What the World Needs Now

09.16.12

1 John 5.2 2 If we love and obey God, we know that we will love his children. CEV

Jesus said this: “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.” (John 13.34-35 NIV) This is a signature verse in the life of a believer. This is a seminal characteristic of the believer: love for other believers. (Yes, it is the right word – you’ll just have to look it up!)

Jesus told His disiples, “Look guys, if you’re ever gonna get it, this is it: love each other. The world understands hate. The world understands tolerance. The world understands retribution – it doesn’t understand love.” The signal characteristic of Christianity is love for one another. Love is seeking the other’s highest good. There are shades of love in the world but those shades only come from God. If there is true love in the world it is only because God placed it there in the first place. God is love: God seeks our highest good and our Highest Good is Him!

And so Jesus said to His guys: A new command I give you: Love one another. And John says, if we love and obey God, we know that we will (naturally) love all the rest of His children. If we conduct ourselves under the prime motivation of always seeking another’s highest good, then we will succeed in walking and acting as Christ did for us and to us.

Jackie DeShannon sang, What the World Needs Now* (is love, sweet love). Unfortuantely, she sang of eros, romantic love; and she sang of phileo, brotherly love. We can all understand eros and phileo; what we can’t understand is loving someone without a shred of expectation of some kind of payback. We can’t understand the power of something that continually puts another’s good above our own.

Part of the issue in Christianity is pride and wanting to be right. That’s partially why there are denominations. Part of the issue in Christianity is semantics – the way we use words or phrases to underscore our beliefs and tenets. Part of the issue in Christianity is style and delivery – we do “it” differently or more frequently than others do. Jesus doesn’t seem to give a rip about style, semantics, or who’s right or whose party is the best – all He cares about is love: putting the needs or the highest good of others above our own: A new command I give you: love one another. And John says if we love God (by obeying His commands) then we’ll naturally love other believers.

And proof of my love is obedience to God’s command to love, and directing my love toward other Christians, and those around me. Love isn’t making excuses; love isn’t enabling – love is giving myself to my family (believers) so that together we can all prove to the world that love (proving the presence of invisible God) exists when the world emphatically states it doesn’t. What the world needs now…

*released on April 15, 1965, on the Imperial label