Love One Another and the Cross

[shazeep]

Originally Posted by mfblume

It's not stated in John 's Epistles.

Please stop playing and actually start discussing. Circles circles circles.

you have a genuine concern that putting love one another before "admitting" that Christ came and died for us would be denying the Cross, and i understand this. My genuine concern is that seekers after Christ are led into a book knowledge of Him, and the vast majority end up worse off because they then don't, or can't, get any Book knowledge, led by the Spirit, because they have lawyers interpreting the Bible for them if they do even read It, and the essence is left at the altar.

Communion is reduced to a ceremony, also, and the pertinent debate becomes whether there is transubstantiation, or is the wafer merely representative. Lol. Everything is reduced to a ceremony--all of the accepted elements of salvation. And they all happen in a "church," where we are told "service" is held.

And of course since this is how our parents did it, it seems perfectly natural to us. Changing comes with a warning--"you will go to hell." "We have Christ, and you will lose Him." etc. iow fear isn't even an undercurrent; it is an overtone. While this may not describe every affiliated church, speaking generally this holds true.

Our churches become corporations brought together by love, of an idea, even as they are legislating love out of the equation. So the point for me here is not to replace Christ, or reject Him, but to seek a better understanding of Him that does not find me mired in hypocrisy.

And yes, it felt like abandoning everything i had learned up to that point. I left the Christ that i learned in church. And it was hard, peer pressure being what it is, etc. And i'm a vagabond by nature--i can't imagine what the experience would be like for a homebody.

So if you are able to confront the hard questions with your model, and detect no hypocrisy, then you are likely walking in love already. And if you aren't, then i think it is inevitable that each generation seek a more genuine Christ for themselves; and love one another brings one into the body of Christ in a most genuine way. church feels like a club now, frankly.