Love Is the Goal

6 min read

1 Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

— 1 Timothy 5:1-2

I feel like you can gauge the general spiritual health of a church by these commands. And that is because what matters most in the kingdom of God is relationships. We learn that simple truth in our Living Life Bible Study. And that simple truth is based on teachings like the above text.

However, some people seem to gauge the spiritual health of a church on other factors: numbers (first and foremost), program and event offerings (children and youth ministries, first and foremost), the presence of others who are in the same life stage (related to numbers and super important to some), and skillfulness of the preaching or the likability of the lead pastor.

Maybe related to the criterion of the skillfulness of the preaching, the soundness of the doctrine that is taught is important to some people too. But it tends to be far lower on the list of things that general church-goers look for in a healthy church.

And maybe related to the criterion of sound doctrine, some people expect a heathy church to have a robust program of “discipleship,” although that word means different things for different people. For me, “discipleship” means to be trained to become more like Jesus by learning how to be better readers of God’s word, the goal of which is to build up the body of Christ through love—that is, through healthy, loving relationships (Ephesians 4:11-16).

Interestingly enough, sometimes when certain people complain about the lack of “discipleship” in the church, I never see those people in any of our Bible studies. Hmmm.

Of course, I am speaking from my own experience as a pastor and not from research.

Whenever I talk or write about such things, people might think that I am completely anti-program. That is not the case at all. I fully recognize that every church (every organization of human beings, including families) needs the help of good programs to grow into maturity and to be healthy.

It’s just that without the foundation of healthy, loving relationships, those programs don’t mean anything. Well-run programs may help to grow a church in numbers, but they won’t help the church become the body of Christ. In fact, the programs may hurt that goal if it feels like the church values the programs more than the people they are meant to serve. And because of our sinful tendency to do that very thing, we need the word of God to remind us of that very thing regularly.

And so, once again, we see from the direct and simple commands in this passage another example of the fundamental truth found throughout the word of God: Love is the goal, not programs. Love is the goal, not numbers. Love is our witness, and love is what glorifies God.

Father, We are Your church, and You have given us every resource and gift that we need to become a mature and healthy church. You have given us the blood of our Lord Jesus, and You have given us Your very word. As we do the work to build up Your church, as we develop and implement programs, guide us with Your Spirit so that love will be the goal in everything we do. In Jesus’s name. Amen.