Love Of The Brethren In First John And Church History

By Michael A. G. Haykin

Among the most precious texts of God’s Word is Ephesians 5:25b: “Christ …loved the church, and gave himself for it.” Before time began or space was formed, the One whom we know as the Lord Jesus Christ had set His heart on dying for human sinners. Not out of necessity, not by constraint nor grudgingly, but from a heart of love, out of mercy and kindness, freely and willingly, Christ came into this world to die for the church.

But, someone might ask, exactly what is the church? What is her nature? Historically, our Reformed forebears, both Paedobaptist and Baptist, have argued that a true church was one in which the Word of God was preached, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper were properly administered, and biblical discipline was carried out. Now, without taking away one particle from this historic Reformed perspective, a close reading of the New Testament compels us to further affirm that a true church is marked out as a community of Christ-like love. Love is an indelible mark of a New Testament church.

Paul tells the Ephesians, for example, a few verses before the verse quoted above, to “walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us” (Eph. 5:2). Then, he reminds Timothy and the Ephesian church through this dear brother, that the goal of Christian preaching and teaching is “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). The writer of Hebrews is content with a more simple admonition: “let brotherly love continue” (Heb. 13:1), as is Peter when the latter urges the believers in Asia Minor to “love the brethren” (1 Pet. 2:17). It is especially in The writings of the Apostle John, however, that love of the brethren in particular and the language of love in general is to be found. [1]

First John: Its Context And Teaching On Love

Consider one of these texts, First John, written by the Apostle John towards the end of a long life when he was most probably living in the great urban center of Ephesus. [2] In part, the letter is a Spirit-breathed response to a dire heresy that was threatening the spirituality and unity of the church in that city and the surrounding region. The heretics concerned denied the reality of the Incarnation (1 John 4:1– 6, see also 2 John 7) and also appear to have been scornful of living lives of holiness (1 John 3:4 –1). Although these heretics had left the Ephesian church (1 John 2:19), John was still profoundly concerned for the health of this community of believers. Among the things he therefore stresses so as to secure the unity of this Christian body is that genuine followers of Jesus Christ not only love God but they love all in whom God dwells. In John’s words: “every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him” (1 John 5:1) and the proof that “we have passed from death unto life” is that “we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14).

“What Great Love”

Now, the Apostle emphasizes three things in particular about this love of the brethren. First, it is a direct result of being overwhelmed with the love of God. John is utterly amazed at the magnificence of the love of God for sinners. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,” he urges his readers (1 John 3:1). [3] We should never think that we, out of hearts naturally filled with affection, decided to lovingly embrace God prior to His coming into our lives. We were in a state of death (1 John 3:14), utterly unresponsive to divine love and totally unconcerned about divine purposes. “We love him,” John insists, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

One theologian who sought to emphasize this truth throughout his ministry was the North African Augustine (354-430), who, in his eloquent account of how the God of love and love of God pursued him over the course of years, makes the same point as John thus:

I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late!… you called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight. You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odour. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace. [4]

“O The Sweet Exchange”

Second, this love of God to which we respond is a love supremely shown in the death of Christ in the place of sinners: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). John’s point here is well seen in another patristic text, this time one written towards the end of the second century, when a pagan by the name of Diognetus was struck by the fact that early Christian communities were communities of love, something quite different from his pagan experience of social relationships. He asked a Christian he knew, a man who had a rich command of written Greek, what it was that made Christians love each other so much. [5] This author, whose name has not come down to us, took Diognetus to the cross and there showed him the deep love of Christ for sinners. “O the exceeding kindness and love of God,” this Christian author was constrained to cry out. Despite the fact that we had committed sins worthy of punishment and death and the fact that we were “wicked and impious,” God “did not hate or reject us.” [6] Rather,

in mercy he took our sins upon himself. He himself gave his own Son as a ransom for us — the Holy One for the godless, the Innocent One for the wicked, the Righteous One for the unrighteous, the Incorruptible for the corruptible, the Immortal for the mortal. For what else was able to cover our sins except his righteousness? In whom could we, who were lawless and godless, have been justified, but in the Son of God alone? O the sweet exchange! O the inscrutable work of God! O blessings beyond all expectation! — that the wickedness of many should be hidden in the one Righteous Man, and the righteousness of the One should justify the many wicked! [7]

Little wonder this Christian exclaims “O the sweet exchange” in the middle of this tremendous passage. Oh, to think that my sins—all of them, no exceptions: my sins of commission, thinking things I ought not to have thought, saying things I ought not to have said, doing things I ought not to have done; and my sins of omission, not thinking things I ought to have thought, not saying things I ought to have said, not doing things I ought to have done—sins that deserve the full fury of hell, have been laid on the dear head of the Son, the Lord Jesus, and He has borne them all! Is this not what John means when he says that God “loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”? But there is more, as the letter to Diognetus makes clear. As a result of the love embedded in the cross-work of Christ, I, who once deserved hell, have been clothed in Christ’s lived-out holiness — “O the sweet exchange!”

