1 John chapter 3 and verse 11. For this is the message that
he heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that
wicked one and slew his brother, and wherefore slew he him? Because
his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. Marvel
not, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have
passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that
loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his
brother is a murderer, and he know that no murderer hath eternal
life abiding in him. 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. But whoso hath this world's goods,
and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of
compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. In his gospel, the gospel of
John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in his gospel, the beloved
apostle recorded Christ's new commandment to us. In John chapter 13, verse 34
and 5, we hear the Lord speaking and he says, A new commandment
I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that
ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. So we are reminded here in this
opening verse of our reading today that John is speaking about
a commandment that they had from the beginning. And it is perhaps
this commandment, this new commandment of the Lord that came from the
beginning of the ministry of the Lord, the beginning of the
ministry of the apostles that characterized their ministry
that we have reference And the fact that it's a new commandment,
that word new in there hasn't to be understood in the sense
that it's never been heard of before or it's a complete innovation
and novelty. The word new in scripture bears
a sense of freshness, like it's been represented or excellence. This is an excellent commandment,
it's a new commandment, it's a fresh, it's an excellent commandment,
it's a better way of thinking, it's a superior approach and
what the Lord is telling us here with this new commandment, it's
the same as perhaps we might think of a new name or a new
covenant. It's not that it's a new covenant
that had just begun in the New Testament, but rather it was
a more excellent understanding, a more excellent revelation,
a freshness, as it were, of that everlasting covenant, which is
our relationship with God through the great work of the triune
God in covenant union together. So here is this new covenant
and the new commandment is a love principle. Love as a principle
of life which is to characterize the disciple's relationship one
with another. And it speaks about a quality
and a characteristic that is evident in the new birth. an evidence of grace. Loving
the brethren, loving one another is an evidence, a characteristic
of the new birth. And so what we have seen in recent
weeks is that faith and hope and love that Paul speaks about
in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, faith, hope and love, these three
all serve to show the effect or the outcome of spiritual life. When the Holy Spirit regenerates,
when he quickens and calls life into being, when a new creation
is made, In a believer's conversion, regeneration and subsequent conversion,
as that new life is created, so there is an effect, there
is a faith which is given. There is a hope which is created
and there is a love which is manifested. John calls it, in
fact, a manifestation. and I looked up that word manifestation
and it carries the sense of shining or blowing and it's to do with
revelation. So here we see that this love
which John is speaking about to us today, this brotherly love
is an evidence of spiritual life in a believer. So, we read it
last week, we didn't read it today, but the 10th verse of
1 John chapter 3 says, In this the children of God are manifest. In this the children of God shine.
and the children of the devil. Whosoever doeth not righteousness
is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. So these
were the two references that are made to identify or manifest
children of God. They do righteousness and they
love their brethren. Now we've seen that doing righteousness
is not good works, it's not legal duty or outward practices such
as worldly men and women might imagine, recommend them to God
or stand and speak for them or speak on their behalf before
God. There are many, many people who think that the things that
they do are going to represent them and give them some benefit
and some merit before God in a day to come, if there is ever
any judgment, if there is ever any everlasting life or everlasting
separation, well then at least I've been good. At least I've
done my fair share of good works. But this is not what the apostle
is talking about when he speaks of doing righteousness. And rather, it is the principle
implanted in the heart And it is a response to that heart principle
which the Holy Spirit gives us that produces the faith and the
hope and the belief and the trust that characterises a believer. That faith and hope, that trust
is a reliance and dependence on the finished work of the cross. It's confidence in the saving
power of Christ's blood and sacrifice, his atoning for sin, his making
reconciliation between God and those he died for. And it hopes upon that righteousness
that is imputed. We thought about that last week.
It hopes upon that righteousness imputed, those covenant promises
being fulfilled, and the eternal life which is prepared for those
who love God. And this is what faith is. I
used the word there a few moments ago. I said it is confidence
in the saving power of Christ's blood. That word confidence,
the little prefix there, con, just means through. And fidence
in confidence is speaking about faith, fides, and it's faith,
it's through faith. Our confidence in the promises
of God is through faith. We haven't seen them like Abraham
hadn't seen them. He hadn't possessed. He didn't
see how it was possible that a child could be born. He didn't
see how it was possible that he would have seed in his old
age. And we will see that that challenge
besets him in the events that will come in his lifetime. But
that's what confidence is. It is fides. Another word that
has that fides in it is infidel. And that is the contrary in their
means opposite to faith. And we speak about people who
have no faith as infidels. They're infidels and heathen.
