What does it mean to love one another?

Here, however, again the Holy Ghost, by the aged apostle, insists upon this as another motive for our loving one another. He says: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." (v. 1.) And if the question be asked what the measure of our love to one another should be, we are elsewhere told: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." (3:16.) When the standard is divinely set up, it could not be less than what marked the perfect One, "who loved the Church, and gave Himself for it." But we may be assured that the more we enter into and enjoy God's love in its depth, and height, and suitability to us, the more our heart's affections, sympathies, and ministrations will flow out toward our brethren. Thus we see that not only because we are born of God, who is love, do we love, but occupied in heart and conscience with His love which has been manifested, shall we find it natural to us to love. Moreover, we shall find that practising loving ways is the path of blessing and assurance for our own souls. "Hereby" (that is loving in deed and in truth) "we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him." (3:19.) How encouraging, too, to us is the astounding statement: "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in Him." (4:16.) Who, then, is of the truth? He who loves. Who is dwelling in God and God in him? He who dwells in love. Who is born of God and knoweth God? Every one that loveth. Who have passed from death unto life? Those who love the brethren. How much ought we to love the brethren? To lay down our lives for them, because He laid down His life for us. And if we search Scripture for the great testimony we should bear towards those around, we are told by our adorable Lord — "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." And the measure of this new commandment is — "As I have loved you, that ye also should love one another." (John 13:34-35.) But divine love working in us can never lead us contrary to the truth; for truth is divine also. Hence it is written: "This is love, that we keep His commandments; and by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God, and keep His commandments." True love must always therefore have to do with God its source, who is love, and it flows in the channel of divine truth. Hence love in activity in us and obedience are inseparable; for "this is love, if we walk after His commandments." As our blessed Lord also taught: "He it is that loveth Me that keepeth My commandments." It would be unsound, therefore, to be putting love against truth, or truth against love. We are taught to "walk in truth," and "walk in love;" and are told that the closing act of man's impiety will be to receive not the love of the truth. It is, then, a delusion to talk of holding the truth with an unloving heart. It is the highest folly to extol gift when love is absent. And we may be assured it is a snare of Satan to persuade people they have the truth when it has only reached the intellect, and one of his chiefest wiles to get men to hold the truth in unrighteousness. Whatever be the pretensions, it is certain that there can be no godliness without love; for God is love. And how marvellously has His love been manifested to us! Be assured, beloved brethren, that what we want in these last closing days is to be so dwelling in God's presence, who is love, to be so drinking in His manifested love to us in Christ, so practising love in deed and in truth, dwelling in love, and thus dwelling in God, until every cold recess of our hearts is so warmed as not easily to be chilled; for many waters cannot quench love. Thus fired with divine love, affections will flow upward to God, onward in the truth, and outward to our brethren, and in bowels of mercies to the ungodly. Love is always intelligible to almost the lowest form of the human mind, and can reach the coldest heart, while the truth we utter may pass by them as if they heard it not. How wise, then, is the inspired direction to "speak the truth in love!" The gospel, while it is the message of God's love, yet it is also God's truth. Hence we read of "the truth of the gospel," and of persons "obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren." It is divine love that sends forth the truth; and by the truth we have to do with God, who is love, and we therefore love. How truly, then, the gospel is the ministry of grace and truth, because it is concerning Him who is "full of grace and truth!" And how ruinous the separation must be of those two things which God has joined together!

