Love That Lasts: Choosing Agape in a Divided World

C.S. Lewis once said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” Yet too often, love in our lives is  fleeting, conditional, or misunderstood. Scripture shows us that early Christians chose love even in the hardest circumstances, demonstrating grace, humility, and unity with one another. How do we cultivate that kind of steadfast, intentional love today? A love that  strengthens relationships and unites believers in purpose? In this excerpt from I Choose Love, pastor and author Chip Ingram takes us to God’s Word, offering practical guidance to  love others as God first loved us.  

Guest Post by Chip Ingram

One of God’s greatest joys is when His children love each other.  

If you’re a parent, you can probably understand why.

Theresa and I have four children, and  our oldest are fraternal twins, Eric and Jason. When they were young, they slept in the  same room, wore matching clothes, had the same haircuts, and shared many of the same  friends. As they grew older, they shared a lot of the same experiences.

They also fought.

A lot.

They teased and provoked each other. Jason was bigger than Eric, so he tried to make his brother do all kinds of things he didn’t want to do himself.

They lived in a constant state  of tension. 

Once when Theresa and I went away for a weekend, the boys especially got under each  other’s skin, and not surprisingly, they ended up in a fight. At some point in all the wrestling  and pushing, one of them put a fist or an elbow through the wall, and they did a pretty good  job of patching it up.

When we returned, they acted as if nothing had happened, although we did wonder why they were standing against a wall in an awkward position. It wasn’t until they were grown that they finally confessed. They were kind of shocked that we never even noticed the damage. 

“…since God is the ultimate Father who even defines Himself by His love, we can be certain that He gets a lot of joy when His people love each other too.“

Theresa grew up with two sisters. So did I. We weren’t quite sure what to make of all the fighting. I remember Theresa asking me once if I thought they would ever love each other,  and I tried to reassure her. 

“Of course, honey,” I said, trying to sound convinced. “This is normal at their age.”  “Normal?” she said. “They’re in the next room arguing and wrestling on the floor!” 

They eventually grew out of it, but the thought of them having a loving relationship with each other still seemed like a stretch.  

But when Jason was a young adult and was preparing to move to Nashville to pursue a career in music, he performed a concert at our church. One of the songs he sang that night was a song he had written to Eric about how much he loved him.

Theresa and I sat in the  front row, bawling. To this day, they are best friends, and all those years of wondering if  they would ever stop trying to hurt each other are a distant memory. 

Few things stress parents out more than their children fighting each other, and few things  bring greater joy to parents than their children loving each other. And since God is the ultimate Father who even defines Himself by His love, we can be certain that He gets a lot of joy when His people love each other too.  

We live in a world that seems more divided than ever, and in many ways, the church is  nearly as divided as the world. We may strive for unity, and we may even hold it as one of  our highest ideals (though some don’t seem to care about it very much), but no one has been very successful at resolving divisions in the world or the church. And for the church, a people who are called to represent the nature of God and live on earth as the body of  Christ, that’s a problem.  

In fact, it’s more than a problem. It’s a crisis.

“One of God’s greatest joys is to see His children love each other. “

Few things rob us of our joy like disunity; and  few things discredit our testimony to the world like disunity. Unless Christians are able to live in love and unity, the world has every right to say, “I don’t believe in your Jesus.” 

There’s a lot at stake. 

One of God’s greatest joys is to see His children love each other. 

The night before Jesus was crucified, He prayed a sweeping, profound prayer that  expressed His greatest desires for His followers. 

We get to eavesdrop on that prayer in John’s gospel, and Jesus begins with a summary of  His ministry and how He has fulfilled it. He then asks the Father to protect and preserve the  faith of His followers in this hostile world. But the climax of the prayer is His request for the three-way relationship between His followers, Himself, and the Father: “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 17:22–23).

In other words, that believers would be united with Jesus and each other in the same way that Jesus and the Father are united. 

Unity. Loving each other. Demonstrating the love of God as evidence to the world that  Jesus is real. That’s a prayer only we can answer. 

It’s an amazing prayer, and if we look just at the surface, we might wonder if it will ever be answered.

Across the board, believers do not appear to be united on much of anything, even within the same denominations and churches. The spiritual reality in Jesus’ prayer is  that Christians around the world already are united with Jesus and each other. True believers are family, born of the same Spirit. But demonstrating that unity is another matter. 

You play a part in answering that prayer—in your family, at work, in your community, at  church, everywhere.

Every one of us is called to embody the love and unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our relationships with Him and other believers. And even though we are commanded to be separate from the world, we are called to express the love of God that flows from our union with Him. 

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