Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy

The Beauty of a Christ-Alone Church

When you write a book called Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy, you get dozens of people who encourage you to dedicate it to them. But there is no dedication because I am the one who drives them crazy! So, this is a conversation together this evening about loving people who you find hard to love. We just need to remember as we do that, that it goes both ways. We are often the people who are difficult for other people to love, and we are grateful to them for extending to us the welcome that comes in Christ Jesus.

Let me pray, and we will get started.

"Lord God, we cannot think about this topic without first thinking, as our songs just reminded us, of the welcoming love you have shown for us—that while we were your enemies, you sent your own Son to die for us. We praise you for that, Father. There is no act of love you call us to do that is not overshadowed, but also empowered, by your own love for us. And so, Father, as we think about our love for each other, we pray that this would not just be a time for us to consider horizontally what that love looks like, but we would marvel at the love we have from you, our Father above, that makes all this possible. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen."

Well, who is not discouraged by conflict at church? I think sometimes we feel like the local church should be as close as we get to heaven on Earth, and yet there are so many opportunities for disagreement at church. Conflict comes from differences of opinion, like whether the elders of your church were right to stop funding that crisis pregnancy center you love. They come from differences of conviction, like that church member whose social media feed promotes positions that you find morally troubling at best. Sometimes there are differences of culture or class that make you feel like an outsider in your own church. And sometimes it is just, honestly, no deeper than people who rub you the wrong way.

But I would suggest that, far from seeing this as an unusual experience in a church, churches are especially ripe for conflict precisely because they should be centered on Christ alone. A church should be defined by Christ alone—not by Christ and shared convictions about children's schooling options, or by Christ and a particular anti-poverty strategy, or by Christ and shared revulsion at so-and-so's social media post, or by Christ and a particular musical vibe. I think you get the picture. It is very easy to say, "Oh, yes, this church is about Christ alone." Well, living with all these differences and disagreements is what that actually looks like. And very often, I think we are entirely unprepared for a Christ-alone kind of church.

So, our goal for this evening is to seek to apply some gospel tools the Lord has given us so that we are prepared to love where love is hard. But since I have started on such a negative note, let me actually transition to a positive story of the conversion of a friend of mine, and how I think it spins the idea of difference and disagreement in a much more positive direction.

My friend's name is Bill. He is quite elderly now. He first came to my church in Washington, D.C., when he was in his early sixties. He did not live in Washington, D.C., where my church is, at the time; he lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and he had spent his entire career teaching at Harvard University, where he studied group psychology. Bill was, in fact, one of the early experts in what we call "groupthink"—essentially answering the question of why people, when they get together in groups, do really silly things like financial panics, urban legends, and witch hunts.

Well, Bill was in Washington for a conference, and a friend at the conference invited him to come to my church, which he did. He emailed me after his first visit and said that it was a very odd experience. He quickly clarified, saying, "I don't mean you people are strange. I just mean that it was odd. I couldn't understand how your church works." He said, "It was very clear to me that people were very deeply committed to each other. It was also clear they didn't have much in common, and that just doesn't make sense." In particular, what struck him was that the commitment seemed far deeper than what anybody seemed to gain from the friendships, and he was trying to figure out, "Okay, what makes this thing work?"

Well, Bill was actually in Washington fairly frequently because of the work he was doing with one of the intelligence agencies. So, the next time he was in town, he visited the church again. He was asking people, "How do you know her? How long have you known them? Why did you do that with them last week?" It just became a personal pet project to understand: what is it that makes this thing work?

I think you probably already know the answer to the question that a Harvard professor struggled to figure out. What is it that draws these people together that I can't see? It was Jesus. And as he began to realize the answer to that question, he began to be interested in Jesus. He began to study the Gospel of Mark, which talked about Jesus. As he read through the Gospel of Mark, he told me later, "My sin stopped being an academic problem and became a very personal problem, and it felt like a very urgent problem. I began to realize that there was only one way for me to be forgiven of my sin, and that was through this Jesus I was reading about."

He became a Christian. Around that time, he retired from his position at Harvard and actually moved to Washington, D.C., just down the street from me. He was baptized, joined my church, and got married a few years later, by then in his seventies. I think what is most sweet is that I have watched Bill over the last fifteen years become one of the best examples I know of in my church of exactly what first perplexed him: of building friendships with people with whom he had very little in common, because they shared Christ.

I was actually at Bill's house on Friday. He is most likely dying of cancer. I was talking to his wife about some plans and how to think about the end, and it was just such a sweet experience to know that this man, who was an enemy of Christ when I first met him, is now Christ's beloved child and is, in so many different ways, living in a way that shows off the glory and love of his Savior.

I think Bill's story is a good one to have in mind as we approach this topic of difference and disagreement at church because it so exemplifies what Jesus gives to us, and what John writes in 1 John chapter 4, where he says that we love because Christ first loved us. That is what characterizes Bill's life, and that is what attracted him to the gospel initially. It was the love of Christ that these people had experienced that made them want to love each other, even though the differences between them would have made someone like Bill feel like, "This is impossible. It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense."

What happened in Bill's experience in my church is not unique to him; it is not unique to my church. This is something that happens in every true church. People love each other not because it makes sense, not because it is easy, and not because they see what they have to gain from the friendship. They love because Christ first loved them.

And that is the glory of a Christ-alone church, where you are united in Christ alone. This is not a church about Christ and a certain brand of politics, or about Christ and a commitment to Dave Ramsey's views on debt, or about Christ and a certain model of race relations. We are just about Jesus, and that is what we see in the New Testament.

