And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.
This commandment comes from God Himself, that everyone who loves God must also love his brother. It rests on God first loving sinners in sending His only begotten Son to be a propitiation for sins, so that love for God awakened by His love extends to all for whom Christ died. To claim to love God while hating a brother is to be a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Love for God cannot be separated from Christlike love for a brother, but the two grow together and prove themselves genuine only when shown in deed and truth with compassion for a brother in need after the pattern of Christ laying down His life. In church life this requires humble united prayer, confession, careful speech, tender regard, and laboring together in unity without hatred, criticism, envy, or dissension, for if believers do not love one another here they will not be prepared for the life of love hereafter.
The Commandment and Its Ground
This commandment is from God Himself, that everyone who loves God must also love his brother. It makes love for God inseparable from love for a brother, so that love for God requires love for one another.
Its ground is God's prior love in sending His only begotten Son to save sinners to be a propitiation for sins. In that sending Christ took human nature and joined divinity with humanity, so that through grace humanity can be partakers of the divine nature and stand on vantage ground with God. Because God so loved, believers ought to love one another.
Love for God arises because He first loved us, and then it extends to all for whom Christ died. It is owed to the neighbor because Christ gave His life to purchase man and bring him back to God.
Love is of God, and God is love. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, while one who does not love does not know God.
Contemplating God's great love subdues and softens and breaks the heart, fills it with patience and long-suffering and love, and puts self to death. This love does not come from trying to make oneself love others; it springs naturally from the love of Christ in the heart as self is merged in Christ.
To say I love God while hating a brother is to be a liar. He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen, and loving the visible brother is the evidence of genuine love for the invisible God.
Cain broke this command when jealousy over God's acceptance of Abel's lamb offering and rejection of his own disobedient fruit offering without a lamb turned to anger at Abel's righteousness and at God's justice, then to hatred, and then to murder. By this he showed evil works and that he belonged to the wicked one instead of God.
Those who dwell in love dwell in God and God in them, and His love is perfected in those who love one another. This perfected love gives boldness in the day of judgment.
Love is the basis of godliness, kept by loving God supremely in the first four commandments and loving neighbor as self in the last six. Keeping God's law therefore requires clearing away criticism and suspicion and complaint. Property and title are of no value in God's sight if the heart is corrupt, for God created all men equal and is no respecter of persons.
Marks of Genuine Love
Love for God cannot be separated from Christlike love for a brother, and love for Christ and love for one another grow together so that the more love a person has for Christ the more love he will have for one another. It is impossible to truly love Christ while acting discourteously, drawing apart without love or sympathy, or doing or saying what creates ill will. Walking apart from Christ makes love for Him grow cold and weakens affection for His followers, while drawing close to Christ necessarily draws believers closer to one another as His sanctifying grace binds their hearts together.
Loving one another is evidence that God dwells in believers and that His love is being perfected in them, showing that their religious experience is genuine. Genuine love must be shown in action and truth and not merely in words, including compassion for a brother in need, with its highest pattern in Christ's laying down His life. Divine love makes its most touching appeal in calling for the same tender compassion Christ manifested, so a true Christian will not willingly let a soul in peril and need go unwarned, unlabored for and uncared for, and will not hold aloof from the erring and leave them to plunge farther into unhappiness and discouragement or to fall on Satan's battleground.
This love proves itself as the Lord's coming draws near by refusing to hold the erring off with criticism and exacting harshness, since God will deal with a person as that person deals with brethren and the younger members of the Lord's family. Love is the principle of Christian action that controls impulses, subdues enmity, ennobles the affections, and leads to a self-sacrificing, forgiving life, and Christian character is complete when the desire to help and bless others continually rises from within and is shown in life. This love does not come from trying to make oneself love others; it springs naturally from the love of Christ in the heart as self is merged in Christ.
This love comes from the Spirit, is not limited to those who show favor or to oneself and one's own, and seeking the good of others is the way true happiness is found because the more unselfish a person is the happier he is in fulfilling God's purpose, with life becoming a sacred trust to be spent ministering to others. Without this love other good qualities do not amount to true goodness and a person is unfit for heaven where love and unity reign. Failing to cherish this love leaves a person answerable in heaven's courts and will go against him there.
Love in Church Life
Hatred and dissension between brothers dishonors God and brings reproach on His cause, and natural brothers at odds must become fully reconciled before that reproach can be lifted. To claim love for the unseen God while hating a brother who is seen contradicts the direct commandment from God and makes the claim false. The requirement applies with special force to those who labor for God, who must be clean, sanctified vessels marked by harmony and love rather than selfishness and hatred.
Obeying the command requires humble united prayer, repentance of sins, confession of faults to one another, careful speech and conduct, and unity in love, and failure to reform on this point leads to a perilous departing from God. True love for God carries with it true, reverential trust and love for one's brother, proved by brotherly relationship in united labor rather than working alone or as supreme authority. That brotherly relationship means linking with fellow workers, counseling and praying together, supplying one another's deficiencies, cultivating companionship, valuing others, recognizing their gifts as necessary to success as one's own, putting away envy and striving for supremacy, thinking no evil of those God has led out, blending together, and letting divine love flow in a healing current instead of ordering, domineering, and exercising masterly authority.
