Weblog Entry - 02/19/2003: "Volume 14 - In Search of a Brother By Richard Waters"

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02/19/2003 Entry: "Volume 14 - In Search of a Brother By Richard Waters"

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity"

Prov.17:17

Christ instituted the Brotherhood of all believers in being formed like us in order to identify with our struggles and thus providing a way through them. ("For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way,---" Heb.2:17) The hardest challenge for the Church is the corporate expression of Christ through "brotherly" love. The Gospel and Epistles of John are replete with a call (singular) to brotherly love. It is through the unity and harmony of such love that the power and authority of Christ is expressed through the Body into cultures (Jn.17:21) and principalities (Eph.3:10).

What constitutes brotherly love? At a glance, it is relational and is best described by what I call the "Love Sandwich" as found in I Cor.13. Paul gives a vivid picture of the glue that holds the unity of the Body together (I Cor.12) with the manifested gifts of the Body (I Cor.14) to be the character of love of the Body (I Cor.13). In that, Paul equates the character of love as patience and kindness with the relational acts of love as protection, trust, hope and perseverance (I Cor.13:4-7).

Brotherly love, therefore, is a decision set with choices and not based on a feeling at any given moment. If I believe that the Lord has set me, as a living stone, amongst several other living stones to be built together as a corporate expression of the Lord Jesus, then I must choose to relate by the mortar that binds us together, that being the mortar of love. Picture yourself a brick set in a wall of a building. There is mortar on all four sides that holds that brick in place and adds to the integrity of that wall that helps support the whole structure.

In order to sustain the integrity of the Body and express the witness of the Lord Jesus, I choose to stay united with my connected brothers by the Love of Christ that binds us together by the four virtues of expression as:

PROTECTION:
I choose to guard against (a defensive posture) any force that would come against to pry us apart.

TRUST:
I choose to lay my life down and believe that my brother holds this same integrity as a mutual adhering one-to-another.

HOPE:
I choose to believe in the best for this relationship, that only positive results will happen for the glory of the Lord.

PERSEVERANCE:
I choose to remain steadfast believing that nothing, save the Lord, can destroy our unity with each other.

Love, then, is the believing force that binds relationships together in mutual respect for the value of the other person at the expense of your own safety and wellbeing. Unconditional love always gives towards the needs of the other without respect to its own needs.

How is this caring relationship established and what is our New Testament example? While we often equate the first church of the Gentiles to Paul, it actually was established before he came on the scene. Paul learned the scope and depth of brotherly love during this time, as before, he was a loner.

FIRST CHURCH OF THE GENTILES: BUILT GOD’S WAY

"--, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks also,--."

Acts 11:20

What isn’t mentioned speaks volumes to present day thinking. No super apostle, prophet, evangelist, etc. is mentioned at the outset of the first gentile church of which the "Apostle" Paul was later commissioned and sent from. Some ordinary men from opposite sides of the Mediterranean were sovereignly brought together by the Lord and used to bring great numbers to the Lord (Acts 11:21).

It wasn’t until after a year that Paul was "sent out" to fulfill what the Lord called him to do. Paul was first schooled in brotherly love during this time where he learned to "Carry each others burdens" Col.6:2, "Submission" one to another Eph.5:21, admonish one another Col.3:16, and all the other one-another commands. Paul learned to walk-his-talk in order to have authority to say "Follow me as I follow Christ (I Cor.11:1). I believe his attitude is summed up in Romans 1:11-12 in that he not only longed to visit the brethren in Rome to impart the gifts of the Lord through him but that he would likewise be mutually encouraged by the Lord’s gifts through them. Paul places himself on the same playing field as his brothers. He was not one to sit in the stands of an elevated ecclesiastical office, but rather a player-coach on the turf of life. Paul held to no office but to a call to service for which he laid down his life. He counted all such earthly recognition as but dung in order to know Christ and Him crucified (Phl.3:8). Earthly offices are a deathblow to brotherly love.

BROTHER, ARE YOU THERE?

When I’m lost feeling alone,

Straying from family friends and home;

Confused in thinking, lost in thought,

Feeling that life is all but naught;

Brother, are you there?

Entangled in a web of day-to-day snares,

Slowly closed off from the One who cares;

Who will turn me from this path of death,

Self-consumed, choking for breath;

Brother, are you there?

Blinded by narrow scope and vision,

All I see is confusing indecision;

Who will help these blinded eyes,

Remove the scales by the father of lies;

Brother, are you there?

Now I see the path before me,

Loving hands reaching for me;

Embraced by the arms of the One who cares,

Brother of Love, you’re always there!

Always there, Your love never fails,

Binding arms that hold fast,

In bonds of peace that will always last.

Always there to protect and trust,

In bonds of hope that never gives up.