By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments
How shall we be certified that we love the brethren
To reply to this inquiry seems to be the specific object of these verses.
Contemplating them in this connection, they suggest four evidences.
I. The first is that we love God. “By this we know,” etc. It must seem strange, at first sight, to find the love of God cited as a proof of the love of His people. We would expect rather the reverse order. This too is found to be the usual practice (see 1Jn_4:7-8). At the same time there is a sense in which the love of God ought to be sought in our hearts as a proof of the love of His people. It is one that will readily occur to a mind jealous of itself. It is not unnatural to ask, Does his love of the people of God arise out of the love of God? In this view he might properly seek for the love of God as a proof of the love of the brethren. The least reflection may show the necessity for such an inquiry. Brotherly love, or what appears to be such, may arise from other sources besides the love of God. It may be a natural feeling and not a gracious affection. We may love our kindred, friends, neighbours, benefactors, and yet not love God. It is possible there may be even an active benevolence where this heavenly principle does not exist. It will be asked how is such a subject to be investigated? And we reply in one of two ways, or in both. It may be either by examining whether our deeds of brotherly love are prompted and influenced by the love of God; or by inquiring into the general principle, whether the love of God has ever been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
II. The profession of brotherly love may be tested by obedience to the commandments of God. “We know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments.” Viewing the subject in the restricted light of the context, the meaning of this test must be, that in our exercises of brotherly love, we are guided by the commandments of God. Assuming this to be the just interpretation, there are two aspects in which our conduct may be contemplated, the one a refusal to do that which God forbids, although it may be desired as an expression of brotherly love, and the other a readiness to exercise it in every way which God has required.
III. The next evidence of brotherly love is akin to the second, and may be regarded indeed as a summary of the two already considered, and an extension of their meaning and application. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” There is great force in the expression, “This is the love of God.” This is that in which it consists, by which its existence is manifested, and without which it cannot be. A child obeys his parent because he loves him, and as he loves him. The same may be said of the master and servant, the king and his subjects. If there be not love, uniform and hearty obedience cannot be rendered. In the case of Christ and His people, the claims are peculiarly strong on the one hand, and the obligations specially felt on the other. There is no love so strong as that by which they are bound to one another. It takes precedence of every other. The consequence is, that the love of Christ urges His people to the obedience of every commandment. No matter how trifling it may seem to be, it is enough that He has declared it to be His will.
IV. There is one other evidence in the verses before us, but it may almost be regarded as a part of that which has just been noticed. It is such an apprehension of the commandments of God that they are not considered to be a burthen. “His commandments are not grievous.” This saying is universally and absolutely true of the commandments of God in their own nature. They are all “holy, and just, and good.” Such, however, is not the sentiment of the ungodly. They consider many of God’s commandments to be grievous. We might instance such commands as these--“Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God,” “Abstain from all appearance of evil,” “The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; your whole spirit, and soul, and body.” These are felt to be grievous by the ungodly. No so by the godly: They may not obey them as they would, but they approve of them.
1. The great reason is their love of God. They so love Him that they account nothing which He has commanded grievous.
2. Another reason is that his heart is in the service itself. He likes it. Prayer and holiness are agreeable to him. They are not a drudgery, but a delight.
3. He forms, moreover, the habit of obedience, and this greatly confirms his desire for it. The more he practises it, the better he finds it.
4. Besides, the Holy Spirit helps his infirmities, and furthers his labours.
5. And we may add, he is animated by the prospect of a rich reward. (J. Morgan, D. D.)
Whereby know we that we love God’s children
I. Who are described by this title--“the children of God.” This title, “the children of God,” is given upon several accounts.
1. By creation the angels are called “the sons of God,” and men His “offspring.” The reason of the title is--
(1) The manner of their production by His immediate power.
(2) In their spiritual, immortal nature, and the intellectual operations flowing from it, there is an image and resemblance of God.
2. By external calling and covenant some are denominated His “children”; for by this evangelical constitution God is pleased to receive believers into a filial relation.
3. There is a sonship that arises from supernatural regeneration.
II. What is included in our love to the children of God.
1. The principle of this love is Divine (1Pe_1:22).
2. The qualifications of this love are as follows:
(1) It is sincere and cordial. A counterfeit, formal affection, set off with artificial colours, is so far from being pleasing to God, that it is infinitely provoking to Him.
(2) It is pure. The attractive cause of it is the image of God appearing in them.
(3) It is universal, extended to all the saints.
(4) It must be fervent. Not only in truth, but in a degree of eminency. “This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you” (Joh_15:12).
