If anyone says, "I love God," but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. Sermons
I. GOD LOVES. He is not an impassive, unemotional, passionless Being. From all eternity there was a tender, infinite, ineffable love between the Father and the Son. When the Scriptures represent God as having a heart, as pitying, sorrowing, repenting, loving, hating, there is a true meaning in the representations. If we take the corresponding emotion in ourselves, purge it from evil, elevate and sublime it as much as possible, then we have that which in its character resembles the emotion which is predicated of God. God truly loves. II. GOD LOVES MAN. He loves not only his equal Son, or the Holy Spirit, or great and good angels, but man - weak, frail, and sinful. Yes, "sinful;" for he loves man as man; not merely the pure and lovable, but the sinful and morally deformed. If God loved only those whose hearts had some love toward him, he would love none; for all are estranged from him by sin. But "he first loved us." "In this was manifested the love of God towards us," etc. (verses 9, 10); "For when we were yet without strength, in due season Christ died for the ungodly," etc. (Romans 5:6-8); "God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses," etc. (Ephesians 2:4, 5); "God so loved the world," etc. III. GOD'S LOVE TO MAN IS THE ORIGINATING CAUSE OF MAN'S LOVE. "We love, because he first loved us." "The love of God to us is the source of all our love." The flowers that slumber in the earth during winter do not start forth in spring and woo the sun's warm return; but the sun comes bathing their beds with light and warmth until they feel his genial influence and respond thereto. So is it with God's love and ours. "Love begets love;" and so God's love to us begets love in us. It follows from this that our love, in its character, though not in its degree, must resemble that of God. There is something in us which has an affinity to his love, and therefore responds to it. We were made in his image, and thus our love is like unto his. Every form or expression of human love finds its archetype and its perfect expression in God. Take the love of a father for his child. A noble thing is a father's love. It is, however, perfect only in God. "A Father of the fatherless is God in his holy habitation;... Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;" "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us," etc. A mother's love is one of the most holy and beautiful things in the universe; but it is perfect only in God. "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?" etc. (Isaiah 49:15, 16); "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." A husband's love is perfect only in God. "Thy Maker is thine Husband; the Lord of hosts is his name." His fidelity is steadfast, his protection is constant and adequate, etc. The love of friends is found in perfection only in God. "The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend;" "Abraham was called the friend of God." Jesus Christ, the Revealer of God, is the "Friend that sticketh closer than a brother." "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." The love of a child for its parents also finds perfect expression in the Divine nature. Jesus Christ as the Son of God and as the Son of Mary is the perfect pattern of such affection. Thus every aspect of true human love is beautiful, sacred, Divine. God has them all in all perfection in himself. He has manifested them, and still manifests them to us. Our Lord Jesus is the completest, brightest manifestation of love. Behold it in him. Condescension, labour, humiliation, patient submission, and uttermost self-sacrifice for sinners. Can you conceive any manifestation of love more complete, more sublime, more Divine? The personal realization of a love such as this must beget love in us. Its nature or ours must be changed ere it can be otherwise. If you love him not, you are really not fully persuaded that he loves you. Behold in Jesus Christ the love of God towards you. Did he not love you? Is he not love? Then, why not love him? Gratitude should constrain you to do so. Some can adopt the language of the text as their own: "We love, because he first loved us." And others have advanced to love him because of what he is in himself. Let us endeavour to love him more and know him more, to know him more and love him more, and so become increasingly like unto him. - W.J.
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar There is an element of Christian ethics present in the Gospels, and everywhere attributed to Jesus, which we scarcely find at all in the Epistles. It is the setting up of an antagonism between duty to God and the claims of natural affection. It will, I think, be profitable to inquire whether our duty to God and our love of Him ought ever to override our duty to our families and our natural affection for our nearest and dearest relations. Turning over the leaves of that flesh-bound revelation, we find our home love to be the most precious, most redeeming, most sanctifying of all our spiritual treasures. According to our possession of family love our home is either our heaven or our hell. But love is much more than this — it is our real moral teacher. It is at home that our characters are formed for fatherly, motherly, sisterly, and brotherly lives in the outer world. And how love purifies and restrains! Who, looking back on his past life, cannot remember the many times when he would have fallen before temptation but for the love he bore to his father or mother, or wife or children? Last of all, our actual possession and exercise of love is our only key to the knowledge of the love of God. From this springs all true religion, all true worship of the Father in heaven, and all service acceptable to Him. So I read in our poor human hearts this sublime truth. Love is our highest bliss, our best guide to duty, our strongest impulse to perform it, the most efficient cultivator of a noble character, our surest defence in the face of temptation, and the highest revelation of God Himself. And now I venture to affirm that our duty to God never does conflict with our duty to each other. And why? It needs no argument. It is the very principle of religious morality that our duty to God consists mainly in our duty to each other. We can render to Him no service at all but in and through the service of our brethren who are His children. Our love to God never yet weakened — nay, it has evermore strengthened — our family love. The more conscientious we have become in the discharge of what we thought to be our duty to God, the more loving and faithful we have been to our dear ones at home.