always squeezing and seducing them to conform to cultural roots deep within reprobation.
WORLD LOVE
Jesus plainly and dominically informed the Twelve of the world’s eschatological negativity; in the ongoing historical process of the Church, they too faced forbidding pain. John 13:16, 15:20a, “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” Under the teleological forces inherent in Christ’s rulership over heaven and earth, they also had to absorb man-eating persecution, a view of the future to soak into all depths of soul. In the meantime, however, still at table, Jesus drew the Twelve appropriately into his messianic pain.
Hatred of Christ, strangely, bonds unbelievers in a love, albeit a different sort, i.e., a set of inflamed connections solely determined by striking out against the Son of God. This worldly love, actually, a friendship borne out a common enmity, bonded first the Jews together—Pharisee and Sadducee—longtime unsavory enemies. For the Crucifixion a conjunction solidified between Jerusalem and Rome; in that reprehensible friendship, the Sadducees, representatives of Hellenistic civilization, brawled as fiercely as the Pharisees. Thus, the three hateful evolutions of power sought to eradicate the Christ from out of the midst of their worlds. Whether this or that religiosity—at the time of the writing of the Fourth Gospel: Hellenism, Caesarianism, and, worst, Judaism—the threesome underwent assimilation to oppose Jesus. At Jesus’s trial, the Sadducees, largely Hellenistic in culture, and the Pharisees, main formulators of Judaism, easily joined cavalier Caesarianism to murder the Lord Jesus, seeking thereby to do away with his coming Kingdom.
To brace the Twelve for worse to come, Jesus taught, John 15:19a, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own.” By this contrary-to-fact conditional, he declared the opposite: his disciples were not of the world. Hence, they too faced persecution. They were in the world, but . . . not of the world. Hence, they were his, the New Church in her beginnings.
Nevertheless, Jesus prophesied, allowing none to forget covetous Judas Iscariot, the temptation to be of the world, Hellenism, Caesarianism, Judaism, or an amalgamation of the three, glimmered and shimmered with sunny demeanors all around. Appeal made by each religiosity and all collectively impinged attractively upon these men; perhaps not so much as they listened to Jesus in this remarkable teaching session, but later, when they experienced its punitive values. Even while with Jesus, Judas had already fallen, engrossed in a burning temptation. The worlds of man through token friendship offered pleasant release from the hatred Jesus prophesied. What intrinsic value pains of shunning and persecution, if avoidable? However, the Satan, by manifesting himself through the various religiosities of the day, the one sensually appealing, the other powerfully fearsome, and the third comfortably familiar, promised a love, a friendship to the Twelve. Friendship to people suffering pains of rejection by offering a helping hand, imposing support, or confidential affection catches at the heart. In drawing to a common front against the Christ, the world loves its own and gladly makes room for any uncommitted followers of Jesus Christ.
All drawn into the religious hopes of Hellenism, Caesarianism, or Judaism understood and helped each other. However deep or shallow this friendship may have been, adherents sensed a rudimentary belonging together. Even so, more contemporary, Roman Catholics, whatever differences among themselves, know they belong together in Papalism. Similarly, Protestants, whatever tensions among them, know an abiding bond in Arminianism, or in Dispensationalism. Humanists, too, however they differ on specific issues, know they belong together in human rights movements. Islamics as well, wherever across the globe, immediately connect in Mohammedanism. For the same reason small-c conservatives draw together into common fellowship. In addition, small-l liberals find togetherness among themselves. Whatever the religiosity, ideologists sense deep down their own places of welcome.
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All unbelievers looking at and listening to Jesus confess from the heart, while balancing on the precipice of condemnation, that he is not of this world; therefore the hate. This hatred raises antagonism and breeds resentment. Because neither he nor his disciples were identifiable with any of the world’s currents, though unquestionably in the world, the Lord and Savior summoned this occasion to place his own on guard. Earlier, Matt 18:7, he had warned his own, “For it is necessary that temptations come . . .” to bond with one of the spiritualties of this earth. This he declared to test all of the Church.
CHRIST LOVE
Through the parable of the vine, the Lord, Gethsemane-bound, summoned his own to abide in him and bear fruit. Both activities, abiding in him and bearing fruit, made the living branches different from all who sought life in the world, which the Father cut off for burning in eternal fires. Therefore, the Lord and Savior commanded his own to bear much fruit, John 13:34, that is, love for one another, not in terms of secular friendships, but in the agapic way. Powerfully, then, he addressed the interactive foundation stones of the New Church with the deep rhythms of the love commandment. John 15:12–17,
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you, to love one another.
With apostolic force John interposed the living source of the Twelve’s love, the Lord and Savior himself. John 13:1, “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” That love infused the disciples with accountability for one another, through which they demonstrated that they loved the Lord and Savior above all. In this faith-demonstrative love for the Lord and Savior as well as for one another, they kept the commandments. John 14:15–17, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” This the Lord reaffirmed. John 15:10, a general conditional, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” These commandments, of course, constitute the entirety of the Decalogue, which comprehends the boundless substance of love. All aspiring branches of the vine, which abide in Christ and bear abundant fruit, the Father prunes to make them bear more. By this pruning, the Father cuts away all submissions to religiosity. On the other hand, every branch susceptible to the excitable temptations of any current ideology, the Father cuts away and relegates to the eternal fires of damnation, forcibly expelled to the common inheritance for unbelievers.
To demonstrate this love? Christ Jesus placed his own first; beginning with the disciples as the foundation of the Church, he sacrificed his life for his own on the Cross, bearing the punishment for their guilt accrued by breaking the Commandments. The disciples demonstrated this love for the Christ by hearing and obeying him only. Thus, they, toiling out of sight, deployed the power of salvation within them. As well, beginning with the disciples, all living church members love one another. With primary care, unostentatiously, they place each other first in the witness to love the Lord Jesus above all and neighbors in Christ as themselves. The gracious strength of this love Jesus revealed in the sin-shattering prayer that is John 17, vs 12, “While I was with them, I kept them in thy name, which thou hast given me; I have guarded them, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled.” Christ alone, by his power and authority as the Son of God/Son of Man, holds the Church together throughout the ages. Even though she is in the world, through dominically imparted love she is not of the world.
This love of Christ