(5) This love includes all kinds of love.
(a) The love of esteem, correspondent to the real worth and special goodness of the saints.
(b) The love of desire, of their present and future happiness.
(c) The love of delight, in spiritual communion with them.
(d) The love of service and beneficence, that declares itself in all outward offices and acts for the good of the saints. If Christians thus loved one another, the Church on earth would be a lively image of the blessed society above.
III. The love of God and obedience to his commands, the product of it.
1. The love of God has its rise from the consideration of His amiable excellences, that render Him infinitely worthy of the highest affection; and from the blessed benefits of creation, preservation, redemption, and glorification, that we expect from His pure goodness and mercy.
2. The obedience that springs from love is--
(1) Uniform and universal.
(2) This is a natural consequence of the former. The Divine law is a rule, not only for our outward conversation, but of our thoughts and affections, of all the interior workings of the soul that are open before God.
(3) Chosen and pleasant (1Jn_5:3). The sharpest sufferings for religion are sweetened to a saint from the love of God, that is then most sincerely, strongly, and purely acted (2Co_12:10).
(4) The love of God produces persevering obedience. Servile compliance is inconstant.
IV. From the love of God, and willing obedience to his commands, we may convincingly know the sincerity of our love to his children.
1. The Divine command requires this love.
2. Spiritual love to the saints arises from the sight of the Divine image appearing in their conversation. As affectionate expressions to the children of God, without the real supply of their wants, are but the shadows of love, so words of esteem and respect to the law of God, without unfeigned and universal obedience, are but an empty pretence.
3. The Divine relation of the saints to God as their Father is the motive of spiritual love to them. (W. Bates, D. D.)
The love of God and universal obedience
I. The nature of true love to God.
1. The peculiar acts of true love to God.
(1) It has a high approbation and esteem of God.
(2) It has a most benevolent disposition towards God.
(3) Its earnest desire is after God.
(4) Its complacency and delight is in God.
(5) It is pleased or displeased with itself, according as it is conscious to its own aboundings or defects.
2. The properties of true love to God.
(1) It is a judicious love.
(2) It is an extensive love.
(3) It is a supreme love.
(4) It is an abiding love.
3. The effects of this love. A holy imitation of God and devotedness to Him, self-denial, patience, and resignation to His will, the government of all our passions, appetites and behaviour, a departure from everything that offends Him, and laborious endeavours by His grace, to approve ourselves to Him, and glorify His name in all that we do.
II. The influence that true love to God has unto our obedience, or unto our keeping his commandments.
1. Love to God enters into the very nature of all true and acceptable obedience.
2. Love to God inclines and even constrains us to keep all His commands.
3. Love to God gives us a delight in keeping His commands. They are suited to the holy nature of a newborn soul, whose prime affection is love to God; this takes off distastes, and makes all His precepts agreeable to us; it makes them our choice and our pleasure; it sweetens our obedience, and makes us think nothing a trouble or a burden that God calls us to, and nothing too great to do or suffer for Him, whereby we may please and honour Him, and show our gratitude, love and duty to Him.
4. Love to God will make us persevere in keeping His commands.
Use:1. Let this put us upon serious inquiry whether the love of God dwells in us.
