Love of the Brethren #3

Q: What does the Bible say about love of the brethren?

The Bible emphasizes that love for fellow Christians is paramount and essential for spiritual growth. The Bible teaches that the love of the brethren holds a supreme place among the graces of the Christian life, as highlighted in passages throughout the New Testament. Ephesians 1:15 illustrates that the Apostle Paul was encouraged by the faith and love displayed among believers. This love is not merely a sentimental feeling but a vigorous commitment to act in ways that reflect God's love. According to 1 Peter 4:8, fervent love among believers covers a multitude of sins, thus demonstrating that love is vital for maintaining harmony and unity within the church body. Without such love, one cannot claim to be truly growing in grace.

Q: Why is forgiveness important for Christians?

Forgiveness is crucial for Christians because it reflects God's own forgiveness towards us and ensures harmony within the community of believers. Forgiveness stands as a non-negotiable command in the life of a Christian. Jesus emphasized its importance in Luke 17:3-4, where He instructs that if a brother repents, one must forgive him without limit. This teaches us that extending forgiveness is not just an obligation; it symbolizes the grace we have received from God. Furthermore, unforgiveness can lead to relational damage within the Christian community and can impede one's own spiritual growth. The measure of divine forgiveness we have received ought to be mirrored in our relationships, as highlighted in Matthew 18:21-35, where we are reminded that if we fail to forgive others, we demonstrate that we have not truly grasped the enormity of our own forgiveness from God.

Q: How do Christians practice love in the presence of sin?

Christians are called to practice love by covering sins and offering rebuke with gentleness when necessary. In the context of Christian fellowship, love operates in two dimensions—covering numerous minor faults and addressing specific sins constructively. As indicated in 1 Peter 4:8, love not only covers a multitude of sins but also commands us to engage in the difficult work of correction when necessary, as shown in Galatians 6:1. The principle here is that love compels us to confront sin within the community while doing so in a spirit of meekness. This ensures we do not indulge in a self-righteous attitude, but rather approach one another recognizing our mutual weaknesses. This dual approach promotes both unity and holiness in the church.

Q: How does brotherly love manifest in a church?

Brotherly love is demonstrated through forgiving one another, correcting with gentleness, and promoting unity. Brotherly love manifests in numerous tangible expressions within the church, as laid out in various scriptural directives. Central to this is the act of forgiveness, as elaborated in Luke 17:3-4 and Matthew 18:21-35, which stipulates that forgiveness be granted generously, reflecting God's own unconditional grace towards us. Additionally, Romans 12:10 encourages believers to love one another with brotherly affection, while Ephesians 4:2-3 calls for humility, gentleness, and patience as we strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit. Thus, love is both proactive in encouraging each other in faith and corrective when necessary, all aimed at building the body of Christ.

