever so severely, if I do not tell you and send you on your way in safety. May the Lord be with you, just as He has been with my father.” 1 Samuel 20:13).
These Old Testament examples of love guaranteeing the well-being of another illuminate and clarify our New Testament command for us believers to love each other as Christ has loved us. Simply put, it means that we guarantee each other’s well-being.
In actual practice, Christian inseparable love means that we address the immediate unmet needs of fellow believers who are in a crisis, as well as the long term unmet needs of fellow believers who are experiencing chronic suffering.
Thus the mission of New Commandment Men’s Ministries: to help churches guarantee the well-being of its members by utilizing teams of men to serve, and advocate for, their care receivers.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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