Now, the Christian author asks Diognetus, his pagan friend, once “you have acquired this knowledge [of God’s love], with what joy do you suppose you will be filled? Or how will you love him who so first loved you?” [8] Christians love one another because God first loved them and showed that love through the sacrificial gift of His own beloved Son for them.

“We Ought To Lay Down Our Lives For The Brethren”

Third, having experienced this wondrous love of God, we ought to love others as God in Christ has loved us: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16).” Our love for one another is to be an imitation of the love of Christ for us.

How foreign this must have sounded to the ears of many of John’s pagan contemporaries. The Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD), for instance, in his book On tranquility of mind (c.50 AD), notes how easy it is to be seized by “hatred of the human race” and overwhelmed with misery when we see all of the corruption and vice around us in society. What strategy did he propose to dispel such hatred? He suggested:

All things must be made light of and borne with a calm mind: it is more manlike to scoff at life than to bewail it. Furthermore, he who laughs at the human race also deserves better of it than he who mourns for it. The former leaves something still to be hoped for; the latter stupidly weeps over what he despairs of being able to correct: and he shows a greater mind who, after he has contemplated all things, cannot restrain his laughter than he who cannot restrain his tears, inasmuch as he does not allow his mind to be affected in the least, and does not consider anything great, severe, or even serious. [9]

For Seneca, then, the cure for hatred is “flippant ridicule” and sheer cynicism. [10] And how often have we, God’s people, gone down this path when it comes to dealing with brothers and sisters with whom we disagree? Rather than express hatred for them, we mock them behind their backs, ridicule them for their beliefs, make fun of them, and write them off. But John knows a better way: love like that of Christ is forgetful of self and concerned primarily for the other.

Of course, there is a fundamental difference between Christ’s laying down His life for us and what we do for others. His was an atonement for our sins. At most, our following Christ in this path of self-denying love will result in martyrdom. [11] In fact, lest John’s readers think that martyrdom is what he primarily has in mind, he immediately adds: “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 John 3:17). There might well be an occasion when imitation of Christ’s love demands martyrdom, but surely most frequently this imitation will take place in the hurly-burly of everyday life. [12]

Some Implications

Two implications flow out of John’s admonition to love our brothers and sisters according to the template of Christ’s love. First of all, it is obvious that, if you are going to love the brethren, you must belong to a body of believers, for that is where you discover the needs of other Christians and can extend to them Christ-like love. We live in a day when some Christians feel that they do not need to join themselves to a church. This attitude, though, has no New Testament warrant. Rather, we are told not to forego the assembling ourselves together, for that is the place where we can build one another up in love (Hebrews 10:24-25).

Then, we have to realize that it is in the love shown to the brethren that the reality of our faith is revealed. In the words of the Puritan divine John Owen (1616 –1683): “the apostle John…wrote his First Epistle almost to this very end and purpose—to let us know, that there was neither…evidence of the love of God to us, nor of our love to God, unless there was fervent and intense love towards the brethren.” [13] As you read the history of the church, it is not uncommon to come across an individual seemingly passionate in his love for Christ, but whose treatment of brothers and sisters with whom he disagreed made the gospel of Christ’s love seem a sham.

One of the great figures in the history of Ontario Baptists is Thomas Todhunter Shields (1873 –1955), pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church. During the 1920s, when it seemed that theological liberalism would devastate the Ontario Baptist community, Shields gave leadership to those who refused to bow the knee to German higher criticism and liberal theology. He was just the sort of man you needed in a battle of that intensity: fearless, largely oblivious to the opinions of others, and utterly committed to the truth. But once the fighting was over, he found it difficult to lay down his weapons; during the course of the 1930s and 1940s, he broke fellowship with virtually all of the men who had stood with him in the great Fundamentalist-Modernist struggle of the 1920s. He not only broke fellowship with these men, but he was never backward in verbally and publicly insulting those with whom he disagreed. The battles he waged with fellow believers, especially in the 1940s, which were reported on in many of the daily newspapers of that era, were indeed a sad spectacle. The fallout of those battles between believers— conservative, evangelical Baptists—still have reverberations in Ontario Baptist circles today.

