Why do we abide so differently?

1 John 4:16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

So why is it that between Christians who claim to abide in God's love, that His love means so many different things to so many?

Is this as it should be... ? Does God teach on His love --of Himself-- differently to different Christians? So that some say it is one thing and some another?

What is the spirit that claims some Christians are not Christian and this said out of Christian love, and yet another spirit also said out of love is said to be more promoting of unity?

Is it a similar love that warns of fellowship with all Christians, that some are not of God's love and those others who claim equally out of God's love that all Christians are deserving of blessing and to different degrees are saints engaged into the world and that all have their due as saints -- God's love?

Ideas? Scripture? Who might have an odd opinion on this? Who might have the truth?

He told them, “The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days He will rise.” But they did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask Him. Then they came to Capernaum. While Jesus was in the house, He asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?”


But they were silent, for on the way they had been arguing with each other which of them was the greatest.








“What is it you want Me to do for you?” He inquired. They answered, “Grant that one of us may sit at Your right hand and the other at Your left in Your glory.” “You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus replied. “Can you drink the cup I will drink, or be baptized with the baptism I will undergo?

“We can,” they answered. “You will drink the cup that I drink,” Jesus said, “and you will be baptized with the baptism I undergo. But to sit at My right or My left is not Mine to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”



Is it wrong to desire to be "close to Jesus?" But motives get sorted out in that cup.



When this is no longer a "Bible verse":


And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

Who might awake from a drunken revelry? Even rivalry?

John the 17th chapter. Jesus prayed that we all be one. This was one of His last main request before going to the cross. If it was that important to the Lord it should be as equally important to us. The parable of the wheat & tares comes to mind. When the trumpet sounds then & only then will we know ''whose in and whose out.'' I have been critical of other believers for way too long. Ain't my job to run around policing the church. Maybe this is just a side effect of not focusing on my own weaknesses.

Thank you for your comments. Much appreciated. But, for the life of me, I have to wonder if being to Christ and being so at variance as to God's love towards man, that it is not a matter of personality or temperament.

Often people say off the cuff that the reason some people are so rigorous in judgement as to who's in the Christian fold and who is not, is a matter of proving one's self or group right at the expense of others deemed not to be. I don't really buy this. I have communicated with these people they are sincere. They more than not love the sinner but not their sin, they say. The would not that anyone go to the Hot Place.

So it is not out of malice. It is out of love. Or is it? For now I cleave to a reason of a modeled personality, perhaps?

Does the personality form the bias, or does the bias form the personality? I don't know...

It is comfort to know that our Lord advised unity... and it so happens it is my bias-- but not from his advise, but from my personality perhaps due to being formed...by His spirit. My personality is as individual as anyone else's.

I still don't know...? I know for example that the world will give Christians a hard time---but not of the world why would a saint give a fellow pilgrim a hard time and say... it done out of love.

I still don't know...why God's love rolls off our hearts so differently? It is true that some are to milk and some to meat, but why do we claim that though God is love, we love so differently?

gordon 2 said:

Thank you for your comments. Much appreciated. But, for the life of me, I have to wonder if being to Christ and being so at variance as to God's love towards man, that it is not a matter of personality or temperament.

Often people say off the cuff that the reason some people are so rigorous in judgement as to who's in the Christian fold and who is not, is a matter of proving one's self or group right at the expense of others deemed not to be. I don't really buy this. I have communicated with these people they are sincere. They more than not love the sinner but not their sin, they say. The would not that anyone go to the Hot Place.

So it is not out of malice. It is out of love. Or is it? For now I cleave to a reason of a modeled personality, perhaps?

Does the personality form the bias, or does the bias form the personality? I don't know...

It is comfort to know that our Lord advised unity... and it so happens it is my bias-- but not from his advise, but from my personality perhaps due to being formed...by His spirit. My personality is as individual as anyone else's.

I still don't know...? I know for example that the world will give Christians a hard time---but not of the world why would a saint give a fellow pilgrim a hard time and say... it done out of love.

I still don't know...why God's love rolls off our hearts so differently? It is true that some are to milk and some to meat, but why do we claim that though God is love, we love so differently?

Click to expand...

Of late this has often come to mind.
Jesus speaking to the sons of thunder when wanting to call down fire:

But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, You know not what manner of spirit you are of.

For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.


Of all the things it could mean, this could be two.

1. They do not know they are of the Spirit of God and their question:

"Lord, will you that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elijah did?"
Demonstrates a tendency toward what is not (at least in this moment) of the Spirit of God. And thus they manifest their "not knowing" by that inconsistency.


Or


2. They reveal that they are not of the Spirit of God revealed by this disposition.

It's interesting to me, even very important to me, that Jesus never tells them or (through the recorded scripture) us, what is their precise estate.

I am more concerned with "you do not know".

It leaves one in a fix of sorts. I don't doubt Jesus perfectly discerned their spirit, as He does of mine. Of all.

I don't know that we can ever venture safely far from this: "All of a man's ways are right in his own eyes"...and I would also add, that of all men, the saint should be, and will become even more keenly aware of this. The only place he can stand becomes more and more narrow to himself, that the broadness of another can be seen.
God knows.

I heard this spoken in a TV show, a drama, where a man was confronted with:

"How can you be so certain of God?"

He said "God is all and only what I am certain of...it is everything else of which I am not certain".

I am not certain how love will come to me, in what form or manner; with seeming harsh or sweetest voice, in stiffest rebuke or gentlest of comforts and encouragement. I do not know what I need...only who.