True Brotherly Love: Rejoicing and Weeping...Continued from page 1

Counterfeit Grace

The words hurt because they are so true. Swindoll goes on to quote from Bruce Larson and Keith Miller (The Edge of Adventure, p. 156).  Ever wonder why so many people are pulled to the neighborhood bar?  Here is their answer:

The neighborhood bar is possibly the best counterfeit there is for the fellowship Christ wants to give His church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but it is a permissive, accepting, and inclusive fellowship. It is unshockable. It is democratic. You can tell people secrets and they usually don’t tell others or even want to. The bar flourishes not because most people are alcoholics, but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved, and so many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers. 

With all my heart I believe that Christ wants His church to be . . . a fellowship where people can come in and say, “I’m sunk!” “I’m beat!” “I’ve had it!"  (All quotations from Chuck Swindoll,Encourage Me, pp. 17-18)

Where do you go in a time of crisis? The answer for nearly all of us is that we go to our close friends, to the people who know us best and love us the most. So many people today hunger for close relationships and for friendships that last longer than one-night stands.

“You wanna be where you can see that troubles all are the same.
You wanna be where everyone knows your name.”

So people turn to bars, clubs, to parties and neighborhood groups, softball teams, bowling leagues, gyms, spas, restaurants, and nowadays they spend hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, hoping to make a connection with someone they will probably never meet in person.

Maybe, just maybe, they turn to the church. And what do they find?

The New Testament contains a phrase that catches the essential quality of a caring church. That phrase is “brotherly love.” It comes from the Greek word philadelphia, which itself comes from two other Greek words:

Philos has the idea of tender affection.
Adelphos literally means “one born of the same womb,” thus translated “brother.”

Put those two thoughts together and you have philadelphia-tender affection owed to those born of the same womb. I have three brothers - Andy, Alan and Ron. I owe them tender affection because we all come from the same womb. And even if I haven’t seen them in a while, when we talk it’s like we just saw each other last week.

Now apply that to the spiritual realm. In God’s family, we are all born of the same spiritual womb. This relationship transcends status, achievement, race, ethnic background, money, education, talent, language, culture, age, sex, or any of the many other barriers that divide the human race into different groups.