Choosing House Church, Part 4: Known By Our Love

In this article series, we’re taking a look at a few scriptural precedents for what it means to be the church and how the house church structure empowers Christians to follow these precedents.

In part 1 of this article series, we first addressed the elephant in the room: the fact that asking, “Why house church?” inherently raises another question: “Why not the institutionalized church?” We explain in more detail there how we love our brothers and sisters in Christ who attend institutionalized church. Our desire for all Christians to have the foundational support that the house church structure provides stems from our love for them–not from hatred, division, or competition.

Then, in part 2, we dove into the first and most foundational scriptural precedent for the church: the church is a body in which every part has a purpose and a function. In part 3, we looked into a second scriptural precedent: the church is a royal priesthood of ambassadors for Christ. In both articles, we talked about the ways that the house church structure supports Christians seeking to live these out, as well as the ways that the institutionalized church structure hinders us from doing so.

With those two understandings in place, we’re ready to dive into our third scriptural precedent:

As the church, we are known as disciples of Christ by our love for one another.

A love that imitates God’s love is meant to be the differentiating factor for Christians. Christians talk about this quite a bit when it comes to loving those in the world. We know that we should go beyond loving our brothers and love even our enemies, as Jesus says in Matthew 5:43-48. We know that imitates the love of God because He “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). He did this despite our unrighteousness and despite our sinfulness (Romans 5:6-8).

But the call for a differentiating love doesn’t end at loving those people. Jesus tells the disciples that their love for each other is what will set them apart in the world’s eyes in John 13:34-35 (ESV):

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

If we want to understand what it looks like to love one another as Christ loved his disciples, we have two excellent places to start digging into scripture. Most obviously, we have Jesus’s interactions with his disciples. Then, we also have the commands of the New Testament writers to the early church on their interactions and relationships with each other. Even if we were only to count the commands that explicitly include the words “one another,” we have dozens of these instructions. 

Whichever direction we look in, we’ll find complex pictures of love.

Jesus serves his disciples to such an extreme that he even washes their feet (John 13:5-17), the task of a servant or slave in their culture. His final words to his disciples are full of encouragement and exhortation (John 15-16), promising them indestructible joy, calling them friends, and telling them to take heart. He comforts them in their awe and fear of his miracles (Luke 5:1-11) and the transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8).

But Jesus also chooses to scold and correct Martha for acting in her anxiety instead of in faith, rather than to comfort or empathize with her (Luke 10:38-42). He corrects his disciples when they worry more about being the greatest than about serving one another (Luke 22:24-30). Beyond these gentler corrections, he also directly rebukes his disciples on multiple occasions, including when they desire to call down heavenly fire on people who rejected them (Luke 9:53-55) and when they do not believe the other disciples about his resurrection (Mark 16:14). Most notably of Jesus’s rebukes, he calls Peter “Satan” for trying to stop him from sharing about and obeying the call to his crucifixion (Mark 8:31-33). Doubly complex, in the exact same moment that Jesus calls Peter to care for his people, he grieves Peter by questioning three times the disciple’s love, calling back to Peter’s three denials of Jesus (John 21:15-17).

Or, if we start with the “one another”-type commands in the scriptural letters to the earliest church, we see a similar complexity. We’re called to comfort one another (2 Corinthians 13:11), encourage and exhort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18, 1 Thessalonians 5:11-14, Hebrews 3:13), and be tenderhearted with one another (Ephesians 4:32). We’re called to serve one another, just as Christ served his disciples (John 13:14; Galatians 5:13; 1 Peter 4:10). As we’ve talked about a few times in this series, we’re called to build one another up or edify one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11, Romans 14:19, 1 Corinthians 14:12, 1 Corinthians 14:26, Ephesians 4:11-16). We’re meant to stir one another up to love and good works (Hebrews 10:24-25). 

Then we’re also called to admonish and instruct one another (Colossians 3:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Romans 15:14); to submit to one another (Ephesians 5:18-21, 1 Corinthians 16:16); and to bear with one another, forgive one another, and aim for restoration with and for one another (2 Corinthians 13:11; Galatians 6:1-2, Ephesians 4:1-3; Colossians 3:12-13; Romans 15:1; Ephesians 4:32). We’re called to both suffer and rejoice together (1 Corinthians 12:26). 

With all of that in mind, the call to love one another as Christ loved us becomes a much more involved and multifaceted aspiration.

House church by design provides a more personal, relational foundation for our love to grow in these complex ways.