Primarily for the benefit of
those who are visiting with us and have not been present in
past weeks to sense the drift of where we are going in our
Sunday morning studies, perhaps a few words of review and introduction
will be most helpful to them, as well as, I hope, not too tedious
for those of us who have been here. In working our way through
the words of the Apostle to the Church at Ephesus in Ephesians
chapter 1, We came in our study to verse 15, in which the Apostle
indicated that the news concerning the growth and development of
the two great Christian graces of faith and love brought great
encouragement to his own heart and provoked him to pray with
greater fervency for the continuous work of God in the midst of the
Ephesian believers. And so having touched upon this
matter of love to all the saints in Ephesians 1.15, considering
a number of factors which have grown out of my pastoral dealings
with you as a congregation, I felt it necessary to digress or to
amplify on the subject of love of the brethren, and in particular
to consider some areas of biblical directive relative to love of
the brethren. And so, two weeks ago, we looked
at about thirty passages of Scripture, reading them without comment,
all of which combine to show that among the graces of the
Christian life, love of the brethren stands supreme above all others. Next, to unfeigned love to the
living God and to His Son, Jesus Christ, There is no grace that
stands more supreme in the place of primacy and descendancy than
the grace of brotherly love. And therefore, we drew these
very fundamental conclusions, having looked at those many passages,
that if we are not loving the brethren, we are guilty of gross
sin. If we are not growing in love,
we are not growing in grace. Thirdly, the presence or absence
of brotherly love is demonstrated in the concrete realities of
our dealing with men. We grow in love only insofar
as we grow in the tangible expressions of that love. And then fourthly,
this love of the brethren does not grow automatically, nor does
it know how to act automatically. So then the Scriptures are full
of exhortations to grow in love, The Scriptures are full of directions
as to how love will act. And one of the biggest heresies
that was ever spawned on the Church was that love needs no
directive, that love has its own built-in gyroscopes. But
it doesn't. Love needs to be directed. Hence,
the God who commands us to love Him with the whole heart tells
us what it means to love Him and how love will be expressed.
The same God who commands us to love the brethren says, and
this is what love will do. And so the scriptures are full
of these specific directives concerning love of the brethren. And all of this, of course, is
in the context of truth. We're not talking of love wrenched
loose from the sphere of truth, but as John says in 2 John 2,
he speaks of that lady whom he loves in the truth and for the
truth. sake. So all that we say concerning
brotherly love and how it acts, it is assumed that we're thinking
of love in the context of truth. Now then, we limited our field
of study as to how brotherly love will work to this one area,
namely, how brotherly love operates in the presence of sinful brothers
and sisters. One of the hard realities of
the Church of Christ is that even at its best, it is a gathering
of imperfectly sanctified saints. And therefore, unless we know
how to have our love directed to the problem of the sins of
the saints, we will not know very much about the actings of
brotherly love. Well then, we divided that general
area down into several sub-areas. First of all, we considered love
in the presence of the multitude of sins in the saints. those
many failures, those many weaknesses, those many shortcomings. They
are sins, 1 Peter 4.8. There is the multitude of sins,
but love of the brethren will cast a veil over those sins. Peter says, Have fervent love
among yourselves, for love shall cover a multitude of sins. If love is not there, these infirmities
and weaknesses and shortcomings will be marked, stored up in
the memory, dragged out to be broadcast, dragged out to be
thrown into the face of our brethren. But if we have fervent love among
ourselves, love shall cover the multitude of sins. Now, last
week we began to consider a second area in which the brethren have
the problem of sin. When it's that general accumulation
of weaknesses and infirmities, love covers them. Now, what about
those specific sins? Where one brother sins against
another? Where one brother does that which demands acknowledgment
of his sin? Well, the Bible gives us a directive.
Having a heart suffused with the love of Christ, we are to
deal with these sins, these specific sins between brother and brother,
between brother and sister in the family of God. We looked
at Matthew 5.23, a situation in which I'm conscious that I've
sinned against my brother. What does love to my brother
make me do? It makes me leave everything
else and go and acknowledge my fault and seek a reconciliation. What do I do if my brother has
sinned against me, and he has not yet come and sought my forgiveness? Mark 11.25 says, When I stand
praying, I am to forgive. If I have ought against any,
I am to forgive. I am not to wait for my brother
to come. I am to receive from God the grace of an attitude
of forgiveness. In my heart I am to extend the
spirit of forgiveness, and then If my brother repents of his
sin, I am to gladly and freely confer upon him the word of my
forgiveness. But I am not to wait till my
brother comes crawling to me before I know and experience
the spirit of forgiveness in my own heart. When ye stand praying,
Jesus said, if ye have ought against any, forgive And I was
meditating on this yesterday and thinking of the review and
the thought that came to me from the prodigal son. There's a beautiful
illustration of this. You remember, the prodigal was
coming back with a full purpose to repent. He said, I'll go back
