Paul gives a simple reminder for
the church in Romans 12:10; “Love one another with brotherly love.”
Just moments before he said, “Let
your love be genuine.” These are two
very different types of love.
In the second reminder I gave,
that love is at the core of who you are.
It is the type of love that defines you and was exhibited by Christ
fully at the cross.
The first love, brotherly love is
a love that bonds a family. This love is
necessary in the family of God, in the church.
For this is the type of love that overlooks faults and says, “I got your
back brother, sister, no matter the circumstance.”
A church that goes through a
split is a church that lacks brotherly love, because this love is designed to
bond a family together even in the fiercest storms.
I grew up with four brothers, so
I am well aware of what it means to have brotherly love. We have had our punches at each other, we
have had our moments of headlocks and noogies, but at the end of the day, we
are still brothers and united, because we are bound by this brotherly love.
Even to this day, when I hear
that one of my brothers gets into a fight, my heart instantly prods me and
says, “you should have been there to help.” (not that I would have been much of
a help) Regardless of if my brother is
right or wrong, I have a gut urge to back my brothers up. It doesn’t matter if we have spoken in two
years or two days, when there is danger involved, I want to help because they
are my brothers.
I will always remember one of my
first fights (what an understatement). I
was in third grade. Things were heating
up between my two oldest brothers and a couple of other boys at school. It
culminated after school one day when one of my brothers said that Trevor and
his boys would be waiting for us at the stop sign. I would ride my bike home every day with my
two older brothers, and today I was pumped as we were to rendezvous at a
certain stop sign on the way home in order to settle this score.
I saw them in the distance, and
pedaled up to them and did a little skid maneuver with my back wheel to show
them who was boss. My oldest brother
pulled up next to me, and the words starting flying. Before long, one of them grabbed his back
pack and tossed it into the middle of the road.
With as much force as my pre pubertal voice could muster I commanded
them to go pick up his back pack. They
didn’t (no surprise).
Soon after the words were
exchanged, a van pulled up and the door opened and out ran about a dozen girls
who surrounded us.
Now being out number 5 to 1, we
were determined to not lose. That lasted
about 5 seconds, as every girl literally jumped on top of me and my view
instantly became a sea of skin as I laid on the sidewalk wondering what just
happened. I can still remember how I
laughed as I was being scratched and gouged.
For some reason I thought it was fun.
Then, through the bodies of
girls, I saw my oldest brother literally ripping them off of me; he was
determined to set me free. It was only
the three of us, but we gave it our best shot. We most definitely walked away
the losers, but it didn’t matter, we had each other.
That is brotherly love. To this day, I have no idea what we fought
about, I just knew my brothers were being hassled and I was ready to get their
back, and in return, they had mine.
Now, imagine the strength of the
church to withstand persecution if we were to love each other like that. Imagine the force in which we could stand the
blows of the enemy if we were ready to back each other up.
Let me encourage you, if you have
a beef with a brother or sister in Christ, resolve it so it doesn’t affect the love you
are to have for them. Forgive them or
seek forgiveness by them, but let us not turn against each other, rather let us
protect each other. There will be
punches thrown in the church, but at the end of the day, I pray that you and I
don’t get hung up on those punches, but we move on from them in forgiveness and
reconciliation.