Even in the youngest, least mature house churches, the baseline level of participation and personal sharing during their gathering times creates a solid foundation for living out these “one another” commands. When every member is expected to, at the very least, actively share their thoughts and questions about scripture during the church’s time together, there are two pieces that come to fruit:

1) There are inherent opportunities for everyone to encourage, teach, edify, or admonish one another in direct response to that sharing.

2) The church members begin to know one another more personally and build trust with one another. That gives them more direct insight into one another’s hearts that they can lean on to more fruitfully live out those “one another”s and follow the complex example of love that Christ set. 

As the church matures, you see both of those pieces grow. The church finds and creates more opportunities, and they take better advantage of those opportunities based on their intimate understanding of one another’s lives and hearts. They also begin to form relationships that extend beyond the time when the entire church is gathered together and so exemplify these standards in their everyday lives. As this all happens, it also becomes more and more difficult for issues, confusions, or struggles to slip through the cracks.

In mature house churches, that’s true also of the church leaders. They aren’t excluded from being comforted, admonished, edified, taught, served, forgiven, or otherwise loved. We’ll share more about what accountability in house church settings looks like some other time, but for now, the most important piece is that accountability starts here. It starts with mutual love and edification as each body part plays their part.

Christians in institutionalized churches often want these things, too. But the institutionalized structure by design makes it more difficult to live out.

Much of this comes back to the same concerns that we brought up in part 2 of this article series, Functioning Body Members. The structure of Sunday morning services (the “main event” that most people consider and call “church”) makes it difficult for most members to truly function well or participate meaningfully. Because of that, there’s very little opportunity for body members to edify one or even know one another during the time set aside for the church to gather.

That, of course, doesn’t mean that Christians in institutionalized churches aren’t seeking, finding, and creating ways and times to follow the example of Christ in how they love one another. It doesn’t mean they aren’t building relationships and pouring into one another in scriptural ways outside of scheduled, structured church events, either.

However, these foundations of how the church is meant to interact with one another are almost completely delegated to “parachurch” times and activities. Once again, that leaves its mark even for those seeking those opportunities. That’s because they see the times where everyone regularly has the chance to comfort, encourage, admonish, teach, or serve other church members as optional “extras” or “bonuses” to the faith, not foundations for all Christians. It also leaves its mark on church leaders and pastors, showing its face in high rates of depression, burnout, and scandals, as we talked about in part 3.

While following the complex example of Christ and the “one another” commands is more scriptural, it’s also more challenging.

Often, people mistake the intimacy or closeness between most members of a house church as simply a matter of preference or personality. But the truth is that most of the house church members we’ve met actually wouldn’t have preferred such close-knit and intimate relationships on their own. Being admonished is difficult. Submitting to one another is uncomfortable. Even accepting comfort and service from other members can be challenging.

This false idea, that the bonds we form or the ways we interact as Christians are based on our personalities rather than scriptural patterns, often leads people to shy away from the house church structure. It’s uncomfortable and outside of our modern cultural norm (at least in America). Because of that, people don’t lean into it if it isn’t “natural” to them. Then, they continue with fewer and fewer opportunities to grow in these ways of loving one another as Christ loved his disciples.

Beyond that, though, we’ve also repeatedly seen it be a very stunting misunderstanding both in and outside of house churches. Even with a firm foundation to make and take opportunities to love as Christ did in his service, rebukes, encouragements, and corrections, many of us also have had to unlearn quite a bit to stop boxing ourselves (and others) out from loving in certain ways. This usually shows up in two different ways in modern American Christianity.

The first is that we delegate those loves to only people’s spouses or partners. This is especially true when we misunderstand faith as something that’s meant to be only or mostly individual, rather than understanding its communal as equally important. When we do that, we ask one person to play every body part’s role for their spouse, and we stunt both the couple and the church. We take the commands for the entire church and confine them only to marriage covenants.

The second happens when we do accept and desire a more communal faith, but then we leave the more complex actions to only the people “gifted” to it or to whom it comes naturally. While there’s absolutely room for deferring to the body part whose gift fits the need, the scriptural examples we looked at were calls for the church as a whole. Because of that, most Christians in house churches have had to learn that we do not need to be naturally extraverted to encourage one another, naturally bold to admonish or exhort one another, naturally vulnerable to be tenderhearted with one another, naturally smart to instruct one another, or naturally agreeable to submit to one another. 

But when we do learn those things and step into the complex, involved, multifaceted example of the love of Christ? Then we’re known as his disciples by that love.