The Law of Christ

We live in a world that has forgotten how to disagree without being disagreeable. We draw lines in the sand and dare people to cross them. We make the issue of the day the hill on which we are willing to die. The situation has become bad enough that I can only describe it in clichés. You may have heard the way that Rick Warren has stated it:

Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

“You must fear or hate them.” This is the way that people in our world think. We live in so much turmoil with our society changing and heaving beneath our feet, with the result that any disagreement is profoundly threatening. But we are the people of God, whose lives and future belong to God. Do we need to live in such fear? Is there another way? I think there is. Over the next several weeks we want to explore the related ideas of agreement and acceptance, looking for a way to disagree with each other while still accepting each other.

Our Texts

I begin with a few comments on our texts this morning, and then move from the texts to the issue I have raised.

Deuteronomy 6: We have heard the great creed of Judaism many times – the “Shema Yisrael”: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” The creed is then expressed as a command to love: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

This creed and command stood at the heart of the Jews’ identity, so much so that when Jesus was asked to summarize the Law (Matthew 22), he combined Deuteronomy with Leviticus and said:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

This combination was well known in Rabbinic circles and expressed well the centre of the Mosaic Law.

In the passage in John 15, Jesus is speaking to his disciples after the Last Supper. The extended passage begins in John 13, and the next action in the drama is Jesus’ arrest. The chapter works out what Jesus means when he says, “I am the vine, and you [the disciples] are the branches.” In doing so, he gives the disciples a command, which Paul later calls “the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2):

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: love each other.

“My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.” This passage spells out Jesus’ words at the Last Supper. After he washes the disciples’ feet, he says to them: “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

What makes this a new command? At one level, it simply restates the great creed from Deuteronomy 6, but Jesus adds a critical piece: “Love … as I have loved you.” Then he says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” To love with Christ’s love. To love sacrificially, willing to lose everything in order to care for those one loves. This is the new command, the law of Christ.

A Digression to Go Deeper

We began with a quote from Rick Warren. You may also know another famous quote, often attributed to Saint Augustine: “In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity.” One internet source tells us that the quote actually “comes from an otherwise undistinguished German Lutheran theologian of the early seventeenth century, Rupertus Meldenius.” Whoever said it, I suggest that this quote gives us a way to understand the passages we have just read and to live against the current of our culture.

In Essentials, Unity. We are united on that which is basic, that which is essential. But what are “the essentials”? What stands at the centre of our faith? This is a more difficult question than it seems. I ask it this way each year in my Worldview and Culture course at Providence: “What is the core of the Christian faith?” We discuss the question, and I have heard many answers. We work at bringing the essential core down to its simplest form. I won’t tell you about all the bits and pieces that we cover; I will simply give you my own conclusion, which comes in two parts.

The Content of Faith. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul begins: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance”, so we can expect that what follows is essential:

That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

If we listen to Paul, the central essential affirmation of our faith is that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that Jesus died for us, and that he rose from the dead for us, and that he has appeared to those for whom he died and rose. If we listen to the sermons reported in the book of Acts – clearly summaries rather than full text – the apostles preached Christ, and especially the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is “essential”. On this, there can be no disunity, for Christ alone is the foundation of our lives, and there can be no other (1 Corinthians 3:11).

A Digression. Although we don't pursue the thought here, it is worth recognizing that we are describing the importance of conversion (or the new birth, or commitment to Christ, or whatever you want to call it). All that follows – "ethics", "vitally important nonessentials", and so on – are fruit. They grow when we are grounded in Christ. Without the root of conversion, they cannot grow.

The Ethic of Faith. Jesus made it clear in the verses we read from John 15 that this basic affirmation also results in a particular way of living: “My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.” This also is essential. We live for and in Christ and for and in each other.

This essential truth is absolutely different from the friendship that characterizes our society. Think of our favourite TV, such as “Survivor”. One makes friendships in order to survive. As soon as a friendship no longer helps me survive, one lets it go and forms a new friendship. The goal is to survive, and winning means that other people do not survive. The whole project makes relationships purely transactional, good only as long as they benefit me.