Why God Welcomes Differences

Take the churches at Rome, for example. We know that Jew and Gentile mixed together about as well as oil and water. If you were in charge of starting churches in first-century Rome, you would, of course, have a church for Jews over here and a church for Gentiles over there. You would have one strategy for reaching Jews and another for reaching Gentiles. But as Scripture makes clear, God's plan was for these churches to be Jew-Gentile from the very beginning, with all the miscommunication, mistrust, and misunderstanding that no doubt ensued.

God made these churches to be an explosive combination, and it wasn't just the ones in Rome. The churches in the New Testament were often built of combustible materials. The very first church in Jerusalem, we discover in Acts chapter 6, was made of Greek-speaking Jews and Aramaic-speaking Jews, who were famously at odds with each other. The church in Colossae had both slave and free. The church in Corinth had people who ate meat that was sacrificed to idols and those who thought that was sin. The churches James wrote to were rich and poor. There were differences of culture, differences of conscience, differences of class. What was the Lord doing?

My guess is, if you think about it, your church is a bit of a tinderbox as well. Your church's divisions may not be Jew-Gentile like the churches in Rome. Maybe they are intergenerational. Maybe there are disagreements in your church over how to apply the Bible's teachings about gender, what music to sing, how to run the children's ministry, or how to navigate a world enamored with the LGBTQ+ agenda—not to mention more theological disagreements, and not to mention ordinary, run-of-the-mill church disagreements like what to prioritize in the budget and what paint to put on the walls. And those are just the category disagreements. What about differences of culture, personality, and social class? I am sure there are three or four others that you are thinking about that I haven't thought to mention yet.

Like the churches of the New Testament, your insistence on actual diversity means that the explosives are set, the switch is set to a hair-trigger, and the fireworks are ready to go off. So, why do we do this? Why not just have two or more happier, more peaceful, more homogeneous churches?

Well, that brings us back to those churches in Rome. Surely, building a church family out of both Jew and Gentile would be exhausting. Surely, it would be easier to just go our separate ways. So, having explained in Romans 11 that the church is composed of Jew and Gentile and why, and having gotten very practical in Romans 12 to 14 about how Jew and Gentile can live together in the church, Paul prays for that Jew-Gentile unity in chapter 15. I think his prayer is wonderful and instructive. This is what Paul writes in Romans 15:5-7:

Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, according to Christ Jesus, so that you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with one mind and one voice. Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ also welcomed you, to the glory of God.

— Romans 15:5-7 (CSB)

Paul is saying, "Look, I know you guys are different from each other. I know that you would never associate together except for Christ, but I want you to live with one mind and one voice to show that being in accord with Christ Jesus is all that is needed to be one, so that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ will gain glory."

Despite all these differences of opinion, background, and even conviction, you Roman Christians can glorify God in a profound way through your love for each other, such that God is far more glorified than if you had never disagreed on anything to begin with.

If we look at our own situations today, there are all kinds of differences that often characterize the local church. There are differences of background—different professions, different cultures. There are differences of personality—quiet people, loud people, risk-taking people, risk-averse people. There are differences of opinion—what kind of music do we want, what is the best approach to immigration for the state of California? There are differences of conviction—people who disagree about how they should spend their money, how they should parent their kids, politics, race, and all kinds of things.

And yet, that is all part of God's plan. Just as God gets more glory through redemption than through creation alone, he gets more glory as your church unites around Christ despite disagreement than if everybody had been in the same place in the first place.

And that is challenging. There is a reason Paul in Romans 15 prays to the God of endurance, because it takes endurance. We need endurance if we are going to love those who are different from us. It is going to be uncomfortable to be in a church with people who disagree with you and are different from you. It means that people don't understand you innately; they misunderstand you, and they assume things that are false because they don't share your background or your assumptions.

Now, I think it is very important at this juncture to recognize that there are some disagreements that have no place in a local church. We don't agree to disagree over whether abortion is right or wrong. We don't agree to disagree over whether the God of the Bible is Triune. It can sometimes, honestly, be tricky to determine which disagreements we are allowed to have inside the church and which disagreements should separate churches. That delicate set of discussions, honestly, is beyond the scope of this talk this evening. So, if you came here because you want to find out where to draw the lines, I am not going to draw the lines for you, and different churches draw the lines in different places anyway.

Instead, I want to focus on a set of disagreements and differences that you have in your churches where you know deep down inside there is no reason why this particular disagreement should force us into multiple churches, but it is just really hard to love these people. That is where I want to focus this evening. That is where I want to take the closing chapters of the Book of Romans, which have been so useful for me in my quest to love people who are different from me in my church, and just begin to unpack them a little bit to give us some tools. How can we understand, for those people who I know should be in my church but who I know are really hard to love, how can I have real affection for them?

To do that, I want to encourage you, I want to exhort you, and I want to equip you. That is what we are going to do. We will take each one in turn.

Encouragement: The Power of Costly Love

To encourage you, the main thing I want to encourage you with is that sometimes it feels, because of the presence of all these disagreements and differences, that things have gone tragically wrong. I think very often that is not evidence that things have gone tragically wrong, but rather that things have gone gloriously right. It could be that the reason why you have disagreements and differences at church is because you have, in fact, centered your church on Christ alone, rather than on Christ and agreement on a whole bunch of secondary matters that would make church a lot easier and a lot less glorious.

Just think about Jesus' words in Luke 6:32:

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.