Love for brethren, especially fellow workers, must be shown by expressing faith, love, confidence, regard, kindness, deference, courtesy, Christian politeness, fervent love and tender regard in every line and in every way. It must also be shown by confessing wrong treatment of brethren and being reconciled with tears and clasped hands, and by putting away selfish distrust and fear of losing supremacy. Criticizing and condemning one another breaks God's commandments and is an offense to Him, showing that those who do it love neither God nor their fellow beings. Keeping God's law therefore requires clearing away criticism and suspicion and complaint, and being sensitive about what keeping the law means and whether one's conduct toward brethren is keeping or breaking it rather than living with nerves so sensitive that reason is impossible.
Harboring hatred, bitter prejudice, false assumptions and treasured grievances against a brother displeases God and is looked upon with disapproval, and the spirit must be decidedly changed to stand acquitted before God. Holding to such sentiments brings present and eternal injury and shows a failure to discern what is righteous and what is unrighteous. It is impossible to truly love Christ while acting discourteously, drawing apart without love or sympathy, or doing or saying what creates ill will. Lack of brotherly love, tenderness and affection, with envy, jealousy, self-uplifting, criticism, evil surmising and quick feelings of being slighted, drives Jesus from the heart, while deeper love for Christ brings deeper love for one another.
Obeying this commandment in institutions would produce a different state of things, surrounding the souls of workers with a healthful atmosphere like a precious odor, a savor of life unto life. Only when mutual love is practiced does the work bear God's own signature with a different, purer and more holy atmosphere of love and tenderness. Breaking it is seen in loud voices deciding against those who are chosen of God and precious, and dealing with them according to human prejudices instead of in kindness according to the law of God, which shows the workers do not have the Spirit of God but are agents through whom Satan can work. Selfish exhibitions of distrust likewise offend God and bring great weakness to the church.
God is proving whether people can become members of His family in heaven, and if they do not love one another in this life they will not be prepared to exercise love in the future immortal life, so now is the fitting-up time. Unselfish love for those around us is evidence of love for Christ and true religion and bears daily witness to Christ before the world. That love includes taking responsibility for one's influence on others, caring about their salvation, and praying for one another and together without letting personal interests lead to neglect. Loving one another means being kindly affectioned, free from jealousy, merciful and compassionate, having confidence in brethren, praying together and laboring for unity, and when this love pervades the church it will send scores of laborers and missionaries to needy countries.
This commandment comes from God Himself, that everyone who loves God must also love his brother. It rests on God first loving sinners in sending His only begotten Son to be a propitiation for sins, so that love for God awakened by His love extends to all for whom Christ died. To claim to love God while hating a brother is to be a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Love for God cannot be separated from Christlike love for a brother, but the two grow together and prove themselves genuine only when shown in deed and truth with compassion for a brother in need after the pattern of Christ laying down His life. In church life this requires humble united prayer, confession, careful speech, tender regard, and laboring together in unity without hatred, criticism, envy, or dissension, for if believers do not love one another here they will not be prepared for the life of love hereafter.
The Commandment and Its Ground
This commandment is from God Himself, that everyone who loves God must also love his brother. It makes love for God inseparable from love for a brother, so that love for God requires love for one another.
Its ground is God's prior love in sending His only begotten Son to save sinners to be a propitiation for sins. In that sending Christ took human nature and joined divinity with humanity, so that through grace humanity can be partakers of the divine nature and stand on vantage ground with God. Because God so loved, believers ought to love one another.
Love for God arises because He first loved us, and then it extends to all for whom Christ died. It is owed to the neighbor because Christ gave His life to purchase man and bring him back to God.
Love is of God, and God is love. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, while one who does not love does not know God.
Contemplating God's great love subdues and softens and breaks the heart, fills it with patience and long-suffering and love, and puts self to death. This love does not come from trying to make oneself love others; it springs naturally from the love of Christ in the heart as self is merged in Christ.
To say I love God while hating a brother is to be a liar. He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen, and loving the visible brother is the evidence of genuine love for the invisible God.
Cain broke this command when jealousy over God's acceptance of Abel's lamb offering and rejection of his own disobedient fruit offering without a lamb turned to anger at Abel's righteousness and at God's justice, then to hatred, and then to murder. By this he showed evil works and that he belonged to the wicked one instead of God.
Those who dwell in love dwell in God and God in them, and His love is perfected in those who love one another. This perfected love gives boldness in the day of judgment.
Love is the basis of godliness, kept by loving God supremely in the first four commandments and loving neighbor as self in the last six. Keeping God's law therefore requires clearing away criticism and suspicion and complaint. Property and title are of no value in God's sight if the heart is corrupt, for God created all men equal and is no respecter of persons.
Marks of Genuine Love
Love for God cannot be separated from Christlike love for a brother, and love for Christ and love for one another grow together so that the more love a person has for Christ the more love he will have for one another. It is impossible to truly love Christ while acting discourteously, drawing apart without love or sympathy, or doing or saying what creates ill will. Walking apart from Christ makes love for Him grow cold and weakens affection for His followers, while drawing close to Christ necessarily draws believers closer to one another as His sanctifying grace binds their hearts together.
