I looked at the date and realized it’s been 56 years since I was given my fish necklace by someone whose name I didn’t even know.
I’ve told the story before when as a new Christian I was at a state fall conference for Christian college students from several universities. I wasn’t doing very well that weekend, and Saturday evening when I went to my bunk I found a small packet on my pillow. I unfolded the paper and read, “This was given to me in love. I give it to you so the love will grow and spread.”
Wrapped inside the note was a silver fish pendant with ἰχθύς , the Greek word for fish, inscribed within its outline. The paper wasn’t signed, but I asked others there and found the person who’d written it. She told me she’d noticed I was depressed and wanted to give me the fish.
It’s amazing, but that gift really has been the gift that keeps on giving. As I thought about it tonight I was encouraged again as I remembered because it was given by a Christian sister who noticed my distress, and did something about it because she herself was loved.
We sing the lyrics, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” and I’m so thankful to God that she, and so many others in my life have lived those lyrics for me.
We shouldn’t be surprised that on that night described in John 13–17 Jesus spoke so much about love, because He knew on the very next day He was headed to the cross to die for us because He loves us. Later that evening Jesus prayed,
Jesus prayed for each and every one of us, all of us, who believe in Him. Our love for each other proclaims, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son…” Our love for each other proclaims, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ…”
The fish has been a Christian symbol since the early years of the church. The Greek word for fish is an acrostic; each letter is the first letter of one of the five words of the phrase, Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior: ͑Ιησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ ͑Υιός Σωτήρ. Those truths are backed up by love: God’s love, and God’s people who have loved because of the love God has for them.
The new commandment Jesus gave us to love one another is a theme running through the letters of the New Testament. I love Edmund Clowney’s translation of 1 Peter 1:22–23 with the words, love one another deeply, from the heart.
Clowney writes that Peter,
“urges Christians to love one another, he shows that what we are to do is grounded in what Christ has done…
“Peter requires love for fellow-Christians as the great mark of true holiness. He is not satisfied with tolerance or acceptance, far less with formalized distance. He will have love, sincere love, without pretense or hypocrisy. (In the New Testament, ‘unhypocritical’ always describes love.) But even sincerity is not enough: our love must be ‘deep’ and intense. Peter uses a word that means ‘stretched’ or ‘strained’…
“How can such love be commanded? …For such love to appear, the pride and selfishness of our alienation from God must be swept away. They must be replaced by a heart made new with the motives of grace. It is the word of God, the good news of the gospel, that is the means both of our new birth and of our nurture in holiness.
“Because God’s love is the source of ours, the message of his love is what kindles ours. Christian love may be demonstrated by a hug, a holy kiss, or a helping hand, but Christian love cannot be transmitted that way. Christian love is born as Christians are born: through the truth of the gospel…”1
“Because God’s love is the source of ours, the message of his love is what kindles ours.”
At low points in my life my fish necklace still reminds me that, yes, love is the mark of a Christian, and that, yes, that love confirms that God, in fact, sent Jesus, and that God, in fact, loves me.
Another song we used to sing a song in my early years as a Christian:
Beloved, let us love one another:
for love is of God;
and every one that loveth is born of God,
and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God;
for God is love.
So, Beloved, let us love one another.
First John Four, Seven and Eight!
So, Beloved, let us love one another…
1Edmund Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove IL: 1988) 74–75.
See also Francis Schaeffer’s wonderful short book, The Mark of the Christian.
Copyright ©2026 Iwana Carpenter
