The Test
They will know you are my disciples by . . . John 13:35 NASB
By – Perhaps we should update the words of Yeshua. After all, he couldn’t possibly mean that love among his followers is the true test of discipleship. We need to make a few changes in order to reflect a more modern approach. For example:
They will know that you are my disciples by: (choose one or more)
- the creeds you espouse
- the doctrines you endorse
- the way that you are baptized
- the denomination you belong to
- the tithes you give
- the membership you hold
- the degrees you have earned
- the language you speak
- the manifestations of the Spirit you experience
- the church you attend
You are free to add a few more “spiritual” indicators if you wish.
Of course, you must realize how artificial these revisions are. Yeshua never asked for any of them, nor did he expect us to require them. He asked only one thing—to love each other as he loved his own. It is so much easier to alter this request of the Master to fit our efforts at excluding those who don’t fit our mold. Yeshua’s identification of the character of a disciple asks us to put aside all other differences and recognize that we are not the same. We don’t have the same creeds, doctrines, denominations, memberships, baptisms, degrees, language or spiritual experiences. Frankly, it should not matter. What matters, and all that matters, is how we express care, concern and brotherhood for each other. If the world is going to be attracted to the Messiah and to Israel’s God, all the rest of these divisive elements must be given a very distant second place. It is tragic that the history of discipleship has been marred by a constant stream of “revised” identifiers.
Perhaps you and I see eye-to-eye. Perhaps we don’t. Apparently Yeshua doesn’t care when it comes to fulfilling the goals of discipleship. As long as you and I express love for each other as the highest priority, the rest will work itself out. Can it really be that simple? In an age where religious differences seem to be motivation for separation, we must wonder what the Master would say about our penchant to exclude those who aren’t like us. One must ask: “How is it possible to be one of his disciples when we go out of our way to not care about each other?”
Topical Index: discipleship, love, John 13:35
Hi Skip
Some questions
Who is ‘each other’ ?
Who is ‘his own’?
What is ‘care and concern’ (don’t we do that for everyone – our neighbour wether a believer or not)?
Why do you write TW discussing doctrine, wrong interpretations, erroneous Christian doctrine etc etc if it does not matter?
If people we lovingly engage with over Torah vehemently oppose it and you personally how does one continue in that relationship when clearly not wanted?
If there is no fellowship near you and you came ‘out of church’ because you lovingly agreed to disagree what do you do to continue to walk in fellowship/love and yet honor YHWH?
Is not wishing to engage in the ‘holidays’ of Christmas / Easter etc unloving?
Is separating oneself because of the above mentioned issues not loving? Wrong?
When Yeshua says to those who did many ‘things’ in his name’ …. Depart from me you workers of iniquity….I never knew you (Mathew 7:22,23 ) caring and loving?
So lovingly Skip I think TW needs some clarification for me, not sure about others, but I face these issues daily.
Christine
That’s a lot of questions. Maybe we can start by just commenting on a few.
“each other” seems to me to first be those within our community sphere of influence. I don’t mean those who agree with us theologically. I mean those with whom we have relationships. If we cannot show compassion, grace, long-suffering, forgiveness, etc. with these, it will do little good to act in similar ways toward strangers. Of course, it is much easier to “love” a stranger, but hesed is a function of relationship and God begins community with hesed.
“his own” seems to mean those who espouse to follow the same Master, in this case, Yeshua HaMashiach. They belong to him by voluntary commitment. So if I come across someone who claims to follow him, I should BEGIN be assuming that we share a common interest in knowing who he is and what he expects of us. One again, I put my personal theology on the shelf and begin with “how do you do life with him?”
It seems that you might be confusing hen and hesed in this next question. Yes, we show hen (grace) toward all. But hesed applies only where these is PRIOR relationship (see above) and therefore I cannot show hesed to a stranger. I can show grace, as God did, but until I make the effort to include the person in my community, it will only be grace, not hesed.
