John 13:35

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Consider this, there are many Greek words for love. Godly love, agape, is the most pure love and it is this love that Jesus is teaching to His disciples. If the world can see that we, the children of God, love one another with this perfect love, it is the love of God being demonstrated by imperfect humans.

From the viewpoint of an outsider who does not know the love of God our love might look like one or more of the other types of love. Love of family and love of friends is common in the world. We even have that love within the family of God. What sets us apart is when we open up our community to unbelievers and show them how God loves us through each other when one of our members acts out of character.

• 1 Corinthians 6:15
  Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
• 1 Corinthians 12:12
  One Body with Many Members
  For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
• 1 Corinthians 12:18
  But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
• 1 Corinthians 12:25
  that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
• 1 Corinthians 12:27
  Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

Paul’s first epistle to Corinth is a prime example of how he reminds us who we are and how we are to act. Why does he have to remind us if we are all members of the same family?

1 Corinthians 1:11

For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

Families quarrel from time to time. Who is going to settle this? Paul brought the gospel to Corinth and set in place a structure for the church that begins with oversight. We are all answerable to a higher authority and when local leadership cannot resolve certain issues those who showed agape love to begin with are called back to settle their disputes. Submission is required.

1 John 4

English Standard Version

Test the Spirits

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Here in verse 6 John refers to “we” meaning that there are many that are born again in the spirit and come to the lost because God has sent them. This is done through those who have been wise enough as homo sapiens to allow the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth to identify truth and error to speak for them.

Most of the lost were not raised up in Christian households where truth and error were brought to them by the love of God that dwells in the hearts of born again Christian. That was my experience and my witness that a family loved me where I was and drew me out of darkness and into the light. That was not my natural family.

Yesterday I said “Are we wise enough to understand how love is perfected with us?” The answer to that is simply if we see the love of God exists in others so that we may abide with them to learn from them how God made that possible.

That is the second part of 1 John 4:6 in listening to them. 

But will just listening do the trick?

Matthew 5:6

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

The hungry will listen, just be wise in what you feed them.