Witness Our Love

"The ultimate goal of building this kind of community - one built on distinctively Christian love that flows from the distinctively Christian Gospel - is to display God's glory throughout our surrounding neighborhoods, our cities, and ultimately the world." (Mark Dever, The Deliberate Church)

Indeed, this is the ultimate goal for our lives here on this earth - to display the glory of God Himself to the world! When you read the Bible you cannot escape this truth; it is there throughout the Old and the New Testaments. It is the reason why the Lord chose the people of Israel as His chosen people - to display His glory to the nations so that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation would come to Him in repentance and faith and worship Him alone forever. When you read about the ten plagues that the Lord brought upon Egypt you will see the Lord's reasoning behind these attacks on the Egyptian's so called gods - see Exodus 7:5, 7:17, 8:10, 8:22, 9:14, 9:16, 10:2. What was the result of these attacks upon those in Egypt who witnessed them? Many believed and followed God (look at Exodus 12:38)!

Going a little further down the road, to the dedication of Solomon's Temple; look at Solomon's prayer of dedication in 1 Kings 8:41-43, 56-61. We see there that Solomon knew and expected people from other nations to hear about God and to come to faith in Him through the corporate witness of the people of Israel.

Likewise in the New Testament we see Jesus telling His disciples at the last supper to "love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34-35). The disciples love for one another was a public witness of who God is to the unbelieving world around. Paul also, in his letters penned his prayers for the churches. For the church in Philippi, he prayed that their love would abound more and more (Philippians 1:9) so that ultimately it would be "to the glory and praise of God" (Philippians 1:11).

For the Church today (both the worldwide, universal Church and the local church) our goal is the same - to display the glory of God! What we do as the body of Christ matters. How we act as a church matters greatly. Are we taking the name of the Lord in vain and breaking the 3rd commandment by calling ourselves Christians and living like we want to live? Does the unbelieving world around us that is watching us (and make no mistake thinking that they are not) look and see a group of believers who truly love God and one another or do they see a group of people who call themselves Christians but put on display all sorts of self-centeredness, pride, envy, strife, hard-heartedness, and hate?

Let us heed the words of our Lord Jesus and truly seek to love one another as He loved us. Our relationship with one another and love for one another in the church is predicated upon our relationship with and love for God. Much is at stake if we do not love one another...the greatest of which is the name of the Lord God Almighty! May we honor and glorify Him rather than bring shame upon His great name! That we may know Him and make Him known!