Creating Communities of Love

Revelation shows us that God’s people are marked not just by truth, but by love. The kind of love that’s merciful, patient, just, and forgiving.

Could it be that the final message to the world isn’t just about what we believe—but about who we are becoming?

Read more about why love is present truth—and why it should be our defining identity.

A few months back a couple of my neighbors invited me over to their house for dinner when the rest of my family was away. It was a wonderful time of laughter and merriment, stretching long into the evening.

One of the things we inevitably talked about, since it’s hard for me not to bring it up, was spirituality. I learned more about their spiritual journeys, about how they are currently unchurched, but about how they are open to connecting with a spiritual community. “But,” the wife explained, “what I’m really looking for is a community that’s focused primarily on love.”

What they shared with me is something I’ve repeatedly found among lots of my neighbors. I live in one of the most secular cities in America, but that doesn’t mean people in my city are closed to spirituality. In fact, it seems just the opposite is true. I’ve had conversation after conversation with neighbors who may be suspicious of organized religion in general and institutional Christianity specifically, but who are desperate for love and desperate for spirituality.

When my neighbor explained to me she was looking for a spiritual community focused primarily on love, I nodded in agreement, acknowledging that I longed for the same thing. And here’s what I wanted to say to her: Join the Seventh-day Adventist Church. That’s what we’re all about!

Would you be disappointed to discover that I didn’t say that—because I’m not sure if I could say it in good conscience? Because I’m not sure that we as Adventists view our primary task as forming and being communities of love?

What Is Our Primary Task?

I know this is a huge discussion, requiring considerable nuance. I’m sure there are many who’d say our primary task is to proclaim the three angels’ messages—and we should leave that “love” stuff, which is an “easy gospel,” to other Christians. Indeed, we are to preach “present truth,” which may not seem very loving at times.

Becoming a vegan or refusing to work on Sabbath is a “cakewalk” compared to living out the ways of love.

I’d say that such an attitude is a false dichotomy, however, failing to recognize the ultimate goal of the three angels’ messages and “present truth.” We don’t proclaim truth simply to have people accept truth intellectually. The goal of truth, I’d submit, is to form us into people of love.

I’m intrigued by how the book of Revelation describes those who are ultimately saved. Revelation 22, in describing those who are eternally redeemed, notes that they “see” God’s face and have “His name” on their “foreheads” (verse 4).

Throughout the scriptural narrative, one’s name is a reflection of their character. Thus, when God proclaims His “name” to Moses in Exodus 34, He says of Himself, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation” (verses 6, 7).

God’s “name” is mercy, grace, kindness, forgiveness, justice—which are all expressions of love. This is who God is fundamentally, and it’s how He operates constantly.

Thus, when the redeemed are described as having God’s “name” on their foreheads, it seems evident to me that it means they’ve allowed God to form them into people of love, reflecting His character and ways.

Not coincidentally, this is also a theme woven through John’s apocalyptic book. Throughout the various sequences of seven, a continuous theme is that God is especially seeking to seal His people with His name before He returns (see Rev. 7:3), while the second beast in Revelation 13 tries to seal people with the “name” (and not just the “mark”) of the first beast (see Rev. 13:7) before this chapter of universal history wraps up.

The Larger Concern

Adventists have historically reduced the “seal of God” and the “mark of the beast” to the Sabbath/Sunday issue—which it likely includes. But I’m not sure it’s scripturally accurate to limit it to that single issue, as the larger concern in Revelation seems to be whether we’re going to take on the “name” of God or the “name” of the beast. The Sabbath/Sunday issue thus seems to be merely one manifestation—albeit an important one—of the larger concern about whose character we reflect. After all, my Sabbathkeeping is worthless if I hate my neighbor.

So what’s the point in my very brief exploration of Revelation?

Simply this: I believe our primary task as Adventists is to form and be communities of love. That’s what God is trying to accomplish in this apocalyptic moment. He’s trying to form a people who are captivated by His love to such a degree that we reflect His character of love to the world.

This is, after all, precisely what Ellen White identified as the “last message” that was to be given to the world. “The last rays of merciful light,” she explained in 1900, “the last message of mercy to be given to the world, is a revelation of His character of love. The children of God are to manifest His glory. In their own life and character they are to reveal what the grace of God has done for them.”[*]

There’s a discussion to be had about what “love” really is, of course. That’s an important conversation. But I’d say that love is always “present truth.” And if anyone thinks that proclaiming “love” is proclaiming an “easy gospel,” I’d seriously question whether that person has ever really tried to love. Becoming a vegan or refusing to work on Sabbath is a “cakewalk” compared to living out the ways of love—of acting with forgiveness when a loved one betrays us, of being patient when a friend crosses our will, of fighting for justice for the people with whom we disagree.

That is the really hard stuff of life.

But it’s what I’d love to tell my neighbors that my faith community is all about!

[*] Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1900, 1941), pp. 415, 416. (Emphasis added.)