— Luke 6:32 (CSB)

We want people who are easy to love. We want people who love us in turn, and that love is easy. That is wonderful, that is delightful, but it says very little about the power of the gospel at work in your heart. Easy love rarely shows off gospel power. Easy love rarely shows off gospel power, which is why, in Luke 6:35-36, Jesus continues:

But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High. For he is gracious to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

— Luke 6:35-36 (CSB)

How do we show ourselves to be children of our Heavenly Father? By loving even our enemies, just as he loved us when we were his enemies. Of course, this is not a command to merely love your enemies—as if it is okay to give the cold shoulder to your brother at church but you have to love your enemies. No, he is marking out the edge—love even your enemies—to describe a whole ethic of love. Certainly, that includes loving the brothers and sisters in your church who you have a hard time getting along with. Because, again, easy love rarely shows off gospel power.

I think of what this looks like in marriage. I have been married for 23 years, and I think back to when I was newly married. Sometimes in my head—rarely, though sadly sometimes, with my mouth—I would think something like, "If you would just do this the way I do it, this would be so much easier."

I have done a lot of premarital counseling in my 15 years as a pastor, and I have very often heard people say in front of me, "If you would just think about this the way I do, this would be so much easier." To which I want to say: that statement is entirely true, and it entirely misses the point of being married. The point of marriage, according to Genesis 2, is that husband and wife are different; they are designed to complement each other. If you think about things the way I do, things would be so much easier, but then what is the point of being married?

The same applies to the church. "If you would just think about this the way I do, this would be so much easier." That is completely true. It is a great description of the problem, but a terrible prescription of what to do about it. Because if you just think about things the way I do, we lose the glory of the church. "If we could all just be Jews, it would be so much easier." So true, but what is the point?

I mentioned earlier that some differences have no place in the church, and so I think we should be rightly wary of calls for unity like the one I am giving you this evening. Calls for unity were the path to theological liberalism in the early 20th century. Christians valued unity more than fidelity to God's word. In the mid-20th century, calls for unity were an excuse for apathy, or even antipathy, by many churches toward the Civil Rights Movement. "Let's just get along and not have any disagreements among us." Thus, Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail was written to pastors of churches in Birmingham who seemed to be valuing unity more than justice.

So, in Philippians 4, when Paul is writing to Euodia and Syntyche, he says that they should "agree in the Lord," not just that they should agree. We also need to agree in the Lord. Our unity must be in Christ.

And that unity is profoundly important. As a church, we need to recognize that unity, though important, will also be difficult. I think about 1 Peter 4, where Peter writes:

Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you. Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.

— 1 Peter 4:12-13 (CSB)

In context, everything Peter said before that verse in 1 Peter 4 is about relationships in the church. So, I think Peter has in mind sufferings from without, but I think he also has in mind sufferings from within. Sometimes we are surprised when we see difficulties in the church. We think, "Shouldn't church be the one easy place I have in my life? The one place where I don't disagree with anybody because we are one in Christ?"

Well, friends, don't be surprised. If we are united around Christ alone, then all these differences and disagreements will find their way into the church. That doesn't mean we stop loving each other, but it does mean that our love in the church has a unique opportunity to show off what the Lord has done in us. That is what shows the power and glory of unity in Christ.

That is my encouragement. Now, my exhortation—I have already started doing that a bit. Essentially, unity is costly, and the exhortation I have for you is: are you prepared to pay that cost because of your love for Jesus Christ?

If your church is united around Christ alone, that means that people in your church won't "get it" about matters in society that are important to you. You are absolutely incensed by this politician or this person on social media, and your preacher doesn't seem to share the same anger that you feel from the pulpit. That is hard.

If you are united around Christ alone, that means that people won't understand you very often. You may come from a different culture or background than other people at church, particularly if you are the kind of person who doesn't seem to "fit in" with all the rest of those people at church. That is going to be a hard place to be.

If you are united around Christ alone, that means that church leaders often won't get it right. Sometimes you will find they refuse to speak publicly on a particular issue that you would like them to speak to because they insist that it is okay to disagree and still be part of the same church. And that can be really hard.

Kevin DeYoung, a pastor in North Carolina, put it well. He says it may be that your pastor is cowardly trying to make everyone happy—that won't work—but it may be that he is trying to wisely shepherd a diverse flock in a way that helps the sheep focus on Christ and him crucified. Churches don't always arrive at the right answer when deciding which issues are church-splitting issues and which are gospel-unity issues. But very often, what you feel is so important and must be said from the front, they feel we can have unity on in Christ. That means that disagreement in society is going to find its way into the church on many issues.

Sometimes we feel like church should be a safe harbor from the cold, angry world on the outside. In some sense, that is true, and that is wonderful. I hope the disagreements inside the church do look very different than what we see in the world on the outside. But the presence of those disagreements is almost inevitable if we are grounded in Christ alone.

We could find a church where everybody agrees with us, where we all come from the same background and all have the same personality. That would be a lot easier, and we could probably have that church even if we didn't have the Spirit within us.

This is all particularly challenging because of the way it rubs against how many of us have been taught to think about church. I think very often as evangelicals in the 21st century, we have been taught to think about finding a church kind of like how you shop for a car. You visit all the different churches in town and think, "Okay, which one has the options I want? Which one isn't going to give me any trouble? Which one is going to make me look good?" And that is the church for me. "Is that the place where I can feel closer to God? Is that the place where I want to raise my kids? Is that the place where I can feel my gifts are being used?"

There is nothing inherently wrong with answering those questions, but that just can't be the main thing that you are looking for in a church. If Jew and Gentile in the first century were shopping for a church like you shop for a car—they didn't know what a car was, but if they were consumerists like we are—they would never end up in church together. It would be deeply uncomfortable for a Jewish Christian to go to church with Gentiles. It doesn't make any sense. Christ-alone unity is costly, and a consumeristic mindset never has any reason to pay that cost.

One thing we see as we look across the broader evangelical landscape today is that many churches have built themselves by appealing to Christians as consumers, and then they run into divisions and disagreements and they can't handle it. Why is that? Because, again, consumerism won't pay the cost of unity.

