Glorifying God by Loving One Another

Dr. J. Vernon McGee, the old fundamentalist preacher of Thru the Bible fame (http://www.ttb.org/), tells what is probably an apocryphal story about a man who drives into a nameless town in small town America on a Sunday morning, and stops at a gas station on a hillside overlooking the town. As he looks down at the town in the valley below, he notices all of the different church steeples dotting the landscape. So he says to the gas attendant, "Boy, those people sure must love God, don't they?" In response, the attendant says, "I don't know about that, but they sure hate one another." While I wouldn't necessarily agree with this observation completely, there may be at least some truth to it. And even if there isn't, what kind of witness are we presenting to the world when professing Christians are perceived as fractious, spiteful, unforgiving, judgmental, etc.? After all, the Lord Jesus said that "this is how they will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:35. That is ultimately the point of this endeavor, to show the world that we desire to love one another, regardless of our (real and imagined) denominational differences. To do that, we need to come to a greater understanding of what we believe in common, which starts with the fundamental Christian confession that "Jesus is Lord" and at the very least includes the Apostles' Creed. With that foundation, along with a deep and abiding sense of love, humilty, and respect for one another, we can begin to understand the areas where our encounter with the Risen Lord differs. In some areas, those differences may be large, while in others they may be small. But even where we agree to disagree, we can learn to admire the passion and zeal with which our brothers and sisters in Christ strive to love and serve our Heavenly Father. To be clear, the idea is not to have another morally relativistic encounter group, where the "truth" is always up for grabs. Rather, while the details of what we will be studying are still to be determined, we are committed to meet together united around the Truth, the Lord Jesus Christ, under the power of the Holy Spirit, to study His Word, with the ultimate goal that others may see our love for one another and give glory to our Father in Heaven. As one of my favorite hymns goes (and I have heard this in both Catholic and Protestant churches), "They will know we are Christians by our love." Amen.