Finally, for now, yes, I write about errors, issues, doctrines, etc. But if I use this to SEPARATE myself from others, then it seems to me that I have made a terrible mistake. The objective is not to REMOVE you from me but rather to clarify how I see things so that you will be able to clarify how you see things so that WE CAN CONTINUE to dialogue and enjoy each other’s company as we LEARN TOGETHER. What I experience, however, is that far too often differences over these things cause separation. I AM NOT TRYING TO INITIATE THAT. I am trying to open the way to understand you so that we might find a way together. If I am in error, please tell me. And I hope that you will take the same approach. This matters because I do not want to put my trust in something that is not true, and I hope that you don’t want to either. The way that I will find the truth is by engaging with you, not walking away when I disagree.
Maybe I will have some time in Cape Town to address the rest of these.
And in this we know that we love the sons of Eloah: when we love Eloah
AND
do His commandments. For this is the love of Eloah: that we keep (observe) His commandments. (1 John 5: 2, 3)
Therefore you shall love YHWH your Elohim,
AND
always keep His INSTRUCTIONS and His CHUKIM, and His MISHPATIM, and His MITZVOT. (Deut.11:1)
Added to this is 1 John 4 in total…
Job revealed for me the love God requires from those born by His spirit – praying for our friends. Praying is not only our verbalized words directed towards asking from God but also includes our assistance towards those we are praying for…
Jesus revealed His love by;
Preparing for task
Demonstration of task
Mentoring through application
Empowering for task (motivation)
Being on call 24/7
Feeding before telling
Permitting mistakes to empower more
(Sorry but He did discriminate according to abilities and assignment)
What else did I miss?
“Other sheep have I which are not of this fold” (John 10.16)
Mi Familia (My [Extended] Family)
#weareoneinthebondoflove
~ Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren [and sistren!] to dwell together in unity! ~
~ ..love one another out of a pure heart fervently! ~ (1 Peter 1.22)
~ [and] By this [one thing will] all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another ~ (John 13.35)
“Love” is an action verb! “Love” must be demonstrated! Love is benevolence towards another at cost to myself. Love never fails.
LORD, teach me, show me, demonstrate to me how to love.
~ We have the mind of Christ..~ (1 Corinthians 2.16)
I think in the mission to find ‘truth’ and latch on to it, it’s far to easy to lose sight of goal and the bigger picture. When coming out of thr church people seem to be far more concerned with the vertical relationship far more then the horizontal relationships. In the act feel an unnessary feeling of being an island
Derek, I couldn’t explain my feelings of loneliness until now. I have shut out many relationships in my “search for truth” mission. Time for another paradigm shift!!! Thanks for your post.
I’m in the same boat, the struggle is real. I’ve been now on this walk of “Jewish Roots” for going on 4-5 years. I can say that I have thought more times than I can count, “Oh I finally get it, I know the, ‘truth’ now”. Just to find that in a few months my theory or my understanding isn’t the full picture. My biggest regrets in learning more about my roots of faith have been that I have made people feel uncomfortable, bent and broken relationships, and acted annoying rather than compassionate or just even rather human. Each time I thought I was in the right or needed to drop some knowledge on someone. Every time a self imposed isolation or made it harder for me to connect with people I truly have loved their company. I’ve come to a point where it is easier for me to understand that someones personal relationship with God is just that, personal. Trust me, what I think is right as of today in just 4-5 years I will probably be shaking my head and thinking “not really the case buddy”. It happens to all of us. Read skips post for 5 years+ ago, you learn and your thoughts evolve. But I’m in a place that I don’t need to just be around people that think like me. I can do things with people that think differently but still hold the values I do by their actions.
The Christian holidays are just around the corner, it’s the hardest time to not put yourself on a soapbox and to check your ego and not feel like you are completely different then everyone around you, “Did you know that Jesus wasn’t born today?!”, or, “This is pagan and I’m the pagan police!”. Meanwhile you have a meeting on next Tuesday and aren’t calling it ‘day 3″… There are a TON of convenient hypocrites in this movement, and people are vulnerable when they start learning. Quicker you see we live in Babylon and you can do the best you can do, the easier life becomes. Do good works with people, share laughs and fantastic memories with people. Keep searching for truth but in the act of getting your vertical relationship right, don’t burn all your horizontal ones. This is life is just a short trip and it’s better to smile with friends and family then to sacrifice that so you can smile by yourself and think, ‘I’m right everyone else is just wrong and I’ll have some special thing now that none will have”.
