15.2 A Reciprocal Love

The last lesson was the greatest challenge I have ever had placed before me or which I have placed before my readers. I am as overwhelmed as a first grader being asked to comprehend the depths of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Let us draw back, then, from the immensity of learning and experience that it takes to Love one another as God revealed and consider things more appropriate for first grade. The final function of the human heart in our study is the ability to reciprocate, that is, to give to and to receive from one another at a level of equal standing. Conversation between two life-long friends is a good example of reciprocity and of the heart’s capacity to reciprocate.

Defining Reciprocity. I have been crucified with Christ. I live, however, but no longer I. Christ lives inside of all that is me. More than that, the life I now live inside this sphere of flesh, I live entirely inside the sphere of the faith of the Son of God, this One having loved me and having given Himself [traded Himself] entirely for me (Galatians 2:20). – “This One having loved me” is belonging, and “this One having given Himself [traded Himself] for me” is reciprocity.

Let’s define “reciprocity” as we are using the term. Reciprocity is a relationship between two, eye to eye and heart to heart, of giving and receiving based upon mutual trust and an equality of respect and value.

Something Brand New. To “love unconditionally” is a mis-definition of God-Love. God loves expecting that same Love to return to Himself. More than that, God-Love comes out from the highest respect and regard for the one being loved. In human terms, what if I said to my wife, “Honey, you do NOT deserve my love, but I’m going to love you anyhow”? Any sane person would be revolted by such an arrogant claim and would not regard it as anything but blind self-love.

Where there is no respect, an equality of respect, there is no love. And where there is no trust, a mutual, deep, and immovable trust, there is no reciprocal love. When Jesus said, “Love one another,” He was introducing something brand new into the human experience.

God Humbles Himself. “Love one another” is a fully equal giving and receiving of love. To give only, but to refuse to receive, is self-exaltation, not love, in just the same way that to receive only, but to refuse to give is not reciprocal love.

We love Him (giving) because He first loved us (receiving). But look at the equality. How can we love Him except God Himself receive our love in return as of equal value to His own? For God to receive our love in return as of equal value to His own He must humble Himself. God humbling Himself is found in these words – This One having traded Himself for me. The word “traded” indicates a full reciprocity.

Never Yet Known. Now, when Jesus said, “Love one another – IN JUST THE SAME WAY THAT I HAVE LOVED YOU,” He was speaking words of creation, calling into the human experience something He Himself had not yet tasted inside His humanity. You see, there is not one place in the Bible where reciprocal love between two humans is shown, including through Jesus’ entire life. For Jesus to have demonstrated reciprocal love, He would have needed another “Jesus,” that is, someone just like Himself, for there to be the equal back and forth interchange of God-Love. The loves of romance and friendship do not come close to the full meaning of the reciprocal love Jesus spoke into us.

Regard and Respect. We prefer to minimize any discussion of the present perversions of the human qualities God has given us, but sometimes we see the true more clearly as outlined by the false. Love is too big of a word and too filled with varying and conflicting definitions. For that reason, to express the deepest levels of Love, we use the terms “regard” and “respect.”

Reciprocal Love is the highest levels of regard and respect shared between two on the basis of a deep and mutual trust. Regard is inward, the value I place upon you and the value you place upon me. Respect is the treatment going from me to you based on that value. But mutual trust is the foundation of all. Mutual trust is a bedrock of human reality known by few.

Lying Shatters Trust. Do not lie to or mislead one another, for you have already completely stripped away the old man with his practices, and have already fully put on and enclothed yourself with the New… where Christ is all inside of all (Colossians 3:9-11).

Let’s look at the larger picture first. In his vision of the New Jerusalem, that is, the Church, that is, the relating together of reciprocal love based on mutual trust, John saw that those who “love and practice a lie” cannot enter into such a dwelling place. This is not because they are “being punished,” but because lying is the one thing that shatters trust. Take a glass mirror and shatter it on the ground. In such a way does lying shatter trust and “Jerusalem” vanishes.

I Lied. I lied to Brother Jim Fant. In fact, that lie was probably the last words I spoke to him while he was a godly covering over me. This was a man who treated me with kindness the entire four-and-a-half years I walked with him. And the wisdom he imparted to me fills my present relationship with God. There is a time, entirely inside of the Lord Jesus, to be utterly ashamed of one’s self and to weep tears of Godly sorrow. This is one of those times.

You see, I was finished with “the move,” and I was preparing to leave Bowens Mill to return to Oregon. In getting ready for the trip, I had bought a music tape that contained “Christian rock” music. The elders had heard of this and brought me into an elder’s meeting.

Why Did I Lie? There I was, sitting in the elder’s meeting – Jim and Joyce Fant, Claude and Roberta Mack, Susan Jacobsen, Paul Putnam and others, brothers and sisters in Christ of high regard and of poured out lives. Brother Jim said to me, “I heard that you have bought a music tape of rock music. I am very disappointed; could you explain yourself.”

