A Band of Natural Enemies. . . .

There are some broken and tense relationships in my life that I've been working hard to bring to reconciliation lately.  And sadly, with little apparent success.  As a result, I've been looking for encouragement and guidance, and while re-reading an article on forgiveness and reconciliation in the life of the church, I came across this extraordinary statement:

The reason there are so many exhortations in the New Testament for Christians to love other Christians is because . . . the church itself is not made up of natural “friends.” It is made up of natural enemies.

 What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort [that bind most other groups of people together]. Christians come together not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have all been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance. In this light we are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.

That is the only reason why John 13:34–35 makes sense when Jesus says: “A new command I give you--Love one another as I have loved you.” . . . Christian love will stand out and bear witness to Jesus because it is a display, for Jesus’ sake, of mutual love among social incompatibles.
 D. A. Carson, Love in Hard Places (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2002),   p. 61

It's easy to think of a church as a group of people who are similar.  I suspect most unchurched people picture the church as a group of similar people.  I remember being taught in Church Growth seminars that the church grows fastest among groups of similar people.  And as we observe most churches, we probably see the people in any particular church as more similar than different.  Similar doctrine, similar interests, similar ethnic background, similar social class.

Similar people will have more in common and less to fight about, so a church of similar people is less likely to be fighting.  And everyone - or at least the pastor! - wants everyone to get along.

But it seems God was thinking differently.  Imagine if God's intent was to gather people who were very different from one another and bind them together by the Gospel, just as Dr. Carson contends.  When I read I & II Corinthians in particular, I think this is exactly what I see! A diverse gathering of people bound together in the Gospel, but grinding on each other at their points of difference.  Perhaps the real reconciling power of the Gospel gets buried beneath human similarities; hidden when we are bound together by things other than the Gospel alone.

We expect the church to be a place where people get along, but we experience something different.  That's why the call to reconciliation among believers is so real, so needed and so hard.  I don't think I'm doing any worse at relationships since the Gospel Renaissance that took place in my heart a decade ago.  But I know that the Gospel has been the power of God to empower me to pursue reconciliation in those relationships that are broken.  Where I used to deny, muddle through or tolerate brokenness, I'm now more compelled to seek wholeness.  It's hard, and not always successful, but it is the Gospel.

No wonder Tim Keller ends the article by saying

The reason we will have to hold ourselves accountable for our relationships is that mutual love in Christian community is super-hard. Jesus has brought incompatibles together! But the reason we will want to hold ourselves accountable for our relationships is that mutual love in Christian community is one of the main ways the world will see who Jesus is. So we must never give up on each other. So we must pursue each other in love.

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