Love to God and Others

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? - 1 John 4:20

    John is saying here that all who truly love the living God also love those who are in the image of God, and that which is identified with God here and now on the earth. How foolish it would then be to claim to love God while holding in contempt those things which are God’s—the very people he has made for himself and by whom he is pleased to reveal and glorify himself.

    You have never seen God and this leaves you free to imagine whatever you will about God. This allows you to form and make a character which pleases you and then call it “god.” "Thou thoughtest I was altogether such an one as thyself," said the Lord in Psalm 50:21.

    But the living God is revealed in his own dear Son who walked on this earth. He is revealed in his Word, his providence, his creation, and yes, in his church! The people of God (frail and weak though they may be) are a part of God himself.

    He loves them, redeems them, indwells them, and uses them to accomplish his purpose and glory. So to not love them and to refuse to be identified with them in their fellowship and worship is to declare loud and clear that we really do not know and love God. "He that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit." (I Thess. 4:8).

    Therefore, the religious recluse who can find no one who agrees with him, no one who pleases him, no one and nothing to enjoy, and no fellowship in which to delight, is not really in love with God at all - he’s just in love with himself. He is settled in self-righteousness and in under a false concept of God. That which he sees and hates is that which God made. That church which he shuns is God's church. That providence in which he finds no delight is God's providence by which God works his divine will.

    Christ said, "In as much as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me” (Mt. 25:45). Christ and his church are one! John is simply telling us, in no uncertain terms, that it is impossible to love one and not love the other.