Lastly in the words of a friend of mine he said, “Can we argue about the specifics after all the widows and orphans are cared for and when the hungry are fed?” That line really resonates with me.
Skip and Derek – Thank you for confirming exactly what we believe the Lord is revealing to us. Live the Shema and if you have difficulty identifying your neighbor- this may help – they all belong to the Lord ! Treat them accordingly.
Skip the group in Sarasota anxiously awaits November 20th
Hi Maddie, my wife and I spend our winters in FL (from Canada) near Wesley Chapel from mid Nov to mid Apr. We would really like to get together again with Skip and anyone else in this group somewhere, sometime as we are isolated. Is there any possibility of doing so with you and your group on Nov 20? Skip has nothing posted on his agenda so I assume it is a private group meeting.
If you prefer, you can contact me directly via gkraemer@nbnet.nb.ca We respect your privacy so thanks either way with your decision.
Hi George and Penny
No it is not private but I will contact you via your email. We would love to include all
The bible has much to say about both phileō love and agapē love… reading from correct translations.
Strong’s compares the two thus:
Phileō; to be a friend to (fond of [an individual or an object]), that is, have affection for (denoting personal attachment, as a matter of sentiment or feeling; while agapē is wider, embracing especially the judgment and the deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty and propriety.
Human love is very much a human thing, an emotional thing, while the love of God very much embodies making deliberate decisions and judgements based on God’s word as a matter of principle and duty.
There are some similarities, which is why the devil is so adept at confusing them.
However, agapē love supersedes phileō love, and on no account must agapē love ever be compromised by preference for phileō love.
Additionally, agapē love is only available to those who have a knowledge of God’s word and who manifest the gift of holy spirit. This is important to our understanding of 1 Corinthians 13, which deals with agapē within the context of the operation of the gift of holy spirit.
Agapē is a spiritual quality, not a human quality.
One cannot take 1 Corinthians 13 out of the context of chapters 12 and 14 or your bible simply falls to pieces. Chapter 13 is a parenthesis sandwiched between chapters 12 and 14 which give instruction on spiritual matters including the proper operation of the manifestations of Holy Spirit. As a parenthesis, chapter 13 is a figure of speech giving it emphasis, but only within the context of spiritual matters and the correct and proper operation of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
One cannot take chapter 13 out of the context of the proper operation of the gift of Holy Spirit and rightly divide God’s word.
Taking this a step further. Only those who energise manifestations of holy spirit accurately and properly have any potential to walk with agapē, the love of God in the renewed paradigm in manifestation.
That is the context of 1 Corinthians 13. If you take 1 Corinthians 13 out of that context, what you have is private interpretation.
Agapē, the love of God in the renewed mind in manifestation, cannot be lived by anyone who does not FIRST walk by the Spirit. This is precisely the opposite of what most people think when they read this chapter.
1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love [agapē]; but perfect love [agapē] casteth out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love [agapē].
In other words, we’re not going to cast out fear with any of our human abilities or talent or brains, it’s going to take something spiritual, the love of God to get the job done.
In the records we’ve seen, Peter, Stephen, Paul, and Yeshua all put God and His word first before their love of people.
In other words, they spoke up when God wanted them to speak up. They refused to put their love for people before their love for God. They walked by the Spirit, offending in the process.
If folks do not speak God’s word because they are afraid of hurting people’s feelings, or because they don’t want to upset anyone, or because they feel it is unloving to confront people and annoy them when God is working in their hearts to speak up (and that’s the key to this whole thing), then the truths of 1 Corinthians 13 apply to them.
If we don’t listen to God when He is working within us to speak up or deal with something, and we compromise because we feel our phileō love for people is more important, or we’re simply afraid, then we are not walking with the love of God in the renewed mind in manifestation, we still have fear in our life.
Manifestations of Holy Spirit are only profitable to those who walk by the Spirit, to those who love God more than they love people, to those who love God more than they love temples made with hands otherwise known as their local church or ministry, to those who want to help others.
Sure, they take 1 Corinthians 10:32 and 2 Corinthians 6:3 out of context to justify their religious weakness, but their lives will not defeat the devil in any spiritual category. They are whited sepulchres full of dead men’s bones and if you go to them you will be made unclean. God refuses to have anything to do with temples made by men and so should you. If you go to church, God won’t be there.
