Thoughts for the Day

By this we know that we abide in God and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version

Thoughts

• “They are a race of men who belong to a new and evil superstition. They are insurrectionaries, incendiaries, practise flagrant immorality, tamper with family relationships, and are cannibals.”

Do you recognise this description? This is how the historian Suetonius described Christians in the early years of the first century CE. We can perhaps understand his complaint if we look at Christians of the time - they worshipped one God (rather than many gods as with the Romans); they refused to worship the Emperor as a god (unlike other subject states); they sought equality (for slaves, women, and free men); they spoke about "loving one another"; they were blamed by Emperor Nero for the fire that decimated Rome in 64 CE; many families were divided over whether to follow this new faith; and to cap it all Christians were thought to eat flesh and drink blood during worship (ie 'body and blood of Christ').

If we had to write a description of Christians today, what might we say now - they profess to love one another but are a fractious group disagreeing on many things; their leaders sometimes wear strange clothes; they create large buildings for worship which are often locked and under used; and their God is not one God, but three?

Our passage from the First Epistle of John says it should be different! John says that when we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then God's Spirit lives in us. And more to the point, the evidence of this is the love we show to to God and to other Christians. We may never be perfect but we can be really determined to try and live the life we profess, for as another John (the 16th century Spanish mystic and priest, Saint John of the Cross) said "In the evening of life we will be examined in love."

Lord Jesus Christ,
we confess our faults, our mistakes,
and our stubborn lack of trying to change,
You have taught us that we abide in God,
and that He is in us,
but we shame that promise each time
we take a mis-step.
Increase our faith and our desire to change,
that we begin to measure all our thoughts,
our words, and our actions
through the lens of Your love.
Amen.