Then he comes to the application of it. “Beloved, if God so loved us.” What then? Naturally we would say that we ought to love Him, but it is not put that way here. “We ought also to love one another.” Whom did God love? He loved us. He loved the brethren. What will that love do if it gets into my heart? It will do the same thing that it did in the heart of God. It will turn towards God’s children. It does not say we ought to love God. The law said that. Here it says, “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” That is our obligation, but is it a law of liberty? Every saint of God in the world is precious to our hearts. We may get under the power of the world, and the flesh may become dominant, so that this love may not be seen, but at the bottom of our hearts, and in the heart of every believer there is love to all the children of God. But here love is practical. “Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” What is the good of secret love? “Open rebuke is better than secret love.” What is the good if it lies only in my heart, and is not manifested towards anybody else? It is of no value to anybody. God’s love was in deed and in truth. The commandments of God in the New Testament are infinitely beautiful, and most encouraging. Take for instance what the Lord says to Peter. Peter says, “How often shall my brother trespass against me, and I forgive him—until seven times?” The Lord says, “I say not until seven times, but until seventy times seven.” There is no limit to our forgiveness of one another. Is that a tremendous demand upon us? No, it tells me that what God is seeking is to make Himself manifest in us. Hence, if He says there is to be no limit to my forgiveness of my brother, that means there is no limit to His forgiveness of me. I have only to act towards others as He has acted towards me. If we love one another, God is seen in us. We read in John 1, “No man has seen God at any time.” What is the answer to it? “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” The answer to it in the Gospel was Jesus; the answer to it in the Epistle is the saints. “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.” If we love one another practically what will be the effect of it? Everybody will say, “These people are disciples of Jesus.” Why so? Because nobody ever taught it but Himself. They have been in the school of Christ. Every avenue in which the love of God has run in Christ will run in you and me. If we love one another the saints will get their share of that love. If we are going on with God the saints get it, and the world gets it. The world hears the Gospel, and we rejoice when the Gospel is preached. We help those who preach it, if we cannot preach it ourselves. What is the spring and fountain of all that? All these energies proceed from the nature of God, which we have, for God is love. The love is perfected in us, and there is nothing lacking. Wherever you go saint and sinner are met by the love of God, for “we have seen, and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.”

Love is found in the Christian circle. It has come to light in the death of Christ: “He laid down His life for us.” This love, if it is in us, will be seen in our laying down our lives for the brethren. Self is not to be tolerated. We are not to be lovers of self. We are to walk as He walked, in the spirit of self-sacrificing love. We may not be called upon to die actually, but the love which is to come out in our walk and ways with one another, is that which was seen in Christ among His own, and which culminated in His death upon the cross for them. But if one be found careless and indifferent concerning the temporal necessity of his brother, when the need is there in all its nakedness before his eyes, if one is found harsh and insensible with reference to these least things, we may well ask, “How dwells the love of God in him?” Our love is not to be in word or tongue, there is to be depth, power, and reality, in it. It is to be like the love of God, indeed it is to be that same love as nature in us, and to be expressed as His was expressed, “in deed and in truth.” It is not mere natural affection, which may be weakened by wrongs and unkindnesses, or killed to the very roots by fell weeds of lust and self-love, which are natural to the fleshly heart, and which may be nourished there; but it is that which is of God, and which never fails, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. If we walk in the exercise of this love, it will involve continual self-surrender, but in this way we shall know that we are of the truth. As begotten of the truth, deception will be foreign to our nature, and when we are tested, we shall not fail to answer to whatever demand may be made upon us, and even if our brethren seem cold and indifferent to us, we shall not be so to them, but like Paul, we shall be able to go on in the exercise of love, when the more abundantly we love, the less we be loved (2 Cor. 12:15). And in this we shall persuade our hearts before Him. We need to keep before us the fact that Christianity is not a creed, neither do we come into it by the submission of our minds to certain doctrines, but it is the life of Jesus reproduced in our mortal bodies. If we do not walk as He walked, in love to the saints, we shall have our hearts condemning us, and if our hearts condemn us, we cannot flatter ourselves that God knows nothing about our selfish ways, but rather we shall feel that if the thing is bad in our eyes, how much more must it be in His, and in drawing near to Him we shall be greatly hindered. But if we walk in love to His people we have boldness towards Him, and all our prayers are answered, “because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”

Further, as in the case of righteousness and of purity, we have Christ as the measure of this love. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; we ought to lay down ours for the brethren. Now, if our brother has need, and we possess this world's good, but do not provide for his necessity, is that the divine love which made Christ lay down His life for us? It is by this real and practical love that we know we are in the truth, and that our heart is confirmed and assured before God. For if there is nothing on the conscience, we have confidence in His presence; but if our own heart condemns us, God knows yet more.

230 "Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" We have another mark there in the dwelling of the love of God. It is not merely love to God, because it is the spirit in which a person walks himself towards his brethren. It is the power of this divine nature dwelling in us which will shew itself in love to God and man. The love of God dwelling in us is the way of God Himself, who through the Spirit thereby brings His love into us. It is not God's love to us, but it is the power of that love working in us, and therefore it will soon shew itself to others. "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him."

