“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” —John 13:34

Christians often speak about experiencing the presence of God. We seek it in worship, prayer, preaching, and moments of spiritual intensity. But the Gospel of John gives us a searching question: What happens to our relationships when God truly dwells among us?

John declares that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God’s presence was revealed in Jesus, but Jesus did not merely give people a religious experience. He touched the excluded, welcomed the overlooked, washed His disciples’ feet, and finally gave Himself for others on the cross.

Then He said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

That means God’s presence must become visible in the kind of community His presence creates.

A church may sing passionately about God’s presence, yet something is terribly wrong if the poor feel inferior, elderly people become invisible, vulnerable members remain unprotected, or leaders use spiritual authority to dominate others. We cannot celebrate the presence of the One who washed feet while constructing communities obsessed with status and control.

Jesus does not abolish leadership, but He transforms its character. “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,” He says, followed by the decisive words: “It shall not be so among you.”

The church lives within a world still shaped by competition, hierarchy, exclusion, and power. Yet through the Spirit, God’s future has already entered the present. The church should therefore become a preview of the coming new creation, where human worth no longer depends upon wealth, status, ethnicity, influence, or usefulness.

God’s presence is not something we manufacture through religious activity. God has already drawn near in Christ and continues to dwell among His people through the Spirit.

The question is whether anyone can see the difference.

Perhaps one of the clearest signs that God dwells among us is not how intensely we feel His presence during worship, but how faithfully we embody His love when the worship service is over.

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