What is unfeigned love?

Having set before us some of the many forms of service we may be privileged to exercise by divinely given grace, we are now exhorted as to the conduct, and spirit, which should mark the Lord's people, and without which every form of service will be marred.

(V. 9). The first three exhortations plainly have reference to ourselves, personally. We are each to see that our love is unfeigned, that we treat evil with abhorrence, and that we are devoted to that which is good. Alas! It is easy to feign love, and hide malice by professing to act in love. Joab can kiss the man he is about to murder (2 Sam. 20:9-10.), and Judas can kiss His Master in order to betray Him. The flesh can act like Israel of old, of whom it is written, "With their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their covetousness" (Ezek. 33:31). Unfeigned love, is an unselfish love that thinks of the good of others.

Love and abhorrence of evil will ever be found together. Says the Psalmist, "Ye that love the LORD, hate evil" (Ps. 97:10). A false charity may ignore evil under the plea of love, and even treat evil doctrine as to the Lord of little account. Unfeigned love will lead us to abhor evil without ignoring the good. In our abhorrence of evil we may overlook much good; or, in seeking to cleave to the good we may compromise with evil.

"[Let] love [be] unfeigned." (Ver. 9.) Love is of God. Therefore it is of the deepest moment that it should ever be genuine and incorrupt: for the higher its source, nature, and character, the more dangerous where that which is spurious usurps its place and name, misleading others and oneself under a fair but false pretension. It is not the same as the brotherly kindness of verse 10; and the reality of the distinction reappears in 2 Peter 1:7. On the other hand it is far from being that kindness to all men, the perfection of which we know in the Saviour God as witnessed in Christ the Lord. Love is the activity of the divine nature in goodness, and hence is inseparable from that nature as reproduced in the children of God. Nevertheless this does not absolve them from the need of self-judgment that it be sincere and undefiled, seeking others' good according to God's will unselfishly. The letting in of hopes, fears, or objects of our own falsifies it.

As to moral character, pureness implies no mixture of principles; knowledge is that full awareness of what one stands for, and does; long-suffering is the fruit of a faith that knows God will eventually triumph; kindness is genuine courteous treatment of others. And behind this is the living presence of the Spirit of God operative in the servant; and a resulting "love unfeigned," a genuine real concern for the good of others. "The Word of truth" is a vital matter here too, the one court of appeal as to all that is morally appropriate. And in subjection to this, the power of God is evident in the vessel. Finally, "the armour of righteousness" is found on the right hand and on the left: this is proper concern to maintain righteous moral conduct in both directions, not taken off guard by watching only on one side.

(1 Peter 1:22,) "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth, through the Spirit, to unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." Your soul has been practically purified from its old thoughts and wishes, and now what comes out instead? "Unfeigned love of the brethren." You had been wandering through the world restless and unhappy, perhaps, and the grace of God came and worked in your heart, and you woke up to find yourself among your brethren. Now, he says, "See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." It is very easy to love lovable people, nothing is easier, but that is not "love out of a pure heart." Love out of a pure heart is a love that loves, not because the object is deserving, but when it is the reverse; it is like the love of God, who loved us when there was nothing about us to love.

Verse 6. "In pureness, in knowledge," etc. If circumspection kept him free from human blame, there is another eye, which tries the secrets of men's hearts, and God was his witness to the pureness of his motives and his walk. If it is a standing maxim of the Spirit that every one who has true hope in Christ purifies himself as He is pure (1 John 3:3), this purity was found more abundantly in him to whom, in an especial sense, to live was Christ. In God's sight he could also boldly say, with reference to his ministerial faithfulness, "I am pure from the blood of all men." Having renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, he lived among men with no other end than a single-eyed fulfilment of his charge. And this integrity was sustained in him by a "knowledge" which — though he passed among the Gentiles for a fool, and among the Jews as an apostate from the doctrine of the fathers — enabled him both to confound the gainsayers, and to shed the light and comfort of divine truth into the souls of all who lived upon God's words, in a measure unsurpassed by any of His witnesses. Nay, in this quality he may be said to have excelled them all, according to the sovereign distribution of that manifold grace of God, which marked them distinctively in their several stewardships, while abounding in them all (1 Peter 4:10; 2 Peter 3:15-16). Now the knowledge which the Lord originally gave to His apostles is to be desired, as an addition to their faith, by all who, in dependence on the same revealing Spirit, seek their efficiency as ministers of God in a constant meditation of their words (2 Tim. 2:7, 15; 2 Peter 1:5, 3:2).

"In long-suffering." Here too he might assert for himself a pre-eminence; for it was a part of the reasonable service which, as a chosen vessel of His grace, he owed to God. As the object of all long-suffering in Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 1:16), he would not allow himself to be surpassed by any in the practical exercise of a grace to which he owed his own salvation. For he served God as he knew Him. In "kindness," also, he must needs abound, since what he ministered to others he had first received of God, whose goodness led him to repentance, and kept his heart fresh watered by the grateful dew of its remembrance. It was as one who had received mercy that he did not faint, and since he exhorted others, in their kindness towards each other, to be imitators of God (Eph. 4:32, 5:1), it became him to excel in this most Christ-like grace, as a pattern to his children in the faith.

"In the Holy Ghost." These words refer, no doubt, in a very important sense to that special inspiration which belonged to him as an apostle of the faith; but by no means exclusively, or perhaps even chiefly, to this. We must remember that although the example is apostolic, and therefore exceptional, the character described is general. All are not apostles, but each true believer is "a servant of God," and all living service must be in the power of the Holy Ghost. By that Spirit only had Paul been enabled to call believingly upon the Lord whom now he served; and under the same unction he had gained that knowledge of divine things which so remarkably distinguished him. By the same Spirit also had all other signs and tokens of apostleship, in word or deed, been manifested. In God's power we must work His work; to Him, therefore, does the more abundant labourer (1 Cor. 15:10) assign the praise.

