by Elder Mike Chon

The church is much more than a group of individuals meeting together on a Sunday to sing songs, hear a sermon and spend some time together. It is more than some religious activity. The church is the family of God made up of those that Christ died for. The church is the family of God that has been adopted and made co-heirs with Christ. The church is the family of God that shares the love of God to each other and to the world. The privilege to be part of the family of God is incomprehensible but along with that privilege comes great responsibility.

The love that we have for one another is not based on whether someone is deserving of that love. The love we have for one another is based on the love of God. That God would love us to send His Son to die for us. We are to love because God loved us first. (1 John 4:10-11) On the contrary, those that do not love actually do not love God because God is love (1 John 4:8). For the believer, to love someone or not, is never the question. There is no decision to make. If you know God, and if you know the love of God, then you will love your brother. Not only will you love your brother because you know God but you will love your brother as a member of your family. Remember we have been adopted into one family. The church is the true family. We are true brothers and sisters. Our identity is with Christ and our family is the church.

The church is the testimony of the love of God. Our love for one another as family is the testimony of the reality of the love of God. Is the love of God divided? Is the church divided? Do we only love those that are easy to love? That are convenient to love? Do we only spend time with those that we consider our “friends”? Christ prayed for the church that we would be one as He is one with the Father (John 17:21-23) so that the world would know who Jesus is. That is some privilege and responsibility. Not only that but the world will know that we are His disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35). The love of the church, the family of God, reflects both the testimony of our salvation and the testimony of Jesus Himself. Do you love the church? Do you love your brother and sister? I pray that our church would not be a church of cliques or a bunch of individual families, but instead it would be a true family that experiences the love of God in every interaction with every member of our church. Who is your family? The church is.

Here is an example of what love looks like in the church. Around AD 260, a devastating plague afflicted the city of Alexandria. People were dying constantly, and the church family as well suffered great loss. But through this tragic time in history, the love the church showed for its members gives us one of the most powerful examples of true familial love that you will ever see. Dionysius, the overseer of the Christian community in the city writes:

The most, at all events, of our brethren in their exceeding love and affection for the brotherhood were unsparing of themselves and clave to one another, visiting the sick without a thought as to the danger, assiduously ministering to them, tending them in Christ, and so most gladly departed this life along with them; being infected with the disease from others, drawing upon themselves the sickness from their neighbors, and willingly taking over their pains…In this manner the best at any rate of our brethren departed this life, certain presbyters and deacons and some laity….So, too, the bodies of the saints they would take up in their open hands to their bosom, closing their eyes and shutting their mouths, carrying them on their shoulders and laying them out; they would cling to them, embrace them, bathe and adorn them with their burial clothes, and after a little while receive the same services themselves, for those that were left behind were ever following those that went before. But the conduct of the heathen was the exact opposite. Even those who were in the first stages of the disease they thrust away, and fled from their dearest. They would even cast them in the roads half-dead, and treat the unburied corpses as vile refuse. (Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 7.22)

The church is where we find our greatest encouragement from our fellow brothers and sisters. Who else except those that have been saved by grace through the work of the cross can and is able to encourage us to love God more and to help us glorify Him in all that we do.