4 We come once more, after the apostle's manner, to the practical test; here, the test of love. It is easy to speak of it. The world has its forms and phrases, and holds to them all the more zealously because the reality is wanting. True love cares not to parade itself. It "seeketh not its own," but it is, as we so often have said, the spirit of service; and thus it is, above all, the spirit of Christ. He, then, that hath this world's substance, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up the bowels of his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? Love is that in which faith works. Therefore he looks first that it be really that — the fruit of faith. He will not tolerate a love, whatever works it may have to boast of, which is found in those who have not the faith of Christ; but all the more earnest is he that if the faith be there, the love which is its inseparable companion will be there also, and manifest itself. We are not to love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and truth; and thus it is alone that we have any right to recognize ourselves as being of the truth; and this is the only way that our hearts have confidence in drawing near to God. He is not laying foundations here, as we everywhere see. He is testing those who are professedly upon the foundation, which is an entirely different thing. Communion with God is his great theme, and communion is not a matter of sentiment merely. It is a communion in deed as well as in thought. It is communion with One who actually gave His life for us, and who went about upon earth doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. It is communion with One who even now bears all His people upon His heart before God. How, then, can it fail to manifest itself in a life which is the reflection of His life? though, indeed, it be but a reflection, as it must be.

For there is a pietistic state, by no means rare, in which emotions and thoughts are enjoyed, the truth intellectually delighted in, but without fruition. Love as a theory is held to be very beautiful - but is not practised. The heart deceives itself. This is loving in thought merely. The text in question is the converse of 1 Corinthians 13. There Paul treats of works without love; here it is, as it were, love without works, that is, mere sentimentality. But our passage crushes both of these errors: not only condemns love without deeds, but also deeds without love. It requires deeds, but the deeds must be from love; that is, not in theory, nor in talk, but in acts and in truth. Our God is love, and that alone will satisfy Him in His children - love "in deed and in truth." How penetrating is the word of God, exposing every mode in which the heart would either deceive itself or deceive others! It is sharper than a two - edged sword, laying bare the thoughts and intents of the heart. Many, in reading these verses, have supposed that the language was mere repetition; that it is not so only shows the wisdom which underlies every word of inspiration.

For there is a pietistic state, by no means rare, in which emotions and thoughts are enjoyed, the truth intellectually delighted in, but without fruition. Love as a theory is held to be very beautiful — but is not practised. The heart deceives itself. This is loving in thought merely. The text in question is the converse of 1 Cor. 13. There Paul treats of works without love; here it is, as it were, love without works, that is, mere sentimentality. But our passage crushes both of these errors: not only condemns love without deeds, but also deeds without love. It requires deeds, but the deeds must be from love; that is, not in theory, nor in talk, but in acts and in truth. Our God is love, and that alone will satisfy Him in His children — love "in deed and in truth." How penetrating is the word of God, exposing every mode in which the heart would either deceive itself or deceive others! It is sharper than a two-edged sword, laying bare the thoughts and intents of the heart. Many, in reading these verses, have supposed that the language was mere repetition; that it is not so only shows the wisdom which underlies every word of inspiration.

Real love is not in word only, “but in deed and in truth,” and there are abundant opportunities for the expression of our love to each other as we pass through a world where all around is hostile to what is of God. The difficulties in which brethren are often found are occasions for the expression of sympathy and the manifestation of divine love in a practical way. While the divine nature can manifest itself in compassion to those who belong to this world, the children of God have the first claim upon us as belonging to the same divine family. John is dealing with the love that belongs to the family of God, and the family circle in which it is expressed.

“My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.” In ‘word’ is the actual expression coming from our lips, which may be very good, but with no actions to back it up. In ‘tongue’ would rather indicate the manipulation of the words, the art of persuasive speech. How empty is this if its truth is not attested in our deeds.

“And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.” We have observed other evidences of reality in the epistle, but here is one that must be carefully considered also. Loving in deed and truth is love expressed practically, and this is itself a confirmation to our own souls of the reality of our faith: our hearts are assured before Him by such results of the new life within.