and say, Father, I've sinned against heaven and in thy sight
am no more worthy to be called thy son. But now the scripture
records that when the father saw the son, while he was yet
a great way off, he ran to the son. And he fell upon his son's
neck, and he kissed him. Then the son said, Father, I
have sinned against heaven and in thy sight. Now, had the son
not acknowledged his sin, had the father thrown his arms around
him and said, Oh, son, it's good to have you back. Had the son
pushed his father off and said, Look, I'm not coming back to
acknowledge any wrong. I'm coming back to get a few
more bucks to go back to the hog pens. The Father could not
have conferred forgiveness upon that son. He could not have said,
son, I forgive you for your evil ways. There had to be the confession,
the express repentance of the son before forgiveness could
be conferred and the relationship of mutual fellowship restored. But had the son utterly rejected
the father's love and the father's concern, the father would go
back to that house with a heavy heart, but with the acknowledgement
that he had extended forgiveness from his heart. And so it is
with our brothers and with our sisters. We must know the spirit
of forgiveness in our hearts before they ever come and acknowledge
their complaint or before they own their sin when we do as we
find in Matthew 18.15 when we go to them to point out their
fault. Now that's basically the area
we've covered. Now we want under that second
area to look at several other verses this morning. What do
I do when my brother has sinned against me? What do I do when
I have sinned against my brother? How does love of the Brethren
conduct itself in this area? And the passages we want to look
at this morning deal with this very fundamental fact or fundamental
duty of the necessity of extending full and free forgiveness to
the one who has sinned against me. Luke chapter 17 is a key
passage, a parallel passage to Matthew 18. Now how does love
to the brethren conduct itself when the sinning brother has
acknowledged his or her sin and asked forgiveness? Luke chapter
17 beginning with verse 1. And he, Jesus, said unto his
disciples, It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should
come. The context of our Lord's words
is this blanket statement, as long as the world is what it
is, there will always be provocations to sin. It is impossible but
that occasions of stumbling should come. As long as man has a depraved
nature, And as long as enticements to evil are present, and evil
is one of the hard-nosed realities of human existence, occasions
of stumbling are going to come. Get rid of your starry-eyed idealism
that somehow you're going to wake up and find sin has gone
off on a journey to some nethermost part of the universe and no longer
will bother this planet in which we live. No, no, Jesus said.
It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should come. But
he's going to give some warnings. Woe unto him through whom they
do come. It were well for him if a millstone
were hanged about his neck and he were thrown in the sea rather
than he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. Sin will
be present. Face that fact. Accept it in
all of its ugliness. It's there. But warning number
one, You must avoid being the occasion of sin to others. Offenses will come, yes, causes
for offenses, but don't you be the instrument causing the offense. It were better that a millstone
were hanged about your neck than you become the instrument by
which someone stumbles into sin. That's warning number one. In
the light of the inevitability of sin, don't you be the occasion
of sin in others. Warning number two, Take heed
to yourselves, if thy brother sin, rebuke him, and if he repent,
forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven
times in the day, and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I
repent, thou shalt forgive him." What's the second admonition?
The second admonition is this, just as you're to avoid being
an occasion of stumbling, When your brother has stumbled, and
in particular, when his stumbling has affected you, never refuse
him forgiveness. You have the duty to rebuke him. You have the responsibility to
forgive him. Don't be the occasion of causing
your brother's sin. Don't refuse forgiveness to your
brother who sins and who then repents. Now, the precise intent
of our Lord in verse 3 is difficult to ascertain. Take heed to yourselves,
if thy brothers sin, and many of the better manuscripts do
not have the words against thee, in which case the meaning would
be this. If you see your brother committing a specific act of
sin, now this is not those multitude or that multitude of infirmities
with which he lives and you and I live day in and day out. Here
is a specific sin. The kind of sin that will cripple
his walk with God. The kind of sin that will bring
scandal to the name of Christ. A specific violation of the precepts
of God. Rebuke it. And if he repent,
forgive him. That is, assure him of the divine
forgiveness upon his repentance. If that's what our Lord meant,
then this would tie in with John chapter 20. Whosoever sins ye
remit, they are remitted. The fact that every believer
can promise to every other believer, if you confess your sins, He
is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse from all unrighteousness. We can pronounce the word of
divine forgiveness to those who repent. However, I think the
context indicates that our Lord is assuming it's the kind of
sin brought into focus in verse 4. And if he sinned against thee
seven times in the day, indicating that this sin of the brother
is particularly the sin against you, and should he sin against
you seven times in the day, seven times in one day, This man does
a specific act of evil of which I am the object. I must bear
the brunt of that evil. And seven times he comes and
says, I repent. I'm sorry. What are you to do?
Jesus said, thou shalt forgive him. In other words, there is
