A Tragic Change Comes Into the Early Church
John realized that Christian love was dying out of the church. “Beloved, let us love one another,” he wrote, “for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”ULe 200.6
“Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”ULe 201.1
The opposition of the world is not the greatest danger to the church. It is the evil cherished in the hearts of believers that brings their worst disaster and most certainly sets back God’s cause. There is no surer way to weaken spirituality than by cherishing envy, fault-finding, and evil thoughts about others’ motives. The strongest evidence that God has sent His Son into the world is the existence of harmony and union among people of different natures who form His church. But in order to bear this witness, their characters must conform to Christ’s character and their wills to His will.ULe 201.2
In the church today, many who claim to love the Savior do not love one another. Unbelievers are watching to see if the faith of professed Christians is having a sanctifying influence on their lives. Christians must not make it possible for the enemy to say, These people hate one another. The tie that binds together all the children of the same heavenly Father should be very close and tender.ULe 201.3
Divine love calls us to show the same compassion that Christ showed. True Christians will not willingly permit someone in danger and need to go unwarned, uncared for. They will not be unfriendly or distant, leaving the mistaken one to plunge farther into unhappiness and discouragement.ULe 201.4
Those who have never experienced the tender love of Christ cannot lead others to the fountain of life. Christ’s love in the heart leads people to reveal Him in conversation, in a spirit of pity, in uplifting lives. Heaven measures the fitness of Christian workers by their ability to love as Christ loved.ULe 201.5
“Let us not love in word or in tongue,” the apostle wrote, “but in deed and in truth.” We have completeness of character when the impulse to help others springs constantly from within. It is this love that makes the believers “the aroma of life leading to life” and enables God to bless their work. (2 Corinthians 2:16.)ULe 201.6