The Sweet Cement of Love
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
(1 Cor. 13:4-8a)
Paul’s great definitional love passage in 1 Corinthians 13 is well known, uttered as it is among white dresses and exchanged rings, but although it can be applied to marital love, its original audience was not husband and wife, but the church. This love, that believes and hopes and endures and does not end, is to be expressed within the context of a church body. It is indeed well known, but perhaps poorly applied.
Jesus himself told his followers that they would be known, not only by how they love the world–which they certainly would as they lived the reality of being freed from sin–but by their love for one another (John 13:35). Love among our fellow church members is a defining characteristic of our new life in Christ, as the Apostle John wrote in 1 John 3:14, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”
Given that the world exists with shifting sands of cultural mores, wrought with rugged individualism and fragile loyalties, a commitment to love the way Jesus directs is otherworldly. Amidst the world’s uncertain relationships the church can stand as a beacon of mystical unity. A unity explainable only by our shared table: a table set with the Bread of Life and his blood shed for us.
Yet despite this call for the church to live bound by love despite our differences, factions creep in easily enough. Certainly there is nuance here, as there are legitimate and sometimes necessary cases for breaking fellowship, but what is too often the case is division over hurt feelings, minor preferences, or an inability to dwell in the presence of disagreement.
Alternatively we may stay within community, but allow ourselves to be surrounded only by those we like, and keep at arm’s length those whom we don’t. But, as Thomas Merton gleaned in his years in the monastic order, “it isn’t just a question of whether you are building a community with people that you naturally like, it is a question of building a community with people that God has brought together.”
If the Church is indeed built by Christ, united in him, and sustained by him, then the community within which we find ourselves is no accidental congregation. It is a group to whom we are divinely given, and commanded to love–love in terms far more demanding than what our culture favors. We are to love them for who they are today--in all their foibles and idiosyncrasies--and encourage them toward the holiness that God is creating within them for eternity. And they are called to do the same for us.
“If the Church is indeed built by Christ, united in him, and sustained by him, then the community within which we find ourselves is no accidental congregation. It is a group to whom we are divinely given, and commanded to love–love in terms far more demanding than what our culture favors. We are to love them for who they are today—in all their foibles and idiosyncrasies—and encourage them toward the holiness that God is creating within them for eternity. And they are called to do the same for us.”
We will not do this naturally. Naturally our expressions of love are, in truth, self-love. We look for friendship to fulfill our own desires: to be needed, to be known, to be good. Many of us consider ourselves quite loving, when in fact our version of love is not unlike that which the chief demon, Uncle Screwtape, of C.S Lewis’ imagination, encourages his apprentice to capitalize on in tempting his Christian “patient”:
“The grand problem is ‘Unselfishness.’ Note once again, the admirable work of our Philological Arm in substituting the negative unselfishness for the Enemy’s positive Charity. Thanks to this you can, from the very outset teach a man to surrender benefits not that others may be happy in having them but that he may be unselfish in forgoing them” (The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis).
It is not enough to be merely “unselfish”, but we must actively love. Unselfishness perseverates on its own sacrifice. It serves, not with delight in what the other gains, but in assumed superiority that commends its own benevolence. It is always looking inward even as it acts for someone else. Unselfishness does not last long in community. It gives, but it will not forget what it gave. It keeps records of every slight. It is quick to anger and irritability, easily offended and impatient–full of pride, and reaching for every splinter while it swings a plank from its blinded eye.
But in Christ our unselfishness is transformed into love. In Christ we battle our deep-seated self-love and learn to look outward. We relinquish our sense of ownership of our time, our money, our preferences, and even our privacy. We hand everything over to him, and so we are freed to love as he does, lavishly, not begrudgingly. This love will have no space to cling to hurt feelings, nurse bitterness, hide sin, nor entertain pride or envy, it is too filled with living water, a water that freely overflows into others.
“In Christ we battle our deep-seated self-love and learn to look outward. We relinquish our sense of ownership of our time, our money, our preferences, and even our privacy. We hand everything over to him, and so we are freed to love as he does, lavishly, not begrudgingly. This love will have no space to cling to hurt feelings, nurse bitterness, hide sin, nor entertain pride or envy, it is too filled with living water, a water that freely overflows into others. ”
This love is more than merely an expression toward those whom we like. It is more than a laissez faire attitude toward those with whom we share the same church building. It is more than unselfishness, condescension, or tolerance. This is the love that flows from a heart that knows we were once enemies of God, yet he took upon himself all our treachery, and loved us into new life with him. This is the love that looks at the other and sees, not someone I have to interact with, but a fellow image bearer of God who was bought with the same precious blood of Christ. It sees a fellow brother or sister in Christ as someone we are privileged to worship alongside, to share in the inheritance of Christ. It requires us to know our fellow church members intimately, so much so that we confess our sins to them, repent when we’ve wronged them, and forgive them when they’ve wronged us. It requires that we hold one another accountable and encourage one another in our gifts. To weep together in loss and suffering, because their loss becomes our own; to rejoice together in blessings, because we really do share in their joy; to love one another so generously that we cannot help but extend that love outside the borders of our church; to look forward to the day when we will gather around the throne of the Lamb and praise him for eternity together. This is the love that can only flow from Love himself.
We know the Church is not immune to wounds inflicted upon herself. We see the fissures that pattern the stones resting on the chief Cornerstone, and we might think that it would take only a gust of cultural wind to level us to dust. But just as Christ has built his Church, so too he repairs the cracks and holds us together. How?
“But the sweet cement, which in one sure band
Ties the whole frame is Love".”
(The Church Floor, By George Herbert)
What can make the Church last into eternity, and repair our divisions and wounds? The sweet cement of Love. After all, it never ends.