We need to recognize that there is something much deeper that needs to be true of my relationship with a church than the fact that it happens to be the best place to meet my spiritual needs. The thing that is going on in the church that is deeper than that is the opportunity to show off the glory of Jesus. That is what we are doing together as a church: we are here to show off the glory of Jesus, and we do that through our love for each other.

And the great news, my friends, is that there is actually more joy in this Christ-alone unity than in the consumeristic church.

Let's say that Sam and I are both friends, and we are both Oklahoma football fans. What do we talk about when we get together? We talk about Jesus, because we are both Christians, but we talk a whole bunch about football as well. But let's say Alex and I are also friends, and we can't think of anything that we share in common, but we are both Christians. So, what do we talk about when we get together? We talk about Jesus. What else are we supposed to talk about?

Now, which is a better foundation for friendship: Jesus or football? Jesus, right! So, this relationship that is founded on Christ alone is going to develop more slowly. It will probably require more charity, more patience; we are going to kind of bump our noses more frequently because we don't really understand each other. But what a profound foundation for our friendship!

I think, counterintuitively, the people in your church with whom you might have the deepest friendships are the people with whom you share nothing in common except Jesus, because you will be forced to build a friendship on Jesus and your shared love of him. I am not saying that all your relationships in the church need to be with people you have nothing in common with other than Jesus, but I hope some of them do. This is not a call to the Marine Corps of Christianity—like, "This is the hard way, so it must be the right way, so we need to do this." This is a call to joy. If you want the kind of joy you can only find in Christian fellowship, then you want to build friendships with people with whom you share little in common other than Christ. That is my exhortation for you.

Question 1: How Can I Really Love These People?

Lastly, I want to say a few things to equip you. How do you do this? You are in a friendship, and you are like, "Yep, we don't share much in common other than Christ, and boy, they offend me a lot. How am I supposed to love them?" What do you do?

Well, that is why I want to go back to the Book of Romans. It seems that, like most of the other churches of the New Testament, the churches at Rome were Jew and Gentile. They were started that way. We also know from Acts 18 that the emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome, probably around the late 40s AD, which would have left those churches to be Gentile-only churches. Claudius died in 54 AD, and the Jews started coming back to Rome. My guess is they started coming back to their old churches. Paul writes his letter to the Romans three years later. I wonder what some of the big news was going on in the churches of Rome. It was, "Gosh, we've been Gentile-only and really happy about it for a while, and now the Jews are back. What do we do now, Paul?" Just when these majority Gentile churches were beginning to remember what it looks like to build unity around Christ alone, we get this letter to the Romans.

What advice does he write to churches like that? That advice is found in the closing chapters of this book. I really don't think there is anywhere else in Scripture that gives us so much ammunition against selfishness and self-righteousness, to learn the joy of those with whom we share nothing in common other than Christ, as these chapters in the Book of Romans.

As I mentioned earlier, chapter 11 explains why Jew and Gentile are one in Christ, and then chapter 12 describes the kind of love we should have for each other—that we should be one body (Romans 12:4-5). Despite our differences, we should love each other with affection as family (Romans 12:10). You have heard it said, "Well, I can love them, but I don't have to like them." Well, let me introduce you to Romans 12:10, where that attitude runs aground, and you realize, "Oh, no, the Lord has some higher expectations for us." We are to have affection as family. We are even to love each other despite differences in conviction (Romans 14), even when we disagree about what is right and wrong.

So, you can see in the handout three questions I often get as a pastor about what it looks like to have this kind of love, and three answers that we see in the Book of Romans. For the rest of our time, I am just going to walk through each of these in turn.

Question number one: How can I really love these people? It is one thing to say that you love the people in your church, but have you met them? It is very different to actually love all of them, which is why the perspective Paul begins with in Romans 12:1 is so critical:

Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.

— Romans 12:1 (CSB)

As we continue reading, we discover the living sacrifice Paul has in mind is love in the body of the local church. He says present your bodies (plural) as a living sacrifice (singular). Not many sacrifices, not a Gentile sacrifice and a Jewish sacrifice—one. How do we do that? He gives us the answer: "by the mercies of God."

The love that Paul goes on to describe in these chapters is, in a word, impossible. It is impossible for Jews and Gentiles to love each other sincerely (Romans 12:9). And the love that Paul describes, as I mentioned earlier, is not a clenched-teeth, white-knuckling kind of love. It is not a pretend friendship; it is sincere. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, in Romans 12:10, he says it is a love with brotherly affection. For Jew and Gentile in the first century to love each other that way was impossible, and that is kind of the whole point.

As I said earlier, easy love rarely shows off gospel power. To quote Jesus again from Luke 6, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?" What does that say about the power of God's work in your life?

Joe is a member of my church. He doesn't fit in. He is African-American in a church that is 70% white. He is working-class in a church which is largely professional. When he first visited, he told me the differences were so stark he almost turned around as soon as he walked into the sanctuary and never came back. But he stayed, and he loved the teaching, and he loved the friendships he found in our church that were built around that teaching.

But you know, it has been two years since Joe first came to my church and joined, and those differences haven't gone away. Those differences are starting to be really hard for him. He was in my office wondering if it was time for him to go look for another church where he can find people who are more similar to him, even if the teaching isn't quite as good.

At this juncture, I have a very sensitive pastoral judgment I need to make. I don't ever want the people in my church feeling like it is my job to sell them on my church. I want them to believe that I will guide them to the very best pastors they can find, whether it is my church or a different church, because I am their pastor, not a salesman. And I don't want someone like Joe to feel like all the burden is on his shoulders. Part of outdoing one another in showing love (Romans 12:10) is for the majority culture to lean forward toward people like Joe. That is what it means for us to be Christians.

