Devotion: Acting as One Body

By Joey Heath

1 John 2:9-11 (NIV)

“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded him.”

I recently heard a sermon in which this was the scripture passage. The person preaching had a beautiful analogy for this verse. He said to imagine you are on hike and it begins to get dark so you turn on your headlamp so you are walking in the light. Then suddenly the batteries die and we are surrounded by darkness. Instead of stopping and changing the batteries we just continue on walking in the darkness stumbling over everything in our path. This is what happens when we allow bitterness and hatred into our hearts.

John wrote this around 60 years after the death of Christ. He wrote it to a church that was really still establishing itself. In fact they really didn’t even have churches in the sense of a building. They would meet in the courtyard of whoever’s house that had room to accommodate everyone. In this young church there were some disagreements. What John was saying here is when there are disagreements, and there will be disagreements, we can not allow that to turn into bitterness and hatred towards each other. We must always remember that this is our brother or sister in Christ. John is writing a very basic message here. He is saying love is good. Bitterness and hatred are bad and if we allow it into our hearts we will be stumbling in the darkness. Our only hope is to release that bitterness and turn to Christ.

Paul spoke a similar message in Ephesians 2 when he said:

“Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.”

What Paul and John are speaking about is a central message in the Bible, that we as the body of Christ are all joined together even in our differences. We are in fact one united and yet very diverse body of believers and we are called to come together as one and to show the love of Christ to a world that cant see it.

As Christian how much time do we spend walking around in darkness because we have allowed bitterness in our hearts? How many times have we allowed something someone said or did to just fester in heart until it becomes a bitterness? If we are in Christ we should let go of that bitterness and embrace our brothers and sisters, even the ones we disagree with, and meet with them at Christ’s table because if we act in bitterness we are not walking in the light of Christ.

If we say something and it is not loving or able to be used to build people up, then we are not walking in the light of Christ. I believe you can loving rebuke someone in Christ if you truly are walking in the light of Christ in your heart about an issue and I believe that will show. But sometimes we can have the best of intentions and still be walking in darkness. What I mean is that if we say something to someone “on the other side” in order to show them how they are wrong and it causes them to think negatively about God or the church or feel that they have no place in the body of Christ then we have really need to check what our motives were and make sure that we were not acting out of bitterness, hatred, or disgust. I say this because to truly show God’s love to someone that is a believer, there is no way they are going to have negative feelings toward God because God’s love will be shining through anything we are saying. 

There is an organization that I receive news from. Im not going to name the organization because Im just using them as one example, as there are many organizations on both sides of most issues that do this. This one organization, which claims to follow Christ, who recently published an article accusing an LGBT organization of having misled a local school board into making a decision. The interesting thing about this article is it offers no proof of this other than to say that the organization misled them. It tells what those that opposed did to try and stop it and how they felt afterwards but never again mentions the organization or exactly how they misled the school board. I studied political science in college and this is what I would call propaganda. I use that term intentionally because it evokes images of war. I don’t believe there is such thing as a loving war. To many who oppose equality for LGBT people that is what it is, a war. In the same way many of those that support equality for LGBT people also see it as a war. War creates sides and division and enemies and does not harbor reconciliation or coming together. Out of war comes propaganda like I just mentioned. It stirs emotions but is really only a half truth. So I ask, how is creating propaganda like this walking in the light of Christ? To me it seems much more like walking in the darkness and bringing others into that darkness.

This organization also allows comments to their articles. Sometimes the comments are more enlightening then the actual articles. Many of the people who comment will claim their faith in Christ as they comment. Then they turn around and say bitter, hateful things sometimes even to the point of calling names or even praying for the death of those who are “on the other side”. Again this happens on both sides. I again ask how is this walking in the light of Christ. I think John, who physically walked with Christ, would say it is simply not.

I recently read where a leader of a conservative organization said “we did not start the fight over LGBT equality” almost as if that is justification for acting in bitterness. My only question to that is what have you done to end it? What have you done other then throw more stones? What have you done to try and at least meet those you see as “the other side” in the middle where you have common ground like a Savior in common?  When have you loved your brothers and sisters enough to meet them where they are at? I say this to both sides because I believe both have fallen short and have allowed bitterness to keep them from walking in the light of Christ just like John said.

 If we allow our differences to create divisions no matter how passionately we believe the “other side” is wrong well that is where we start walking in darkness because as soon as we see the other side as the “other side” instead our brothers and sisters in Christ, as soon as we start to question the Christianity of someone that claims Christ than we are walking in darkness because only God can speak of where a persons heart is. For those that say well the loving thing is to point out how they are not Christian I ask you how loving it felt the last time some one said you weren’t living in Christ or as a Christian. Most likely you felt a little defensive and as soon as that happened you were looking for the way prove that they were wrong and from then it doesn’t matter what either person says because neither is really going to listen to the other. We start to create sides and begin walking in the darkness.   

Paul and John both wrote of unity in the body of believers. We cannot let our differences divide us any more. We need to come out of the darkness and in to the light of Christ and act as the one body. We need to release the bitterness and hatred in our hearts and erase the dividing lines. We need to stop thinking of “them the other side” and start thinking of “us the one body”. In doing this we will be able to move past those things that divide us and move towards the real work of the kingdom, showing God’s love and mercy to the many in the world that have never seen it or experienced it  and so that we can “Go into the world and preach the good news to all creation.”

God in Heaven,

I ask you today to remove the bitterness in our hearts that so easily divides us these days. We ask that you unite us as the one body of Christ. I pray that though we have differences that we strongly believe, we would always remember that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Most of all I ask that you remind us of the ties that bind us to together like in you is the forgiveness of sins and in you we can place our complete faith. Please bring us together so we can share your love with the world.  Amen.