Just after He washed the disciples’ feet, Jesus predicted one of them would betray Him and another would deny Him. Even as He was “troubled in spirit,”[1] carrying the grief of two of His closest friends’ betrayal, already feeling the wound of a brother, He charges them:
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.[2]
Scripture has a lot to say about how we regard each other within the church, and the culture of honor and encouragement we are to cultivate when we’re together. There are too many passages to even reference about the way we are to treat our fellow believers, the love that should abound among us, and the importance of forgiveness between us. Forgiveness is one of the unique marks of Jesus’s teachings that stands out amidst the revenge culture of the world and most other religions.
I think every Christian I know would say they believe in this, and even that it’s a very elementary lesson of our faith. But I certainly wouldn’t say every Christian I know practices this. If I had to guess what’s causing the gap between our beliefs and our behaviors, it would be this:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.[3]
We are given the roadmap for navigating conflict with a fellow believer, we shouldn’t be lost when relational issues arise (and they will). The process for confrontation Jesus describes in this teaching is honoring, honest, and clean. It doesn’t indulge drama, gossip, resentment, or passivity. If you don’t like conflict, join the club; But as believers, we don’t get to avoid healthy confrontation. We don’t get to hold onto bitterness and negative thoughts towards another. No matter how uncomfortable confrontation can be, it’s a commandment for us—for the health of our relationships and the sake of the Church.
Verse 15 of this teaching shows us just how much this process can honor God and our family in the faith. Go to your brother or sister in private, one on one. Give them the respect of going to them directly, instead of hanging their dirty laundry out for others. If you can avoid bringing anyone else into it at all, do so. Confront them in love, gentleness, and openness. If they hear you and repent, then you’ve gained a better, deeper, healthier relationship with that person. You’ve gained a family member. You’ve built trust that should help the relationship withstand difficulty in the future. If they don’t hear you, we are given instructions for navigating that as well.
Whether it’s a serious sin or just a small offense, confronting it directly is a game-changer for our trust in one another. Treating our relationships like gardens that need tending, there will be things that must be pruned. Healthy, vibrant life doesn’t just continue growing without us giving attention to the garden. There are a thousand ways we can “build one another up in love,”[4] and sharpening each other is one of them. If encouragement, honor, celebration, and blessing are the “water and sunlight” of our relationships, confrontation is the pruning. Dead things must be cut off for the healthy parts to flourish.
In my (limited) experience participating in different arms of the global Church, one of the main enemies of the body of Christ I’ve seen is disunity. Of course the enemy attacks our unity, because it is our witness to the lost.
Who are we to think we could reach the lost if we can’t even love each other?
In the new commandment Jesus gave to the disciples right in the middle of addressing wounding between brothers, He told them that the world would be able to identify His followers by their love for one another. The mark of our identity in Christ is how we treat our own family. Jesus gave us the most brutally beautifully example to follow as He knelt to wash the feet of the men who would soon betray and deny Him—an example that was to be followed.[5]
If Satan can divide us, he can keep the lost from knowing Christ. Firstly, because we’ll be too caught up in fighting each other to look outside of ourselves, and drained of the strength it takes to reach them. Secondly, because they simply won’t want what we have. A dismembered, dysfunctional body is not attractive to the lost (or to anyone). A family who’s always arguing and at odds with each other is not appealing to someone in need of community. And what’s even worse, a dismembered bride is not even attractive to God.
When Jesus was here, this was His prayer to God for us, the Church:
That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in Me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.[6]
Twice He repeats that we would be unified the way He and the Father were unified (an astounding level of intimacy), so that the world may come to know Him.
We spend a lot of precious time and energy fighting other believers about doctrine, practice, lifestyle, culture, etc. But no matter how much we want to “get it right,” we might still be getting it wrong simply because of our motives and heart. We can spend a lot of emotional energy stewing over the way someone hurt us, or even just bothered us. Letting these offenses stay inside and embitter us towards each other is like poison to our unity. While the enemy is sucking us into these family fights over secondary issues, we are losing our witness to the lost. Satan’s goal is that we would be fighting each other rather than the powers and principalities that actually threaten us.[7] Paul wrote to the church in Corinth that believers should be able to settle disputes between themselves and within the church—instead of taking it to an ungodly court of law—because that’s a bad witness to nonbelievers. He went as far as to say that it’s evidence we’ve been “defeated” and should sooner take the hit from however we were wronged.[8] We know that “a household divided against itself cannot stand,”[9] and we must actively guard our relationships with one another to avoid becoming divided. The small, false sense of comfort that comes with holding on to our offenses is not worth what’s at stake—we have to fight for our unity even when it’s painful and uncomfortable.
I don’t think it’s an accident that Jesus introduced the commandment “to love each other as He loved us” in the same moment He felt the sting of betrayal and denial from two of his dearest friends. If He could get on the floor and wash their feet knowing how deeply they’d wound Him, we can certainly set aside our offenses and forgive each other—for the sake of our own health, for the growth of the church, for the needs of the lost, and for the glory of God.
Autumn Crew is the Managing Editor of FAI Publishing. She lives in the Middle East and serves a number of disciple-making initiatives. She can be reached at autumncrew@faimission.org.