Chapter 6: Divine Convincing
The Every Day Supernatural
How does the world realize that Christians are really who we claim to be?
It is through natural means — arguments, presentations, debates, power?
Or through something greater than the natural?
I warn you: this might sound “ho hum” at first, especially if you’ve heard the following verses used to refer to natural things.
But there’s a supernatural layer to this that so many of us miss.
Jesus declared:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35 NIV).
It’s not when we present convincing arguments, although there are many. It’s not when we see the evidence of God at work through science, although we see that constantly. It’s not even when they experience the miraculous.
It’s when we love each other as Jesus loves us.
When we love each other, employing the same love with which Jesus loves us, then something extraordinary occurs. Scales fall from eyes. Doubt lifts. Hearts open. People can see Jesus in us and realize that this something more. More than an ideology. More than a religion. More than a moral framework.
This is God Himself alive in us.
Jesus states that this kind of love is a “new command.” But how can it be new? Leviticus 19:18 commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus repeated this command often to the crowds. So how can this command to love be new?
It’s new because Jesus’ command is not merely a command to love.
Or to say it differently: Jesus does not command us to natural love.
Natural love does not convince anyone that we are Jesus’ disciples. Natural love — loving as the world loves — does not display anything supernatural. It doesn’t convince a natural person that God is truly among us, or that we follow Him.
Jesus’ command is new because it is higher than natural love. Jesus calls us to love each other as Jesus loved us.
And Jesus didn’t love with natural love.
Philippians 2 describes perfectly how Jesus loved us:
Philippians 2:3-11
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who,
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:3-11 ESV
Before Jesus gave His new command, Jesus had humbled Himself, the Master taking the role of a slave to wash the disciples’ feet. He commands them (and us) to love each other in this way: to esteem each other above ourselves.
That’s not just being nice to people.
That’s not just helping people.
That’s sacrificing your own good for the good of others.
That’s God taking on flesh and dying in our place for our sins, even while we are His enemies.
Jesus esteemed us above Himself — not loving us as we deserve, not loving us as equals, but esteeming our lives above His, loving us in a way we could never deserve.
When Christians love each other in this way, it connects Heaven to earth.
It is the everyday supernatural: divine miracles occurring every day.
It is this that is supernatural, greater-than-natural, other-worldly: to love someone else above you, when they don’t deserve it, and you don’t require them to earn it.
When Christians are selfish, us-centered, focused on our community and not you, then we display nothing other-worldly, nothing super-natural. It’s entirely natural: selfish, tribal, what humanity has always been doing.
But when we sacrifice ourselves for others, even our enemies, esteeming them above ourselves, that’s when love becomes super-natural.
Roman Plagues and Divine Convincing
In the second and third centuries after Jesus, the Roman Empire suffered devastating plagues. The Antonine Plague in 165-180 A.D. killed 5-10 million people, roughly 10% of the entire Empire’s population. Cities and military camps suffered the worst of it, many bearing fatality rates of 25%.
The Plague of Cyprian in 249-262 A.D. was equally as brutal, with the city of Rome suffering 5,000 deaths per day. Cities like Alexandria saw their population diminish by over 50%, from 500,000 people down to 190,000.
During these outbreaks, particularly the Plague of Cyprian, many Romans fled infected areas, abandoning the sick—including family and friends—to avoid contracting the plague themselves. Society broke down. People of every religion fled to save their own lives.
Yet one group remained.
Christians.
Even knowing it risked death, armies of Christians remained in these cities, providing care to the ill regardless of their faith, burying the dead, and offering aid at great personal risk. Many Christians died, contracting the plague while caring for its victims. This didn’t stop them. Claiming verses like “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Christians continued to comfort the afflicted when no one else would.
Bishop Cyprian urged believers to care for the sick in his treatise De Mortalitate (On Mortality), writing:
“Bring yourselves to the sick and poor, and help them. God said love thy neighbor as I have loved you.”
Some might argue that caring for your neighbors is the natural, human thing to do in times of crisis.
Yet no one did so except for the Christians.
The natural, human this to do is fear. Be afraid. Save yourself. This is what most people did. Pontius of Carthage, in his Life of Cyprian, described the chaos:
“Afterwards there broke out a dreadful plague, and excessive destruction of a hateful disease invaded every house in succession of the trembling populace, carrying off day by day with abrupt attack numberless people, every one from his own house. All were shuddering, fleeing, shunning the contagion, impiously exposing their own friends, as if with the exclusion of the person who was sure to die of the plague, one could exclude death itself also.”
Only one group resisted fear.
It irked non-Christians, like the Emperor Julian the Apostate (r. 361–363 AD). He lamented how popular this self-sacrifice made Christianity:
“For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.”
Why did the Christians stay behind?
Why did the Christians choose to die in order to care for the sick who believed in pagan gods?
Why did the Christians gladly lay down their lives when no one else would?
Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, gives us a clue:
“Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ... Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their deaths to themselves and died in their stead... The best of our own brothers lost their lives in this way — some presbyters, deacons, and laymen — a form of death based on strong faith and piety that seems in every way to equal martyrdom.”
Strong faith.
But faith in what?
Faith in a God who is real.
Faith in Christ raising the dead.
Faith in the promise Jesus gave to the dying thief on the cross: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43 ESV).
The Christians drew upon supernatural love fed by supernatural hope. The hope of Heaven shook off the curse of death. What could dying do to them? It would only send them straight into Jesus’ loving arms.
This enabled supernatural love, the ability to love others even to the death of the self.
They loved as Jesus loved us.
They lived out the new command Jesus gave.
And the world noticed.
Before the plagues, the size of the Christian church in the Roman Empire is estimated to be about 50,000 people, representing 0.1% of the Empire’s population.
After the plagues, Christianity numbered over 7 million people, nearly 12% of the Empire’s population.
Yes, plenty of Christians died caring for the sick. Yet their selfless compassion, even for their enemies, boosted new converts dramatically. By 350 A.D., less than a century after the Plague of Cyprian, Christianity numbered over 30 million believers, nearly half of the Roman Empire.
Such self-sacrificial love—such supernatural love—opens people’s eyes to the indwelling Holy Spirit. It provides non-believers a tangible experience with someone who has been made new, someone who has been raised from death to life: from selfishness to self-sacrifice, from typical human to little-Christ, from bound by fear to free in faith, from natural to supernatural.
The world truly realized that Christians truly were disciples of Jesus.
When they loved the world as Jesus loved them.
What are we waiting for?