A Concluding Example

In the late 160s, the Syrian humorist Lucian of Samosata (c.120– c.180), subsequently recognized as one of the most important literary figures of his day, wrote a biting satire about a Cynic philosopher by the name of Peregrinus, who had ended his days by burning himself to death on a pyre at the Olympic Games in 165. [14] For a while, Peregrinus, whom Lucian regarded as a rank charlatan, had adopted Christianity and according to Lucian, was even imprisoned for his Christian profession. Lucian described the way other Christians responded to Peregrinus’ imprisonment:

When Peregrinus was put in prison, the Christians thought it a terrible disaster, and did everything they could to try and get him out. When this proved impossible, they helped him in every other way they could think of. First thing every morning, you would see a crowd of old women, widows, and orphans waiting outside the prison .… They brought him in all sorts of food, talked to him about their religion, and called ‘that good man Peregrinus’ (for that was how they spoke of him) a second Socrates. Delegates even arrived from other Christian communities in Asia Minor, to help him by petitioning for his release and trying to comfort him.

Lucian then went on to comment about the gullibility of Christians in general—a comment that speaks powerfully of the nature of early Christian communities in the Roman Imperium.

They are always incredibly quick off the mark, when one of them gets into trouble like this — in fact they ignore their own interests completely. Why, they actually sent him large sums of money by way of compensation for his imprisonment, so that he made a considerable profit out of them! For the poor souls have persuaded themselves that they are immortal and will live for ever. As a result, they think nothing of death, and most of them are perfectly willing to sacrifice themselves. Besides, their first law-giver [that is, Christ] has convinced them that once they stop believing in Greek gods, and start worshipping that crucified sage of theirs, and living according to his laws, they are all each other’s brothers and sisters. So, taking this information on trust, without any guarantee of its truth, they think nothing else matters, and believe in common ownership—which means that any unscrupulous adventurer who comes along can soon make a fortune out of them, for the silly creatures are very easily taken in. [15]

On the basis of their devotion to Christ, their deeply held conviction that eternal realities are more important than merely temporal matters, and their fundamental belief that those who are in Christ are brothers and sisters, these early Christians were able to show true generosity and genuine love to one another. Lucian viewed their love for one another with derision. Later commentators, like the twentieth-century patristic scholar Henry Chadwick (d. 2008) have seen in this love of believers “probably the most potent single cause” of the growth of the church during the early Roman Imperium. [16] While we might want to range other key causes for the growth of the church in this era alongside that of love — for example, the sovereign power of the Word of God—there is little doubt that love was central to the life of the church then and needs to be just as central now.

Notes

1. Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 174-75; idem, “Introduction to 1 John,” ESV Study Bible (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 2425.
2. See Georg Strecker, The Johannine Letters, trans. Linda M. Maloney and ed. Harold Attridge (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), xl-xli for Ephesus as the place of composition.
3. See Yarbrough, 1-3 John, 175.
4. Confessions 10.27, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin Books, 1961), 231-32.
5. Letter to Diognetus 1.
6. Ibid., 9.1– 2, 4.
7. Ibid., 9.2-5, translation of the author.
8. Ibid., 10.3.
9. On tranquility of mind 15.1-3, trans. William Bell Langsdorf (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900), revised and ed. Michael S. Russo (2000; http://www.molloy. edu/sophia/seneca/tranquility.htm; accessed October 29, 2008). I am indebted to Yarbrough, 1-3 John, 202, for alerting me to this text by Seneca.
10. Ibid.
11. Daniel Akin, 1, 2, 3 John (New American Commentary, vol. 38; Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman and Holman, 2001), 158.
12. I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 194-96.
13. Gospel Charity in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (1850-1853 ed.; reprint Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 9: 259.
14. For the dating, see A.M. Harmon, “Lucian of Samosata: The Passing of Peregrinus,” n.22 (http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/peregrinus.htm; accessed October 24, 2008).
15. The Passing of Peregrinus, trans. Paul Turner, in Lucian: Satirical Sketches (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1961), 11-13.
16. Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, rev. ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 56.