Love is complicated. I doubt that’s news to you. But it’s relevant to the passage we’ll consider today.
I’ll bet you know that love as talked about in the New Testament isn’t a warm, fuzzy feeling. It involves conscious decisions, dedication, sticking-with-despite-challenges love. We frequently see in familial love.
Let’s face it: our kids can be difficult sometimes. For that matter, our parents can be difficult. Most assuredly, our siblings can be difficult. Sometimes love isn’t enough among human families, but most of the time it binds us together despite our difficulties.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God. Whoever loves someone who is a parent loves the child born to the parent. This is how we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep God’s commandments. This is the love of God: we keep God’s commandments. God’s commandments are not difficult, because everyone who is born from God defeats the world. And this is the victory that has defeated the world: our faith. (1 John 5:1-4, CEB)
John first talks about loving Jesus as the Son of God, but he goes beyond that in verse 2 to include all those who believe that Jesus is the Christ. We are all in the family, therefore, brothers and sisters. Sometimes brothers and sisters don’t like each other very much, but love keeps us together anyway.
Our youngest just turned 18. The oldest is 38. When they were younger, they tried to kill each other at times. One of our children died three years ago from kidney disease complicated by the flu, and that loss has brought them all together. They have realized how precious they are to each other in the way they are related and connected.
Have you noticed something similar in the church? Sometimes we get at each other’s throats, for trivial reasons or serious ones. Without pretending our differences do not exist, Jesus calls us to remember the bonds that transcend those differences.
By the way, some people try to justify not loving their brothers and sisters by saying they’re not really brothers and sisters because they don’t keep God’s commandments. Consider this:
“I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.” (John 13:34-35, CEB)