"In love unfeigned." This chief fruit of the Spirit follows closely and naturally, in the order of enumeration, the mention of its living source. By means of it, true ministry has ever been distinguished from its counterfeit. As a spiritual roan Paul had renounced all private aims, and no longer knowing any after the flesh, he clave to all who were "of God," with the truthful fervency of an affection which beheld the Saviour in the saved. That this virtue was the mainspring of his patient and unwearied service of the saints "for Jesus' sake" is sufficiently attested, both by his writings and his acts. It was a love which was not only his own glory, by the grace of God, but the shame also of some, at least, of those who were its care.

But now we turn from circumstances and sufferings to quite another class, to qualities which God looks for in His service: "in pureness, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness, in love unfeigned, in [the] Holy Ghost, in [the] word of truth, in [the] power of God." There is thus not only perseverance in the face of antagonism and enmity, but the exercise of all that is holy and wise, long-suffering and gracious, and all this, not in mere amiability but in love unfeigned, yea in the Holy Spirit, and hence in the word of truth and in God's power, not more human wisdom and ability, that its excellency might be of Him, and not from the man though by him.

So the Spirit guards against mere forms or words by qualifying the brotherly affection for which their souls were purified as "unfeigned." Pretence to a good that is not genuinely felt is hateful to God, and unworthy of His child. Hence the value of cherishing the sense of His presence to be kept from hypocrisy in this way as in every other. Let us never forget His marvellous light into which He carried us out of darkness. "Know ye not," says the apostle Paul, "that ye are God's temple, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you"?

Hence the exhortation, which is not tautological as some have irreverently said, "Out of a pure heart love one another fervently," or intensely. It is a simple charge that the object in view may be earnestly heeded. God's love to us is the spring of all our blessing, and never did it flow out so freely and fully as when man's sin proved how utterly undeserving he was, and no less wretched and helpless. Then it was, and at the lowest point, when God turned his evil in rejecting and slaying Christ, His Son, to the proof of His own all-overcoming goodness in making Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. In the faith of Him and His sacrifice have we purified our souls, hitherto steeped in defilement, unto unfeigned brotherly affection. Let us love then the objects of the same divine love, who rest on the same sin-cleansing sacrifice. No doubt they were called to be holy throughout their course, because He Who called them is holy; but they were bound to love their brethren, not for any reasons of their own or for reasons in others, but "out of a pure heart" and "fervently": had not God so felt and dealt with them? Even to heathen, when they believed in Christ, the apostle could write (1 Thess. 4:9), "ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another."

168 When you get "love as brethren," it is again relationship, love unfeigned. It is the opposite of feigned; it is not "putting it on," as you say, but real. It is the converse here of what it is in Thessalonians. It is the bringing in of divine life, and the Holy Ghost was there, and He is the spring that is in my heart. So it is not talking about inconsistencies, but what is love, and what is God's nature. It is a wonderful thing for us to look at in all our path - Christ, and then in that sense we could not know any man after the flesh. Purity and love is what God is looking for here. Self is dead, and consideration for others is what reigns in the heart according to God. And the recognition of God's presence is the great secret of that. I was struck some time back with this, that when the apostle describes what love is, it is all subjective. In 1 Corinthians 13 you do not get one atom of activity in it; it bears, endures, hopes, and so on. and that is all. Love is not always subjective, but it is so in 1 Corinthians 13. Disappointing! You go and live it out, and see if other people will be disappointed. Activity, of course, is all right too. God gives to us in the blessedness of His nature, He makes us enjoy Himself, and, besides that, He gives us a share in the activity of His love. "See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." These instructions are drawn from the very depths of God's nature, and you get God and grace instead of self. Suppose a man is giving way to bad feelings, the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. I ask myself how should I feel if I met that man at the door of heaven, going in - supposing I had met a heretic, or anything else. Would it not be nice to meet people here as you will meet them there? Only when you have to meet opponents, take care that it does not connect itself with anything of feeling as regards the individual. Look at Christ in Gethsemane in an agony. He asked His disciples to stay, and He went farther, and when He comes to them again, He finds them sleeping, but He only says, "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?" and He goes back again into His agony; and this was His way to them when He was thinking of meeting God in judgment!

First, love is to be unfeigned: it is a root principle of all true fruit for God. Pretense of any sort has no place. This connects necessarily with abhorring evil, for love is energetic and sensitive: evil is thoroughly revolting to it. And just so, on the other side, there is to be a cleaving to what is good. Well for us to often test our souls by these two things: do we positively abhor evil, and cleave earnestly to good? This is the real activity of love, for love cannot but feel strongly against what is harmful to its object, and favorably toward what is beneficial.

"Let love be without dissimulation." This is the first of the apostle's general admonitions, and may be considered the foundation and summary of all the others. He who shines in this grace will abound in every good work. But here, on the threshold of this fresh line of truth, thou mayest well pause for a little, O my soul, and meditate on a love that is free from all dissimulation and guile. Wondrous sight in a world of hollow pretence! But where is it to be found in practical exercise, thou wilt inquire? God only is its source; "for love is of God." It is Himself; God is love; not merely loving, but love. And should not His children be the expression of His nature — of His moral character? "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." And faith goes on to say, "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him." Here, mark well, my soul, the true character of communion, and the power of walking in love. "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God; and God in him." This is christian communion, but who could explain it? Still, the Christian should be a genuine expression of the real spirit and character of that love in which he dwells. He is formed, sustained and perfected in love. 1 John 4:7-19.