If you want your life to be spiritually meaningful, to have spiritual value, you will have to love God first before people, which means you speak up when He wants you to speak up, and you act when He is working within you to will and to do of his good pleasure. This is the walk of anyone who wants to be a disciple, and it is axiomatic that we must first learn to operate the gift of Holy Spirit properly and accurately for that is the immediate context of this chapter.
1 Corinthians 13:2
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity (agapē), I am nothing.
You may have a heart for God and want to know His word and do something for Him, but really, anyone can run away from confrontation.
That takes no ability or courage at all. If we’re going to walk with the love (agapē) of God we will have to deal with situations when God is working in our hearts to do so. That is walking with the love of God in manifestation and that takes courage. This isn’t about being nice to everyone and smiling inanely at them.
Yeshua wasn’t nice to everyone. Do you see how this fits within the context of 1 Corinthians 12 and 14? Unless we’re walking by the Spirit, properly operating the manifestations, chapter 13 is a world away from where we are, and all our talk about love is just noise.
Galatians 5:22,23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love [agapē], joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Fruit of the Spirit is not fruit of the good works of man. You can’t produce spiritual fruit by doing anything in the senses realm, which includes manifesting human phileō love.
You can manifest phileō all you want, you can be the most phileō loving person on earth, but it will never produce fruit of the Spirit. You can only produce spiritual fruit by manifesting the gift of Holy Spirit..
Agapē is only attainable by first manifesting the gift of Holy Spirit accurately and faithfully according to the instructions given in 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 14.
If we lose this truth and attempt to manifest human love to everyone, we are walking by the senses and not by the Spirit. We are attempting to perfect the flesh. Once these truths are lost regarding walking by the Spirit, we have lost the meaning of the resurrection and the whole point of the Grace Administration.
Philippians 3:3
For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Yeshua, and have no confidence in the flesh.
Now yes, once we’re walking by the Spirit, and we recognise God’s still, small voice and we decide to be courageous, get involved and deal with situations when God works within us,
it’s being courageous by doing God’s will. Every situation is different and that is why we must first be walking by the Spirit before we can be effectual ministers walking with the love (agapē) of God.
1 Corinthians 13:4,5
Charity [agapē] suffers long, and is kind; charity envies not; charity vaunts not itself, is not puffed up,
Does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil;
Are fathers loving and kind when they fight to protect their wives and children? Sure, they are. Love is not weak. Not even human love is that weak. Not even animal love is that weak! It takes strength, courage, and a sense of duty to live with this kind of love. Religious love isn’t love at all, it’s a disease.
1 Corinthians 13:13
And now abides faith, hope, charity (agapē), these three; but the greatest of these is charity (agapē – the love of God).
If you have a problem understanding this teaching in the context of the love of God, then your perceptions of agapē are still clouded by religious nonsense. We love people with the love of God, we love people enough to confront them with God’s word to give them a chance to change. It’s the only way to help people.
Love is more powerful than fear. But it’s not talking about human love, it’s talking about the love of God. Agapē love is more powerful than fear, but phileō love is not, and that is why perfect agapē love can cast out, or displace fear.
Perfect love (agapē) must necessarily be more powerful than fear otherwise it wouldn’t be able to cast it out. God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, he gave us a spirit of power, agapē love, and a sound mind.
This love God gave us isn’t phileō love, human love – we were born with that – it is agapē love, the love of God in in manifestation.
If you think smiling nicely at your fears with a religious phileō plastic smile is going to back off the challenges of life, you have no concept of the spiritual realities around you.
If you want to confront and defeat fear it is going to take the strength, courage, and determination that comes only from knowing God’s word, walking by the Spirit, and living with the love of God in the renewed mind in manifestation. Amein!
Apologies for the lengthy, challenging comment, adapted from Way of the 21st Century. com Shalom!
Well laid out Ester with the climax in 1 Cor 15. Explained as manifested in Yeshua but relevant for our own rebirth into Christ.
I read a pastor teach on why the Coptic Christians were not Christian. He was point on as he enumerated his Calvinist position. Then I saw this and would much prefer to sit under his teaching: http://www.copticdadandmom.com/fr-boules-george/