I felt like a dear caught in the headlights. Then I remembered that there was one good song on that tape, a song that had been sung recently by a sister in the fellowship. I said, “I got it in order to enjoy that one song.” I lied. – Why did I lie?

Shattered Trust. The answer to that question, “Why did I lie,” is critical. You see, had I continued in any outward relationship with Brother Jim Fant, and had he become aware of my lie, then the mutual trust we had enjoyed towards one another for several years would have been shattered.

Shattered trust is almost impossible to rebuild. Even if you pieced and glued together every tiny sliver of glass in that broken mirror, it would still be a broken mirror, and it would still reflect a broken image. Yet there is a way to rebuild trust inside of the redemption of Jesus, a way, however, that takes much time and many tears. That way begins with a full and honest answer to – Why did I lie?

Always for Control. I could claim that I lied because I was embarrassed and did not want the elders to think that I was a “fleshy” person. But that would be just another lie.

I lied because I wanted to manipulate and control Brother Jim Fant. I lied because I imagined that by controlling Brother Jim, I would gain an advantage, which, in the end means that I wished to know myself as “superior” in my imagination. I lied because I found an advantage for myself in wrapping myself inside of and enclothing myself with the old man of pretending.

Pretending, that is, lying, fills the warp and woof of those who adhere to Nicene Christianity. It is how we once always related together.

Lying Builds Hades. Where there is dishonesty there is NO reciprocal love. You see, the thing even more terrible than my wicked and cruel treatment of Brother Jim was that my lie worked. It worked because Brother Jim believed me. But the first lie must always lead to the next. God saved me from building such a hell in my self-delusion by taking me on from there a few days later. Yet it is only now that I feel the full horror of what I did.

“Father God and Brother Jim, forgive me. What I did was wicked and cruel and wrong.” I know now that rebuilding trust with Jim Fant will be a task of many years in my future, even in the resurrection.

A Different Kind of Love. I’m getting right at the meaning of “love one another,” a meaning far different from what most have considered. Most of what is called “Christian love” is one-sided. The “mature” Christian “loves,” but “expects nothing in return.”

Love “one another” is an entirely different kind of love. It is a love between two that flows back and forth on the basis of equality of heart. We have a taste of such love in marriages that are mature inside of Christ, but even that is a limited taste of reciprocal love. Reciprocal Love is the highest levels of regard and respect shared between two, that is, an equality of giving and receiving on the basis of a deep and mutual trust.

An Equality of Giving. I have known more than one relationship in my experience where the other party gave with all willing cheerfulness, but neither asked nor received anything tangible from me, even after years of being “friends.” Such relationships become hollow and empty in meaning, for no love “one another” is involved. In the end, such “giving” imparts an unresolvable weight of obligation; that is, it is not true.

Inside my community experience, of around 100 elders who were “over me in the Lord,” only three related with me fully as an equal, with “I am an elder” never once intruding itself. “Love” that is hierarchical may be “Christian love,” but it is NOT love one another. Most pastors or elders I’ve ever known wanted to be “superior” in the Lord and in the relationship.

Two Walking Together. A long-distance relationship over the phone, say, or by Internet chat, cannot be “love one another,” for such conversation always leaves out the conflicts that always come when face to face. Reciprocal love happens only with two walking together in all the tasks and doings of daily life.

Dishonesty cannot endure in the bright lights of walking together through difficulties and joys. It is here alone, in the daily conflicts and struggles, in the clashing of differing viewpoints and ways of doing, that mutual trust is developed and the highest regard for one another can result in reciprocal respect. What is reciprocal respect?

Reciprocal Respect. Respect is those words and actions from me towards you that indicate the highest value which I place upon you and upon our friendship. Respect is all those little things of gesture and response that demonstrate that I think more highly of you than I do of myself. Respect is not a one-sided giving, but receiving equally as much. When I value and regard your giving to me, I am also demonstrating my respect for you.

But we are not talking about “respect”; we are talking about reciprocal respect. And here we are looking at something, I think, that I have never really known. Why? Because reciprocal respect must be Father alone.

Acknowledging Father. What does it mean to acknowledge the Father inside of close and ongoing relationships filled with small conflicts and joys? I have experienced such acknowledgment just a bit, when I placed “God among us” into a momentary conflict with a brother, but not as anything enduring over time.

When a brother or sister opens up the deepest levels of their heart to me, reciprocal respect means that I do the same in return, nothing hidden – or if something is private and I don’t want to share it right now, I would say so openly, without inventing false words. The moment false words enter communication, mutual trust has vanished and with it, any acknowledgement of the Father.

Father in Person. Reciprocal love, then, is the full and mutual acknowledgement of Father as true and good words and true and good actions flowing from one to the other in a full equality of giving and receiving. The true and good words are Father; the true and good actions are Father.

And even when we are frustrated with one another and say or do unkind things in the moment, still, we together place Father upon all our interaction and anything that was momentarily “not good” or “not true” is turned towards the outcome of pure and intrinsic goodness.

Reciprocal love is Father in Person between us always by our shared acknowledgment.