Community as God wants it ...

Friday, July 31, 2015. How is it that God wants us to relate to one another as humans? How should we deal with each other, talk with each other and behave towards each other? What are the steps and measures we take? How do we talk and act day by day?

Love is central …

Jesus calls his disciples to love one another, the way he has loved all of them. And everyone who believes is called to live the same love, to do the same. It is indispensable. You cannot get around it. Life without love, without this love in truth and in the spirit, is not life but death - we will hear that again today when we look into what the apostle John writes in his first letter.

The following passage from John 1 has quite a lot of far reaching points to say. Let us first focus on the parts which talk about relationships and listen carefully:

11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers,3 that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.

Whoever does not love abides in death.

15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3, 11-24)

Love, Death and God …

John explains the relationship between life and love, between hatred and death, and he also talks about God and his spirit and about the relationship between the spirit and the individual human.

John clearly explains that a life which is led by hatred is not one which would fit to God. Life led by hatred is a life of death, and it is separated from the eternal living God. But life which is filled with love, with the love of Jesus, with his truth and his purity, is filled by God himself. God comes to us, he lives in us. The Christian idea that today the temple of God is the people who believe in him and follow him is still revolutionary.

We are called to faith, to faith in Christ Jesus. We are called to believe, but this belief is not a mental act, but it is a life. It touches all parts of what we are, in particular our relationships to one another. And it brings God's presence into our life. That is a fantastic and wonderful experience, day by day! (RWEP) ... more texts