The Test of Love Across Difference

Today's Reading

Read John 17:20-26 in full. Hear the prayer of Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, for those who would believe in him through the apostles' word — that they may all be one, as he and the Father are one, "so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

Then Romans 14:1-13: "As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions... Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?" Add Philippians 2:1-11 and Ephesians 4:1-3 ("eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace").

Reflection

The previous days of this plan have largely been about division — when it is faithful, when it is not, what it costs, how it grieves the heart of God. This day is for the other side of the same coin. The question is not when to leave but how to love when staying — and how to love brothers and sisters whose Christianity does not look like ours.

John 17 is one of the most underread chapters in the New Testament. We quote verses 20 and 21 in ecumenical contexts and move on. But the prayer is striking the more you sit with it. Jesus does not pray that his disciples be uniform. He does not ask that they all settle into a single denominational structure or agree on every doctrinal nuance. He asks that they be one as the Father and the Son are one — the unity of mutual indwelling, of love poured out, of glory shared. That kind of unity does not require erasing difference. The Father and the Son are not the same person. They are one in love, in purpose, in life — distinguishable, never separable.

That is the unity Jesus asked for the church. Not a uniformity. A unity-in-love that holds across genuine difference and is so visible that the world looks at it and concludes that the Father has sent the Son.

The world is, frankly, not concluding that. Whatever else the watching world sees in modern Christianity, it does not see what Jesus asked the Father for. It sees factions, anathemas, podcasts, online dunks, and a thousand denominations in any midsize American city. We must take seriously that this is a failure of obedience to a clear apostolic prayer. Not a small failure. Not a failure that we can shrug off as a function of our pluralistic age. Christians have been disobeying John 17 for centuries.

But — and this matters — the answer is not the false unity of pretending difference does not exist. Romans 14 is the corrective. Paul writes to a church where Jewish and Gentile believers genuinely disagreed about food and days and the lingering significance of the law. He does not tell them to stop disagreeing. He does not tell them to take a vote and impose the majority view. He tells them, on the one hand, that they may not bind one another's consciences over secondary matters, and on the other hand, that each must act in faith, fully convinced in his own mind. Difference is allowed. Judgment of brothers over the difference is not. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.

That is what theological maturity looks like. Strong convictions held without contempt for those who hold different ones. Difference acknowledged without weaponized. The willingness to break bread, share communion, and pray together with believers whose accents we do not share — because Christ has made them brothers and sisters whether or not we would have chosen them.

C. S. Lewis, in the preface to Mere Christianity, gave one of the most useful images we have for thinking about this. The book, he said, is not an attempt to invent a new religion or to defend his own preferred version. It is an attempt to set out the shared faith of all who have called themselves Christians across the centuries — the great hall, in his metaphor, that opens into many rooms. The rooms are the denominations: Catholic, Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Orthodox. The hall is mere Christianity — the apostolic and creedal faith that the rooms hold in common. Lewis argues that you cannot live in the hall. You must enter a room. But the hall is real. It is what makes the rooms more than separate buildings. It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine.

That is a wise sentence. The deepest Catholics, the deepest Reformed, the deepest Pentecostals, the deepest Orthodox often discover, when they meet, that they have more in common with each other than with the lukewarm members of their own tradition. Holiness has a family resemblance that crosses confessional lines. So does cynicism. The watered-down progressive Methodist and the watered-down progressive Catholic are largely indistinguishable; the deeply praying, deeply repentant, gospel-rooted Methodist and the deeply praying, deeply repentant, gospel-rooted Catholic, when they meet, find themselves recognizing each other instantly. The center is closer than the edges.

This is not relativism. Lewis, who was a thoroughgoing supernaturalist and a robust defender of historic doctrine, was not saying that doctrinal difference does not matter. He was saying — and Romans 14 backs him — that there is a floor of Christian fellowship beneath which we cannot go without ceasing to be Christian, and there is a ceiling of doctrinal precision above which we cannot demand others meet without ceasing to be charitable. The floor is the apostolic gospel. The ceiling is our preferred denominational distinctives. Christians who collapse the difference between the floor and the ceiling — who treat their denominational distinctives as if they were the gospel itself — produce the kind of fragmentation Jesus prayed against.

For ordinary practical purposes, this means a few things.

It means cultivating friendships, where you can, with serious Christians outside your tradition. The Reformed believer who has never been formed by an Anglican prayer book or a Catholic spiritual director or a Pentecostal worship service is missing something the larger church can teach. The Pentecostal who has never sat under expository preaching from outside her stream is missing something. The Orthodox believer who has never read a Reformed exegete is missing something. None of this requires you to compromise your convictions. It requires you to recognize that the body of Christ is bigger than your room.

It means refusing to take cheap shots at other traditions in your own preaching, teaching, and conversation. There is a kind of Christian who builds his identity on what he is not — not Catholic, not charismatic, not mainline, not fundamentalist — and who keeps a running list of grievances against his nearest neighbors in the hall. That habit is not faithfulness. It is the inverse of John 17. It is teaching the watching world that the Christian's primary loyalty is to a faction.

It means being willing to bear with brothers and sisters in your own local church whose theological accents within your tradition differ from yours. The dispensationalist and the covenant theologian in the same Baptist church. The premillennial and the amillennial elder. The strict-sabbatarian and the liberty-of-conscience family. The "we should sing more hymns" couple and the "we should sing more contemporary songs" couple. Romans 14 still applies. Not every difference must be resolved. Many must simply be borne, with love, until the harvest.

And it means praying John 17 with Jesus. Not in a vague, sentimental way, but in a specific way: praying for the unity of the church across the divides we cannot, in this age, repair. Praying that the world would see, in our love, that the Father has sent the Son. Praying for the Christians whose accent or politics or denomination most irritates us. Asking that, when the harvest comes, we will not be ashamed to find them at the same table to which we have been invited only by mercy.

Going Deeper

It is worth sitting with the strangeness of John 17. On the night of his betrayal, with hours to live, knowing he was about to be tortured to death by an empire and abandoned by his closest friends, Jesus prayed for us. Specifically: he prayed for the unity of those who would believe in him through the apostles' word. That includes you. It includes the brothers and sisters you most struggle to love. It includes the dead saints of every century who confessed his name. It includes the Christians in countries you will never visit who pray in languages you will never learn.

The unity he asked for is real. It is not yet what it will be. But it is more than we usually credit. The body of Christ is larger and stranger and more beautiful than our denominational maps suggest, and one day every faction we ever fought will dissolve in the worship of the one who prayed for our oneness while the soldiers were already on their way.

Until that day, love across difference. Not because difference does not matter, but because the Lord who knew exactly what we would disagree about asked the Father, anyway, that we would be one.