to be no extent, no limitations placed upon the measure of forgiveness
that you will extend to your brother. Now, as our Lord is
saying, if a man commits the same sin seven times over, well,
you would have reason to seriously question the genuineness of his
repentance if he went down the same road seven times, especially
in one day. And even though our Lord probably
has in mind that there were seven different wrongs, I don't think
we can limit it even if He fell before the seven times before
the same wrong. I don't see that our Lord puts
limitations upon it. When He comes and says, I repent,
you're not to take the place of God and say, wait a minute
now, if you really repented, how come you sinned against me
the second time? Now, I'm willing to grant it maybe the first time,
but I think my limit's three with you. The Lord says it becomes seven
times in one day, saying, I repent, I acknowledge the wrong, is willing
to make amends wherever tangible things can be done to show the
seriousness of the repentance. We are not to stand back and
say, now wait a minute, I'm going to see if there's going to be
an eighth time first. I will hold back forgiveness until you
bring forth fruits for repentance for a while, then I'll forgive."
There is nothing of that in the text. Jesus says, you're to forgive,
and forgive, and forgive, and forgive, and forgive, and forgive. Now granted, if this sin is such
that it has ruptured the intimacy of your fellowship, You cannot
simply, by saying, I forgive, expect that a relationship built
upon respect and confidence can be restored overnight. That may
take some time. Granted. Granted. That may take weeks and months.
And if the sin was of such a nature that the rupture went very, very
deep, that relationship may never be quite the same again as far
as the level of its intimacy and mutual trust and confidence.
But that has nothing to do with the fact that from the heart
I have forgiven my brother and I hold no grudge against him. Now what is taught here in a
few words in Luke 17 is taught in many words, enforced with
a vivid parable in Matthew chapter 18. So let's turn to the parallel
passage in Matthew 18. What does love do when my brother
sins against me, acknowledges his sin and seeks my forgiveness? Verse 21, following on the heels of our
Lord's treatment of this problem of a sin, one brother between
another, then Peter came and said unto him, to Jesus, Lord,
how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?
And I imagine Peter thought he was quite virtuous in making
the number this high. Until seven times? Lord, how
many times shall I forgive my brother? How many times shall
I say from the heart, I forgive you? Jesus said unto him, I say
not unto you until seven times, but until seventy times seven. What's our Lord saying? Here's
what He's saying. Peter, true forgiveness keeps
no record. It has no numerical bounds. Peter, if you've got your little
book, and you say, all right, that's number four, he's come,
he's got three more, and then he's going to get it. You show
that you never had the true spirit of forgiveness the first time.
Not until seven times, but Peter, until seventy times seven. In other words, Peter, true forgiveness
has no bounds to it. It is to be as extensive as seventy
times seven. And then he says, now Peter,
I'll show you why this is true. Verse 23, Therefore is the kingdom
of heaven likened unto a certain king. Our Lord is going to enforce
this principle with a parable. And you remember the basic facts
of the parable. Here's the man with a great debt,
and the king comes to him. Well, let's read the whole parable.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king who would
make a reckoning with his servants. And when he had begun to reckon,
one that was brought unto him that owed ten thousand talents,
but forasmuch as he had not wherewith to pay, his lord commanded him
to be sold, and his wife, and his children, and all that he
had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down
and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I
will pay thee all." And the Lord of that servant, being moved
with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. He
didn't just turn him loose and say, now pay back five bucks
a week. He released the debt. He said, from now on, when you
look at me, don't you look at me as you were in the relationship
of a debtor. You look at me in the relationship
of a grateful subject to a king, but that's all. When I look at
you, I don't look upon you as Mr. So-and-so who owes me so
much. No, no. I release you and I forgive the
debt. The page in the ledger there
in my counting room is torn out. It no longer has any debit. No,
it's forgiven. And so the man goes away. What
happens? Verse 28. He found one of his
fellow servants. Here's the king to the subject. The king who had all the power
of his regal authority behind him to, as it were, put the squeeze
on the man, the king condescends to forgive a servant. Now the
servant goes out and finds what? Not someone beneath him, but
a peer, an equal, a fellow servant who owed him a hundred shillings,
a pittance compared to what he owed. And he laid hold on him
and took him by the throat. Now this guy was dead in earnest.
so he's got his hands around your throat you know he's not
just giving you the first letter that comes out of the computer
will you please pay up he means business got him by the throat
saying pay what thou owest so his fellow servant while he had
a little life left in him fell down and besought him saying
have patience with me and i will pay thee and he would not but
he went and cast him into prison till he should pay that which
was due So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were
exceeding sorry, and came and told to their lord all that was
done. And his lord called unto him, and said unto him, Thou
wicked servant, I forgave thee all thy debt, because thou besoughtest
