The Church Living Out the Greatest Commandments

As kids we all learned the nursery rhyme about the church, the steeple, and the people. It's a way for us to see the church as a structure with a familiar style (open doors, a building, the image of a steeple, and a classic architecture). Even if a church meets in a warehouse, movie theater, a back porch, or in a sprawling suburban campus, there's still imprinted in our minds a form of the church and its familiar shape.

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So it's with keeping that familiar imagery in mind I want to think about what it means for the church to live out the two greatest commandments, to love God and to love neighbor. That, in essence, is the summary of the Law according to Jesus. And because we are still under an obligation of obedience even in Christ, we recognize that our duty, our response, our worship of Jesus is expressed through faithfully living out what He has called us to. Love God. Love Neighbor.

Yesterday was the first in a series through the Seven Churches of Revelation and what we can take from them. The first was Ephesus, the church that had a loveless orthodoxy. They had all the right answers, held to all the correct doctrine, and did all the right things, but the charge against them from Jesus was that they had forgotten/abandoned the love they had at first (or their first love - it's a bit of a sticky interpretive issue). As I chewed on that, I kept coming back around to some undeniable assumptions about the local church:

1) There is a foundation of Truth - We don't get to redefine things, God has spoken and has declared what is good and right and true. This canon has been meticulously and faithfully preserved in the Scripture. We know about God, ourselves, and how we are to live and relate to Him.
2) Truth overflows into a twofold expression of Love and Action - The truth of Scripture about God is that He is not distant, removed, or callous. He is near, loving, and merciful. He is generous. He is good. And because of His initiative and affections and actions towards us, we love Him. And not only do we love Him but we also serve Him. A deficient view of Truth can lead people away from Love and Action because a deficient view of Truth fails to see God as He truly is.
3) The church is, has been, and will continue to be God's Plan A - The vehicle of redemption and transformation of not just individuals but culture and the world will always be the local church. God loves the Church. Jesus calls it His Bride. And each and every local church is an outpost and embassy of God's Kingdom to reach its community and the world. The vehicle is not a denomination, missions agency, or community ministry.

Which brings us to the model below.

The beginning point is obviously Truth. It's the foundation for any local church, or for any individual Christians. Truth is more than a series of collected propositions or syllogisms. Truth is centrally contained in a Person: the Lord Jesus Christ, revealed in Scripture as King and Messiah. That truth has been faithfully preserved by the writers of Scripture and the ongoing work of the Spirit to preserve the Word.

But from that flows, as I said above, the two natural responses to Truth: Love and Service. Neither the church nor an individual Christian can live fully the design of God apart from the overflow of Love and Service. The building is supported by these to keep it standing. Without one or the other, the whole structure topples, even with a solid foundation of Truth. A church or Christian captivated by Truth should be both the most loving and the most active, because of the transformation from within.

At the top of the building is the steeple, where everything comes together. In this, the steeple is the vertical and horizontal axes of love that God commands of us: love for God and love for Neighbor. Our vertical relationship with God is to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It's more than feelings. It captures our thoughts, it drives our actions, it stirs our souls. It changes us. All of us. From within and outside. Likewise, not as a secondary but more as a 1A, is the other of the Greatest Commandments: love your neighbor as yourself. A church founded on Truth, supported by Love and Service as the outflow of Truth, will live out not only the vertical of our relationship with God but also the horizontal in how we love our Neighbor.

The church at Ephesus was one that was marked by a commitment to Truth but without the same commitment to Love. Jesus' warning to them was to repent and return, to recapture that love, or else their lamp stand would be removed. Removing the lamp stand would mean taking the source of their light away, Jesus Himself. It would become a "church" where Jesus wasn't. Those same words apply to us at Emmanuel or wherever you're reading this. If we aren't committed to the expression of Truth through Love and Service, thereby fulfilling the two Greatest Commandments, we shouldn't be surprised when Jesus moves out.