Fighting for Love
by Josh Dickens
We are living in a cultural moment of the death of love. I’m sure I don’t have to explain this much to you. If you need any more convincing, just go turn on your media method of choice. Now, mind you, we are taught to expect this. Jesus tells us how the love of many will grow cold as the day of his return nears (Matt. 24:12). But what has been unexpected, and what not many Christians have anticipated, is how love seems to be growing cold in the church herself. All too often, our churches are micro-representatives of our culture, rather than expressions of the Kingdom of God offering an alternative to our culture. Infighting is never pretty, how much more so when infighting is taking place on global platforms of the likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc. We have allowed our competency to overcome our character, and we are suffering the consequences. We are living in the dying light of Christian love in America.
The Coming Kingdom of Love
We have forgotten loving one another is the key to Christian living. Jesus boils down the Christian life to loving God and others (Matt. 22:37-40). John writing to the church in Ephesus continually contrast Christian love with living in the light. Love is nothing profound for Christians. It is not shocking for Christians to talk and write about the value of loving one another. Christians writing about love is like someone from Colorado talking about mountains. I don’t think our cold love, as evidenced by how we treat each other, is a result of ignorance. I think it is a result of forgetfulness. We have forgotten what our love represents.
Love the Key to the Kingdom
The church is called to offer to the watching world the way of love. Picking back up with 1 John, he is writing to the church about the value of loving one another, and then he states,
“Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.” – 1 John 2:8
Within this little verse, John packs a new theology of love for the church today. At the advent of Christ, our commandment to love takes on new meaning. Now we have a living picture of what it means to love one another. Christ is the living embodiment of love. In Him, love is given a face. And it doesn’t stop there; being a living embodiment of love is also given to the church. When the church loves, we are representing the coming Kingdom of love. Love is the key that unlocks the Kingdom of God. As our culture declines around us and the love of many grows cold, we are called to represent the hope of love that is yet to take center stage. This coming Kingdom will usher in love incomprehensible. And it is only given to the church to display it. When the church loves, she is not merely good and kind. She is putting the darkness of the world on notice. She is advertising to a watching world the narrow path. She is waging war. And she is setting to light the redemption that only Christ offers to a watching world.
So Christian, would you choose love. Choose love as you go on social media. Choose love as you enter into conversations. It’s easy to finish this article and think of at least three others who need to read this. I must confess, I have had to fight this even while writing. An indictment of my own love problem. But what if this challenge became your own. Choosing love must start within each one of us. So today, choose love and enter the fight of our Savior.