Loving one another is evidence that God dwells in believers and that His love is being perfected in them, showing that their religious experience is genuine. Genuine love must be shown in action and truth and not merely in words, including compassion for a brother in need, with its highest pattern in Christ's laying down His life. Divine love makes its most touching appeal in calling for the same tender compassion Christ manifested, so a true Christian will not willingly let a soul in peril and need go unwarned, unlabored for and uncared for, and will not hold aloof from the erring and leave them to plunge farther into unhappiness and discouragement or to fall on Satan's battleground.
This love proves itself as the Lord's coming draws near by refusing to hold the erring off with criticism and exacting harshness, since God will deal with a person as that person deals with brethren and the younger members of the Lord's family. Love is the principle of Christian action that controls impulses, subdues enmity, ennobles the affections, and leads to a self-sacrificing, forgiving life, and Christian character is complete when the desire to help and bless others continually rises from within and is shown in life. This love does not come from trying to make oneself love others; it springs naturally from the love of Christ in the heart as self is merged in Christ.
This love comes from the Spirit, is not limited to those who show favor or to oneself and one's own, and seeking the good of others is the way true happiness is found because the more unselfish a person is the happier he is in fulfilling God's purpose, with life becoming a sacred trust to be spent ministering to others. Without this love other good qualities do not amount to true goodness and a person is unfit for heaven where love and unity reign. Failing to cherish this love leaves a person answerable in heaven's courts and will go against him there.
Love in Church Life
Hatred and dissension between brothers dishonors God and brings reproach on His cause, and natural brothers at odds must become fully reconciled before that reproach can be lifted. To claim love for the unseen God while hating a brother who is seen contradicts the direct commandment from God and makes the claim false. The requirement applies with special force to those who labor for God, who must be clean, sanctified vessels marked by harmony and love rather than selfishness and hatred.
Obeying the command requires humble united prayer, repentance of sins, confession of faults to one another, careful speech and conduct, and unity in love, and failure to reform on this point leads to a perilous departing from God. True love for God carries with it true, reverential trust and love for one's brother, proved by brotherly relationship in united labor rather than working alone or as supreme authority. That brotherly relationship means linking with fellow workers, counseling and praying together, supplying one another's deficiencies, cultivating companionship, valuing others, recognizing their gifts as necessary to success as one's own, putting away envy and striving for supremacy, thinking no evil of those God has led out, blending together, and letting divine love flow in a healing current instead of ordering, domineering, and exercising masterly authority.
Love for brethren, especially fellow workers, must be shown by expressing faith, love, confidence, regard, kindness, deference, courtesy, Christian politeness, fervent love and tender regard in every line and in every way. It must also be shown by confessing wrong treatment of brethren and being reconciled with tears and clasped hands, and by putting away selfish distrust and fear of losing supremacy. Criticizing and condemning one another breaks God's commandments and is an offense to Him, showing that those who do it love neither God nor their fellow beings. Keeping God's law therefore requires clearing away criticism and suspicion and complaint, and being sensitive about what keeping the law means and whether one's conduct toward brethren is keeping or breaking it rather than living with nerves so sensitive that reason is impossible.
Harboring hatred, bitter prejudice, false assumptions and treasured grievances against a brother displeases God and is looked upon with disapproval, and the spirit must be decidedly changed to stand acquitted before God. Holding to such sentiments brings present and eternal injury and shows a failure to discern what is righteous and what is unrighteous. It is impossible to truly love Christ while acting discourteously, drawing apart without love or sympathy, or doing or saying what creates ill will. Lack of brotherly love, tenderness and affection, with envy, jealousy, self-uplifting, criticism, evil surmising and quick feelings of being slighted, drives Jesus from the heart, while deeper love for Christ brings deeper love for one another.
Obeying this commandment in institutions would produce a different state of things, surrounding the souls of workers with a healthful atmosphere like a precious odor, a savor of life unto life. Only when mutual love is practiced does the work bear God's own signature with a different, purer and more holy atmosphere of love and tenderness. Breaking it is seen in loud voices deciding against those who are chosen of God and precious, and dealing with them according to human prejudices instead of in kindness according to the law of God, which shows the workers do not have the Spirit of God but are agents through whom Satan can work. Selfish exhibitions of distrust likewise offend God and bring great weakness to the church.
God is proving whether people can become members of His family in heaven, and if they do not love one another in this life they will not be prepared to exercise love in the future immortal life, so now is the fitting-up time. Unselfish love for those around us is evidence of love for Christ and true religion and bears daily witness to Christ before the world. That love includes taking responsibility for one's influence on others, caring about their salvation, and praying for one another and together without letting personal interests lead to neglect. Loving one another means being kindly affectioned, free from jealousy, merciful and compassionate, having confidence in brethren, praying together and laboring for unity, and when this love pervades the church it will send scores of laborers and missionaries to needy countries.