me. Shouldest thou not also have
had mercy on thy fellow servant, even as I had mercy on thee? If I, the king, forgave the debt
of you, the servant, when there was this distance between us
in place of authority and station? Should you not to one of your
fellow servants have shown this disposition of forgiveness? And
his Lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors, till he
should pay all that was due. So shall also my heavenly Father
do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from the
heart. And just as Jesus teaches in
the beginning of this parable that our forgiveness is to be
extensive with no bounds, He says it's to be intensive. It
is to be from the heart. No bounds to it. No sham in it. What was the problem with this
man? Well, the problem was this. He had never drunk of the spirit
of forgiveness, and therefore he had a total inability to forgive
others. The king says, ought you not
to have forgiven your fellow servant when I forgave you? He says, in essence, look, if
you had any understanding and appreciation of what I did for
you, I, the king, have forgiven your great, your mountainous
debt. Walking in the sense of the wonder
of that, when your fellow servant came and pled for mercy with
his pittance, You would have immediately reasoned, wait a
minute, if the king could have brought to bear upon me all the
authority of his throne and the rights of that throne to have
me cast into the debtor's prison, and yet he freely forgave me,
the king to the servant. Cly, of course, my fellow servant,
I can forgive your debt, of course, but his inability to forgive
his fellow servants showed that he had never grasped the spirit
of the forgiveness that was extended to him. And that's the essential
lesson of this parable, so that Jesus says, if you do not forgive
your brothers from the heart, you've never drunk of the spirit
of divine forgiveness, you've never been forgiven yourself,
you'll be delivered to the torment. And frankly, I am frightened
when I think of the churches all across this country in which
I've been, where they have been crippled for years because certain
professed brothers and sisters will not forgive one another.
And yet they claim to be recipients of divine forgiveness? Impossible. Don't get bogged down in the
details of the parable, how could the forgiven servants As it were,
have His forgiveness taken back and be delivered. This is not
a parable to teach the nature of justification. It's a parable
to teach the necessity and the reality of the spirit of forgiveness
which knows no bounds and flows from the heart of a man, a woman,
who appreciates divine forgiveness. That's why in all the exhortations
in the epistles, not all but almost all without exception,
every admonition and exhortation to brotherly love is immediately
taken back into the context of divine love expressed at Calvary. Let's look at a couple specimen
passages. Turn please to Ephesians chapter 5. Verse 1, Be therefore imitators of God
as beloved children, and walk in love. What kind of love? Where do we learn what love is?
He goes on to tell us, even as Christ also loved you and gave
himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an
odor of a sweet smell. Paul knows that he has an immediate
entrance into the heart of every forgiven sinner. Every true saint
has a highway in his heart from there to Mount Calvary. And so
he says, as I would lay the highway of love between you and your
brother, he said, let me ask you to keep in your mind his
love to you. Walk in love as he loved. Later on in the chapter, he does
the same thing with husbands. Husbands, love your wives. Well,
what's it mean to love my wife? As Christ also loved the church
and gave himself for the church. Verse 25. What does he do? Well,
you see, he does this thing that we're saying. He relates the
expression of forgiveness and love at the human level to that
great expression of God's love to us. It's done again in 1 John
4, 13-16. It's done in chapter 4, verses
7-10. God is love. He that loveth is
begotten of God. And He says, Hereby know we the
love of God, because He sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. So what does this tell us? It
tells us that if we have received divine forgiveness, then we know
what it is to have so drunk of the spirit of forgiveness that
we are enabled to forgive others. And if we cannot forgive others,
it's because we ourselves are not forgiven. Hence the words
of Jesus, If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will
your heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses. Why? Because
you're still in the state of impenitence. You've never drunk
of His forgiveness. Now may I answer some very practical
questions, and I've already suggested the answer to the first one.
How? How may we be brought to this
place? Where if our brothers or sisters
sin against us seven times in the day and say to us seven times
in the day, I repent? Or even if they don't say it,
I haven't been able to get to them yet. Perhaps their sin has
come to me by way of another. How am I to have that disposition
of forgiveness extended until it can be conferred? I haven't
yet been able to get to them to rebuke them. How is my heart
to be delivered from rancor and bitterness and the desire to
take vengeance and the desire to strike back? How? Well, the
only answer I know to that is the one set forth in these scriptures
that I've read. We must drink deeply and often
at the fountain of divine forgiveness until our spirits are permeated
with the perspectives of that forgiveness. That's why only
a child of God can experience what we're talking about this
morning. You see, the man out in the world who's been wronged
and knows he's been wronged and can prove his case in a court
of law, he's filled with rancor and bitterness and the desire
to take vengeance, and he has no reference point to know a
spirit of forgiveness that is not native to his flesh, but
the people of God do. They are constituted the people