2. Let the sinner against God behold how odious and unworthy the principle is that refuses to obey Him.
3. Let us prize the gospel of the grace of God, and seek help from thence to engage our love and obedience.
4. Let us look and long for the heavenly state, where all our love and obedience shall be perfected. (John Guyse.)
Loving God through human love
The love of man is involved in the love of God. There is no real love of God that does not include the love of His children. Love is a state of the human spirit; an atmosphere in which one abides; he who is in that atmosphere loves the human that appeals to him no less than the Divine. Loving God is not merely a feeling toward Him--a gushing out of emotion: it is a practical exercise of His Spirit. It is a real doing of His commandments. “What is loving God? Is it anything more than loving men, and trying in His name to do them good?” “I do not think I love God, for I do not feel towards Him as I do towards those I love best.” “It is hard to think of God as the Great Energy that fills all things, and yet to love Him as a Father.” These are all expressions of sincere minds trying to get into the real atmosphere of the truth and to live the spiritual life. I should like, if possible, to help clear up the difficulties indicated. Let us recognise the fact that nothing but emptiness and disappointment can come from the effort to love an abstract conception. Love goes out only toward personality. And the personality must lie warm and living in our hearts, or it fails to quicken affection into life. Israel, for instance, was labouring for a thousand years to bring forth its idea of Godhead. In the old notion of Jahveh as God of Israel only, there was a sort of personal warmth akin to patriotism; a common affection which went out in a crude way to their personal champion. When the prophets began to see in Him much more than this--the God of all the earth, “who formeth the mountains and createth the wind, and declareth to man His thought”--while there was an immense gain in breadth and truth of conception, there was a loss of the nearness that begets personal attachment, until, a little later, God’s relation to the whole nation gave place to the new idea of His direct relation to every man in all the affairs of his life. That gave birth to all that is best in the Psalms of Israel, with their outgoing of personal confidence and affection. Then after the coming of Jesus and the intense feeling that sprang up on His departure that He was God manifest in the flesh, there was a leap of thought and life which showed how the real heart of man hungered for something more close and personal than Judaic religion could ever give it. So complete was this change, and so central to the Apostolic age, that for eighteen hundred years the same phenomenon has been witnessed of placing Jesus in the central place, with God removed to a vague back ground, the Being “whom no man hath seen or can see,” dreaded, reverenced, and worshipped, but never standing in the intimate relation of close fatherhood in which He was the warmth and light of the life of Jesus Himself. There was abundant reason for this. The human heart, seeking for a real religion, must have some thing concrete and close and warm; it cannot love an abstract idea. Jesus was seen as God reduced to the human compass, enshrined in a human and personal love. The whole responsive life of man went out to Him. And so it came to pass that He did what He did not in the least aim to do, but rather the contrary--He did not bring the real Godhead of the universe nearer to the average mind, but took the place of it, letting it even sweep backward, farther out of sight--farther into the impenetrable mystery. We are pillowed in our infancy on a bosom of affection. It is long before we know it; but when we do awake, it is to our mothers that the earliest love goes forth. And if we ever do love God, we come to it by rising from the home love, or some later and even stronger love that awakes in us, to the higher affection. This makes the common affections of life sacred and Divine, in that without them there is no ground in us for the love to God. All love has one source. Do our mothers love us? It is God in them that breaks out into love in its highest manifestations, with its Divine unselfishness and its clinging power. Wherever love is, we get a glimpse of the Divine and infinite. It is only as such love responds to the Spirit of God in it that it does and dares, and clings to us and will not let us go, though it cost struggle and patience and sacrifice and pain. And this love, as a channel of the love of God, is the power that most often lifts us up into the clearer realms where we are at one with the Divine, and its love becomes real to our hungry hearts. The love we have to God is realised in our love to men. It cannot abide alone. They who have thought to gain it by retirement and meditation have found it only a will-o’-the-wisp save as it has issued in the love that seeks men and tries to do them good. For the love of God is not a mere feeling, a gush of emotion in which the soul is rapt away to things ineffable. It is a spirit, an atmosphere, in which one lives; and “he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” But to dwell in love, to be really baptized with its spirit, is to have that energy of it within us that seeks continually to find exercise for itself and actually to give itself to others. Unfortunately, the service of God has too often been conceived of as the conferring of something on Him by worship or sacrifice, by which it is thought He will be pleased. But what can we do for Him by our offering of gifts for His use, or by the singing of His praises, save to give expression to what is in us and thereby satisfy our own cravings? The real love of God will manifest itself in what we do for men. It will set itself to help on the kingdom of God on earth as the dearest end it can set before itself. The Samaritan did not worship in the Jerusalem temple; his own on Mount Gerizim had long been levelled to the ground. But when he took care of the wounded man on the road to Jericho, he showed himself a lover of God beyond the priest and Levite of orthodox connections and habits, who passed by on the other side. Men and women are warned not to love each other too dearly, lest God be jealous; not to love their children too much, lest He take them away. This is not religion. Real love does not exhaust itself by giving; it grows by giving. The more you love your child, if it be unselfish love, the more you will love God, for the loving of a little child brings you into that atmosphere and spirit of love where the heart is living and warm and goes forth to God as naturally as the sunlight streams into the ether. You will need to be cautioned lest your love of human kind become selfish and exclusive, and is indulged as a mere luxury. That vitiates it. But the more you love your brother whom you have seen, unselfishly, the more you will love God and see Him, too, with the spiritual vision. To sum up, then, this relation of Divine and human love: all love is of One, and the line cannot be drawn where the human stops and the Divine begins. But we may feel sure of this, that to see the love of God in all the love that comes to us, to recognise it in all the unselfishness we see, is the only way to know it truly, and the most direct road to the clearer sense of it as an indwelling life. (H. P. De Forest, D. D.)