And yet, as Joe and I talk, I feel like he is only weighing one side of the trade-off. Yes, church is uncomfortable for him, and being uncomfortable has spiritual consequences. And yet, all that notwithstanding, there is another side to this trade-off, which is the glory of differences in a church. Joe has supernatural power to love those who are different from him because he has received a mercy that is itself supernatural. What is more, Joe is learning in my church to build friendships where he doesn't share much in common other than Christ, which is teaching him more of Christ and more of his mercy. And of course, Christ is worth way more than being comfortable.

I am not going to tell you how the story ended, because I don't want to suggest that a happy ending always means staying at your church. But too often, we are tempted to flee the glory of difference for the comfort of similarity. We are, to use the language Paul gives us in Romans 12:2, being conformed to this world's way of thinking, instead of looking back at the mercy of Christ, thirsting for more of his mercy, and in doing that, finding a new power and perspective to love where love is uncomfortable. That is how a church full of differences eventually begins to feel like family.

Question 2: Wouldn't We Be Better Off Without Them?

This leads to a second question because, just like in a physical family, sometimes in a spiritual family, we are very tempted to ask the question: "Wouldn't we be better off without some of these people?"

In question number one, my friend Joe was the protagonist. For this one, I will give you my own experience, because this is a question that, in my shame, I have often voiced to myself. I know that 1 Corinthians 12 tells me that the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, but I think, "Lord, could you please make them indispensable to someone else's church body?" Do you ever feel that way?

I live in a very political place with a very political congregation. I am not a very political person. I sometimes grimace when I hear the positions very proudly aired by members of my very opinionated congregation—sometimes to the left of me, sometimes to the right of me. I just think, "This is exhausting. Lord, wouldn't we be better off without some of them?"

Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 gives us an answer. I quoted it before: the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. Every part of the body plays a unique role. In other words, even if I can't see why, I can trust the Lord that we need those people. But you know, by itself, that doesn't actually answer my question. By itself, that can feel somewhat utilitarian, where I love these people whom I would prefer not to love simply because of what they do for our church. That is half the answer, but it is not all the answer.

That is where I think Romans 12:5 is so helpful. It is interesting: in the New Testament, Paul repeatedly uses this image of the church as the body of Christ and us as its members, and nearly every time he uses that image, he applies it slightly differently. In 1 Corinthians 12, he says that it is important that we have this diversity in the body because we need all the different pieces. In Ephesians 4 and Colossians 2, that diversity is important because that is what builds maturity and protects doctrine. But I honestly find Romans 12 to be the most challenging of the three. This is what Paul says:

in the same way we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.

— Romans 12:5 (CSB)

I find that an unexpected turn of phrase. I would have expected Paul to say that we are one body in Christ, and therefore each member belongs to Christ. But that is not what he says. No, each belongs to the others. In Christ, we belong not merely to him; we belong to each other.

And so, the emphasis Paul gives us in the verses that follow, as he talks about using our various gifts, is not our need for one another—like it is in 1 Corinthians 12—but our service to one another. Service, he says in verses 6 to 8, that is abundant, zealous, and cheerful.

Think about a blended family that forms after a mom or dad is widowed or divorced and remarries. The feeling of belonging that produces the abundance, cheer, and zeal of Romans 12:6-8 is not what you feel on day one as step-siblings, when "belonging" to them essentially means you had better love them. It is much more like what you feel in verse 10, if things have gone well, where you want to love because you belong.

For me, this verse has functioned not so much as a command when I struggle with the people God has put in my church, but as an invitation. It offers hope that as we continue to seek Christ together, we will increasingly discover how well-suited we really are for each other. God has providentially brought this body together in his wisdom. We belong together, which means that not merely do I need these people, it means that they are worthy of my love. They are made in God's image, of course, but beyond that, he has called us to be together. We belong to one another.

Question 3: How Do I Stop Judging and Despising?

That leads to a third question: What if those people at church are difficult to love not merely because their preferences or their backgrounds are different from mine, but what if their consciences are different from mine? What if they say and do things that I honestly believe are wrong?

Question number three: How can I stop judging and despising these people?

One thing I find very useful about these chapters as Paul closes the Book of Romans is that, as they progress, the challenges Paul addresses become more moral in nature. He begins just by talking about love despite differences. At the end of chapter 12, he introduces the fact that these people can feel like enemies, and he takes a little discursus in Romans 13 to talk about what it looks like for the state to punish wrongdoers. Then he comes back in Romans 14, and now he is talking about disagreements of conscience head-on. How can I love people when we can't even agree on what is right and wrong?

Let me share another story from my congregation's life. A young man named John Lee lived with my family—not just at any time, but during all the COVID shutdowns. We got to know each other really well.

During that time, another friend in my church named Grace was having a very hard time. She very much agreed with the precautions our government was mandating, and she really struggled with the people in the church who she felt were wrong in their disregard for the government's restrictions. She would sit through the services we had outdoors, secretly despising that member over there who refused to wear a mask, or that member over there who she knew was criticizing the vaccine. Grace was mature enough as a believer to know that that judging spirit was wrong, but she felt stuck; she couldn't escape it.

We met outdoors for a while, and then we had a congregational meeting to discuss the fact that we had reached an agreement with the city so that we could come back indoors again. It was one of the most painful congregational meetings that I have experienced at my church because some of the people there were wary about us coming back indoors, and some of the people there were incensed that we hadn't done that long ago.