They've no faith. And here is a distinguishing
feature of the true church of Jesus Christ. By this, there
is a manifestation. Faith, hope, and love manifest
those who are the true sons of God. Now, I I worry about jargon
sometimes and I worry about my vocabulary and I do hope that
we don't speak about things like reconciliation and atonement
and righteousness imputed and you just seem to say, well these
are the religious words that a preacher uses. No, this is
the very essence of our faith. It is these very things that
we are looking towards. These are the very things that
explain to us, that put meat around the bones, as it were,
of the gospel revelation of what Jesus Christ has done. And it
is these very words, this language that is the vocabulary of Gospel
preaching that we are to learn about and we are to have our
confidence in. Because these things tell us
of what Jesus has done. Our faith is looking away from
self and self-righteousness and looking to Christ and Christ's
righteousness. Our faith is believing in God's
word and the promises that God makes in his word. It is relying
on the acceptability of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ before
the Father in His holiness as our way of peace with God. And faith acknowledges the Lord
Jesus Christ as the only Saviour. Faith is a mark of a believer. and hope personalises that faith. We know, we learn about what
the Lord Jesus Christ has done in the Gospel and then we have
a hope. We have a hope that we have entered
into the benefits of that work. We bring our need to the cross
of Christ. We bring our sin to the foot
of the Saviour. and we rely on him and what he
has done to save our souls and make us right with God, to fit
us for eternal life. faith and hope and love is the
other thing that John is speaking about here. Love evidences or
manifests that new view that it is a passion and it is a desire
to honour and serve the Lord because we see what he has done
and we have hope that we are the beneficiaries of that work
and we find our hearts being drawn out to God. And faith and hope and love are
graces. They are graces that are imparted. We don't inspire faith in ourselves. We can't work up faith. We can't
do faith. The scriptures are clear on this
matter. The carnal man is opposed to the things of God. We don't
want to believe in God. We can't believe in God. It is
an impossibility. Such is the depravity of our
nature, such as the fallen condition in which we are in. And yet faith
being implanted by God the Holy Spirit gives us grounds for hope
that we might have everlasting life through the work of Jesus
Christ and all that he has done. And that same work of grace elicits
and draws forth from us, manifests from us. love towards God. Christ's love in us brings forth
love from us. And as always, I've mentioned
this before many times, I stressed it a little bit in the little
letter that I sent out yesterday with the hymn numbers in it.
As always, Christ's commands are his enablings. we made reference
to the shalls and the wills of Scripture and how Joseph Irons
in his hymns had picked up on that theme and wrote those two
lovely hymns about God's shalls and wills, that he shall and
we will showing the power of our God. All that God requires
of us, he provides for us. All that the Lord Jesus Christ
calls forth from us, he first implants in us, like faith and
hope and love, the graces. But here's the thing, This manifestation
of love for the brethren. What is it that the Lord says?
A new commandment I give unto thee that you love one another
as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that
you are my disciples. Just think upon that little phrase
for a moment or two. By this shall all men know that
ye are my disciples if ye have love one for another. This is the love that John is
speaking about here in 1 John chapter three. That same love
that the Lord Jesus Christ had spoken to him about. Now, the manifestation of that
love for the brethren, it may well be evidence of conversion
to all men, to the world around about. By this shall all men
know that you are my disciples. And even our fellow believers,
they may be able to see that evidence in our life. But, A bruised sinner and a sensitive
sinner. One of the Lord's people, one
of the Lord's little ones who's tempted and tried, who's beaten
down, who is attacked by the devil, who doubts. All that that
person can say is that they wish they could love more. They wish
that they didn't see the rising up of the animosity, the coldness
and the barrenness of our feelings one for another. The criticism
that seems to be in our hearts for our fellow brothers and sisters
in Christ and the cynicism that we have so often about the way
in which our Christian relationships go. That's how the bruised saint
and the sensitive sinner thinks on these things. Maybe that's
how you feel. You long to love more. You long
to love better. And sometimes you doubt that
you love at all. Is that you? Is that me? Now you remember the purpose
that we've already established in thinking about these passages
in 1 John together. We have said that we are preaching
through 1 John with a view to comforting those who struggle
with assurance. We are seeking, using these passages,
which I think is John's design. We're not stepping outside the
boundaries of John's purpose here. I believe this is John's
design, and therefore it is quite appropriate that we place this
emphasis upon these verses. But we are seeking together today,
right now, in these passages, in these sermons, to provide
encouragement for the doubters. and comfort for those that are
tried and tempted in their life, with their relationships, with
their church relationships, with the relationships between brothers
and sisters in Christ. And so for that reason, what
