The Alelyon (one another) passages in the New Testament:

Don’t bite and devour each other, or else you will end up destroying each other (Gal. 5:15), part 2

I have always been grateful that neither of our kids were biters. This is, of course, a good thing in and of itself. None of us is particularly interested in having other children experience the trauma of having to bear teeth marks from our offspring. It’s not a good look, and an even worse reputation.

To make matters worse, biting is a pretty difficult habit to overcome. I’ve had adult friends (you know who you are) who couldn’t resist the temptation to launch an occasional dentile attack on an arm or shoulder, especially during competitive sporting events.

Spiritual biting is even more persistent, and will sometimes resist our best efforts to curtail the practice. We’ve considered some of the “why” behind the urge to tear at our brothers and sisters, as well as what comes of doing so (see part 1 from last week). Paul’s admonition is a stark one: If Christians persevere in tearing at their brothers and sisters, they risk destroying not only each other, but the church’s witness as well. Christians dividing into traditions and denominations is one of the clearest manifestations of Paul’s warning come to life. Public denunciations and disputes among believers is another. All the smaller and greater, the individual and corporate, yours and my wars of words and deeds – every expression of the biting and devouring against which Scripture cautions – threaten the integrity of our claim to represent the God who has created us for love, and who is love.

Clearly it’s only God’s sovereign grace that keeps the church and its mission from entirely disintegrating. With that covering and provision of grace come the power and wisdom to experience a transformation of our hearts, a change from the need to bite and devour to the fruit of kindness, honor, and healing. Paul reminds Titus (and us) that grace teaches us to say no and to say yes: no to the ungodly practices of the devouring devil; yes to the way of Jesus that freely blesses even those who hate us. In our yes to grace is the antidote for our temptation to achieve gain at the expense of others.

As I noted last week, one of the most insidious aspects of being biters is the hypocrisy that attends our sin. We often engage in subtle, passive-aggressive forms of bringing down or diminishing those around us. Everything from backhanded compliments to gossip veiled as a prayer request to snarky, indirect comments about brothers’ or sisters’ appearance, possessions, accomplishments, preferences, and so on can hide our true animosity toward them. And it’s not like we want them not to know what we’re about; we are hoping they feel the sting of our teeth as a sign of our little victory in the ongoing competition that Satan wants to foment among God’s people.

As a remedy for our duplicity, Paul exhorts the Christians in Rome to “let love be genuine (literally, without hypocrisy)” (Rom. 12:9). This is a kind of summary encouragement that is followed by a series of twenty-one defining expressions that Paul gives us as those living in counter-worldly relationships. As always, they form a portrait of Jesus’ own character, which means that we only grown in them as we draw from him and abide in him. Out of the 21, I want to pick out seven as displaying  specific ways that the Spirit can lead us away from destroying and into being life-givers – three this week, and four next.

1. Verse 10, love affectionately and delight to honor each other (or prefer/hold each other in higher esteem). Here is a prime example of how perceptive biblical wisdom is. These two  are perfectly complementary. Affectionate love comes from a revelation of who I’m related to. My brothers and sisters are under the all-encompassing goodness of the Father, blessed with his kindness, upheld by his mercy. Such recognition leads me to magnify what the Lord has done in you and to desire you good. You are not under divine judgment; I court serious danger if I put you under mine. You are the bearer of the Spirit and his gifts; for me to injure you or deny the reality of who you are is to deny the work of Jesus’ cross in your life.

The reverse is also true: The practice of sincerely and joyfully commending and giving way to each other seeps down into our hearts, and reinforces our sense of growing closeness to the “saints in the land” (Psalms 16). The Father anoints and inhabits us when we serve each other or (as I have known from my earliest days as a Christian) when we serve together. The combination of seeing each other clearly and acting according to God’s vision of each other brings to life Scriptures such as Psalms 133:1, “How good and pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to live as one,” verses that otherwise can become stale or be consigned to the realm of fruitless sentimentality.

2. Verse 15, rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. This is counsel that feels like an extension of showing honor, but it also feels like a God-given honor. Paul is touching on the blessing of sharing God’s dual ministries of joy and consolation. As we read through the Bible, it becomes clear that the Lord not only enjoys blessing us, but he relishes our experience of that blessing. His declaration, “Well done, good and faithful servant”; the joy in heaven over one sinner who repents; the over-the-top party that the father throws for his returning son all have the sense of unrestrained happiness. In the same way, we find God’s displaying his compassion in the Prophets (“in all our affliction he was afflicted – Is. 63:9); in the weeping of Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb; and in the unfathomable bearing of our sin on the cross.

Ours is the same call; to put aside envy, rivalry, jealousy – all the untoward passions that lead us to bite and devour – and to take up the Lord’s heart for each other in both the heights and the depths of our ever-changing and challenging existence. If I have the Father’s perspective on the blessings in which you rejoice, I see two things. First, that they are his gifts – they come from him and are a reflection of his goodness and love. How the come, what they are, and in what measure he pours them out demonstrate his prerogative as the one whose “great pleasure it is to offer his kingdom.” Second, they are an expression of what he thinks of you, and of your stature as his child and friend. And when you suffer, your trials are the locus of his consolation, again reflecting both his nature and yours. His as the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort; yours as one in whom he is working all things for good and for whom he has prepared a table for today and an eternal weight of glory for the age to come.

3. Verse 13, practice hospitality. Insert obligatory (bad) joke that it’s better to eat with each other than to devour each other. Beyond the feeble attempt at humor is the fact that hospitality is one of the explicit marks of the early Christian community. If we read the first few chapter of Acts, it becomes obvious that sharing each others’ space is crucial to countering habitual biting. For one thing, being together builds a common identity in the midst of a hostile world. I don’t mean this in the sense of some kind of weird isolationist paranoia, but as a way of growing in encouragement and in seeing that we are not alone in our discipleship. The intimacy of a meal, of sharing our daily experience of life, of sharing the heights and depths of our Christian walk, of praying and worshipping together – all these things build up our faith, joy, love, compassion, conviction, and strength.

Hospitality also humanizes and normalizes. When I am in your home or you in mine, we become more “real,” with beauty and blemish alike in view. Someone might say that nothing good can come out of such familiarity – that it only breeds unhealthy comparison and judgment. No doubt there are challenges involved. But in the context of God’s call to building up and not tearing down and the grace to do so, we will find that sympathy will grow in the recognition of being under the same mercy and the same transforming power. The Spirit has an inexhaustible ability to level our playing field so that living with sinners becomes a source of multiplied fruitfulness rather than divisive destructiveness.

And a third (among many) blessing of hospitality is that it provides opportunities for mission. The amazed declaration of the ancient Roman world as it witnessed the service and community of the early believers – “see how they love each other” – is not one that often resounds in our age of mediocrity and boredom. And yet people are dying for demonstrations of unity, mercy, enduring commitment, healed and genuine relationships. Where will they find credible answers to the desires of their hearts if not in the lives of Jesus’ brothers and sisters? Let them come and see, and perhaps they will be moved to the same amazement as the first century pagans knew.

I have four more “medications” for biter’s disease waiting for next week. Meanwhile, I highly recommend the verses from Romans 12 for our meditation and pray that we will grow in the love that draws the whole world to Jesus Christ.