To the outside world they may look alike, act alike and appear to think alike.  But nothing exhibits more diversity than siblings.   From the moment they are born they strive for diversity from their older brothers and sisters.  Whether it is due to birth order, family dynamics, personality convergence or divergence, or simply the Lord’s delight in all things different, there is nothing more diverse than a family. 

G. K. Chesterton, in his book Heretics, describes well the largeness of the diversity that exists within the family.  It is in that small village where large living is to be found.  It is a large quote, but worthy of your time and consideration.

It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the willfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men.

The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery.

There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan.

But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell. A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. It is, in the most literal sense of the words, a society for the prevention of Christian knowledge. 

-G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, XIV. On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family.

We hear of sibling rivalry and that is easy to understand.  That competition for attention or the last piece of cake is fierce and persistent.  The need to be heard, seen, and known among the clamor of the family is a very real thing.  Sibling rivalry falls naturally out of our sinful pursuit of the ‘me’ rather than the ‘us.’  But sibling love and sibling loyalty is something quite divine.  In the tumult of family conflict, the cultivation of love for one another causes the family to truly become a society for the promotion of Christian knowledge.

The Church is such a family.  Made up of the chosen not the chooser.  For Jesus taught,

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. -John 15:16

And Paul noted that “God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.”  (1 Cor. 12:18)

The Church is the ultimate family.  To a critical, hostile world Christians all look alike, act alike, and appear to think alike.  But we know by experience, this is hardly the truth.  Sibling rivalry is nowhere more fierce than at Church.  We contend over important theological truths and the color of the carpet with equal intensity.  Like calves at the feeding trough, we are apt to jostle and push for position and preference, sinfully pursue the ‘me’ rather than the ‘us.’

But nothing reveals our identity as disciples and believers like our love for one another.  Jesus declared,

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” -John 13:34-35

Notice that Jesus commands love.  Rivalry and self-serving come naturally.  Our new nature as believers enables us to love, but to love our brothers and sisters who are so different from us, act so differently, think so differently, and prefer things so different from us.  That is a work of God’s sanctifying free grace. 

As John writes to his beloved flock in Asia Minor to show them how to grow in their assurance of the faith they profess, he points to their love for one another as a non-negotiable.  False teachers, the Antichrists, were wreaking havoc in the church by denying the person and work of Christ, rejecting the apostolic authority of the scriptures and encouraging an individualistic Christianity that calls men out of fellowship in the church.  But John reminds the flock that God has called them to abide in Christ and in the Church and to love one another.

Join us as we examine John 3:11-18 and consider what this commandment to love one another as Christians entails.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.