The Spiritual Man's Relationship to Fellow Christians
A right adjustment to God necessitates a right adjustment with all to whom God is related. Coming into God's family brings one into relationship with other members of that family as brothers and sisters. God is love so love is the atmosphere of the home in the heavenlies.
1 John 4:8, 12, "God is love ... If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."
The love of the children for one another is rooted in the love of God. His heart of love is reflected in the heart of each because His very nature, which is love, is imparted to each one at the new birth. The proof of God's indwelling in the believer is his love for the brethren. Unlove or hatred toward a brother or sister in the family of God is incontrovertible proof that the love of God does not dwell in one. The love-nature is shown in a love-life.
1 John 4:7, "Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God."
1 John 3:14, "We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death."
1 John 4:20, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
Obedience in the family life of God requires love for one another. The law of Christ is love upon the very highest plane - the plane of the Cross. There on Calvary in laying down His life in death for those who were not only sinners but rebels the Lord Jesus manifested love at its highest and purest. It is love of this same nature and extent that Christ commands Christians to have. The Cross of Christ is to be both the birthplace and the pattern of the love which brethren are to bear one to another. Rooted in a love that has its life-blood flowing from the Cross the spiritual man's life becomes adjusted to that of every other member of God's family.
John 13:34, "A new commandment, I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
John 15:12, "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you."
Then love for one another in the family of God is not optional but obligatory. To love one another as Christ hath loved us rests upon a divine "ought". There is no escape and no excuse.
1 John 4:11, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
1 John 3:16, "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."
This spiritual adjustment between fellow-Christians is revealed in the inner circle of fellowship by unity and in the touch with the outer world by solidarity.
Unity in the inner circle of the Father's family life is the very heart of the Son's High Priestly prayer. In church circles today there is much emphasis laid upon union. All kinds of associations and federations are being formed. There is an attempt on a vast scale to bring about a universal consolidation of denominations, and even a federation of the two bodies into which the visible Church is divided - Protestant and Catholic.
But there is a vast and crucial difference between union and unity. According to Webster's dictionary union means "junction; coalition, combination," while unity means "a state of being one, oneness, agreement, harmony." Union is junction; unity is conjunction. Union is coalition; unity is concord.
The unity for which our Lord prayed was not a forced union, worked up and organized by man, based on common ideas and ideals, but it was a spontaneous oneness which grew inevitably out of the sharing of a common life - the life of Christ Himself. Christ prayed that the disciples might be one even as He and the Father were one. The significance of that "even as" is tremendous; it is descriptive and explanatory. It describes a unity that is based not on organization but on organism; it is not a union of denominations or of communions but it is a welding into essential oneness of those who are drawn together magnetically as it were, by the power of the supernatural life indwelling each. "Father, thou in me and I in them that they may be made perfect in one." It is the unity of spirit with spirit through oneness in Christ Jesus.
John 17:21, 23, "That they all may be one: as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me ... I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."
Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
Such unity is based on a common, clearly-defined relationship to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and it is "kept" through a mutual, right adjustment in the Spirit.
Ephesians 4:4-6, "Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 7)
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