BY BERTIL WIKLANDER

This message was presented as a devotional on the eve of the Annual Council of the General Conference at the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, on September 26, 2000.—Editors.

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.... This is my command: Love each other” (John 15:12-17).*

OU AND I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF working for the church. Isn’t it a blessing to work for something we believe in with all our heart?

It is possible to work hard for the church, though, while forgetting that the soul of the organization we serve is an attractive and yet evasive mystery. We fool ourselves if we think we can manipulate it or bend it to fit our own schemes. We can only approach it with reverence, wonder, and humility.

I Find It Hard to Grasp
What mystery? The mystery of God and His presence with us. I never stop to marvel and wonder that God would find a human being in this dark and cold universe, keep their shivering soul, nurture them and help them grow, offer them eternal life, for the simple reason that He wants to have a relationship with them and have communion with them. And yet it is the truth.

As Jesus speaks to His disciples in John 15, He explains this wonder. The general principle, “love each other,” is first explained very briefly: “Love each other as I have loved you.” God’s relationship to us is the model for our relationships.

Then Jesus adds a more specific explanation: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus defines God’s love for us as the greatest love that exists, in that He gave His life for us, while treating us as His “friends.” Love unto death creates life. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ! This is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). This is the foundation of the church. Without it, the church is not the church. Without it, we can do nothing, and our efforts are an exercise in futility.

Let’s Never Forget
It’s easy for us to forget why we work in the church. The apostle Paul knew why he worked for God. He says in Colossians 1:24-2:10 that God commissioned him to present “the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). He says that his goal is that people in the church “may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2, 3). A few seconds later he says that “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (verse 9). And finally, addressing the church, he says: “You have been given fullness in Christ” (verse 10).

What a message! And this is our message—the confession that Christ in us is the “hope of glory.” But also the humble recognition that it is when we are united in love that we may know the mystery of God’s love, the fullness of Christ.

What gives me the greatest pleasure is working side by side with people who stand in awe before the mystery of God, who have received God’s fullness in Christ. I have noticed that those who have this wonderful gift see it with enthusiasm and joy, as if they had just discovered it.

A Jewish writer said: “When we see the same old friend, the same old tree, the same old book, the same old tradition, the same old work of art, the same old prayer, the same old teaching, the same old song, the same old anything, as if for the first time, we begin to taste the ‘real new’ that transforms. We start to melt away the stereotypes and regain our sense of wonder.”

I invite you to receive that experience today as we begin our work. To see the presence of God in this office “as if for the first time.” What a day this will be!

The General Conference office is not just another office. Like its division offices around the world, it is a spiritual place. That spirituality is materialized in human relationships of love. Love that is like Christ’s love for us, like the love between friends who find it only natural to lay down their lives for each other.

This spirituality cannot remain only within these walls. It is Jesus’ method of evangelism and witness: we call it “friendship evangelism.” He said that it is by the relationships between us that people will know that He lives in us. He said: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34, 35).

“As I have loved you . . .” There it is again! The model of Christ’s love is deeply significant. How did Jesus love us? The Bible says that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

God was our friend when He died for us, although we were His enemies. And that is the essence of our best method of evangelism and witness.

Sixty-five percent of the half billion people living in the Trans-European Division are Muslims. With all our efforts for many years, we have won very few of them for Christ. There are Adventists who have given up on them.

But what the Muslims need is the mystery of God, the gospel, God’s power unto salvation. And we have to arrange situations in which we are able to share that with them. We can do that only if we accept them as our friends.

A British missionary who had worked among Muslims for 50 years said: “In all these years I have seen only one thing that really made an impact on a Muslim and made him want to know Christ: the love of Christ in the life of a truly converted Christian.” Experts on church growth have found that there is a highly significant relationship between the ability of a church to demonstrate love in action and its growth potential.

Love is demonstrated through normal, sound, human relationships expressed, for example, through hospitality, liking to be together, encouragement and compliments, laughter, caring, empathy, and warm fellowship.

Obstructions to loving relationships are found in the technocratic church, where love is simply a fulfillment of dogmatic or moral standards, and in the superspiritual church, where love is viewed merely as a feeling—easily vanishing when the atmosphere is gone.

My friends, let us follow Jesus today. And do what He told us to do: Love other people, as He has loved us.

And let us not make the mistake of believing that love is a general Christian sort of thing, and that when we emphasize it, we are losing some of our distinct Adventist identity. Seventh-day Adventists are called to a life of love.

And It’s Always Been So
In the 1850s—before our denomination was organized—James White wrote in the Review and Herald about what characterized the people in our church: love for the truth, love for each other, and love for a dying world.

And Ellen White said about us: “The church is the repository of the riches of the grace of Christ; and through the church will eventually be made manifest . . . the final and full display of the love of God” (The Acts of the Apostles, p. 9).

As we go to our work today, and as we open Annual Council in the year 2000 tonight, let us bear the mystery of God in our hearts: Christ in us, “the hope of glory.”

And let us rejoice as we lay down our life for each other, knowing that God is made present by that act of love, both here in the church, and out there in the lost world whom He longs to save.

*Scripture references in this article are from the New International Version.

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Bertil Wiklander is president of the Trans-European Division of Seventh-day Adventists, with headquarters in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England.