“Though you have not seen him, you love him.”
How do we come to love one whom we have not seen?
This is not a new problem. There are no video clips of the Lord’s healings, sermons or public interactions available on YouTube. We have no pictures of him to look at. The last words he uttered on this planet were spoken almost two millennia in our past. For everyone outside of Judea, and who lived in the years after the Lord Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, knowing him and loving him — to the extent we manage it — has been the result of hearing and reading about him.
For many people, Christ himself is little more than an abstract idea. How do you genuinely love an abstraction?
Loving the Abstraction
Somehow, it is possible. Peter did not write, “Though you have not seen him, you should love him.” It’s not an imperative or even a command. It’s a simple statement of fact. He’s writing to people who DO love the Lord Jesus despite never having met him.
How did they get there? How can we follow their example? Peter doesn’t say, at least not in the immediate context of the statement he makes above.
Or perhaps he does in a measure. In his next paragraph, he ties love of Christ to belief, and belief to the words of the prophets concerning Messiah. The Spirit of Christ predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. These are the things the Christians of Peter’s generation believed, and having trusted the word they heard, they could learn about the Lord Jesus second-hand, not only from those who knew him, spoke to him and touched him, but also from those who wrote about his character and work long before he lived. The truths the prophets wrote down concerning our Lord’s humility, compassion and dedication to the Father’s service provide insight into his thoughts and motivation rarely glimpsed in the gospels. These primarily show us what he did and said. So then, through the prophets, we get a more complete picture of Jesus the man than we would otherwise enjoy.
More than Knowledge
So yes, love for Christ comes through exploration of and meditation on his word by way of the apostles and prophets. That’s not an original thought, but it’s a source of knowledge, refreshment and spiritual food that few Christians exploit to the maximum. So many are content to hear a platform message or two every week and get their knowledge of Christ at yet one more remove. To really love him requires we really know him, and to know him presumes we allow ourselves to hear, believe and process biblically-informed thoughts about him daily.
But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there. When we think about heaven and eternity, we all pay lip service to loving the idea of being with the Lord, and to some minor extent, I think we genuinely feel a desire to see him in person and have unlimited access to him for all time. But I truly believe if more than a few of my readers are very honest with themselves, we are more captivated and motivated by the promise of being with our loved ones who know Jesus as Savior and Lord than we are with the Savior himself. With some admitted embarrassment, we quietly prefer the copies to the original.
Why is that? More importantly, are we entirely wrong for feeling that way? Should we feel guilty about such emotions?
Originals and Copies
Well, yes and no. When I put it so bluntly, we all know the great Original is preferable to any replica of mere flesh, and that it is Christ and his fellowship we should long for above all else, and do, when we are thinking rightly. That’s the “yes”.
The “no” is this: Our loving and gracious Lord understands our weakness and limitations in this area. He knows we need more than word-pictures of him to stir our hearts to affection. That’s why he’s given us walking, breathing images of himself all around us. I worship with a hundred or more of them every week, and I have no trouble at all loving most of them.
John addresses this very issue. He writes, “No one has ever seen God.” That’s the problem. Then he adds this important solution: “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” He goes on to say, “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.” That is to say, the transforming work of the Holy Spirit is imaging Christ all around me, if I am willing to see him present in and among his saints.
Blurry Images of Glory
How can that be, I wonder, since we are all so flawed? Sure, we are all being remade in the image of the Lord Jesus, but this is very much a work in progress in each one of us. The image of our Lord we present to the world and to each other, both conscious and involuntary, is imperfect, blurry, and slow to come into focus. Each of us has his spiritual strengths; areas of character in which we excel in showing the Lord to the world. Likewise, each has his spiritual weaknesses, where others cannot help but note more differences from our Savior than similarities to him. My failings can inspire your pity, your compassion and your commitment to help me on the road to my transformation. They are not likely to inspire your love and draw it forth.
That comes from elsewhere, doesn’t it. “Love is from God,” says John a few verses earlier. It doesn’t originate in me or you, but with him.
So my question is this: When I yearn to be reunited with those who have preceded me into the presence of the Lord with greater intensity than I yearn for the Lord himself — when I can picture them, and feel deeper and more obvious affection for them than I can gin up within myself for the Lord Jesus — is that a sign of my spiritual poverty? Perhaps so.
His Brother Whom He Has Seen
On the other hand, is it possible that the qualities for which I loved them most were the qualities most Christ-like? Nobody loves a believing relative or friend because of his occasional outbursts of malice, anger, deceptiveness, dissolution or envy. We love them in spite of these things. The qualities in them that we admire and long to emulate, and which make us ache for their presence once they have gone home to glory, are those that most perfectly reflect the character of our Savior: their humility, compassion, cheer, grace, wisdom, self-control and love for the truth.
Is this not the case? The scripture even teaches it: “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” It is in the transformed character qualities of our fellow saints that we see Christ more clearly than in any other way. This is by the design of God, and his love in us is what identifies with and prizes these qualities, welling up in genuine affection for the Little Christs all around us.
So then, on the one hand, we all aspire to know and love Christ better. Let us do so, growing up into him as the scripture teaches. But let us not get too bent out of shape when we find ourselves longing for our fellow believers who are no longer with us. The problem is not that we love the degrading memory of the fragmentary copies too effusively; it’s that we love the glorious Original too little.
Seeing Him As He Is
One day soon, we will see him as he is. When we do, we will recognize him instantly. I will realize in a flash that when you encouraged me last week, it was really Christ doing it through you. When my son anticipated some desire and met it unasked, Christ was doing it through him. When I felt a deep, sweet connection to some brother or sister for the wise words they shared with me, it was Christ in whom that wisdom originated, and he empowered every aspect of the way they expressed it.
The earthly copies are not temporary signposts on the way to some vastly superior relationship with a perfect heavenly person; they are not due to be discarded or minimized when faith becomes sight. No, these mere replicas will one day come into focus so sharply and clearly that we may not be able to tell them from the original. He is bringing many sons — and daughters — to glory, and he will do it perfectly.
What a day that will be.
No comments :
Post a Comment