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ONE ANOTHER

John 13:34-35
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” NASU

John 15:12-13, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” NASU

Remember the lawyer’s question of Jesus in Matthew 22:36, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

Jesus, reply was, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” NASU

We are to love our neighbor as ourselves, but we are to love our fellow-Christians as Christ loved us, and that is far more than we love ourselves.

Christ loved us better than he loved himself, for he loved us so much that he gave himself for us. This is a nobler kind of love altogether to the love which we are to manifest to our neighbors. The love to our neighbors is a love of benevolence, but this is a love of affinity and close relationship, and involves a higher degree of self-sacrifice than was enjoined by the Law of Moses.

The old commandment was backed by this declaration, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” Exodus 20:2.

The Israelite was to obey that law because of the redemption which God had wrought for His nation in Egypt, but we are commanded to love one another because Christ has redeemed us from a far worse bondage than that of Egypt, and with a far costlier sacrifice than the offering up of myriads of sacrificial lambs.

1 Corinthians 5:7 reminds us, “Christ our Passover lamb is sacrificed for us.”

He has brought us out from under the iron yoke of sin and Satan, and has broken our bonds asunder.

Our enemies have pursued us, but He has destroyed them at the sea, even at the Red Sea. He has redeemed us with His own heart's blood, and therefore His new commandment comes to us with the greatest possible force, “That ye love one another as I have loved you.”

I am bound, as a man, to love my fellow-man because he is a man; but I am bound, as a regenerate man, to love my fellow-Christian still more because he also is regenerate. The ties of blood bought relations ought to be recognized by us far more than they are.

We are too apt to forget that God, according to Acts 17:26 “has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth”; so that, by the common tie of blood, we are all brethren.

But, the ties of grace are far stronger than the ties of blood. If you are really born of God, you are brothers by a brotherhood that is stronger even than the natural brotherhood which according to the flesh may be separated eternally.

It is a very blessed thing when we are able to love one another, because the grace that is in any one of us sees the grace that is in another, and discerns in that other, not the flesh and blood of the Savior, but such a resemblance to Christ, that it must love that other one for Christ’s sake.

As it is true that, if we are of the world, the world will love its own, so is it true that, if we are of the Spirit, the Spirit will love His own. The whole redeemed family of Christ is firmly bound together.

Born of God ourselves, we keep looking out to see others who have been “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible” according to 1 Peter 1:23; and when we do see them, we cannot help loving them.

There is a bond of union between us at once. The love which Christ commands his followers to have towards one another is not the ordinary love of man to man as such, but the love of the new-born man to the new-born man.

Let us, who love the Lord, love each other fervently in that sense. This is a love which arises out of a totally new union. A man, who is a Christian, belongs to a very special family. That family circle does not comprehend the whole human race; it is a family inside the larger human family, yet separated from it by an inner spiritual life. We are brethren because, in Christ, we are all in one family; and hence it is that we are called to a new kind of love.

If you are true Christians, you will not have the love of worldly things; you cannot have it.

So then, cling the more closely to one another.

Whatever opposition you meet with from the outside, let it only weld you into a firmer union one with the other.

We must hold together, we must be as one man, banded together in closest fellowship.

There is much that is beautiful about all true Christians, so try and search out their excellencies rather than their defects.

If we, ourselves are in a right state of heart, we are all the more likely to admire that which is good in others.

We, who believe in Jesus, are going to live together in heaven for ever and ever, so we may as well be good friends while we are here.

See you in service!

Pastor Mike