The Love of Christ: Letting the Genie Out of the Bottle

In The Beginning
In the first part of the modern era the Christian faith burst onto the cultural scene from what seemed like a disastrous beginning and rose to a point where it was the official religion for the once hostile Roman Empire. The defining elements of this faith were 

• That the Creator God had entered human form in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew whose followers saw him as God's promised savior and king. 
• He taught that the Law God had given to the Jewish people could be summed up in the two commands, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind' and  ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
• He was executed by the Romans and that He went willingly to death, offering Himself as the final atoning sacrifice that would allow humanity to reconnect with the divine.
• That He rose from the dead and now is present with God the Father 
• That He will return again one day in judgment over the living and the dead, examining each on how they have followed his faith and lived out his commands of love, after which the creation will finally be set free from the bondage that evil forces have had over it.

So Christians went out seeking to follow Christ's example of extravagant love, freeing those in bondage and speaking out against those who showed injustice to their fellow humanity.  Though, as time went on, tribalism in the church began to take hold. Starting originally as a cultural dispute between Jewish and Gentile Christians, it soon began to spread further a field to others, as different understandings around the nature of the incarnation of Jesus took hold, the message got lost and the fights began. Did Christ become divine at His birth or baptism? Did he exist before his birth as a human or did he only appear to be human and was really a spirit being? Were the divine parts of His nature at one with his human nature or were they separate? Was He the same being as the Father God or was He actually a separate angelic entity. Was He even human at all, or was He even divine? These questions began to be asked because if you were going to die for your faith, you needed to know what that faith was and how it was the same as the person being executed next to you. Christian love should have prevailed over this, but the forces of this world were at work.

Doing the Splits
For the early church already finding itself divided from Judaism, schism among its members was an already a sad possibility. Maintaining unity while actively seeking to discourage those that caused division was never an easy thing. Some, believing they were carry on the leadership of Christ's disciples, sometimes disagreed with others who were also considered to hold authority. Charlatans and opportunists were already appearing to take advantage of the good nature of the young movement and looked to lead it in directions that were directly opposed to to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. This didn't go unaddressed in the letters and other writing that would in time become collected together as The New Testament. The Gospel of John is very clear about what is important in relation to understanding who Jesus is and the nature of his being. In the Gospel of John it says, 

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it................. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (The Gospel According to John 1: 1-5, 9-14).'

Here the writer is laying out the idea that the origins of Jesus Christ didn't begin in the womb but stretched back into the very essence of the Eternal Divinity. He was a major player in creation and now He inhabited it. This idea of Christ being eternal divinity, God's Word made flesh, is carried on into the 1st Letter of John, which traditionally the church has attributed to the same author. Here it becomes a rallying point for those who are seeking to discern what teaching and which persons truly represent Christ against those that seek to deceive, 

'Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. (1 John 4: 1-3)'

For John, the most dangerous thing that could take hold of the church was a belief that denied that the divine Word of God, the means by which the unseen Heavenly Father had interacted with his creation since the beginning of time, had not been born into human history as the man Jesus of Nazareth. If Jesus was merely a man or even a spiritual being that merely looked like a man, the Christian message was undermined. God could dwell with in his creation, his creation was good and he loved it enough to die for it. Human life is precious, human life matters, Human life is of eternal value and the way we treat others counts. The way of this world says that someone has to die to pay the piper, the way of Jesus says that if someone has to die to appease the murderous spirit of this world,
 it will God giving himself freely. God is love and he loves us, warts and all.

'This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4: 10-12).'

Dying For the Here and Now
This amazing cocktail of love is the good news of the christian message. We are agents of God's love who share this love with others because He loved us first. In fact it is by our love that people will know us and by which God will recognise us as His people. It seems simple but as history rolled on the same old enemies began to rear their heads. In my own life time God's people seem to have been recognised by their doctrine, their assigned list of beliefs. Often it didn't matter how much this lead to discrimination, oppression, hate and intolerance, what counted was that the persons doctrine was perceived to be right. If this was the case these things could be over looked no matter where it lead the holder of such beliefs. In fact if your life was a mess and you were suffering, it was probably your own fault because you were following the wrong set of beliefs. You  probably deserved everything you got. Maybe your faith wasn't strong enough, that's if you had one at all. For many Christians it was belief in a right set of doctrines that guaranteed entrance into heaven and not a belief in the divine power of love that would empower you as a child of the God to transform the world here and now. They forget it was in the 'here and now' that Jesus came and dwelt in order to the redeem the whole 'here and now' from the destruction that a lack of love was bringing upon it.

Street Freak Fear
This has lead to what I call 'street freak fear', the moment when a street preacher approaches you and asks whether you are a Christian. If the answer is in the affirmative, they will begin to tell you why your not and why they need to save you. Loving God and your neighbour is no longer enough, there are levels of Christianity beginning with what ever doctrinal slant the preacher holds to and where ever they see as you sitting theologically. Look out if you belong to another religion all together, you are hell bound no questions asked, despite the fact that Christians believe that Christ is the ultimate judge. Love has seemingly disappeared as the true defining principle of Christ's followers and has been replaced by an adherents to a set of propositions. There was even a time, long after the Romans ceased burning Christians at the stake, that the followers of Christ started burning each other over issues of doctrine. I'm not suggesting that we should turn our backs on the basic tenants of the Apostolic Tradition, only that Christ's command to love comes first in our dealings with others. Instead of being the salt that gives flavour to the world, we are at risk of becoming pickled in our own self righteous juices. Is this how Christ meant it to be?

Release the Genie!
Looking back through history, through reformations, schisms between East and West, inquisitions and crusades, I think it's time for us to return to our first love, Christ and His sacrificial passion for the 'last, the lost and the least'. We need to let the genie out of the bottle and unleash the lavish love of Christ on a world that needs it more than ever. When we meet others, no matter who they are, their well being needs to be our main concern. In fact, the way we treat them is the way we treat Jesus (1 John 4: 19-21). It's always seemed ironic to me that the church has fixated on all kinds of things that it has perceived to be the greatest of sins, even to the point of social isolation and execution, and has ignored the very things Christ said would be the issue in question at the last judgement. We struggle with common law marriage, same sex relationships and evolutionary theory but openly tolerate greed, social inequality, sexism, racism and gossip. Something seems to have been lost over the years.

Nail Your Colours!
If the just, merciful and loving treatment of those around us is the ultimate hallmark of a Christian, why don't we nail our colors to that mast? Why don't we make that our goal? Then we will truly be salt and light in our tiny corner of the cosmos. Only Christ's love has the power to transform our world, when we come to see all humanity as beloved brothers and sisters redeemed by Christ's blood and not enemies to be crushed. We need to let love flow freely and to all, no matter who they are, because in doing so we are showing Christ how much we love him. We need to be the people who cause the vulnerable to breath a sigh of relief in our presence and the ones with a vested interest in suffering to flee or change their hearts. Christ has called us to be the ones who work with him to piece back the broken pieces of the human race into a beautiful mosaic of spirit filled family, at one with its creator and one another. Release the genie now!