A woman named Serena stands up and, with great emotion, describes all the ways that COVID restrictions had hurt her family and hurt our church. She was exactly the kind of person that Grace had struggled with, and yet, something in what Serena said shook loose Grace's judging spirit.

Here is how Grace put it to me later. She said, "It was seeing her pain—the same pain I was feeling, even though we were coming from opposite sides of the issue. It was seeing in her tears the same love of this church that I had, the same faith that I had, even though we couldn't disagree more about what our church should do. I knew on a theoretical level that someone could disagree with me and still be a Christian, but what I needed wasn't a theory; I needed a person. A person whose faith was real and whose faith was driving her heart, even if on this issue her heart was pointed in the opposite direction as mine."

When she told me that, I immediately thought of what Paul talks about in Romans 14. This is what he says in verses 6 and 7:

Whoever observes the day, observes it for the honor of the Lord. Whoever eats, eats for the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; and whoever does not eat, it is for the Lord that he does not eat it, and he gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for himself, and no one dies for himself.

— Romans 14:6-7 (CSB)

These controversies go on in the Roman church between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. Paul is not pretending like one side isn't right and one side isn't wrong; he is very clear that the Gentile side in this debate is correct—he shows his cards in Romans 14:14. Yet on this admittedly secondary matter, he cares far more that these disagreeing Christians love each other than that the correct side wins the debate. In particular, he wants us to see in Romans 14:6 that the other side is acting out of a sincere desire to follow Christ, just as Grace saw with Serena.

We are often told in our culture to assume the best. I think that advice is good—good to a point. Assuming the best, though, is only the doorway to doing what Paul describes here in Romans 14. Yes, assume the best, but then walk through that door to understand and explore what really motivates a Christian on the other side of the issue. Don't stop with assuming. Even if you are assuming good, find out! Find out how a genuine desire to honor Christ can motivate opinions that are diametrically opposed to your own.

Just like Grace saw with Serena, sometimes you will be disappointed and discover it is just as bad as you feared. But at least then you are not assuming the best about something which is false. Yet very often—and I am surprised even as a pastor how often this is the case—I will discover, "Oh, I see. I still disagree, but I see how your faith is actually motivating that opinion that I find wrong." You will discover real faith. That discovery is rarely going to solve a disagreement, but it can certainly shake you free of that trap of judging and despising.

Let me close by going back to that passage in Romans 15:5-7. Twice in this short passage, we see God getting glory through the harmony that comes as Christians live in accord with Christ. Not that it's easy, as I said earlier. But if that difficulty had led the Roman churches to abandon unity or to insist on uniformity rather than Jew-Gentile diversity, Paul's prayer would have fallen flat. Where differences threaten to tear our churches apart, they are actually opportunities to demonstrate that being in accord with Christ Jesus, as Paul writes, is all we need to be in harmony with one another. That is how, with one voice, we glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If a church is about Jesus and urban renewal, you rob him of glory. If a church is about Jesus and homeschooling, you rob him of glory. As I said earlier, just as God gets greater glory through redemption than through creation alone, the glory he receives in your church's unity is greater in disagreement and difference than if everyone had been in the same place to begin with.

And that should be our prayer. Let's pray with Paul that we would show Jesus to be enough, the gospel to be enough, to draw all his people together so that we can bring glory to him.

I am going to stop there now, and we will have some time for Q&A. So, if you have a question, please stand up once you get a mic, give us your name, give us your church, and then give us your question. Think about whether the question you have would be useful for all of us to hear. You may have a very specific question that only applies to you; I would be delighted to talk to you about it afterward. But I would love to have questions that are just generally edifying, where the answers will be useful for you and other people. Now, I have raised the standard for questions! You have to think about it for a little bit, but if you have a question, go ahead and put up your hand, grab the mic, stand up, and ask your question. My son CJ will run quickly; he is good at running quickly.

Q&A: Living Out Unity in the Local Church

Mariano: Thank you. You said name—my name is Mariano. The church I attend is First Baptist Church of Aliso Real, right here. My question primarily goes to family. You talked a lot about the church and our ability to come together under Jesus Christ and those types of things. I am interested in knowing a little bit more if you have like a little something extra you can give us in regards to family members where you have a similar dynamic, right? You know, there is your family, you believe in—you hope everyone in your family believes in Jesus Christ—but then you still have those troublesome disagreements, if you will.

Jamie Dunlop: Yes, a very wise friend once told me that when he does marriage counseling, basically all he is doing is getting people to love one another. He said good marriages just come down to taking the "one another" commands in Scripture and actually doing them. And so, I do think that the commands written to help us love one another in the church are very useful in the family. Paul doesn't apply them to the family; he just applies them to the church. But you know, you read through Romans 12 in your quiet time tomorrow, pray about your marriage. I bet you have a whole bunch of stuff to think about, to confess, and to thank God for.

So, I do think that these principles that are designed for our family as the church are useful in our physical families. The one caveat I would give you is that most of what Paul gives us in Romans works with Christians, and of course, I can't assume that everybody in my physical family is a Christian. And so, I think you will find that these principles work really well when I think about Christian family members who may be part of your same church. Just don't try to apply principles designed for Christians to people who aren't Christians; we are expecting too much of them at that point.

But yeah, I can't tell you how many people have said, "Gosh, Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy—do you have a marriage edition?" To which I say, "I bet you 85% of this will work really well in a Christian marriage."

Alex: I'm Alex from Christian Fellowship Bible Church, West Covina. Two questions: Did John Lee drive you crazy when he lived with you? And then the second question is: Is there something you're doing as a pastor or church to equip your members for a divisive political election that's coming up?

Jamie Dunlop: I hadn't thought about the second one—that's a joke!

