When Jesus birthed his church, he created a place where “whosoever will” can belong, where we can grow up in him, and know and be known as adults.

When we build church systems around hierarchy and rigid roles, we may think they will do for us what Jesus promised. But struggling to find relationship there can be like struggling to put two magnets together the wrong way around.

Every time you move the magnets toward each other, they push apart. But also, as they jump back and you press in, the magnets offset one from the other, leaving one up; and the other, down.

As we sincerely try to comply with our systems, they push us back from adulthood. They offset all our efforts at relating adult-to-adult.

While we keep struggling to make our way work, Jesus is quietly building his church. He is transforming those who say yes to him. He is growing us up. He is growing us together. He is the Way where there was none.

This is new and key

On the eve of his death and resurrection, our Lord said:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

God has always called his people to love. He has always counted love crucial to everything else. Since Moses’ day, the Lord has commanded his people to love people. He has said: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).

So how is Jesus’ command to “love one another” a new command? And how does living it out look different from what we may have thought? 

LOVE one another

By the Spirit of Christ within, we love with his love.

Notice that Jesus said:

As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

He also said:

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. (John 14:16-17)

And then Jesus prayed:

Righteous Father … I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them. (John 17:25, 26)

Because of all that, we’re no longer limited by our own notions of what is and isn’t love. We’re no longer limited by our own ability (and inability) to love. Our Lord has made the way for us to love others as he has loved us. He is committed to teaching us how to walk in HIS love.

Love ONE ANOTHER

As we relate to others who know Christ, his love flows both ways.

This too is crucial, and often overlooked. The Greek word allelon appears 100 times in the New Testament. Typically, it is translated “one another.” Wherever we see this term, it indicates that the action taken is reciprocal, mutual. It doesn’t just flow one way!

Here are a few examples:

• Accept one another. (Rom. 15:7)
• Honor one another. (Rom. 12:10)
• Live in harmony with one another. (Rom. 12:16)
• Admonish and counsel and instruct one another. (Rom. 15:14 AMP)
• Encourage one another. (2 Cor. 13:11)
• Serve one another. (Gal. 5:13)
• Bear with one another. (Eph. 4:2)
• Be kind to one another. (Eph. 4:32)
• Submit to one another. (Eph. 5:21)
• Offer hospitality to one another. (1 Peter 4:9)
• Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. (James 5:16)
• Spur one another on toward love and good deeds. (Heb. 10:24)

Together, the “one another” commands capture the essence of true relationship between God’s people. These commands tell us: All that embodies God’s love is to flow both ways.¹

Wise counsel is not to flow from one party only; and submission, only from the other. Teaching is not to flow from one party only; and serving, only from the other. Rather, in Christ, we serve and teach one another. We yield to and challenge one another. We offer hospitality and speak truth to one another. We pray for and confess to one another.

A different dynamic entirely

Loving one-anothering sets us apart as God’s people, for it cannot be done apart from him.

In God’s kingdom, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit operate in beautiful mutual submission, mutual honor and mutual love. What’s more, this Triune Lord has made the way for his people to relate to one another the same way.

As each of us yields to Jesus as Lord, his Spirit fills us. He produces a new capacity in us to reflect his character, to walk in his ways. As we press in to know our Lord, he nurtures and strengthens that capacity. As we relate to each other in him, he teaches us to seek together to hear him clearly and follow him fully. He empowers the one-anothering he commands.

Loving one-anothering creates a different dynamic entirely from the leadership models that organizations use, and our church cultures have adopted.

In organizations, some people are in charge. They make the decisions. They enforce the rules. Everyone else is to follow. Otherwise, chaos ensues. If people do not do what the designated leaders say, they are rebelling. If people take the lead when the rules say they cannot be leaders, or if they lead in ways the system does not allow, they are usurping authority.

In organizations, the order is fixed; the rules, weighted; the roles, prescribed. People are there for the organization, not the other way around. Those who do not control the system are expected to comply (and even contort) as needed, to fit into the system.

God’s kingdom has a higher order, a living order. It has leaders. It has rules. But none of that looks or works like our human organizations. Our Lord makes rules for people, not people for the rules. By his grace, leaders lay down their lives, and call everyone up to maturity. The church reflects his holiness (his “entirely otherness”). It breathes with his life, yields to his touch, pulses with his love.

Oh. And “lording it over” has no place. Jesus said:

You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.

It will not be that way among you.

Instead whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant. (Matt. 20:25-26 EHV)

Western church culture has done an interesting thing with Jesus’ words. It has turned them inside out. We’re taught to accept as biblical what Jesus said not to do. We’re taught that “lording it over” is in fact servant leadership.

Our one-up, one-down systems may frustrate us, but they don’t demand nearly as much from us as our Lord’s messier way, his more excellent way, of learning to love each other as he loves us all.