I want to do today, and I'm aware of the time, but I just want
to, as it were, lift us on to slightly higher ground in order
for us to see what this little phrase that we love the brethren
means. So in verse 10, we saw there
John saying, whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God,
neither he that loveth not his brother. Well, many people will
find that crippling in their spiritual life, bruising as to
whether or not they even have life. But we've seen that that
righteousness is revealed by faith and received in hope. And what is that also to do with
loving our brother? Loving the brethren. So before
I answer that, let me ask this simple question. Who is our brother? Who is our brother? And I think
John has been preparing us from the opening verses of this epistle
to properly identify the Lord Jesus Christ as our brother. It is Christ who is the Son of
God, as all the elect are the sons of God. So that relationship
that John has been setting before us and putting in this juxtaposition,
if you like, to use an unnecessary word, is to show us the relationship
that is between us. Christ is the Son of God and
we are sons of God. And the duplication of names
is no coincidence. It describes the relationship
between the heirs and the joint heirs of the father and it primarily
identifies our brother. And this is a well-established
Bible theme. In the Old Testament, in the
beautiful book about the Shulamite and her lover, who we take to
be the King Solomon, that is a picture there of Christ and
his bride. But the Shulamite in Solomon's
song speaks as the Old Testament church longing for Christ's future
coming. and she describes that coming
as saying that she is looking forward to seeing her brother. We are brethren in Christ because
we are all sons by adoption of the same father. Now we made
mention that we're not getting hung up on whether it's sons
and daughters here because the sons speaks about the rights
that we possess. It's nothing to do with masculine
or feminine. It's speaking about the rights that we possess. And
so we are sons together with Christ, therefore heirs and joint
heirs with him. And Ephesians, Paul says in Ephesians
chapter three, verse 14, even the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is
named. So the Father, God the Father
looks upon the whole family with Christ at its head and the whole
family as the sons of God. Brethren together with Jesus,
our elder brother, the firstborn among many brethren. Romans 8,
29. Or bone of his bone, flesh of
his flesh. Ephesians chapter five, verse
20. And that's a truly wonderful
relationship for us to think about, for us to grasp that Jesus
Christ is our brother. It speaks of familiarity. It
speaks of affection. It speaks of care. It speaks
of protection. The Lord Jesus Christ, our elder
brother, And that in itself fulfils a
beautiful Old Testament type which is given to us in Leviticus. I'm going to read it to you in
a moment. But it's a beautiful type of
restoration and how the brother goes forth in order to recover
his brother who has fallen. recovers and accomplishes on
the behalf of the fallen brother that which the fallen brother
could not do for himself. Moses writes about it in Leviticus
chapter 25. I'm just going to give you one
verse for the sake of time, but if you wanted to look at it later
yourself, you could do that. Verse 35 is the verse that I
have here. And here's what it says. And
if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee,
then thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger
or a sojourner, that he may live with thee. Now that was an Old
Testament injunction given to the people of Israel, but it
was a type of Christ. It was a type of our elder brother
sent to his brethren, fallen in decay, that they may be raised
up and gathered in that they may live with him. And so Christ,
in his redemptive work, has fulfilled that type beautifully. And well
might John say then, what manner of love, what manner of love
the Father hath bestowed upon us that the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, should be set apart, should be sent to his
brothers, poor, fallen, decayed, for the purpose that we might
live with him. And that's the blessed family
union of covenant grace, covenant purpose by which the little children,
the fallen sons of God are searched out in this world, sought for
by the good shepherd, redeemed and recovered and restored and
given glory in heaven. Now, let me ask you a question.
You who struggle with assurance, who wonder if Christ came to
die and to suffer for you, who doubt because of the way that
you feel so often and the weariness that you have in your soul and
the coldness that you have in your heart, who doubt that you
can really possess so great a salvation, because you don't feel the heat,
you don't feel the warmth, you don't feel the energy, you don't
feel the vitality, and you don't feel the love And you think that
those are marks of the fact that really you don't have the root
of the matter at all. Let me ask you a question. How
do you react to this work of the elder brother coming for
the redemption and recovery of his brethren? How do you react
to that? Does that gospel embarrass you?
Is that a word that you would use to describe how you feel
about it? I'm being serious. Does that gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ coming into this world, laying down his life for
his brethren, laying down his life for his people, for his
family, for his body, do you find it embarrassing? Are you
ashamed of that gospel? Are you ashamed of Jesus Christ?
Are you ashamed of the work that he has done? Now I hope your
answer to that is, oh no, no, no, no, never would I be ashamed
of Christ's work on the cross. I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed
of my sin. I'm ashamed of my disobedience.
