"A new commandment I give unto you," Christ said, "That ye love one another;as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." John 13:34.What a wonderful statement; but, oh, how poorly practiced! In the church of God today brotherly love is sadly lacking.Many who profess to love the Saviour do not love one another.Unbelievers are watching to see if the faith of professed Christians is exerting a sanctifying influence upon their lives;and they are quick to discern the defects in character, the inconsistencies in action.Let Christians not make it possible for the enemy to point to them and say, Behold how these people, standing under the banner of Christ, hate one another.Christians are all members of one family, all children of the same heavenly Father, with the same blessed hope of immortality.Very close and tender should be the tie that binds them together.
Divine love makes its most touching appeals to the heart when it calls upon us to manifest the same tender compassion that Christ manifested.That man only who has unselfish love for his brother has true love for God.The true Christian will not willingly permit the soul in peril and need to go unwarned, uncared for.He will not hold himself aloof from the erring, leaving them to plunge farther into unhappiness and discouragement or to fall on Satan's battleground.
Those who have never experienced the tender, winning love of Christ cannot lead others to the fountain of life.His love in the heart is a constraining power, which leads men to reveal Him in the conversation, in the tender, pitiful spirit, in the uplifting of the lives of those with whom they associate.Christian workers who succeed in their efforts must know Christ; and in order to know Him, they must know His love.In heaven their fitness as workers is measured by their ability to love as Christ loved and to work as He worked.
"Let us not love in word," the apostle writes, "but in deed and in truth."The completeness of Christian character is attained when the impulse to help and bless others springs constantly from within.It is the atmosphere of this love surrounding the soul of the believer that makes him a savor of life unto life and enables God to bless his work.
Supreme love for God and unselfish love for one another --this is the best gift that our heavenly Father can bestow.This love is not an impulse, but a divine principle, a permanent power.The unconsecrated heart cannot originate or produce it.Only in the heart where Jesus reigns is it found.
"We love Him, because He first loved us." In the heart renewed by divine grace, love is the ruling principle of action.It modifies the character, governs the impulses, controls the passions, and ennobles the affections.
This love, cherished in the soul, sweetens the life and sheds a refining influence on all around.
John strove to lead the believers to understand the exalted privileges that would come to them through the exercise of the spirit of love.This redeeming power, filling the heart, would control every other motive and raise its possessors above the corrupting influences of the world.And as this love was allowed full sway and became the motive power in the life, their trust and confidence in God and His dealing with them would be complete.They could then come to Him in full confidence of faith, knowing that they would receive from Him everything needful for their present and eternal good.
"Herein is our love made perfect," he wrote, "that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world.There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear." "And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us: and if we know that He hear us,...we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.""And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The conditions of obtaining mercy from God are simple and reasonable.The Lord does not require us to do some grievous thing in order to gain forgiveness.We need not make long and wearisome pilgrimages, or perform painful penances, to commend our souls to the God of heaven or to expiate our transgression.He that "confesseth and forsaketh" his sin "shall have mercy." Proverbs 28:13.
