It is Thursday, and Paul’s open heart surgery is due tomorrow. It has not been an easy week to do anything productive, and now the newsletter is due. Throughout the week, I had given some admittedly fleeting thought to writing on various subjects, but my mind has been obsessed by one subject above all others – Paul’s operation. Then I received an email from Myanmar, which followed one from Nepal – both promising prayers for Paul. It was hard not to be deeply moved by the worldwide fellowship of Christians.
The New Testament contains about 61 ‘one another’ passages where Christians are told how to relate to one another. The first one, surely, is that Christians are to love one another (John 13:34). We are also told to be kind to one another (Eph.4:32), for this reflects the character of God. ‘Let us with a gladsome mind, praise the Lord for He is kind,’ wrote John Milton, paraphrasing Psalm 136. If God were not kind to us sinners, where would we be? To show kindness is a wonderful thing. In 1829 Charles Simeon recalled the opposition that he experienced for decades as an evangelical preacher of the gospel at Cambridge University. He wrote that ‘It was a university crime to speak to me, and was reported to parents’. So isolated was Simeon that when a poor man in the street took his hat off to him, Simeon was so touched that he hurried back to his rooms to weep. Such was the impact of a simple act of kindness.
A difficult command is the one that Christians are to forgive one another (Eph.4:32). John MacArthur has made this observation: ‘Early in pastoral ministry I noticed an interesting fact: nearly all the personal problems that drive people to seek pastoral counsel are related in some way to the issue of forgiveness.’ Connected to this command is the one that we are to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16). We are not united by a pretence to virtue but a humble acceptance of fellow penitents. All true Christians, whether strong or weak, are to accept one another, because Christ has accepted all who repent and believe the gospel (Rom.15:7). In Christ, all racial and social distinctions mean nothing (Col.3:11).
Similarly, we are to pray for one another (James 5:16), and encourage and stir up one another to love and good works (Heb.10:24-25). There is to be a natural empathy – or a Spirit-given empathy – between Christians. ‘Live in harmony with each other,’ says Paul in Romans 12:16. This is not to embrace anything and everything. The Christian stands upon God’s revealed truth. One of J. Gresham Machen’s sayings was: ‘To move the world you must have a place to stand.’ But those who are standing on the rock which is Christ need to stand together.
We are to bear one another’s burdens (Gal.6:2). These burdens may be financial. Deacons are to look after the poor, and remember that Paul took a collection from the Gentile Churches for the famine-struck Christians in Judea. It may simply be that someone is going through troubles – everything strikes at once. Carry such a one. He or she may be going through grief. There are not too many short cuts – carry such a one. Calvin speaks compassionately of the need to ‘each hold one another’s hands’. It is part of what it means to submit to one another (Eph.5:21).
The kingdom of God is a worldwide kingdom whose king and head is Christ. It consists of all whom the Father has given to the Son by the work of the Holy Spirit. It depends on no armies, no thrones, no parliaments, no media barons, no honours list, no spin doctors, and no human achievements. All who are joined to Christ are joined to each other. And the best is yet to come. As Charles Wesley put it:
And if our fellowship below
with Jesus is so sweet,
what heights of rapture shall we know
when round His throne we meet?
This week, in the midst of some tension and anxiety, I have known a little of that, I trust.