Chapter Twelve — Remain

This book has weighed reasons. It is time to put the weighing down.

The question you came with is a real one, and it may take you a season to answer. But it sits inside something already settled.

Before the foundation of the world, God wanted a family. He did not wait for us to be good enough.

"The Word became flesh and took up residence among us" (John 1:14, NET). He knelt with a towel. He went to the cross. He rose.

And on the night before all of it, He prayed for you. He did not say your name, but He prayed for everyone who would ever believe:

"The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one—I in them and you in me—that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me."

— John 17:22–23 (NET)

Read the last line again. The Father has loved them just as He has loved the Son.

That is what the church is made of. Not the love of people who agree about everything. The love of the Father for the Son, poured into a crowd of ordinary, flawed, quarrelsome people sitting in a circle around Jesus.

He looked at the ones who had come to hear Him and called those who do the will of God His brother and sister and mother.

He is still looking.

"We love because he loved us first" (1 John 4:19, NET). Everything this book has asked of you comes after that sentence and depends on it.

If you stay, you will be able to love the people beside you only because He loved you first. If you go, you will be able to leave well only for the same reason.

If you have been hurt, the love that will heal you is His, and it came first.

So one thing is asked of you, whatever you decide about a congregation: do not decide anything less about the family.

If you stay, stay as a brother or a sister, not as a customer. If you go, go as a brother or a sister, not as a scorekeeper.

Writing down what was done to you, and telling it, does not make you a scorekeeper. It is telling the truth.

If you have been hurt, know that the family is larger than the people who hurt you, and that its Head is gentle.

And wherever you end up on a Sunday morning, you will be sitting among people Jesus prayed for on the night before He died.

Treat them that way. They are His before they are yours.

There is one more thing, and it is for everyone who looks sideways at what others are doing.

After the resurrection, by the sea, Peter saw John following and asked, "Lord, what about him?" Jesus answered:

"If I want him to live until I come back, what concern is that of yours? You follow me!"

— John 21:22 (NET)

Some of your friends will stay. Some will go. Some will judge you for whichever you choose.

What concern is that of yours? You follow Him.

The deepest staying is not in any building. Jesus put it in three words, and they are the words this book keeps coming back to:

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing."

— John 15:4–5 (NET)

Christ is the vine. No congregation is.

The branches of a vine do not choose one another. They are joined because they are joined to Him.

These words are a call to remain in Christ, and the traditions in this book differ on how a person remains in Him. A Catholic or Orthodox Christian would say that to remain in the vine is to remain in the one Church. Many Protestants would say it is to remain in Christ within a faithful congregation.

All of them would say at least this much: apart from Him we can accomplish nothing.

A few verses later He said it again, and said what it was for: "Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my love. ... I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete." (John 15:9, 11, NET.)

That is why these things are written to you.

Not so that you would stay, and not so that you would go, but so that your joy may be complete in Him, wherever He has you.

So before you decide anything else, go back to the vine.

Pray. Read John 15. Ask the Father what He wants of you, and wait for His answer with people who love you.

Then do the next faithful thing, whatever it is.

"And now, little children, remain in him" (1 John 2:28, NET).

God wanted a family. He still does. Remain in Him.