(Tim) Some of our elders and closest friends think the commitment David and I have to evangelicalism is quixotic, with the kindest of them hoping we'll see the light some day, and give it up. It's not likely.
Take the sermon text this past Lord's Day, for instance. It was Matthew 22:34-40, where Matthew records the exchange between Jesus and a lawyer who asks Him which is the greatest commandment? Jesus answers that the greatest commandments is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind.
Today's evangelicalism has eviscerated love of much of its objective biblical content, so I'm not suggesting anyone take out membership in a megachurch and join in a sing-along...
It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
On the other hand, I wouldn't propose old school presbyterianism, either, where it carefully avoids placing any emphasis on conversion--what Jesus called being "born again"--and has no intimacy, fellowship, or house-to-houseness at the center of Christian life...
The Lord's Supper without unity around the Table is a violation of that Table. Without that unity, love of God and neighbor is a sham. Our Lord made this clear when He initiated the Lord's Supper in the context of His prayer:
I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. (John 17:20-23)
Yet really, Lennon was on to something here. All we need is love. Not the ceremonial laws. Not circumcision. Not the Sabbath. Not phylacteries. Not circumcision. Not the icons. Not the Mass, Eucharist, consubstantiation, or the weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper. Not covenant-renewal liturgies. Not baptism in the Name of the Triune God administered by a properly ordained minister of the Word and Sacrament. But love.
You say I'm setting up a false antithesis. Really?
Consider. Jesus could have answered this question in a number of other ways. The scribes and Pharisees did. Most of them considered the ceremonial law weightier than the moral law. And taking their speculation down to the individual laws, they were split over whether the weightiest law was the Sabbath, phylacteries, or circumcision. But love? No one would have expected that to be Jesus' answer. And if we're honest, we'll admit we wouldn't answer that way today. Sure, the answer wasn't unknown in Jesus' time; and yet, who'd have guessed it? Love?
Apparently, faith without love is dead.
