The Christian call to love the church: 1 Peter 1:22-2:3

Called to love the church

It is common in our day for people who profess to be Christians, to have little to no regard for Christ’s church. Consider that only 20% of Americans attend church regularly, and yet, 64% of Americans claim to be Christians. How can there be such a wide gap between professing Christians and a love for Christ’s church? But the fact is, many who claim to be Christians see nothing inconsistent about neglecting Christ’s church as a Christian.

But that perspective is inconsistent with Scripture. Jesus tells us that our love for fellow believers is one of the most significant and defining features that someone is a true believer. In John 13:35, Jesus says that our love for one another proves that we are His disciples. And more than that, our love for the church is proof to the world that Jesus is real and is evidence that he came to earth as God incarnate (Jn 17:22-23). Christian love and unity is a significant testimony to the truth of Christ. It is far from something extra or ‘nice if we find common interests.’ It is an irreplaceable mark of people who follow Jesus.

Peter elaborates on the same truth here in our text here in 1 Peter 1. After writing in the previous verses that a Christian’s faith in the gospel and belief in God as judge effect their actions, he continues by saying in verse 22 that this same faith and belief compels us to, ‘sincere brotherly love.’ Sincere love is the natural response of one who is having their soul purified by faith in the gospel. And if we do not have sincere love for our fellow believers, the gospel is not at work in our lives.

The problem with our love

The fact is, sincere love is unnatural to us. Because of our sin nature, our natural starting point is not the sincere love Peter (and our Lord) calls us to. Rather, we are predisposed to being validated by using other people. Whether we use people to meet physical needs like making money, gaining power, or finding sexual gratification through them, or we use them to meet emotional needs by lying about them, gossiping with them, or desiring to ‘fit in’ with them, we are unable to sincerely love them and are not loving ‘earnestly’ and from a ‘pure heart.’ In 1 Peter 2:1, Peter says that in reality we are malicious, deceitful, hypocritical, envious, and slanderers.

But he calls us to see all of those deficiencies of the flesh, and to put all of that away as we are called to that sincere love for one another. But that call is not a call to work hard to push all that stuff below the surface. That would be about as effective as trying to push a beach ball under the water of a pool and keep it there. Eventually it’s going to come out, and with a fury! We need something more than mere effort to love one another.

That’s why Peter appeals to something stronger as the basis for our love in 1:23, ‘since you have been born again.’ The gospel is the only thing that has the power to compel us to love one another. God knows that in order to love one another, we don’t need better information, a personality tweak, or a whole lot of effort; we need to be totally regenerated. That’s what the gospel comes to do. We have been given a new birth that comes with a new heart and new desires that Peter says were not from a perishable seed like our old birth, but an imperishable one; one that is of the very living and abiding word of God. That’s our only hope; this wonderful gospel.

Do you have a craving problem?

Peter’s suggestion for people who have been reborn by faith in the gospel, but who are continuing to struggle in the flesh to love their fellow believer (which is everyone at one time or another), comes in chapter 2 and verse 2, ‘like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.’

That pure spiritual milk is the gospel he refers to just two verses before in 1 Peter 1:25, ‘the good news that was preached to you.’ The only hope that you and I have to love one another as God has called us to love, is to continue to be nourished by the gospel that Jesus has taken the penalty for our sins and made us loveable by God.

After all, that’s what we truly crave, to be loved. That’s why we manipulate people in the flesh; that’s why we use people for our gain, and that’s even why we grow cold and apathetic to people at times. It’s all so that we can feel loved and accepted or because they don’t love and accept us. As Ed Welch put it, ‘we are love tanks with a leak.’ We try to fill it up with validation, power, and other things from others but it just leaks out. But the gospel of Jesus Christ says we have been perfectly loved and accepted by God. When we believe that; when we are nourished by that, we feel loved and can love others with sincerity and purity. And if you are having trouble loving others, forgiving others, or feeling accepted by others, maybe it’s because you have a craving problem. Christian, long for that pure spiritual milk of the gospel.

Questions for Discussion:

1.     Is your life marked by a sincere and unhypocritical love for your fellow brothers and sisters in the church?

2.     In what ways do you find it hardest to love your church? What would happen if you saw those challenges as opportunities to press into the gospel and love well, rather than as excuses not to bother?

3.     Do you tend to seek to love others through summoning up a desire to love, or by remembering and enjoying the gospel? How could to do the latter more and more?