| Jesus and the End-Time The Ethics of the End-Time Love |
The end of all things is at hand; therefore keep sane and sober for your prayers. Above all hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins. Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another. As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace; whoever speaks, as one who utters oracles of God; whoever renders service, as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies; in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 4:7-11This passage before us is not the clearest exposition of love in the New Testament, but it places love in the context of our study: "The end of all things is at hand." The end of this book is also at hand, and its last word is love. There comes a time when love is the only appropriate response; that time is now. The end-time calls us to love. Surprisingly, in Peter's advice to his readers, the love to which they are called seems to be a restrictive love, limited to the Christian fellowship. That is significant, but, as we shall see, it is not the whole story. Before dealing with the passage specifically, I want to return to the ethics of grace. For love is not limited to the end-time. IT has existed from before the beginning of time; it is the very nature of God to love: to be gracious. From that starting point, the nature of God, we can assert that love is both motive and means in Christian ethics and would have been whether or not the Church is the people of the end-time. Love is not dependent on the calendar of redemption; it was what moved God to draw up the calendar of redemption in the first place. Love is in the world because God loves the world. In Christ, God loves us into love, and that becomes our motive for loving others.1 "We love, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). And those whom we love are, some of them, also loved into love; and this is wonderful to behold. Several years ago, at a Bible camp for teenagers, I particularly noticed on boy of sixteen or seventeen. I was in a staff position that did not put me in more than casual contact with him, but I am a dedicated people-watcher and I kept my eye on him through the week. I did not know his name, his background, or anything about him, and I still don't; what caught my eye the first day was his expression. Except for a minor case of acne, which was commonplace in those days, he would have been handsome; but his upper lip was curled in a perpetual snarl, and his eyes were bright with tension. What had provoked that expression? I let my imagination handle it, and I saw sarcastic and biting parents and teachers. His face reflected his treatment. He was fighting back in kind. That is what I imagined. Just maybe it was true. But one thing I am sure of; if that boy was loved, he didn't know it. But at camp the boy had as his counselor one of the most remarkable laymen I know. One night I ate supper with him and his counseling group, and I have never seen anyone treat teen-agers with so much respect and courtesy and gentleness. Now I have no evidence that the one thing was the result of the other, because I was not part of the process; but I can report what I saw. By the end of the week the boy's snarl had relaxed into an attractive smile, and the tension lines around his eyes had disappeared. I have no certain evidence. But I have the conviction that he had been loved into love. It is this active, channeled love-from Christ, through us, to others-that is meant by the ethics of grace. It is different from the love the world offers, because the world arrogantly assumes that love is somehow a solution to impending doom. We know better. We love because it is right to do so; it is the appropriate response both to the love with which we have been loved and to the impending close of the age. Our love will not solve anything on a very large scale. It would be very nice if love were the answer-if love would so multiply in the world that when Jesus comes he would be greeted with rejoicing by all the nations of the world. But this is not the expectation of the New Testament. The tribes of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven. Since there will be this resistance to Jesus until the very end, we must admit that our love will not be the solution. His coming will reveal the solution. Instead, we love because we have been loved. That is reason enough. Love is the theme of 1 Peter 4:7-11, but it is not the first response called for. "The end of all things is at hand; therefore keep sane and sober for your prayers." A serious devotional response is necessary before an ethical response is workable. Peter's call to sanity and sobriety in prayer as a response to the end-time is quite different from responding to it by withdrawing for your responsibilities, donning white robes, and standing idly by as you wait for the coming of Jesus. Sanity and sobriety involve sticking by your post. Recognize the seriousness of the situation, not so that you can flee from it, but so that you can face it and do what you can about it. If you have that prayer-attitude, the rest of Peter's advice becomes operative and intelligible. "Above all hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins." In the examples that follow, an expression is repeated: "Practice hospitality ungrudgingly for one another." This in-group mentality seems at first glance to be out of character with the Christian witness. If Christians only love one another, they are no different from any other group of like-minded people in the world. To take Peter's words as restrictive misses the point. Both he and his readers know what the mission of the Church is. He is not holding anyone back from carrying out that mission. But, in the stress and urgency of the end-time, love in the fellowship must not be neglected. We need each other desperately. If we are not careful to treat each other with love, we will have no strength to extend that love beyond our fellowship. For the love of Christ is not exhausted when it is practiced in the Church; in fact, it is only when it is practiced that it grows and multiplies. The end-time calls us to this urgent love. For when we live as though we have all the time n the world, as though the present situation is eternal, we do not get around to love. We let bitterness, jealousy, quarrels continue among us. But if we believed, as we have every reason to believe, that everything as we know it is coming to an end, then love would dissolve the barriers between persons. This is what Peter means when he says that "love covers a multitude of sins." Fellowship is strong between persons who know they have little time left. The urgency of the end-time draws Christians together to love as they have been loved. Only then can they fulfill their mission in the world. One of the great tales of friendship in modern literature is that of Frodo and his servant Sam, the heroes of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Through great peril, against enormous odds the two make their way deep into the land of the enemy. They succeed in their mission, but they are trapped by earthquake and fire. Believing themselves lost, Frodo says to Sam, "I am glad that you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam."2 But they are rescued in the nick of time, and the end of all things becomes a beginning. So it shall be with us. In the meantime as we wait for that great day, we say to our Christian brothers and sisters: "I am glad that you are here with me. Here at the end of all things." If we are working together for Christ and his Kingdom, there is no higher response we can make to the perils and promises of the end-time. For we have confidence that the end of all things is the beginning of a new day. "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!" 1 William Hordern, Living by Grace, Westminster, 1975, pp. 104, 105. This one reference does not do justice to my indebtedness to this book, for it had great influence on the way I approached this chapter. 2 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Pallantine Books, 1968, pp. 280. » Table of Contents » Home |