If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar
I.
The lesson is taught with peculiar force which is deserving of attention. The several clauses of the text are so constructed as to cast light upon it. “A man may say, I love God.” He may say it and think it, and yet not do it. In that case he is self-deceived. Or he may say it and not think it. In such a case he is a hypocrite. In the midst of such self-deception or hypocritical profession the man “may hate his brother.” The man who so speaks and acts is pronounced to be “a liar.” There is an entire inconsistency between what he says and does. His conduct towards men is a contradiction to his profession toward God. An argument is next used to prove the inconsistency of professing love to God, while hatred is indulged to men. “He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” This is assumed to be an impossibility. And it really is so. His brother is the child of God. Can I love a man and hate his child? My brother is to me the representative of God, and in hating him I hate God. To confirm the argument, it is added, “and this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.” We say we love God. Of that love the great proof is that “we keep His commandments.” But one of His commandments is, that we love one another.
II. The incompatibility of the love of God with the hatred of men. It is to be feared that, in this matter, a widespread delusion prevails among men. Many say they love God who are seen to hate men. It may be well, therefore, to notice some of the principal forms under which this incongruity has appeared in both past times and the present.
1. A remarkable example of it may be seen in the national spirit that prevailed among the Jews in the time of our Lord and His apostles. The Jew said he loved God, and yet he was injurious to men. And so far did this spirit prevail that it formed the national character in the time of our Lord.
2. This habit, however, did not arise out of anything peculiar to Judaism; for, it may be observed next, that it is found to prevail in all unenlightened nations. The Mussulman, out of zeal for God, as he alleges, goes forth with his sword to demand subjection from all men; and, when he has the power, to plunge it into the bosom of anyone who dares to resist him. It is the same under other and more aggravated forms in nations that are purely heathen. The Hindoo, out of zeal for God, refuses to eat with his brother of another caste, lest he should be defiled. The Chinaman has been taught from his infancy to reckon all men barbarians beyond the boundaries of his own land. All heathen people entertain the same idea of religion. They regard it as a service of certain forms due to God; but which, it never occurs to them, is designed to regulate their deportment toward one another. The love of God, prompting love to mankind, is nowhere to be found, even as a theory, among men devoid of revelation. Greece and Rome, at the height of their enlightenment, made no such discovery. It is humiliating to see the vanity of their worship, which was neither intended riot fitted to influence their conduct toward men. We may suppose it to be an easy thing to see the connection between the love of God and the love of man. But we should remember we are indebted for the knowledge of it entirely to the Divine Word.
3. But alas! even where the light of revelation shines, this simple truth has been sadly obscured. Men have thought that, because they had been born and lived within certain geographical boundaries, they were not required to seek the good, but rather the injury of those beyond them. They have engaged in the most savage attacks upon one another in the name of religion. How necessary it is that the nations should learn the lesson of the text--“that he who loveth God love his brother also.”
4. We may go for another illustration beyond the nations of the earth, and fix upon the Christian churches themselves. In some we discover the most uncharitable zeal for their doctrines. They construct a system which they hold is founded on the Word of God, and agreeable to it. Admit that it is so. Its views, they maintain, are essential to salvation. Admit that they are so. Forthwith they proceed to denounce all who do not see with them eye to eye. We have need to be watchful lest our love for God, in maintaining His truth, should degenerate into bitterness against men. In others, again, we discern the uncharitableness of sect. We may go further, and find an example even among those who hold the same truths, and worship in the same sanctuary. We may profess love to God in His ordinance, and yet be indulging ill-will to our brother. Worse than that, we may do him much injury. We may injure him in his good name, in his property, in his peace, and still maintain the profession of love for God. (J. Morgan, D. D.)
Love to God promotive of love to man
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.)
The great commandment
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.)
Love to God produces love to man
When God comes to man, man looks round for his neighbour. (Geo. Macdonald, LL. D.)
“He’s my brother”
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.)
