EPISODE FIVE: DEEP AND GENUINE LOVE
…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
More and more, I am reminded of the importance of the Word of God in my life. There are so many “voices” out there, voices that try to tell me who I am, what I should do or not do, where I belong and where I don’t belong, what I can say and what I should refrain from saying, and what I should believe simply because someone more powerful than I am believes it.
But there is only one voice that counts.
I look back at the key verse from 1 Peter, which I cited at the beginning of these Set Free episodes. You and I are among those chosen ones, part of the royal priesthood to which all believers belong. You and I are called to be holy. We are God’s own possession, and that is mind-blowing, and our calling is to proclaim Him who has rescued us so that others will also be rescued. Peter’s “voice,” inspired by the Spirit of God, shouts, doesn’t it?
In his letter to the believers who had been scattered because of persecution, Peter has already encouraged them to stay the course and remain faithful to the One they have believed in. He has already encouraged them to believe in and cling to the promises they understand from the Word they have received. He returns to that theme in this next section.
1 Peter 1:22-25
Since you have purified your souls by obedience to the truth so that you have a genuine love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from a pure heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of the imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” And this is the word that was proclaimed to you.
Followers of Jesus were always under suspicion. In a society where the household and its order were sacrosanct, the authorities feared that the followers of this sect were upsetting the “rules” that governed how things worked. Why does Paul, for example, spend so much time writing about the relationships between men and women, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free? It was because the way of Jesus was so completely different from the way of the society in which these groups had culturally functioned. The way of Jesus was revolutionary. But, at the same time, revolution, in the way we might understand it as a violent upheaval of social order at any cost, wasn’t the way of Jesus.
“‘A new commandment I give you’” says Jesus in that last private encounter with His disciples before His arrest, “‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.’” (John 13:34, 35)
Scot McKnight demonstrates in his book Reading Romans Backwards: A Gospel of Peace in the Midst of Empire that the book of Romans helps the believing Jews and the Gentiles in the Roman church understand that they were now brothers and sisters in Christ and that they needed to act like brothers and sisters rather than criticizing each other or expecting one group to conform to the other’s expectations. They were now family, characterized by the love so often referred to in the letters that circulated among the early churches.
And here, in 1 Peter, imagining that his readers are asking that question: “How should we respond, how should we live, in the light of the circumstances we are facing, in the light of the fact that we are under suspicion, that the authorities and our neighbours are watching, that we have lost so much and could be dead tomorrow?” he writes: “…love one another deeply, from a pure heart.” Since Jesus, by His saving grace, has made them obedient to the truth of His Word and has given them an unusual, countercultural love that overcomes all the barriers imposed by society, they needed to demonstrate that by the way they loved others.
As these pilgrims moved about, settling for a while and then perhaps having to move and resettle as life became difficult again, they would meet other believers who might be different from them. They might unite with a house church that had different ways of worshipping, or that allowed or disallowed things they were uncertain about. For the apostles, uniting all these believers from different backgrounds throughout the empire was a constant challenge. The instruction to “love deeply” and to have a love that was “genuine” was a necessary one. Helping everyone to understand that they were one in Christ and now part of one family was important—especially when there were enemies all around. The authorities and the false teachers were constant threats.
I remember a time when Oakwood Baptist Church in Toronto, where I attended and worked for many years, was breaking racial barriers. When I first went to Oakwood, we had perhaps one black family in the church. As the neighbourhood changed, more people moved in from the islands, and we gained more black families. I don’t believe any of the rest of us were particularly biased, but I suspect we might have been a bit nervous. The face of the church was changing, and we “white” people weren’t sure how to handle what we perceived as differences between “us” and “them.” I don’t know if any of us noticed, but we all sat in our respective sections of the church, in the same room but separate from each other. One Sunday morning, our pastor, George Bell, brought the divisions to our attention and told us to sit together. I think that made us realize what we were doing—the unspoken biases or fears we were all feeling. Seeing that changed everything, and Oakwood became a church that was much more homogeneous.
But what is loving deeply and loving genuinely based on? Peter explains. Redemption and the Word of God are the foundation for the love that God requires of all of us. At the foot of the cross, we are all equal. Beyond the cross, that truth remains because the Word tells us that God plays no favourites. No racial group has more power or a greater position than another; no gender is superior to another; belonging to one strata of society doesn’t make one better than someone in another strata.