Our Lord’s way grows us up and builds us together, into a worldwide community of people who once were not a people, but now are the people of God.

Systems built to our specifications actively hinder God’s people from functioning as his church.

What beauty and joy we’ve missed

Throughout the New Testament, our Lord stresses again and again: The two-way flow of truly loving attitudes and acts is key to healthy relationships among his people.

Does he then instruct husbands and wives to abandon one-anothering in marriage? Does he instead order: “Husband, you alone lead and instruct; wife, you alone serve and obey”? Does our Lord impose onto the most intimate of human relationships “roles” governed by a set of one-up, one-down rules? Or have we superimposed that view onto his call for mutual submission, mutual honor and mutual love?

Consider the passage in Ephesians 5 that addresses husbands and wives. It is set into a letter that urges us all to “be filled with the Spirit” and to love one another:

• Walk in the way of love;
• be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other;
• bearing with one another in love;
• speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit;
• for we are members of one another.²

What’s more, the entire passage we’ve used to teach marital hierarchy is designed to help both spouses flesh out this key aspect of loving one-anothering:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21).

The instructions to wives and husbands in Colossians 3 also occur after a series of commands calling us to love one another in specific ways, that include this:

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. (Col. 3:16 NLT; see vv. 9–19)

There too, the calls, “wives, submit,” and “husbands, love,” are said in the context of affirming to all believers that all our expressions of godly love are to go both ways.

What beauty and joy we’ve missed!

God designed marriage to picture the mutual submission of Christ, the sacrificial Savior, and the Bride whose delight is to honor him. At the same time, our Lord designed marriage to reflect the beauty of loving relationships to one another in him.

Whether in the home or the church, any view of submission that requires us to abandon loving one-anothering is badly askew.

Turning the magnets around

There’s one more thing, and it’s perhaps the hardest thing to learn. It involves recognizing that love may flow one way only, and often does. It requires each of us to accept what is our responsibility, and to refuse what is not. Remember:

Our Lord calls us to love our “neighbor,” whether or not they love us. This isn’t the place to go into that, but it’s important to learn it, Spirit-to-spirit. For Jesus himself taught us and showed us how such love does, and does not, look.

Our Lord also calls us to love “one another,” an even more impossible task. By the Spirit we build relationships in which God’s multifaceted love flows both ways.

So what if we long to do just that? What if we’ve tried to build loving adult-to-adult relationships with other people in Christ – and the magnets just keep jumping apart?

It’s important to continue learning to walk in love.

It’s also important to let God show us where loving one-anothering can happen – and where we thought it could, but it cannot.

It’s important to lay down the false responsibility (and fruitless task) of trying to practice one-anothering with others who are not making the same choice.

In a world in which Christian adults have been widely indoctrinated to relate one-up/one-down, our Lord is quietly building his church. Our challenge and joy is to keep growing in Christ, to wait for him and to move with him as he begins to connect us with others who are learning to relate adult-to-adult in our Savior’s love.

It’s like turning the magnets around, and finding: Yes, we can fit together beautifully.

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Parts of this post are adapted from chapters 12 and 14 in What About Women? A Spirit-to-spirit Exposé, updated 2021.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

See also

• Adulthood and the church that rejects it
• Case of the battered boundaries
• Darkness, betrayal and the heartbeat of God
• Embrace fiery love

Footnotes

1. The Scriptures referenced are the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a more complete list of verses that call for, and describe different aspects of, loving one-anothering: Love one another (John 13:34-35; 15:12, 17; Rom. 12:10; 13:8; Gal. 5:13; Eph. 4:2; 1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9; 2 Thess. 1:3; Heb. 13:1; 1 Peter 1:22; 3:8; 4:8; 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:7, 11, 12; 2 John 1:5). Accept each other, find common ground (Rom. 15:5-7; 1 Cor 1:10). Give honor, seek the other’s good (Rom. 12:10, 16; 14:10-19; 1 Thess. 5:13, 15). Encourage, comfort, instruct, give wise counsel (Rom. 15:14; 2 Cor. 13:11; Col. 3:16; 1 Thess. 4:18; 5:11; Heb. 3:13; 10:24-25). Serve (Gal. 5:13; 1 Peter 4:10). Speak truth (Eph. 4:25; 5:19; Col. 3:9, 16). Be humble, gentle and patient (1 Cor. 11:33; Eph. 4:2; Phil. 2:3-4; 1 Peter 5:5). Be kind, compassionate and forgiving (Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13). Submit (Eph. 5:21; Phil. 2:3-4). Offer hospitality (1 Peter 4:9). Confess to and pray for (James 5:16). ↩︎
2. Ephesians 5:18-19, 2; 4:32, 2, and the literal rendering of 4:25. See all Ephesians 4–5. ↩︎