“Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.”
1 Thessalonians 4: 9-10 (NIV)
PAUL now deals with another aspect of Christ-likeness which is in the way we treat and act towards other believers. What Paul is seeking to highlight here in these two verses is the way we should behave towards other believers. When Paul speaks of brotherly love, and loving all the brothers, this may feel to our thinking today as rather alien. The family of God consists of both brothers and sisters. We are all one in Christ Jesus. In the church there is neither male nor female. All are equal in God's sight and equally children of God. In God's family of the redeemed both male and female are saved through faith in Jesus Christ and in his death for us, and all have the spirit of adoption whereby we cry 'Abba Father'. What Paul is dealing with here is the expression of the love of Christ which should exist in the family of God's people, his church. The use of the terms 'brotherly' and 'brothers' is simply conforming to the language usage of the day.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BELIEVER.
The basis of the truth about all believers belonging to one family, the family of God and Christ, is bound up in true Christian experience. The true church of Christ is a body of people who have become a new creation. We have been raised together with Christ. We have been born again of the Holy Spirit. A change has taken place in our lives which is altogether new. From being dead in trespasses and sins we have become alive in Christ. This new creation has been created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. In the life of the believer a change has taken place when we have been raised to know God, have fellowship with God, and know and experience the love of God. We have been adopted into God's family, where God is our heavenly Father, Christ is our elder brother, and we are all, male and female, equal members of the family – brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul is concerned here that the believers in Thessalonica should be expressing this family in the love that they showed to each other.
TAUGHT BY GOD.
Paul speaks of believers being taught by God to love each other. What is Paul speaking about by this being taught of God? In the first place this teaching consists of two parts. Firstly there is the teaching which we have in the Scriptures which are made clear to us by the inspiration and illumination of the Spirit as we read the Scriptures. Then secondly, there is the practical experience of God's love for us, that then translates into a disposition of love for other believers as Christ has loved us. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. It is the characteristic of the new life born within us that has this family experience whereby we see other believers, and feel that other believers, are our brothers and sisters, and we have a love for them as members of the family to which we now belong.
How does Scripture speak about this family love? In 1 Peter 1: 22, 23 we read the words of the apostle Peter where he says “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but the imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” Peter tells us the truth about salvation. He tells us that when we are saved through faith in Jesus as our sin-bearer and Saviour, through the new life that is given to all who believe, we have a sincere love for our brothers, that is for all others in the family of God, all our brothers and sisters in Christ. Love for other believers is built into the experience of new birth by the Holy Spirit. This is part of the expression of the new life that is now in us through becoming a new creation.
But Peter echoes the words of Paul in our verses in 1 Thessalonians by saying, because we have this family love as part of the new life within us, let us show this love in all the ways we relate to other believers more and more – love them fervently or more deeply. What both Paul and Peter are acknowledging is that we must show this character of love in our living day by day, and so work at it that it may grow and be seen in us more and more.
The fact is that because in this earthly life we still wrestle with the sinful influences of our flesh, we do not always express this love, and we are constantly being tempted by Satan to express the pride, selfishness and self-righteousness of our sinful nature which militates against the principle of love that is evident in us by the new life we possess. The truth is that we do not always love other Christians with the sincere Christ-like love which is within us, and so need to be constantly working to express this love day by day.
This is expressed in the incident told in John chapter 13. John tells how Jesus acted towards his disciples when they were gathered together for a meal. We are told that the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus, and so we see Satan was very active in this social time together that the Jesus had with his disciples. In those days people wore sandals which left the feet open to being covered by the dust of the streets as people walked. Because of this it was the custom for people to have their feet washed as they came into a house from the street. Usually there were servants who provided this service. It is apparent that on occasion of this meal together there were no servants, and the disciples were too proud to offer to be the servant and wash their fellow disciples feet. Instead Jesus took the place of the servant, and began washing the disciples feet for them. When Jesus had finished washing the disciples feet, he told his disciples that if he, their teacher and Lord, was prepared to wash their feet, then they should be willing to wash each others feet. By this Jesus was teaching his disciples that there was no room for pride in the family of God, but all of them should be willing to take the place of a servant, and in love do the servants work for each other. The passage in John commences with this sentence “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.” Jesus did this by washing their feet, taking the place of the servant, and humbling himself in this way. This was a foretelling of the way Jesus was soon to take the form of a servant and in self-giving love give his life to redeem them from everlasting punishment and hell because of their sins. This chapter in John's Gospel ends with Jesus saying “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13: 34-35).
Jesus could not have given a more powerful teaching of what Paul is exhorting the believers in Thessalonica to do when he says to them to love each other more and more.
MORE AND MORE.
Paul acknowledges that the Thessalonian believers are showing this family love for each other, but Paul is concerned that this love may not only be maintained but increase. The love of these believers had been so evident that the knowledge of it had spread throughout the district of Macedonia, but Paul knew only too well how persistent is the devil's attack on the family of God in order to upset this love or even destroy it, so Paul reminds the believers in Thessalonica of this love and exhorts them to be in continual reminder of it so that they work at loving more and more. This is done in two ways. Firstly there must be a watchfulness that the pride and sinfulness of the flesh is not raised to deny this love; and secondly that each believer may work at this loving every day and seek to show this love more deeply in their lives.
The question is as to how this may be achieved. This calls for all of us to be quick to be convicted when we fail in such Christ-like loving, and immediately be truly repentant for such failing. This requires watchfulness and honesty in assessing our performance in loving. We must resist every temptation of the devil to excuse failure in loving, and the making of excuses for it. If we have shown failure in love, true repentance requires that we are ready to apologise to people when we fail in love where this is appropriate, and seek always to take care to do better in the future.
If we are to become more loving day be day, we must hold up before us all the time the love of Christ for us. No doubt the disciples had the incident recorded in John 13 indelibly printed on their minds. No doubt John had this incident in his mind when he was inspired to write his first letter. How powerful are the words of 1 John 4: 7-12. He tells us there that love comes from God, and that our loving is evidence of, and the expression of, knowing God, and tells us that if we do not love we do not know God. Then he speaks of how God showed his love to us in sending his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world that we might live through him. This we know was a love which caused his Son to take the form of a servant and become truly human, and this to be able be the substitute and representative of all believers before God, and in his death pay the just punishment of death for all our sins. God's love gave his most treasured gift in order save us. John goes on to say that it was God who first loved us. From this he argues that if we are born of God this is the sort of love we should show in the family of God. We will love others more in as far as we remember the great love of God and Christ for us.