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If Christians by the command of Christ are to be known by our love for one another, then it is plain for all to see that in the main historically, there has been a great failure on the part of the many who have professed to be Christians to obey. This sobering reality check cannot just be shrugged off as being due to the fact that Christians are saved, but remain imperfect. Nor can it be said the commandment to love one another by Christ is so hard He could not have meant it literally (as many say for any number of biblical imperatives they do not want to obey). Our Lord would not give us a command that could not be obeyed consistently if it were not possible.
No, failure to love one another in disobedience to Christ has largely attended the history of Christianity on earth since the first century because its assemblies have filled more and more with impostors devoid of the Holy Spirit and weak believers quenching His fire through willful disobedience (1 Thessalonians 5:19)! In the same way Gentiles came to dominate Christianity before the close of the 1st century making Jewish believers a tiny minority, so impostors and rebels have dominated professing Christian assemblies rendering the faithful from all backgrounds a minority. From these loveless impostors and rebelling weak believers came formal layers of authority foreign to New Testament Christianity including eventually, a religious priesthood and educated elite to support it.
Utterly devastating to the true faith with Christ’s command to love also was the emergence of Christianity the religion; a counterfeit, spiritually dead harlot of corruption and ostentation created by the impostors and rebels that has become a monolith in the earth with many daughters. They have also introduced many heresies and worldly compromises destroying the faith of some and on their hands is the blood of faithful saints and prophets that have cried out against their spiritual adultery and wickedly concocted religion (Acts 20:29-31; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 2 Peter 2:1-3; Jude 3-19; Revelation 17:1-6).
What? Did they not know Christ condemned the corruptions of religious Israel that included their evil press to murder Him, the Son of God (Matthew 23:1-36, 26:1-5, 14-16)? How could they create a Christian religion and expect God to be pleased? Satan, the great deceiver is good at what he does so that smug Christian religionists as impostors and rebels look back on and hold Israel in contempt for their faithless, loveless rejection of Christ, but hypocritically overlook the fact they do the same thing (John 5:39-47)! Because of them biblical Christianity is tarnished and maligned. Our God is blasphemed around the earth; bumper stickers declare “God save us from your people” and they as ancient Israel are proud (Romans 2:17-24)?
Even so, my God has not been thwarted in His purposes. Again in a blog and for eternity I praise the triune God for being able to work to save and keep a faithful remnant of saints in every generation down through the centuries to this hour in spite of the clever opposition of Satan carried out by his legions of carnal impostors and captive rebels in the churches (1 Kings 19:11-18; 2 Timothy 2:20-26)! Truly, God has accomplished much to the divine glory through the faithful remnant who as aspiring strong men and great women have been His witnesses winning souls and servants par excellence shaking kingdoms, bringing down evil schemes and very importantly, putting the Lord on full display in their obedience to His command to love one another.
Every Christian martyr willing to die rather than assent to heresy and corruption is among them. So is every Christian apologist and church reformer that remained true to God’s Word as well as every abolitionist and black preacher from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement who stood to challenge America’s manifestation of Christianity the religion that would not only enslave the black brothers it made in ostensible Gospel evangelism, but also brutally, thoroughly and perpetually oppress them. Towering amid all of these in American history is the 20th century’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preacher, pastor and prophet felled by an assassin’s bullet and whose life our nation remembers as a national holiday.
As with most everything related to doing right by its black citizens, the King Holiday was a matter of reluctant acquiescence on the part of many white Americans including of course, a number professing to be Christians and their churches. Still, to this day many will not honor their Christian brother that gave his life calling them and their segregationist forefathers of a generation ago to obey the commandment to love by the Lord they claim to love in loving their black brothers. Now, we know why loving as Christ commanded has been so hard for the many professing white Christians and keeping it real, those who are black as bitter victims. It is the failure of human love in both as impostors and weak rebels filling churches of Christianity the religion that are incapable of loving and defiantly refuse to love as Jesus commanded through the Holy Spirit. 1
Therefore, in the divine love and mercies of Christ who desires that none should perish, I am calling every professing Christian who believes you are doing great things for God without the fruit of His love through the Holy Spirit to repent since you are irritating noise, nothing and gain nothing for your efforts in His sight (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). You also face the terrifying reality of His judgment for your treachery as impostors and willful rebels (Matthew 7:21-23; Hebrews 3:7-19; 10:26-31)! Finally, with certainty the religion of confusion you love with all of its pageantry, outward splendor and ornate buildings will be destroyed by the Lord as He did the former houses of corrupt harlotry in Israel (Jeremiah 7:1-15; 52:12-14; Matthew 23:37-24:2; Revelation 14:8, 17:15-18:24).
1 Read Dr. King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail if you never have and again if you have not done so for a time. His assessment of black and white churchmen in 1963 is tragically still current.
