“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”   1 John 4:7-12

This is one of my favorite passages, I discovered it when I was a young Christian and it has spoken to me over the years. This intimate letter, written by the Apostle John when he was an old man, is in part a corrective epistle against the then common heresy of Gnosticism. The Gnostics denied the humanity of Christ, saying that He was fully spiritual and only appeared to become human. The church’s emphasis on fully human and fully divine is foundational to the truth of the faith – Jesus’ redemptive work would have been a sham had He not truly become one of us. We relate as believers to the God who completely knows and understands the extent and limits of our humanity – not some unknowable God who sits apart and dictates to us.

In this passage from 1 John 4, John is simply declaring the transforming power of God’s love – the highlight of which was God’s choice to send his only Son into the world so that we might become one with Him and live with Him. John underscores that God initiated love, it was He, not us and sent His Son to atone for our sins, in other words, make us right and acceptable in God’s sight. This is foundational Christianity, as basic as it gets. John’s simple writing style belies the depth of this truth, which, John knew would transform the world after he died and had already begun to do so. But how?
      

John already knew that God’s vessel of transformation and restoration was the actions of the believers and so, he tells them and us, to love one another. Jesus spoke it as a command, John speaks slightly more obliquely: as we love one another, he wrote, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. God’s love, growing and showing in us, is not just for us, it is the designated means God will use to restore His order to this broken world. So this is not just a recommendation, this is the recipe for renewal, the marching orders for God’s eternal plan.
      

What is love and how do we show it? Most important, I think, God is telling us to reach beyond ourselves, care more than just about ourselves or our special people. Pay attention to the people God puts in your path. Cut out the superficial judgments, dig to find out who the real person is. Find out what makes them tick. As we show love in our actions, not simple words, some people will open up. In time we may get to share – so we also need to learn to share the effect God’s love has had in our lives.
      

This is God’s plan for evangelism, if you will – to use millions of us as personal ambassadors to millions of others and so to expand God’s family until God has achieved the complete renewal of God’s people and the human race. It’s a huge task – like building the Great Wall of China. We’re laborers, working one brick at a time the task will get done. It is my privilege to be a laborer in this greatest of all projects. Thanks for reading…
 
Nick

“He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Right from the time of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, people have wondered about the time of His return because He promised His disciples He would come again. In John 14:1-3, he said, "Let not your hearts be troubled. You are trusting God, now trust in Me. There are many homes up there where my Father lives, and I am going to prepare them for your coming. When everything is ready, then I will come and get you, so that you can always be with Me where I am. If this weren't so, I would tell you plainly. And you know where I am going and how to get there" (the Living Bible). This is one of several promises Jesus made but the important thing here is to understand these promises as expressions of God’s generosity and inclusiveness. More on that in a minute.

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. Acts 1:1-9

Around Easter, my mind often wanders to the thoughts and feelings of the Apostles and followers of Jesus after the crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension. Talk about a total change from everything that had ever happened before. Now Jesus instructed them to wait until the Holy Spirit comes upon them – what could that possibly mean? These folks were witnesses to a series of events that changed everything, nothing was the same, but it would take a while to make sense of it. And, on the surface, nothing seemed different. The world was the same, only their lives had changed.

We don’t really have parallels to anything of this magnitude. Many of us lived through the events of late November, 1963. Stunning, startling – but life went on. We stood in sickening witness to September 11, 2001. The world was somehow different, but what did we do on September 12th?