“For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.” Acts 15:28-29.
Every friendship requires work or better put, friendship is conditional. Even from our human experience, to be friends with a person and remain, friends, there are certain things required from both parties such that when either party fails, the friendship suffers. Today, Jesus tells us: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
That is to say, our friendship with God depends on our choices in life. Every time, we decide to commit a sin or avoid it, we are choosing to accept or reject God’s friendship. Now, this does not mean it all depends on our efforts; we cannot control God. Hence, Jesus says: “You did not choose me, but I chose you…”
While God’s love is constant; completely independent of our actions, our own love for God is reflected in our daily choices. God never stops loving us, he is a God who can leave the ninety-nine in search of the one but then, if that one sheep refuses to return with the shepherd after he has found it, the sheep is saying: “God, to you I am your friend, but to me, you are not my friend.” It is one thing to call a person your friend but a different thing for that person to recognise you as his or her friend.
In other words, what sustains friendship is mutual love not merely one-sided-love. God has already shown his love for us all by dying on the cross. “Greater love has no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13. If God has loved us this much, all He demands from us is “to love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12.
What does it mean to love one another as God has loved us? It means that we actually pour ourselves out for the good of our fellow brothers and sisters not seeking our own advantage; not for the sake of getting back what we give; not simply as it suits us and that we never stop loving. To love like God is to be a Prodigal Father ever ready to forgive as many as seventy-seven times seven times.
To love like God has nothing to do with having feelings for a person. This is not loving at all but merely physical attraction which is completely different from what Jesus is saying here. Our world sadly confuses physical attraction for love and this is why it has lost its moral foothold.
If our love for others depends on our feelings, then such love dies the moment our feelings disappear. Of course, feelings do not last forever since they are often spurred by the senses, what we see, touch, smell and so on. This is why it is possible to see a married couple get into a fight and in some cases even kill each other. They thought they loved each other but they only had feelings; they were only physically attracted.
God never recommended that we should have feelings for one another but that we should love one another and when we love, the question of physicality does not arise. Since such love was not dependent on physical attraction, it continues forever. Sex before marriage is not only a sin, it is an indication that there is actually no love between the couple but merely feelings. Feelings cannot sustain a marriage, love alone does.
There are no grounds at all for justifying fornication. It is not surprising that its avoidance was mentioned among the necessary (basic) things the apostles required of the Gentile converts to Christianity after debating on the issue of circumcision. In other words, abstaining from fornication is not even the highest virtue required of a Christian but just the basic; something so necessary that it should even be taken for granted like brushing your teeth in the morning.
Our calling as Christians is to bear fruits; fruits that would last but we cannot bear fruits if we are still struggling with the basics. We cannot win souls for God if we remain stuck at the primordial stage of our Christian growth.
Let us pray: Lord Jesus, teach me to love one another as you did so as to remain your friend forever and give me the grace to truly bear fruits for you. Amen.
Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you. God bless you. (Friday of the 5th Week of Easter. Bible Study: Acts 15:22-31 and John 15:12-17).
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