Action & Truth

18 Dear children,let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

     Action and truth, that is what John is telling his fellow believers teaching them to carry out the commandments of Christ.  Love then consists of actions backed by the love of Christ in God.  We merely must not be so minded that we talk out our Christianity but instead walk it out with faith and works.  Paul also understood this well and said, "show me your faith and I will show you my works." Faith and works are hand in hand.  

    Abraham the Father of Nations and an example of Ancient faith was ready to sacrifice his only son to the New God he followed.  But in a moment, he was spared the anguish of loss of a promised heir by God himself providing the atoning sacrifice of a Ram caught in a thicket.  So much more in Actions did God himself prove to us that his love for us was unbounded by sacrificing his only son on the Cross.  God's actions were sound and therefore saved us through them.  By God's actions and proof of them the whole world gained salvation through his son. 

     So now it begs the question?  How do I as a Christian satisfy the commandments of My God.  It has to be by Actions and Truth as John has written.  I have spent many, many years inserting myself in Christian fellowships in hopes to find a place of being.  Many times over it has been a disappointing experience.  Disappointing because I find limited outreach is being manifested  to those "lost" and on the outer edge of life. The poor, disenchanted, the lied to masses seduced by a Christianity preached that is promulagated and forced to the masses in anything but the real and basic tenets of true Christianity.  Programs and prosperity doctrines shallow in nature and leaving behind the love John writes about in his letters for brothers and sisters in the Lord.  

     Seventeen years I labored in a closed fellowship of Christians building with brothers and Sisters building up the body of Christ.  In this fellowship we actually built each other's houses over a period of 17 years.  It was in true love's labor for one another that we did this to free each other from debts and so the "ministry for the saints would not be neglected.  It was I guess the closest thing ever to the book of Acts living the New Testament church I have ever found.  

    There was however one great flaw that undid seventeen years of works and faith and that was betrayal and a controling spirit from within the Church itself.

  Works of love and faith mean nothing when love waxes cold. How could so many who profess Christ be so cold as to( "shun" like the Amish) the very people on whose backs the Christian Church was built? How could families be torn apart so easily in the name of correction and leading of the Spirit? How could legalism present itself in the form of laws of dress code, hair styles, how many hours of work men must perform (or not) and be told instead "have faith"  the Lord provides... when Paul himself admonished those who do not work do not eat! All the while pouring precious energy into the Church while the lack of food and housing of some, went unnoticed by the leadership?  

     How it got there after such a great beginning and powerful witness of the Spirit still to this day saddens me and causes me to be wary of types of Christianity that are closed and only witnesses to itself.  The very ones who need to hear the gospel are left out on the cold.  The preaching of sermon's with content like "us and them" should have been a warning bell.  

       The crux of 1st John then is the hallmark of love.  It must be like Christ. It must not be judgemental, critical and wax cold in the name of doctrines of teaching so called Christian principles that love gets lost and brothers and sisters no longer function with a heart that is soft and tender, but instead swap it in the "name of Christ" while building something else entirely.  

    John said that if we hate a brother or sister then we are murderers!  Strong admonition.  But in essence they have killed off something valid in that sister or brother when love waxes cold.  

     9 I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us. 10 So when I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, spreading malicious nonsense about us. Not satisfied with that, he even refuses to welcome other believers He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.