John Stott- The cross sweetens all our relationships in the church...

The cross is to characterize all our relationships in Christ’s community, however, and not just the relationship between pastors and people. We are to “love one another,” John insists in his first letter, both because God is love in his being and because he has showed his love by sending his Son to die for us. And this love always expresses itself in unselfishness.

We are to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than” ourselves. Positively, we are each of us to look not only to our own interests “but also to the interests of others.” Why? Why this renunciation of selfish ambition and this cultivation of an unselfish interest in others? Because this was the attitude of Christ, who both renounced his own rights and humbled himself to serve others. In fact, the cross sweetens all our relationships in the church.

We have only to remember that our fellow Christian is a “brother [or sister] for whom Christ died,” and we will never disregard, but always seek to serve, their truest and highest welfare. To sin against them would be to “sin against Christ” (1 Jn 4:7–12; Phil 2:3–4; 1 Cor 8:11–13).

Stott, J. R. W. (2006). The Cross of Christ (pp. 282–283). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books.

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