Of the twenty-nine One Another admonitions that are found in the New Testament, the first two contain caveats which instruct us how to follow those particular One Another instructions.
On the night that Jesus was betrayed and arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, He celebrated the Passover with His disciples. During that evening together, Jesus stripped down to a loin cloth, wrapped a towel around His waist, took a basin of water in His hands and washed the feet of His disciples. After washing their feet, He put His robe back on and said the following to His disciples. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
The Command? Love one another. How? Even as Jesus has loved us. Why? That the watching world will know that we are His disciples.
You might say, “That’s impossible!” The only reason that it is impossible is because we choose to make it so. Here is where the struggle begins with the one another admonitions, it is not so much a struggle between God’s Word and our intellect but a struggle between God’s Word and our will.
Oswald Chambers wrote, “God does not make us holy in the sense of character; He makes us holy in the sense of innocence; and we have to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of moral choices.”
In dealing with matters of the will, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses (your will), into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish one. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
When an individual is born again, their heart is cleansed, and they are made new in the righteousness of Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:21). It is then, through the actions of our will, that our character is developed along the line of our clean hearts.
God does not call us to do anything for which He has not made every provision through the Cross of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit that lives in every believer. The grace of God is sufficient for every detail of our lives. The Apostle Paul said, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).
What is the key that releases the power of God into our lives so that we might find the capacity to do His will? The key is obedience. Faith is a matter of do and acquire, not acquire and do. When, in faith, we obey the commands of God, contrary to how we feel about the command, God will release His power into our lives to complete that act of obedience.
Jesus said, “This I command you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you” (John 15:12). The command to love one another has nothing to do with how we feel about it. Rather, it is a call to obedience.
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