of God because the King, the Lord of heaven and earth, has
condescended in Jesus Christ to extend and confer forgiveness. They don't go around swaggering
and talking about my rights with reference to their fellow men
because their God didn't talk about His rights with reference
to them. They don't go around saying, I want justice done. I'm glad there's a God who dealt
with them in grace and pity and not in justice. We're talking
now about the family of God. We're not talking about the principles
that operate out there in God's common grace in society and civil
justice. I'm not talking about that. I'm
talking about the family of God. It operates on totally different
principles because the root of the Christian ethic is redemptive,
not legal. and all the legal demands are
poured through redemptive conduits into the life of God's people.
And so we as God's people are grateful that we have the spirit
of forgiveness infused into our hearts and are therefore enabled
by the Spirit to extend that forgiveness to others. So in
answer to the question, how can we be those who meet these directives,
drink deeply at the fountain of divine forgiveness? Often
and long drink deeply there, and then secondly, face honestly
the implications and consequences of failure to extend forgiveness
in love. There are times when gospel motives
don't move us. And legal motives can be a check
to us. And both of those are legitimate in the life of God's
servant. There are times when Jesus warned
about the danger of indulging sin because, he says, the path
to which it leads is perdition. If thy hand offend thee, cut
it off. It is better to enter into life maimed than having
two hands to go into hell. And so there is this mixture.
And if you are not moved sufficiently by gospel motives, and if your
spiritual condition is such that you are not moved by those, will
you remember this? Jesus said, So shall my Father
do to every one of you that forgives not from the heart. Deliver them
to the tormentors. Face honestly the implications
and consequences of your failure to love unto forgiveness. For the same Bible which says
those that transgress and abide not in the truth have not God,
2 John 9, also says in 1 John 4,8, he that loveth not knoweth
not God. That means love operative in
the concrete realities of sinning brethren and what I do with them
when they sin against me and when I sin against them. You
see, the Bible doesn't come to us in some detached, unrealistic,
idealistic setting. It comes to us in the realism
of imperfect saints having to live together in the family of
God. And we're going to harm one another. We're going to sin
against one another. Now, we don't do it because the
Bible says we will. The Bible says we will because
it knows we will and wants to meet us with directives that
will lead us back into the place of reconciliation, one with another. Well, I'm torn because there's
another whole area that I want to touch on this morning. This
has been difficult. I never know how far we're getting
each day. But there's another area that needs to be touched
on, because there are some vital passages we've not yet considered.
Under the same general heading of love in the midst of sinning
brethren, we've seen what love does to that great mountain of
little picayune things. It covers them. We've seen what
love does when I remember I've sinned against my brother, Matthew
5. When my brother has sinned against me, Mark 11, Matthew
18. What we do when the brother who has sinned acknowledges the
sin and seeks forgiveness, Luke 17, Matthew 18, 21 and following. Now, what do we do if we're acting
responsibly in love when our brother sins, but it's not a
sin particularly directed against us? Let me illustrate. I see
one of my brothers slacking off in the use of the means of grace
and I realize he's sinning against his own soul and against God.
What do I do? Perhaps I'm in his home and I
see that he's very churlish with his wife, treats her like a chattel
and a servant instead of like a creature in the image of God,
like the object of the tender, considerate love of Christ to
his church. What do I do? Perhaps in that
same home I see a wife who is obviously insubordinate to her
husband's headship. Or perhaps I see slackness with
reference to the children. I see them sinning against their
children as well as against God by not disciplining them, by
not governing them and ruling them in love. Perhaps I happen
to hear in conversation dishonesty in business, some shadiness in
business ethics that my brother discloses to me, or I notice
a sharpness in speech in his dealings with others. What do
I do? The sin is not directly against
me. I'm not affected in a direct sense. What is my responsibility? And the problem is accented because
not only is it not against me, but I'm so sinful myself. I can
see my brother's sin, but I'm sure he sees sins in me. And
I'm not an elder charged with the spiritual authority to admonish. What am I to do? What does love
do in this case? Well, the Bible gives us some
principles in answer to that question. Now I want you to turn
with me to one of the key texts regarding this issue, and it's
found in the Old Testament in the book of Leviticus. Of all
places, amidst all the offerings and
sacrifices and sundry laws. Here's one of the most balanced
statements in all of Scripture as to what love prompts me to
do and directs me to do in the case of the sin of my brother
that is not directly against me. Leviticus 19 and verse 17. Leviticus 19. Verse 17. Thou shalt not hate
thy brother in thy heart. Here is a prohibition to any
hatred in the heart. Now just leave off the next phrase
for a minute. Now down to verse 18. Thou shalt not take vengeance
nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I am the Lord. Now here you have
this admonition that we're going to look at in a minute, or this
directive, sandwiched between these exhortations to love. Thou
