An older believer in my church once shared with me a method of meditating on the Word of God. He said that he’d been discovering new insights by taking a verse of Scripture and repeating it to himself, each time emphasizing a different word in the text. I decided to try it. Years later, the insights from that first meditation still echo through my soul.
The verse I had chosen was John 13:35: “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another” (RSV).
By THIS all men will know.... By this—by our love. Love is the “badge” of our faith.
By this ALL men will know.... What an incredible challenge! If people do not know, is it because we are missing the one ingredient in our lives that really counts? Jesus says here that if we have love, God’s love, everyone will know it. We will be lights that cannot be hid.
By this all men WILL know.... It is a sure thing. It will be a result of our loving as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow and tomorrow and the next tomorrow until the end of the age.
By this all men will KNOW.... they will know it beyond every shadow of doubt. There will be no question about it; the world will know with certainty that we are the people of God when they see this kind of love that Jesus talks about expressed.
Too often the world sees a church divided. Bickering, lawsuits, divorces, wranglings, rifts and splits all make for a fairly divided witness before a world that is watching.
What is needed is a revival of love—a reaching out rather than rejecting, and building up rather than tearing down.
This kind of love will leave no doubts in any mind that the light of God has come into the world, and that all who so desire may come, eat and drink, and be satisified.
