A New Command
“When he {Judas} had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.””- John 13:31-35
Judas had left with his moneybag to betray Jesus, and Jesus had sent him out. His final hours had been set into motion. In truth, these moments had been set into motion from the beginning of time, inevitably leading to this climactic act of love on the one hand and betrayal on the other. In fact, we all like Judas have gone astray, betraying our King and our God. Very soon Jesus would go where no one, not even his disciples could follow. He would die, be raised to life and ascend into heaven. Although his earthly life was lived in fellowship with others, especially his disciples, his last few steps would be taken alone. But just before Jesus was to show his ultimate love for his children, by laying down his life for them and just before they would show that they do no love him as all would abandon him even Peter, Jesus had one more thing to teach them. He gave them a new command, to love one another.
How is this a new command? Hasn’t that always been the summary of the law and the prophets? In one sense this is not new, and in another sense, it is (1 John 2:7-8). There is something new. Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” The greatest expression of love was about to take place. The world had never seen this love displayed in this way ever before. They had only seen shadows in the Old Testament sacrifices. And from this moment on, the world would continue to see this love displayed in the church.
And this is what brings us to our moment now. If there is one virus most prevalent in our society these days it is the contagion of passing down mandates to one another. And everyone, from the least to the greatest seem ravenously hungry to tell other people what to do. And to make it worst, it all seems done on the pretense of love. “IF you love people, then you’ll do such and such.” And equally demonic is the opposite sentiment. “IF you love me, then you will do such and such for me, or you won’t tell me to do such and such.” Love does not insist on its own way (1 Cor. 13:5). Instead, love lays down its own way for others. Love looks to the cross as the greatest display of love ever. Jesus willingly takes our sin and hatred of him so to reconcile us to himself. Scarcely would someone lay down their lives for a righteous person (Rom. 5:7), but Jesus even laid down his life for his enemies (Rom. 5:10).
And this is where the church shines. No other place on earth can you find the kind of love that Jesus had for his children expressed for one another. Our current moment is an opportunity for the gospel to shine bright. We demonstrate the gospel by laying ourselves down in love for others. And this demonstration shines when it feels like everybody is telling everybody else what they are supposed to do and nobody knows what voices to listen to. There’s only one mandate handed down to us that we must listen to, the command to love one another. Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t detail out exactly what we think that love for others ought to look like. Our faith must work itself out in love for others (Gal. 5:6). Our faith must have good works of love (James 2:17-18). Our faith is in Jesus Christ and the work he has done for us on the cross. We know exactly what love looks like. It looks like giving up our demands and submitting to the demands of others, to not be served but to serve (Mark 10:45). We submit to one another in the church not by shutting up and not having opinions. We submit to one another as we speak with grace and truth what we believe our actions ought to be and then we all say to one another, “let’s do it your way.” What would it look like if everyone had this mind of serving and putting others before ourselves (Phil. 2:2-3)?
But then, how do we actually decide what to do together? If everyone is deferring to one another, aren’t we just in a new kind of argument? Instead of everyone saying, “let’s do it my way” and then not agreeing, now we’re saying “let’s do it your way” and we’re still not agreeing! This is important. The church is not about uniformity. Love does not mean lock-step capitulation. It does not mean one flavor fits all. It does not mean hierarchal and efficient decision making in a chain of command. It DOES mean however that we respectfully listen to others and sympathize with what they’re thinking. It means we assume and appreciate how others are motivated by love just like you are. It means we expect people to do things differently than us and that’s ok. It means we understand that people have different families and different responsibilities to heed and we don’t expect everyone to look the same. It means we are humble before each other. We shouldn’t be shocked when we give people all the information that we have available to us and they don’t make the same decision as we do. Love allows for each one to be fully convinced in his own mind (Rom. 14:5).
What about the mask mandate?