It reminds me of the way that we sometimes approach church. We ask, “What does this church do for me?” That is a transactional question. The right question is, “Do people here love God and love each other? Is the love of Christ present here?” This approach makes relationships a covenant within which we live, a covenant based on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

In Non-Essentials, Liberty. So we agree to be in unity that our relationships with each other are based on our relationship with Christ, through Christ’s death and resurrection. What does it mean to say that the rest of our faith consists of “non-essentials”? Many of us will struggle with this thought. It sounds like saying that everything else is unimportant. Can we really say that our commitment to peace and non-violence is non-essential and unimportant? If we make our commitment to peace essential, then we declare ourselves out of fellowship with the rest of the Christian Church, who do not make this affirmation.

You see, of course, that non-essential does not mean unimportant. Many non-essentials can be vitally important – so important that our faith requires them. But, however important they are, they are not the means of and basis for our salvation. We can be in fellowship with others who are in Christ, who also disagree with us on some vitally important implication of Christian faith. What does it mean, then, when we say, “In non-essentials, liberty”? What does “liberty” mean? Understanding this point is basic to discovering how to disagree in love.

Sometimes, we say: “I suppose we will have to agree to disagree.” This sounds good, but conceals a real problem. We may actually mean, “I don’t want to argue with you, but we will never speak of this matter again.” Afterwards, we not only don’t speak about the matter again, we don’t speak nearly as much with the person again. In fact, if we decide to avoid important issues with our friends, we may make those relationships shallow and less important.

We may mean something else – that our conversations do not need to lead to agreement in order to continue. For example, if I am a friend of someone who demonstrates their commitment to peace through a “just war position”, then we can discuss our disagreement without requiring agreement at the end. When I was a pastor in Pennsylvania 35 years ago, a young couple came to our church. The husband was a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard. When he discovered we were a “Peace Church”, he asked me, “Do I have to leave the National Guard to come to your church?” I replied, “No. All you have to do is commit yourself to listen to what we believe, and I promise to be willing to listen to what you believe?” In the BIC, we call this “being open to more light” – recognizing that what we believe and do is vitally important, but remaining in fellowship and refusing to break fellowship as we discuss the important, but not fundamental, issue.

In All Things Charity. Charity, of course, means “love”. The love of God; the love Christ has for us; the love we give back to God and to each other; agape love; love that is willing to die if necessary for our brother and sister. It is only such love that makes us able to live with disagreement and continue accepting and loving each other. It is only such love that creates the space within which we can discern truth. This is a covenant love, which is not dissolved when someone moves from one congregation to another. This is covenant love, which builds up the other. This is covenant love, which comes to us only as a gift of the Spirit. As Paul puts it, “Now remain faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.” This love is itself the fundamental foundation, the essential core of Christian faith. Without this love, I wonder if we can even call ourselves Christian. With this love, we can face anything that comes to us in this life, in the hope that God gives us for an eternity lived in God’s presence, whose essence is perfect love.

Conclusion

Wendy Peterson taught at Providence, as well as in Metis and First Nations settings. She died last year, and we lost a loved and wise mother in our community. Some years ago, she described a practice at a gathering of First Nations, in which the youth were upset with their elders for the lack of progress they had made in some issues closely affecting the youth. As they spoke, the elders stood up and walked around behind the young people. As the youth continued to speak, the elders stood behind them. The gathering understood what the elders were saying as they stood there silently. Something like this: “As you criticize what we have done, we want you to know that we have your backs. You can speak strongly, and you can speak safely, because we support you whatever you have to say.”

That is accepting while disagreeing. There was no commitment to agree, but there was a commitment to listen and to hear. There was a commitment to support each other whatever happened. There is much more to say as we work this idea out, but this is my challenge to you as we begin – to love and accept the other, even when we disagree; to love and hold in the unity of our common commitment to Christ, even while disagreeing on how to live out that commitment.

13 January 2019

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Deuteronomy 6: 4-9

John 15: 9-17 and 13: 34-35