shalt not hate thy brother, but thou shalt love him as thyself.
Here's an exhortation to love, couched in the negative and the
positive. Now, what is sandwiched in between it? Well, look carefully.
Thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor, and not bear sin because
of him. What does love to my neighbor
do if I don't hate my brother in my heart? If I'm seeking to
love him as myself, what will I do? This text says, love will
move me to rebuke him for his sin and indicating if I don't,
I am guilty of the sin of lovelessness by my failure to rebuke. thou
shalt surely rebuke him and not bear sin. If I don't rebuke him,
I will be chargeable with the sin of failing to discharge my
obligations of love. He'll be charged with the sin
he's committed. I'll be charged with my sin in
failing to rebuke him." So then, Any dichotomy in our thinking
between love and rebuke should be swept away by a passage like
this that says, love must rebuke. And failure to rebuke is indeed
failure to love. Now this is precisely what is
said in different terms in Proverbs 27, verses 5 and 6. Better is
open rebuke than love that is hidden. Faithful are the wounds
of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are profuse or are deceitful. Better is open rebuke than secret
love. And Jesus says this in His dealings
with His own in Revelation 2. As many as I love, Revelation
3, I rebuke and I chase. So then, when I see my brother
sin, A specific sin in the context of 1 Peter 4.8, by God's grace,
I have that love that is covering the multitude of little faults
and failures and things that he's working on. But here's obviously
a sin that he is either blind to or if not blind to it, he
is willfully refusing to deal with it. What does love move
me to do? Love moves me to rebuke him. Love prompts me to expose His
sin to Him, even though it has nothing to do with me directly. As we'll see next week, God willing,
it has much to do with me indirectly. Transfer this passage from Leviticus
now over into the statement of Galatians 6.1. Tie them together,
and I think you'll see a comprehensive picture of what our responsibility
is. Galatians 6.1. Brethren, even if a man be overtaken
in any trespass, and the form of the verb here means he has
fallen before a specific sin, not those multitudes of sins
that love covers, but he's overtaken in a specific act of sin that
may become a habit of sin. If any man be overtaken in any
trespass, what are we to do? Ye who are spiritual, and what
does that mean? It means ye who are actuated
by those principles and attitudes that are born of the Spirit's
work in you. The fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, self-control. You who
can go to that brother not out of the hypercritical spirit of
a wrathful vengeance type of a context. No, no, no. This is
not carte blanche to go whacking people to pieces because you've
got some of your own frustrations that you want to give vent to
on your brethren. No, no. You see the man overtaken
in the fault and you know that this not only brings grief to
him, but dishonors his Lord, and in some measure, dishonors
the family of God, and grieves and quenches the Spirit, and
actuated by those attitudes born of the work of the Spirit, ye
which are spiritual, what are you to do? Restore such a one. The word restore means putting
back together. It's the word used for mending
the nets in the Gospels. Restore such a one. Seek to put
that limb back in joint. Seek to skillfully and lovingly
and tenderly cut out that cancerous growth that has begun to be manifest
in his life. Restore such an one in a spirit
of gentleness. and all the while considering
thyself, looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted." What's
the overall impression of this text? Well, it's that the person
who sees that brother's sin and is intent to help him is motivated
by true love. He's not motivated by his jaundiced
eye or by a sense that he is somehow the Lord's chief high
executioner or the Lord's surgeon general in the church, and he's
to go around with his scalpel cutting whatever he sees that
looks like cancerous growth. No, no. If I happen to have some
growth that need to be removed, and I did a few years ago, I'm
not going to put myself in the hands of a physician who just
said, oh, there's a growth somewhere on the back of his head there,
and here's a scalpel, and I'll go at it. No, sir, I want to
know that I had someone who handled that thing delicately, who cut
only when he had to and only where he needed to, and then
sewed me up as soon as all the necessary cutting was done. Now,
if that's true with handling the body, how much more handling
the delicate spirits of men? We're not to leave the sin unrebuked. That is to commit sin against
our brother. But when we go, we are to go
in that spirit of meekness, all the while conscious that we ourselves
could fall in that same area, and therefore there will be no
judgmental spirit, no pharisaical, holier-than-thou spirit. But
we will nonetheless go, and we don't allow the sense of our
own weakness to keep us back from going. But if we go, In
the Spirit, we go to set that bone, skillfully to cut out that
which is a grief to the Lord and a grief to our brethren.
And it's amazing when people have this attitude. And if you
have it, you may not have the right words. How many times I've
struggled as a pastor having to speak to my brothers. I remember
a few months ago a vivid example of this. I saw in a dear brother
an area that's hard to talk to anybody about. It was about his
family life. and he just wasn't scripturally disciplining his
kids. That's all. It was just that plain. I didn't
want to talk to him. I said, Lord, I don't want to
talk to that brother. Sense of duty kept coming back. I tried
to pray. You know, there's nothing more spiritual to do when you're
supposed to be out doing something than to try to pray, you know.
You make prayer an excuse for obedience, and I was desperately
