By Ken Silva

"You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give it to you. This I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it has hated you." [1]
Love In Christ
Without a doubt these are strange times we are living in. An era where a warped kind of "tolerance" has actually replaced the type of love our Lord was often speaking about. This alleged "postmodern" age is really just a mask for relativism, with its supposed "love" which requires no real stand for Truth because doing so might "offend" someone.

Essentially this is the rotten fruit of humanism which flowered as it were in the 60's into a kind of Bohemian "love in" that was going to usher in some sort of Utopian brotherhood of mankind. It didn't work in secular society then, and it certainly isn't going to work in the true Body of Christ today. And yet it would seem that this purpose is what drives the Ecumenical Church of Deceit (ECoD) within the new evangelicalism.

There is much that can be gleaned from this text but space dictates that I point out that the Christian is to bear fruit, but this is not just empty statistics. On the contrary Jesus is telling us that if we witness for God His way then our fruit would remain. The Master, Who obviously spoke the Truth in love perfectly, also informs us in verse 18 that the world hated Me before it has hated you. So the Christian already knows going in that the true Gospel of Jesus Christ will never be popular with Satan's world system.

And what leaders within the ECoD such as Rick Warren and Brian McLaren and Joel Osteen don't seem to understand is that the above command by God in verse 17 that we love one another cannot be separated from something else Jesus would later pray in His High Priestly Prayer:

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are one: I in them and You in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me. [2]

Since I cover this more issue more thoroughly in True Unity In The Body Of Christ I will make just this one point in passing. To love one another in the way the Master is speaking above in verse 21 necessitates that first one must be born again by the Holy Spirit through God's grace alone; through faith alone; in Christ alone. This is the only way someone can be in Christ just as the Father is in Him and Christ is in the Father.

What the ECoD, centered as it is on the love of man instead of on love for God, does is to try and isolate a verse such as 17 of our opening text in order to further their own misguided agenda of pleasing the world. Let me also point out to the reader that the Purpose Driven Church of Rick Warren is the major cog in this Reformation-denying ECoD.

Examining Christ's Commands
Currently I have been seeking the Lord concerning these matters because as a Christian and a pastor-teacher myself I most certainly would never wish to violate such a central command as love one another. Seeking no sympathy, but stating a fact, the type of ministry that Apprising Ministries has involved me in is quite difficult for someone with my particular personality.

In this kind of discernment work it's hard enough to keep the balance between love for God and love for others as we stand for His Truth. This however is then complicated in my case because by nature I am also a person who hates conflict. My basic philosophy was always "live and let live."

This I have in common with the average person in this world today, so conditioned as we are to think that love means we are not to infringe on the "rights" of someone else and instead must leave them alone to live as they please. Satan knows this sounds good to the flesh, and especially to those who have followed his deceiving spirits with their things taught by demons into the reasoning process reversing practice of contemplative spirituality.

In Part Two we'll talk more about how the immediate problem that arises is these people must then attack the absolute and final authority of God's Word because this doesn't square with the BibleOld or New Testamentbecause the Lord's prophets and preachers in Holy Scripture continually call mankind to live up to the standards required by their Creator.