Every Wednesday, 8:00 AM - 8:15 AM
Two Ways the Church Shows God’s Love
By J.D. Greear
How does the world know God is real? By how well someone preaches? By how loudly you worship? By miraculous answers to prayer? By how you vote? No. By how you love.
Only readers of a certain age will remember the TV show “The Invisible Man.” As a kid, I loved superheroes. I used to dress up in all kinds of superhero costumes, but the one superhero whose disguise I could never quite master was the Invisible Man. On the show, when they wanted to make the Invisible Man visible, they would pour paint on him or throw dust at him. Then they could see his shape and track his movements.
The love in the local church is the paint that makes Christ visible to our community. That love shows itself in primarily two ways.
First, it shows up in how we serve our community, when the love Jesus has for us just spills out into the streets. It’s when we take in foster children and love prisoners and serve refugees and befriend political enemies—when we make the invisible Jesus visible.
It also shows up through a unity in Jesus stronger than anything that could divide us.
When we lose our unity in the church, it’s because something has become more important to us than Jesus.
Some people, by the tone of what they put on social media during a volatile season, demonstrate that they care more about politics than they do about Jesus. When we express our perspective, we should do so with a spirit of love and unity that declares what we have in Jesus is greater than any opinions we have about secondary matters. We give space and show grace.
If we lived this way—in loving unity, with the Spirit of Jesus—the evangelism efforts of the church would get a whole lot more effective.
In his final discourse to his disciples, Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35 CSB).
If the church committed to love, forgive, and serve one another and refuse to be divided from each other, we wouldn’t have to invite people to come with us to church. They’d be beating the doors down to come and see what is going on! They’d want to know who this powerful, invisible superhero is that fills and empowers the church.
Then, we’d tell them about Jesus.