trying to do this, but I couldn't pray. I might as well have been
talking to myself. The heavens were brass. There was no spirit
of prayer. or to obey is better than to
sacrifice and to hearken to Father Rem's. And finally I just said,
Lord, I've got to go. I think my spirit's right. I
want to help this brother. I want his good. I don't have
any other desire than that. And I didn't go very eloquently
or skillfully. I fumbled and stumbled and just
kind of blurted out what was on my heart. But oh, what a gracious
reception I had. Because you see, people sense
when you come in the spirit of meekness, when it's paining you
to cut. And the only thing that's making
you cut is love. They sense this. And when they
do, if they're true children of God, most of the time you'll
find them receiving you. And if they don't receive you,
God calls them fools. You go through the book of Proverbs.
We don't have time this morning. I had a whole bunch of verses
here listed to read. where it speaks of the virtue
of the man who receives rebuke. And again and again, God says,
the man who receives rebuke and reproof is the wise man. Listen,
when you cut yourself off from the loving rebukes of mom and
dad and brothers and sisters in the faith, you are cutting
yourself off from one of the great means which God has ordained
for your perseverance in the faith. And if you cut off the
means for perseverance, it may be a sign that there is no real
disposition to persevere implanted in your heart by the Holy Ghost.
For if the Holy Spirit has effectually drawn you to Christ and put the
seeds of divine life within you, and is purposing to bring them
to their completion in that day, then He puts within you a disposition
to receive all that He has ordained to carry out that work of perseverance.
And if one of those means is the loving rebukes of your brethren,
one of the surest marks you're a child of God is that you welcome
those faithful wounds of your faithful friends. And you embrace
their rebukes. You don't suddenly draw up and
defend yourself and excuse yourself and spout out your folly by saying
how wise you are and you don't need their rebukes. No, no. Love
rebukes and Christian grace receives that rebuke. Now as we close,
and I've sort of had to manipulate here because I'm not done and
I have to give some wholeness to it, don't assume that this
is your primary task in the plan of God, to go around rebuking
people. The Bible says even to elders that their first task
is not rebuking people and exhorting others, but taking care of themselves.
Acts 20, 28, Paul says to elders, take heed to yourselves and to
all the flock. Don't anyone assume that your
first task in the kingdom of God is to go around restoring
others. You keep your own self in line.
That's your first job. Secondly, don't ever engage in
this activity without prayerful, studied purpose. Don't do that. Aim before you
shoot. Think, meditate, pray before
you go to the brother or to the sister. Thirdly, seek to make
your rebuke. as receivable as possible. There's
two ways to rebuke people. Come to your brother and say,
now, brother, I've seen you do such and such, and that's sin,
and you better repent. Now, that all may be true, but
if you come and say, brother, you've made it very evident that
with all your heart you want to please the Lord, and fully
conscious that I want to please Him and there are many areas
I fall short, have you considered that maybe in this area You accomplish
the same thing, but oh, how different. In other words, don't stir up
people's flesh unnecessarily. Do you have remaining corruption
that can be stirred up by a certain approach? Do you? I do. Well,
maybe your brother or sister does, too. And as you would that
others do unto you, even so do unto them. Put a little oil on
the sword before you stick it in. You don't need to go at people
with rusty swords. Then the fourth directive is, when you're on the receiving
end, thank God for the rebukes of your friends. Well, as I say,
it's been an awkward thing because I've had to condense and close
and I'm not done. And I've never yet read a book
that tells you how to handle that. But oh, is it too much
to expect that God will help us to walk responsibly in this
kind of love, not the saccharine, unprincipled, sloshy sentiment
that says, oh well, everything's fine and everybody's all right.
No, no, no. That faces the reality of our
ugly sins against God and one another. Love that covers the
multitude of those inconsequential things. Love that moves us to
go to the brother whom we have offended. Love that moves the
brother to come to me. Love that moves me to extend
forgiveness long before I have an opportunity to confer it.
Love that moves me to confer forgiveness when my brother has
acknowledged his wrong and has repented. Love that moves us
to loving rebuke one to another, restoring one another in the
spirit of meekness. This is how love works in an
assembly. God never said that love will
purge away all sin. so that there'll be no need to
rebuke, but he has said that love will enable us to rebuke
in meekness and be a means and instrument of grace in one another's
life. Oh, may we drink deeply of the
spirit of divine forgiveness and in that spirit forgive one
another. Let us pray.

Love of the Brethren #3

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about love of the brethren?

Why is forgiveness important for Christians?

How do Christians practice love in the presence of sin?

How does brotherly love manifest in a church?

Sermon Transcript

About Albert N. Martin

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Love of the Brethren #3

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about love of the brethren?

Why is forgiveness important for Christians?

How do Christians practice love in the presence of sin?

How does brotherly love manifest in a church?

Sermon Transcript

About Albert N. Martin

Comments

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