First of all, there is no mandate to wear a mask, only the mandate to love one another. Second, I do not wish to jump the gun here and say one way or another what my opinion is on whether we should wear masks to church or not during the current coronavirus pandemic. There are two reasons why we as a church will recommend, but not mandate, the wearing of masks to our services.
Reason 1: Respecting everyone’s conscience while encouraging as many people as possible to attend our services.
There are some people who are convinced that if we are going to meet together that we must wear them. There are others who are convinced that we must not wear them. We must respect the conscience convictions of both sides. But how do we do that?
Scenario 1 – Not encouraging masks: We say that we are not encouraging anyone to wear a mask on Sunday morning, but you are free to wear one if your conscience demands it. What is likely to happen is that there will still be some people whose consciences do not allow them to come to church out of a concern for their safety and the safety of others or that we are not being as compliant as possible with government requests.
Scenario 2 – Encouraging masks: We say that we are encouraging everyone to wear a mask on Sunday morning, but you are free to not wear one if your conscience does not allow you to. It is conceivable that a person who does not wear a mask would think that others should not as well, but would still attend because they are not imposing upon other’s consciences. It is not conceivable that a person who does not wear a mask would not attend the service because there would be others that were wearing them. This is the main distinction between the two scenarios. There are some people who would not attend if we were not encouraging the wearing of masks.
Scenario 2 is preferred because we want to do whatever we can to allow as many people as possible to attend our services. This presents a scenario where the conscience convictions of everyone are still respected and it still creates an environment where anyone who has health concerns might be able to come. Obviously some people will be so concerned about health that they won’t be returning for quite some time, but we want to make sure that none of our guidelines are what keeps people away.
The goal of this guideline is not to bind anyone’s conscience one way or another on this issue. We cannot expect everyone to come to the same conclusion. But, we can afford some time for a consensus to grow among the church. Over time, we will certainly change this guideline and the others as well. But we will make that change as we listen well to everyone in the congregation and ensure that as many people as possible can attend our services.
Reason 2: Respecting the governing authorities as much as possible without disobeying God.
The government cannot tell churches what to do, even if they try. There are many governments all over the world that try to do that and Christians adjust how they meet together. But even with an oppressive government, Christian civil disobedience can be done in way that still honors the emperor. Is civil disobedience even a consideration in our circumstances? In one sense, of course it is. There is always a potential for it to come into play. But our disposition towards our government is that we resort to that only when necessary and as a last resort. The rebellious heart of man seeks to revolt against all authority, and we dare not feed that temptation. If at all possible we will seek to abide by regulations that are given to other businesses, even if those regulations are not specifically targeted toward churches. This is an opportunity to show love for our communities especially because churches are exempt from the government mandates (whether the government thinks we are exempt or not).
It is very important to note that all of our actions where we abide by the government’s suggestions are temporary. This is the only condition where we would abide by these regulations. We are guaranteed to continue meeting together as fully as possible sometime in the future. Our pace for returning to normal worship will be determined by how much we can reasonably uphold the spirit behind the regulations. The spirit at present seems to be reopening at a slow incremental pace to gauge the impact on citizen’s health and the impact to the medical infrastructure. Please keep in mind that we will be changing our guidelines regularly, if not weekly, as we continue to assess our situation.
It is noted that the government regulations have vast unintended consequences, both in health and economics. As a church we will seek to mitigate these consequences too as we try to comply as much as possible to the regulations. While these consequences make the original demands seem unreasonable, our responsibility is not to judge their motives or assume we have greater knowledge than the governing authorities do. Instead, we evaluate whether their requests are causing us to violate biblical imperatives. An extremely temporary hiatus from meeting together is acceptable.
Finally, remember that we have only one mandate, to love one another. None of us, except our Father in heaven, will perfectly navigate this situation. We must remain humble and seeking to defer to and serve others in this time. This can happen in a myriad of ways outside of a traditional Sunday morning gathering. Please be in prayer as we together seek the unity of the body.