I have been thinking a lot lately about love and the major role it plays in families and Christians pulling off genuine fellowship with one another. I have concluded that one of the biggest hindrances to love is like.
One of the most challenging things Jesus said in His famous Sermon on the Mount was in chapter 5: “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?” (Matthew 5:46). In context, He is saying that we will be judged more by how much we love (treat people) than how much we like (feel about people). We often let like get in the way of love, which produces a roadblock to true Christian fellowship.
The Bible repeatedly teaches in principle that the church is a fellowship of believers. As such, it is to behave like a loving family is supposed to behave as described by God in the Bible. When God “called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9), He also called you into “fellowship” with the whole family (1 Corinthians 5:2). The two are inseparable where true love and fellowship exists.
As the church, we are bound together by far more than our individual desires or feelings. We are bound together by Christ. He is our common bond. As a Christ-follower, you would be as foolish to say “I’m not a part of the family” as you would be to cut off your own hand or nose. As Paul said to the church at Corinth, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” (1 Corinthians 12:21.)
I have often said, “The best thing about the church is that it’s a family, and the worst thing about the church is, well, it’s a family.” And like any family, at times there will be conflict, misunderstandings, disagreements, personality conflicts, hurt feelings, and the like. At such times, families and churches must stick together and practice love instead of like. Our relationships with each other must be more important than our prideful desire to be right.
Too many churches attempt to pull off fellowship by trying to like each other instead of being committed to love each other. “I don’t like the church leaders. I don’t like the preacher. I don’t like the worship style. I don’t like the programs. I don’t like the way I was treated by somebody. I don’t like this or that, so I’ll go find a church I like better.” Good luck with that in the long run, because you’re only going to find that any church fellowship you go to will be filled with flawed and sinful human beings (just like you), who will disappoint you at times!!! In order to find ultimate peace with a church family, or any family, at some point in your life, you’ll have to learn to love instead of like.
Church consumerism (which is so rampant today) occurs when what people like becomes more important to them than what they are supposed to love. Too many church leaders in our age try to build churches that people will like in hopes that they won’t go to some other church they like better. Instead, church leaders need to put all of their efforts into building churches like the one God describes in the Bible. In their never-ending quest to enhance their numbers, many churches have sacrificed love on the altar of like.
Then, there’s the whole issue of preferences versus promises. This definitely gets in the way of loving fellowship. Too many church folks are more concerned with getting what they prefer (what I want the church to do) than they are in fulfilling the love promises (what is best for the church as a whole) they made to the fellowship when they became a part of it.
What keeps families together is not that they always like the same things, or even that they always like each other. What keeps families together is when every family member is committed to loving one another more than themselves, even during those times when they might not even like one another.
Christians who love versus like understand what Bible fellowship really is. They stay together when things get tough, because they’ve made a promise to love each other even during those times when they might not like each other. They understand that their love commitment to Christ and their brethren should trump anything they don’t like about each other. Those who don’t understand or practice what true love is in Christian fellowship will never like a fellowship long enough to stick with it all the way to heaven.
As I stated earlier, at some point we all must come to the realization that no matter what community of believers we commit ourselves to, there will be sinful and flawed human beings associated with it (just like you and me), and the only way we can maintain genuine fellowship with them is by loving them instead of liking them, and hoping that they will make the same commitment to us.
As with family, what binds us together as Christians is not our compatibility, but our commonality. Our common bond must be Christ, not likes and preferences. We must stop judging one another and come to the realization that we are all sinners in desperate need of love instead of like. We must eventually realize that we need too much love and grace from others to withhold giving it to them.
We all should be so very thankful that Jesus was more interested in loving us than liking us—or else He probably would not have died for us on the cross.
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