I'm ashamed of the poverty of my soul, my self-righteousness,
my nakedness. But ashamed of Jesus? Never. That, my friend, is a mark of
grace. Listen, Hebrews 2, verse 11 tells
us, Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are
all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ, our brother,
came for us when we were in decay, and we are not ashamed to go
to him. in our time of need. Not only
is Christ our brother, not only are we not ashamed of him, but
the more we come to know him, the more we learn to love him. Is that not so? Am I wrong in
saying that? Have I got this wrong? As we
discover more about the Lord Jesus Christ, as we discover,
as we deepen our understanding of the gospel, as we understand
more by faith of the things that the Lord Jesus Christ has done,
does not our admiration rise? That little question, what think
ye of Christ? The significance of that question
deepens the more we know of Christ. So then will you disagree with
Peter when he declares, whom having not seen ye love? Now you may doubt that God could
love you, but can you do less than love such a saviour? And
if it is so that we do love him, whence cometh that love? Where
does that love come from? John tells us, we love him. 1 John 4 verse 19. We're going to come to it in
a couple of days, couple of weeks. We love him because he first
loved us. We love him. Peter says, whom
having not seen, we love. And John says, we love him because
he first loved us. See this brotherly love that
John is talking about, this is its pinnacle. This is the mark
of family affection. Peter let the Lord down, and
you have let the Lord down. Peter denied Christ, and you
have denied Christ. Peter doubted him, and you have
doubted him. But now we share Peter's confession. Lord, thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love thee.
I've seen what you've done. I've seen what you've done. And
I love you for it. And that inspired apostolic utterance,
whom having not seen ye love. I think you do. I think you love
the Lord. When John says the children of
God are manifested in that they love their brother, Christ is
the brother whom we love. It is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Cain was a child of the devil, of that wicked one, and he slew
his brother. He slew him out of envy, because
envy consumed him, malice provoked his anger and hatred led him
to murder. And there's a time when we would
have slain the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a time when I would have
stood shoulder to shoulder with those scribes and Pharisees and
Jews and cried away with him, I will not have this man to reign
to rule over me. But if that's no longer true,
what's changed? What's changed? If that's not
us anymore, what's changed? Christ has given us a love for
the brethren. Now the same antagonism of evil
against good has persisted all through world history. From Cain
to Christ to current events. And the true church must expect
no difference. The wicked hate Christ. And because
they hate Christ, they hate his righteousness and they hate his
righteous people. They hate those whom he loves
and they hate those who love him. And that's the point about
the opposition that we face today. It's Cain's hatred of Abel, it's
Satan's hatred of Christ, it's the Pharisees' hatred of the
apostles, and it is an enduring antagonism between the children
of light and the children of darkness. The world's hatred
for Christ's brethren is its hatred of the gospel, and ultimately,
its hatred of Christ himself. If you love the gospel, It is
a mark of your love for Christ. And if you love Christ, it's
because he first loved you. Let me summarise. And then we're
done with just a couple of points about phrases that John uses
here in these verses. He uses two lovely little phrases
about the believer's blessed state in Christ. In verse 14,
1 John 3, verse 14, he says, we know that we have passed from
death unto life because we love the brethren. We know, we know,
and it's the emphasis on we know that I want you to look upon
there. We know that we have passed from
death unto life because we love the brethren. Friend, do we love
the Lord Jesus Christ? Do we love him for all that he
has done? That is a mark of grace. He first
loved us that we so love him. And we know that we've passed
from death to life. If we love the Lord Jesus Christ,
then we are assured that he loves us and we are assured of his
mercy, we are assured of his grace, we are assured of salvation
and we are assured of eternal life. It's not in us, it's given
to us. It is not something we work for,
it is something that comes to us as a free gift and it is God's
goodness to us. If we love Christ, then the love
of our brothers and sisters in Christ will and must follow thereafter. The second word that he uses
is this, he says we know We know that we have passed from death
unto life. And then he says, we perceive. We perceive God's love by Christ's
death for us. The father gave his son because
he loves us and he will save us. The death of the Lord Jesus
was the only means to accomplish this end. That was the only way
it could be done. It shows the highest sacrifice. It shows the greatest love. It
shows the peak and the pinnacle of all God could do. God himself
gave himself for the recovery and salvation of those that he
loved. While we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. And when we look at the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, when we think of the suffering that
he bore, oh, we are filled with admiration that God, such a God,
could come and so pay a price for our redemption and for our
salvation. And our love is elicited and
drawn forth from us. The salvation of a sinner is
both profoundly mysterious and wonderfully simple. An angel
can't explain it, but a humble sinner may receive it. May God
grant that we know our salvation in perceiving his love by the
sin-cleansing death of our elder brother, Jesus Christ. Amen.