Did John Lee drive us crazy? Yes, sometimes, and we did the same to him. But no, not very much. Though, you can ask my son about the little rhyme he has about John's food habits.

What are we doing to prepare our church for a potentially divisive political season? Well, for my church—you think about politics as two colors, but at my church, it's like a rainbow. I mean, we've got like 13 different versions of each political party, and there are all kinds of ways we can divide in my church that you've never thought to divide over.

I think the main thing we have done to prepare our church for this divisive political season is to have a culture of meaningful membership. By what I mean by that is: to be involved in the church, you join the church, and when you join the church, you make some big promises that are defined in our church covenant—just the "one another" commands in Scripture—and you promise to do those for all the people in the church. I think that is sort of the antidote to consumerism, which is opposed to diversity and unity.

If you have a church which is grounded in that idea of membership—"I'm loving you not because it makes sense, not because I see what's in it for me; I'm loving you because I promised to love you"—that creates a culture which I think is much more robust when you have stresses against it, just like in marriage. What difference do the vows make? Well, when things are going great, they don't make that much of a difference. When things are hard, those vows make a huge difference.

When I married my wife, I made some really big promises to love and to cherish, until death do us part, to someone who, frankly, I didn't know that well. I thought I knew her well; I certainly didn't know her the way I do now. And we've changed a lot over the years. Relationship thrives inside the safe walls of commitment. When we commit to each other in marriage, it makes something beautiful. Our society is trying to cherry-pick the benefits of marriage without the commitment. It doesn't work, which is why divorce rates are so much higher for couples who live together before they get married.

It's the same thing in the church. Membership forms the commitment so that the relationship is more robust. It's stronger because it's grounded in something more than self-interest. So, that would be the main thing I would say, which, if you've read 9Marks materials—and this book is part of them—it should not surprise you that I talk about church membership.

In addition to that, not having run away from disagreements in the past. If your church has a habit of dealing with disagreements by shoving them under the rug and pretending they don't exist, then when a really big disagreement comes along, you won't be prepared for it. But if we've gotten used to exercising these muscles and understanding what it means to be honest about the disagreements and loving each other, I hope that serves us well.

In addition to that, we haven't done anything particularly special to prepare for this political season, in part because every season is political for us. This is just sort of normal, though it will be different. But we have to kind of use the same principles we always do, and we pray, and it's a good thing for us to pray about. Yes, up front.

Diego: My name is Diego, a member here of this church, First Baptist Church of Aliso Real. As a leader in a church, you see things from a different perspective than as a member of a church. When you see differences and then you see harmony, that's good. When you see differences and it's festering, as a leader, when is it the right time to step in? Or do you even ever step in?

Jamie Dunlop: Right, so when is the right time for me to step in? Pray for your leaders that they would have wisdom to do that, because that is so hard to figure out. Especially because, as a leader, very often I'm hearing about problems secondhand. So, it's not that you and I have a disagreement—that's kind of the easy sense—it's that you and someone else have a disagreement, and he comes to talk to me, and you come to talk to me, and I'm not supposed to know about it, but I do.

Well, generally, what I do is I try to kind of push back to where the information came from. I'm giving you advice on how to talk to that person. I may secretly, unknown to you, be giving him advice on how to talk to you. But I'm trying to strengthen the congregation's ability to work through Matthew 18 of settling these disputes themselves without me having to settle them. I would settle it if it seemed like it was a threat to church unity, and by the time we get there, I may not be able to settle it, or I may need to settle it if it's between you and me.

But generally, as a pastor, I'm reluctant to step in because all that teaches the congregation is that when you have a problem, the pastor solves it. I don't want that. I want a congregation that understands what Jesus says in Matthew 18:

“If your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won your brother.

— Matthew 18:15 (CSB)

He is willing for disagreements to become public if that's what it takes to get to repentance, but if at all possible, he wants it to be discreet, just between the two of you. And so, it's fine to ask your pastor for advice; that is not violating Matthew 18. But come ask him for advice, not complaining about the person and not expecting him to solve it for you. He's probably just going to give you advice and pray for you and send you back to have that hard conversation by yourself. Yes, it's a great question. Other questions? Yes.

Charlie: Charlie, Good Steward Church. You talk about building that culture of going against consumerism—like, we're not willing to pay the cost. We at our church try to practice meaningful membership, but you know, I think just because we're just swimming in the grain of the culture, even our members still have that consumeristic tendency when it comes to relationships and service, and in their own accountability groups. How would you instruct us, with members, to kind of cultivate that culture of going beyond just swimming in that stream of consumerism and to pay the cost of unity?

Jamie Dunlop: Yeah, probably the most important thing is to build a friendship where you have a lot of differences, so that you can discover how good it is. There's nothing that's going to teach you like that friendship. You know, I can tell you till I'm blue in the face that this is a good thing to do, but until you discover it's a good thing to do—not just the right thing to do, but a good thing to do—it's just going to appear theoretical.

I can't believe I wrote this book and it never occurred to me that my wife's best friend in our church is someone with whom she shares absolutely nothing in common but Jesus. Like, different ethnicities, different educational backgrounds, different political views, different socioeconomic status—everything is different, but they happened to both need a friend at the same time 20 years ago, and they have built a beautiful friendship. And it's beautiful largely because all they have in common is Christ. I'm kind of glad I didn't remember that, because I would have put it in the book, and you know, you don't want to write too much about your family!

But that kind of friendship teaches you something in a very personal way. And so, that would be my main answer to your question: trust that this is the path to joy, and lean into it, and discover it is the path to joy. And that helps you walk a little bit more by sight and a little bit less by faith as you do the next one, which I think is sowing good seeds in the congregation. Did that get to your question, Charlie? Okay.