(C. Voysey.) We enter the family circle now. It has become a very large family, and is destined to become still larger, till it includes all the families of the earth. Whether large or small, there is one grand principle which is to flow through the hearts of all its members, and to constitute a bond which neither time nor eternity can dissolve. That one principle is mutual love. Nothing else can take its place. Nothing else can do its work.I. It will be well for us to look a little carefully at THE PERSON FOR WHOM THIS LOVE IS CLAIMED — our brother. Our brother, in the New Testament, has a new and definite meaning. It is not our neighbour, as such. To a Jew, it was not his fellow Jew. Nor is it necessarily the son of our own father and mother. There may be many such sons whom, alas! we cannot regard in this high sense as our brothers. There are those who come nearer to us as Christians, and are endeared to us by stronger ties. The elements of the union between us, and which constitute them our brethren, are altogether peculiar. The first of these is faith in our common Saviour. From the moment that faith is exercised a new set of conditions spring up. We have parted company with the world, and shall soon find that we have forfeited its love and its sympathy. Then the faith which unites us to Christ unites us to all who are thus united to Him. And that irrespective of all external differences. Another of these elements is regeneration by the same Spirit. And now there opens before us another view of our subject, although necessarily glanced at already. Our Creator has become not only our God, but our Father. Further, our heavenly Father has embraced us all alike in the arms of His adopting grace. II. We shall next have to enter into SOME OF THE REASONS WHY THIS LOVE IS REQUIRED. And we need hardly insist on the fact that all the reasons why we are called upon to love our neighbour obtain, and obtain with redoubled force, here. The ethics of the Second Table are not abrogated by the great law of brotherly love. Nay, those ethics are carried up to a higher plane, and enforced by sanctions of a higher order. Then He bases this precept on the deep ground of His own love to us. "As I have loved you." We can understand how He can have loved others. But us? There is the difficulty. Yet we have tits own word for it, and that ought to be enough; and most persuasive in its eloquence. Learn from this unique example of My love to you to love one another. My love to you has been unmerited, disinterested, self-sacrificing, all-enduring. Let your love to each other take this as its pattern. "Love one another as I have loved you." It will also be seen that the claim of our brother to our love is founded on our love to God. "And this commandment have we from Him, that He who loveth God, love his brother also." John, however, touches the deepest foundations of all for this demand in the tenth and eleventh verses of this same chapter. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." III. There must be SOME PRACTICAL METHODS AVAILABLE FOR THE UNEQUIVOCAL MANIFESTATION OF THIS BROTHERLY LOVE. Love to our brother is not a mere profession. Nor will this association be a mere formal and external thing; but we shall be led into real and intimate fellowship of heart and spirit with our brother. Readiness to sympathise with and help will, in like manner, present itself as an evidence and display of this love. Love can withhold nothing from its object. The love in question will at the same time lead to mutual charity and forbearance. IV. A CURSORY GLANCE AT THE GREAT IMPORTANCE OF THE PRINCIPLE WHICH IT HAS BEEN OUR EARNEST DESIRE TO INCULCATE. And let us begin at home. We have a deep personal interest in this matter. Nothing tends more to promote our own happiness, profit, and usefulness than that love which we owe to our fellow Christians. It fills the heart with sunshine, if the Church is ever to become the power for good in the world which she was intended to be, this will be the secret and fountain of her strength. Beside and above all these considerations, the honour of our Divine Lord and Head is bound up with this matter. Nothing pleases Him so much as the love which should unite all His disciples together in one close but grand confraternity. Nothing can furnish so powerful a demonstration of the might and benignity of His truth. Nothing can present so worthy and influential an exhibition of His character. (J. Drew.) When God comes to man, man looks round for his neighbour.(Geo. Macdonald, LL. D.) Dr. Macgregor met in a great Scotch city a little girl carrying in her arms a baby, so bonny that she fairly staggered under its weight. "Baby's heavy, isn't he, dear?" said the doctor. "No," replied the winsome bairn, "he's not heavy; he's my brother."(U. R. Thomas, B. A.). People John, JudePlaces EphesusTopics FALSE, Anyone, Brother, Doesn't, Hate, Hates, Hateth, Jude, Letter, Liar, Love, Loves, Loveth, Loving, Sayeth, Says, Someone, YetOutline 1. He warns them not to believe all who boast of the Spirit;7. and exhorts to brotherly love. Dictionary of Bible Themes 1 John 4:20 5765 attitudes, to people 8115 discipleship, nature of Library Love of God and ManFIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Eversley. Chester Cathedral, 1872. 1 John iv. 16, 21. "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. . . . And this commandment have we from Him, That he who loveth God love his brother also." This is the first Sunday after Trinity. On it the Church begins to teach us morals,--that is, how to live a good life; and therefore she begins by teaching us the foundation of all morals,--which is love,--love to God and love to man. But which … Charles Kingsley—All Saints' Day and Other Sermons First Sunday after Trinity God is Love. Christ's Mission the Revelation of God's Love The Servant as his Lord Love and Fear The Ray and the Reflection May the Sixth the Perfecting of Love Love's Logic A Psalm of Remembrance Love Dark Times "And if Christ be in You, the Body is Dead Because of Sin; but the Spirit is Life Because of Righteousness. " "For what the Law could not Do, in that it was Weak Though the Flesh, God Sending his Own Son," The Torment of Fear "The Fruit of the Spirit is Love" Scriptural Predictions of an Apostasy. The Established Christian Urged to Exert Himself for Purposes of Usefulness. The Manifestation of Holy Love. Love in the Triune Being of God. I May Briefly Reduce the Chief Persuading Motive to this So Needful and So Much... Dwelling in Love Whether Initial Fear Differs Substantially from Filial Fear Here Some one Will Say, this is Now not to Write of virginity... Links 1 John 4:20 NIV1 John 4:20 NLT 1 John 4:20 ESV 1 John 4:20 NASB 1 John 4:20 KJV 1 John 4:20 Bible Apps 1 John 4:20 Parallel 1 John 4:20 Biblia Paralela 1 John 4:20 Chinese Bible 1 John 4:20 French Bible 1 John 4:20 German Bible 1 John 4:20 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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