The Bible teaches that the mark of a genuine Christian is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit within shining as light out of darkness from that Christian’s life. This happens quite naturally because the unique, superior nature and character of life embodied in the triune God radiates outward as the sun’s light and heat. Of the foremost display of the divine presence and life in genuine Christians is love. Impostors are not able to love God or others as commanded because they do not have the Holy Spirit and the love of God within them. The Holy Spirit leads me to explore the matter more fully in this re-titled and edited 2013 blog repost to help us discern true Christians.
Originally Posted January 13, 2013
It is not without superior, unimpeachable purpose that the Lord Jesus says to Nicodemus, a religious leader of the Jews that was sympathetic toward Him, ‘“You must be born again,’” (John 3:7, NKJV). Spiritual new birth by the Holy Spirit is an absolute requirement for entry into the Kingdom of and intimate relationship with the triune God. Therefore, any person professing to be a Christian that has not been born again by the Holy Spirit--no matter how educated, credentialed or the length of time in a local church--is an impostor (Romans 8:5-9)!
Such being the case, I exhort every professing Christian reading this in the strongest possible terms to heed the counsel of the apostle Paul and examine yourself to see if you are truly “in the faith,” (2 Corinthians 13:5-6, NKJV). In all humility, check yourself for the vital signs of spiritual life that come through the new birth by the Holy Spirit. In the new birth, authentic believers in Jesus Christ are made “partakers of the divine nature” as He also prayed (John 17:20-23; 2 Peter 1:1-4, NKJV). The nature and life of God are brought into the authentic born again believer’s life through the exclusive agency of the Holy Spirit who is God (Acts 5:3-4)!
There are several attributes of the nature of God the apostle Paul calls “fruit” and that serve as vital spiritual life signs in the authentic born again believer. The fruit of His presence is not created, but is the natural reality and display of His Person dwelling in the authentic born again believer (Galatians 5:22-23). Since they are of the nature and life of God, it can be accurately stated that “God is” before each fruit of the Holy Spirit the apostle lists in the well known Galatians passage cited and elsewhere such as Ephesians 5:9. Indeed, the apostle John writes, “God is love” because God uniquely in nature is love (1 John 4:8, NKJV).
The love of God is exceedingly greater than and distinct from fallen, sinful human love. While human love by divine design is modeled on and intended to be a full expression of God’s love, because of sin in us it is a corrupt, inferior imitation. For example, we that are authentic born again believers know from God’s Word and experience in His company that He loves unconditionally (John 3:16; Romans 5:6-8). We, on the other hand in the natural man of the sinful flesh, love very conditionally based on the other person’s performance and reciprocation. Moreover, the apostle Paul gives a brief description of God’s kind of love in contrast to human love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a.
Paul teaches God’s love is longsuffering, kind, forgives keeping no accounts, rejoices in the truth, bears, believes, hopes and endures all things; does not fail! Human love in contrast, however, is often impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, proud, rude and selfish, easily provoked and offended, keeps records of wrongs in bitterness, revels in perversion and fails miserably. Also, human love is very often confused with sentimentality and lust. Clearly, when it is said the Lord Jesus has commanded Christians to love each other, it is not intended for us to do so with human love. He says in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another,” (NKJV).
The new command of Christ completely fulfills and exceeds the Law which says, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, NKJV) since He loved by voluntarily laying down His own life in the cause of saving rebel sinners and enemies; the innocent for the guilty (Romans 5:6-11). In our sinful thinking, to love a neighbor as much as we love ourselves is next to impossible since we are born selfish. So, to love even my brother in Christ as He loved me in unconditional, sacrificial self-denial is beyond impossible in human love. Thus, Christ gives His new commandment with the understanding that only His born again followers would be able to carry it out through the exclusive agency and power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5)!
Impostors in the flesh cannot love either God or a supposed Christian brother with divine love because they are devoid of the Holy Spirit. This is the reason the apostle John is so brutally direct in his Holy Spirit inspired teaching on the subject of Christians loving each other (1 John 2:3-11; 3:10-24, 4:7-21). Divine love for one another actualized by the Holy Spirit is not only a commandment of our Lord, but it is the one and only authenticating sign He gave by which all (believers and the world) would recognize His genuine disciples (John 13:35). The Christian life is a supernatural life!
Hence, the unique calling card of born again believers as witnesses and ambassadors of God in the earth is the divine love filling our hearts by the Holy Spirit and tangibly seen in its display with one another (Acts 1:8; 2 Corinthians 5:20; Colossians 3:12-14). Every aspiring strong man and great woman of God in the image of Christ is a genuine Christian marked by the Holy Spirit and displaying the resulting vital life signs of the new birth through Him including the fruit of divine love.1
1 Get my book The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics to learn more about the fruit of the Spirit. It is available at any major internet bookseller and at the Strong Man Store on our Web Site, www.thestrongmanofgod.org.
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