Love in the Midst of Mess
IN SPITE OF the lying that was so conspicuously evident
in the first-century community, John addressed these believers
in the most affectionate of ways: "dear children", " my dear friends"
and "my dear, dear friends".
We can understand ourselves in the community only when we understand
ourselves as being created in the image of God who is love and who
demonstrates his love towards us in sacrificial ways. As John wrote,
"This is how we come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed
his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers,
and not be out for ourselves"
The New Testament writers used different metaphors to describe the church:
a field, a building, a body. But the metaphor of a family is probably the best,
because a family is all about relationships-parents, children, brothers, sisters.
The life of faith is lived out in the context of a family, with all its dysfunctions,
with all it's sibling rivalries and relational eccentricities. And somehow, in the
midst of all that mess, people manage to love one another, stay together, and
work out their relationships.
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