Peter is then pretty blunt. You are going to die, he says, just like the grass and the flowers. But don’t worry. What you have been told about God will not fail, as flesh will. Love remains.
I mentioned the Beguines in my last post. Love for God, the love of God, and how that love was applied to others was the core of their meditations and study of the Scriptures. Hadewijch of Brabant often referred to Jesus as “Love” in her writings, reminding us that Jesus was indeed the love of God personified. Jesus’ life, His teachings, and His death were the constant focus of the Beguines.
During the Medieval period, another group of religious women took this pursuit of Jesus to unusual heights. These were women called anchoresses. Notable among them in the 14th century was Julian of Norwich. She lived for many years, enclosed in a cell attached to St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, where she dedicated her life to prayer, the study of Scripture, and counselling. The cell had three windows. One opened to the garden outside the church. Through this window, Julian would talk to people (she had a cat who apparently came and went through the garden window). Another opened into the church so she could participate in worship. The third allowed a servant to deliver food and whatever else Julian needed. From this cell, she also wrote Revelations of Divine Love, a work about her experiences.
The mystics, as those like Julian were called, often had visions they tried to describe. Whatever we might think about visions, listen to what Julian wrote about this one:
I watched our beloved Jesus languishing for a long time. The oneing between himself and the Godhead gave him the power to suffer beyond all human endurance. I don’t only mean that his anguish surpassed that of any other human being, but that no human being from the beginning of time until the last day could possibly measure, describe, or even conceive of the magnitude of his pain. Ponder the contrast between the worthiness of the most exalted, honorable king and his shameful, spiteful, painful death. He who was highest and most worthy was most drastically brought low and utterly despised…As pure and as vulnerable as he was, he was equally strong and powerful in the face of such devastating pain. And he suffered for the sake of every human being. He saw every individual’s sorrow, desolation and anguish, and, from the depths of his kindness and love, he grieved for us all…And now he has risen…he continues to grieve with us.
As I gazed upon all this, by his grace, I saw that his love for us is so strong that he willingly chose his passion and suffered it humbly, with deep joy and satisfaction. Any soul touched by grace who sees things in this way will truly realize that the pain of Christ’s passion exceeds all other pain. And yet all our pain will be transformed into boundless, everlasting joy by the power of this same passion. (Mirabai Starr, Julian of Norwich, The Showings, p 49, 50)
As those who read Peter’s letter pondered their own circumstances, and considered their own losses because of those circumstances, the anchor of their souls must needs have been a similar contemplation of that “imperishable seed” of Jesus who had sacrificed everything for their redemption and who understood what they were suffering. But He was their risen Lord, and that resurrection came with promises that though they might suffer, the promises of His Word were certain and sure.
Their deep and genuine love for their brothers and sisters, no matter how different from them, was based on what they shared in Christ.
John Peterson (1921-2006) wrote these beautiful words that many of us have sung over the years:
1. No one understands like Jesus.
He's a friend beyond compare;
Meet Him at the throne of mercy;
He is waiting for you there.
No one understands like Jesus
When the days are dark and grim;
No one is so near, so dear as Jesus--
Cast your ev'ry care on Him!
2. No one understands like Jesus;
Ev'ry woe He sees and feels;
Tenderly He whispers comfort,
And the broken heart He heals.
No one understands like Jesus
When the days are dark and grim;
No one is so near, so dear as Jesus--
Cast your ev'ry care on Him!
3. No one understands like Jesus
When the foes of life assail;Y
ou should never be discouraged;
Jesus cares and will not fail!
No one understands like Jesus
When the days are dark and grim;
No one is so near, so dear as Jesus--
Cast your ev'ry care on Him!
4. No one understands like Jesus
When you falter on the way;
Tho' you fail Him, sadly fail Him,
He will pardon you today.
No one understands like Jesus
When the days are dark and grim;
No one is so near, so dear as Jesus--
Cast your ev'ry care on Him!
His word stands forever.
In our key verse, we are told that our task as these called-out ones is to “proclaim the virtues” of Jesus. If we are to be guided by the life of Jesus and what He taught, then how we love others is the foundation of those virtues that we are to not only proclaim, but also live.