David: Hi, David, First Baptist Church of Hacienda Heights. Can you speak to when it gets to—so, like, if you do have a sharp disagreement with somebody at your church, I assume that at whatever level there's a desire for, you know, like I think you mentioned, if they just saw things differently, then they would have a different way of thinking, a different way of doing things. When it does come to those kinds of feelings, that spark of wanting to see them be different—in the best of cases, maybe it's seeing that I think they have a faulty view of thinking, or even a sinful way of thinking, or even in the discussion of trying to find out where their faith is in forming their opinion, fearing that they might be misinformed or what have you. Can you talk a little bit about how to think about when you should get to that point of confronting the individual? I'm not quite sure how to say it, or even just how to think about when it does get to that point, or if it does get to that point, and then some advice as to how to approach that situation.

Jamie Dunlop: Yeah, I think you want to have the conversation about, "How does your faith inform your opinion?" early, before you are even thinking about confronting the individual. You know, if your first inclination is to confront before you understand, that's dangerous. None of us want to be there. And so, especially if it's someone you don't know at all in the church, you probably want to have a relationship before you have the, "Hey, how does your faith inform that decision or that opinion?" conversation.

But if there is some friendship, just get a cup of coffee and just say, "Hey, I would just love to hear how this particular opinion or conviction is motivated by you being a Christian." Not because you're kind of secretly trying to checkmate them, but because you really want to understand. And as you really understand, you may be put in a place where you think, "Oh, I had never thought about that before. This is more complicated than I realized." Or you may be in a situation where you're like, "Okay, this person really is messed up." But now, if I begin to push back, I'm pushing back with a real understanding of where it's coming from, and I can probably do that more effectively.

And that might be when you want to get advice. Call your pastor and just say, "Hey, can you—I'm not even going to tell you who the person is, though once I describe the situation, you may be able to figure it out—but can you give me advice on what I can do about this?" And you can often get that advice anonymously so you're not gossiping, but just get a little wisdom on how you can help to build the friendship. Yeah.

Grace: Hi, my name is Grace from Emmanuel Church of Orange. I was not talking about this Grace. I felt very convicted when I heard my name! But my question was actually about your story about Joe, because I was just thinking about the situation. I mean, at one point, I feel like everyone's going to have some sort of experience where they're in the minority, and it's oftentimes the majority that doesn't see the ways they might be lacking in care, love, or consideration toward someone in the minority that's feeling these kinds of pressures. I know in the story you advised Joe to kind of consider the glory that comes from that, but on the other hand, did you follow up with the rest of your congregation, or were there ways where you guided your congregation to help them see ways where they can grow in that way too?

Jamie Dunlop: Yeah, you know, one thing I do when I teach the new members' class is I give—not the example of Joe because he's in my church, but I give another example of someone who's gone by now, the first Black member of my church—and I just talk about how hard it was for her. She was in my church because she loved the worship of my church, and I think there were all kinds of offensive things said to her. But she loved Jesus, and so she was there. And I just encourage people.

I say, "Some of you are like Joe; you're in the minority. You have made a very costly gamble by stepping into the door of my church: that Christ is worth more than comfort. I want to reassure you that you have made exactly the right choice, that he is worth more than comfort, and you will never regret giving up your comfort to find more of Jesus. But then I'll turn to everybody else and say: now, some of you, on the other hand, are here because it's comfortable. You know, our congregation is 70% white, and we're generally professional, educated people, and you're white, professional, and educated, and so you came here because this feels great. And I just want—there's nothing wrong with that—I just want you to know how dangerous a position you're in, because you could make friends in my church with people who are very much like you, and you could feel really comfortable here in my church, and you could be not at all living as a Christian and you'd never know anything is wrong."

So, when you're a person like Joe, you are stepping out in faith and you are putting Christ to the test in a good way, and that's good for your soul. But if you're in a place in a church that doesn't really ever make you do what Jesus says—love your enemies—well, that's a dangerous place. And so, I encourage them. I say, "I need each of you who feel comfortable here to make the same gamble that someone like Joe is making: that Christ is worth more than comfort. And so, that means don't just hang out with the people you're comfortable with. Build friendships where things are not comfortable, but where you share Christ in common, because there's a promise to be found that he is worth more."

And so, I try to—not just in response to someone like Joe, because honestly, I have these conversations all the time—but in the membership process, get people thinking differently. We think comfort is great. "I love this church, everybody's like me." I want you to understand there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it is dangerous. We all need to act as Christians and put ourselves in places where we need to act as Christians.

And just another thing as a pastor I can do is I can lead us in prayer, and I often do in our Sunday evening service, praying that we would—well, all the things Paul talks about in Romans 12—lean forward in love, outdo one another in showing honor, and that we would seek to build friendships where we honestly don't share much in common because we share Christ and we know that's enough. And so, just the kinds of stuff you pray about in your church can begin to build the basic assumptions of what a church should look like, and God answers those prayers. Thank you, Grace.

Well, let's close in prayer, and if you have more questions, I'll be up here afterward. Let's pray together.

"Father, we pray right now Paul's prayer for each of our churches. We pray to you, the God of endurance and encouragement, who gives us strength when we ask. We pray that you would grant each of us in our churches to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together we would with one voice glorify you, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we pray that our love together would show that you are worthy, that you have done a profound work in our hearts, such that we pursue you at all costs because you are lovely and beautiful and glorious and satisfying. And Father, we pray as we do that, that we would become known as those who are welcoming because we welcome with the welcome of Christ, and that you would again gain glory in that. Father, we pray that for each church here, we pray that for each of ourselves, we pray that we would understand the glory of loving because Christ has first loved us. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen."