15.3 The Appearance of Love

As we have seen, examples of reciprocal love are not found in the Bible (except for brief glimpses of Father and Son), even though the words of the gospel place reciprocal love as primary. And, even though my Christian experience has been inside of more integrity and being real than is typically known by those who have not lived for years in Christian community, still, I have no example of reciprocal love in any experience.

What I mean to say is that this lesson is 100% pure speculation. This is a topic that neither you nor I nor any other human knows anything about. We do have many signposts in Scripture and in the experiences of marriage and of Christian community, and we will use those signposts to sketch out a dim outline of what God looks like.

The Church His Body. The Appearance of Love is the Church. The appearance of Love in the Church is the appearance of God in creation.

“Church,” then, is the highest expression of my human nature and design. I am a real human only as a member of Church. The Church is the Body, that is, the embodiment, of Christ. And when we say “body,” we mean flesh and Spirit fused together. Thus the Church is the full expression, upon earth inside of heaven, of the Lord Jesus Christ in all that He is and does. – The Church, which is His Body, the fullness and completion of Christ who fills all inside of all (Ephesians 1:23).

Church is the gathering together; Church is many walking together in the full acknowledgment of Father among us.

Christ Community. More than that, Church is the appearance of the Lamb Slain and alive into the ages.

At this point, I want you to bring into mind everything studied in Symmorphy V: Life, that is, the gathering together of believers into local Christian communities. Again, “community” is a large term carrying in it many different expressions, but all churches that are the revelation of Christ share one thing the same, a commitment inside of liberty to walk together in reciprocal love daily. What we want to do now is to place the five aspects of the human heart, filled with the Lamb Slain and alive again in all of His nature and expression, as those qualities become visible inside of Christ community.

Commitment. Reciprocal love is based upon covenant, that is, upon a commitment to walk together. Without such commitment, no “love one another” will ever appear. Thus we conclude that Christ Community is the only context through which God appears to creation.

If we are not yet in a community context, we trust utterly in Christ Jesus living as us, that He will place us where we belong in the right season. But we never play false games with God in imagining that we are experiencing reciprocal love outside of the commitment of daily togetherness except in that limited measure found in the commitment of marriage. In fact, I am challenged to acknowledge the Father between my wife and me as a firstfruits of community.

How Does Jesus Love Us? In looking at each of these five aspects of the human heart, ambition, person, definition, devotion, and fellowship, we begin with the human quality, then filled with the Lamb and expressed outwardly into the context and flow of walking together daily. The source and cause of reciprocal love is the speaking of Jesus – “This is My full completion, that you love one another in just the same way that I have loved you.”

In Just The Same Way!

And so the question, “how do we love one another,” is answered by a different question – “How did/does Jesus love us?” Yet Jesus is speaking of His reciprocal love together with us, back and forth. We must set aside the “one-way” image we have held.

Ambition. The desire and even NEED to rule found in every human heart, when filled with the Lamb, becomes something extraordinary inside of Christ Community. Here is how the Lamb turned His ambition towards us. – And having been found in outward appearance as a human, He humbled Himself, actively becoming hearing-under all the way to death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8).

Understand the overwhelming ambition and drive of this Man. He wanted something, and He would HAVE what He wanted. He WANTED to win our hearts. Jesus heard inside the knowing of His own heart – “This is how You will win those whom You love. This is the only way.”

Building a Kingdom. You WILL do things against me that are even contrary to God; that’s community. And when I know I’m in the right, but you continue in it, refusing to admit your fault – what then? One who is filled with the ambition of Jesus will humble himself towards you, will find the way to take the fault, the offense, the awfulness, upon himself, until he has won your heart.

False ambition builds a kingdom “on top of.” True ambition builds a kingdom “beneath of.” But reciprocal love is two building that kingdom beneath of each other, each ready to humble him or herself for the sake of the other. Each willing to place themselves under with the knowing of the Father for the sake of the other. This is a real Kingdom.

Person. Self-affirmation is the central meaning on the inside of being a human. Self-affirmation is the central meaning inside of God (I Am that I Am). There is no greater affirmation of ME than to know that Jesus honors my SELF inside of His Self, and that He gives me His own Self as mine. I am not lost; I am fully affirmed and honored. No greater except one, to realize that it is the Father inside of Jesus sharing my SELF and His Self with me.

I am affirmed. And thus, moving out from full and unshakeable self-respect, I extend the same affirmation of self to you. It is my human nature to “know” that I am right, even when I might be wrong. When Jesus alone is my rightness, then I am complete, and I freely extend that same rightness to you.

True Respect. Ambition and self-respect go hand in hand, just as belonging and reciprocity are always together. Since the self-respect of Jesus’ rightness is mine, and the self-respect of my rightness is His, then the ambition of the Son of God in me is determined to AFFIRM your rightness.

If I want respect from you, then I give you respect first. True respect has NO strings attached, no hidden threads of manipulation and control. True respect wants to establish the other person’s inward self as right and true and good. Yet here we are talking about a reciprocity from self-respect to self-respect, a shared honor of each other as right and true and good. At this point Community can begin.

Definition. Ambition and self-respect are together; belonging and reciprocity are together. – What about definition? Definition is not a solitary thing either, for Word is always with Spirit and Spirit is always with Word.

Ambition and self-respect are the doorway into the ROOM that we could call our shared hearts, or we could call it Christ and Christ Community. Belonging and reciprocity are our place and action inside of that ROOM. But the ROOM itself is the sharing of Spirit and the sharing of Word – shared worship and shared Word. I can tell you from years of experience in community that sharing Spirit and Word together is the very HOUSE of God.

Sharing Christ Jesus Together. To share Spirit is to worship together, to give thanks together, to break bread together, to know the Father together. It is the glue of the Word. – But to share Word together is the central joining of our HOUSE together, the shared fabric of the universe.

Everywhere we look, the ruling verses of the Bible, as they give meaning and place to every other verse, have become the structure and paneling of our shared togetherness. Those ruling verses are Jesus as every Word God speaks, and they are us as the definition of our own hearts. Then, I share those words with you as they are made personal as me, and you share those same words with me as they are made personal as you. And we live together inside the Garden of God.

Devotion. Ambition is why I open the door to you and you to me. Self-respect is my invitation to you to enter and you to me. Spirit and Word are the fabric, the walls and floor and structure all around us, the shared definitions of our lives. Devotion, that is, belonging, is the place I give you then, inside of my own home, and that you give me inside of your own home. Reciprocity is what we do together inside of devotion.

Giving place to one another. You know what – this is the word “holy” as it really means. God says, “Give Me place in your life, for I have given you place in My life.”

I am devoted to my children. That means, even though they need to be independent, still, I am always thinking of ways to give them place inside of our present life.

The Foundation of Trust. If a married couple is visiting in our home, there has never been any thought in Maureen and me other than to give them our own bedroom for the night, the place of honor. Cots and couches are perfectly fine for us. Yet we are speaking of a reciprocal devotion, a community where the members are giving such places of honor to one another.

This reciprocal devotion is the foundation of mutual trust. It is the bedrock of Christ Community. And it is within this shared devotion to one another, then, that the deepest experiences of fellowship can now take place. Reciprocal love is beyond any love we have ever known.

Fellowship. It is our reciprocal fellowship, then, coming out from the full expression of the Lamb Slain through the first four aspects of our human hearts, that is the actual appearance of God.

Fellowship, of course, is similar to the concept of “to know,” in that it is a sliding scale experience. Teaching and learning is reciprocity. Simple conversations are reciprocity. Singing in a choir is reciprocity. But the “love one another” that Jesus spoke into us is a far greater experience of reciprocity than anything we have known.

The fellowship among us inside this Home and dwelling place of God is deeper and more intimate than we can imagine. This is why we say with Peter – with pure hearts, fervently.

Church as It Is Meant to Be. Love one another with pure hearts fervently.

My wife and I are finding a level of fellowship in our love for one another, now that we are in a new place and by ourselves, than we have known before. Indeed, everywhere I look in my daily work, I am filled with such joy, and it’s not just the new property we have, but rather that we are sharing it together. Yet our intimacy together is built entirely upon Covenant, upon the sworn oath we made to one another inside of Christ, that is, commitment.

And so it is inside of Church as God means Church to be, a level of intimacy inside of joy that is built upon a mutual commitment to one another – the revelation of God All-Carrying.

Normal Human Life. When all things are complete, then, in this sharing of HOME together, what you now see is the very Appearance of God – God manifest in the flesh. It is for this that Jesus gave Himself as the ONE-Seed of God, the mono-genesis, to be planted in our earth that He might become our sharing of life together as the visible expression of God inside His creation.

This is Fellowship, many just like the Lord Jesus, sharing together the highest levels of regard and respect towards one another upon an unassailable foundation of mutual trust. This is the normal human life as God intended from the beginning, the Home, the dwelling place of God.

Human Learning. Now, in this chapter thus far, I have placed a vision before us of true reciprocal love, a love that is best called “fellowship.” Nonetheless, levels of reciprocity as a function of the human heart are the norm for all humans. As stated, a simple conversation between friends is reciprocity.

The next section is titled “Human Expression” and focuses on what humans do and why and how. We see, however, that every form of human expression has a path of learning. The whole concept of learning, then, is central to the definition of the human as God designed us. Thus education plays a far bigger role in our lives than we have considered. Learning and education are significant expressions of the capacity of the human heart to reciprocate, to receive and to give.