Brotherly Love (3)

The Testimony of History

The Lord left His disciples with the following command: “Love one another; even as I have loved you… By this all men [shall] know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34-35). He said by this that brotherly love between His believers would be the strongest testimony to the outside world – more than teaching, more than activities, even more than church meetings. By our love for one another all men will know that we are His disciples.

This command was recorded by John, the last living apostle. By the time he wrote this, many of the first century churches had become cold. Even the spiritual church in Ephesus, according to the Lord’s own word, had left her first love (Revelation 2:4). Religion and oldness replaced much of the vigor that characterized the early church in as few as 60 years. The testimony of brotherly love was lacking.

At the conclusion of his gospel, John records the following conversation between the resurrected Lord and Peter on the beach after a long night of fruitless fishing.

Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again a second time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Tend my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep. (John 21:15-17)

We are sheep and the Lord is our shepherd. It is pointless to say we love the shepherd without feeding and tending His other sheep. Thus love for the Lord is made practical in our love and care for one another. Later, John repeats this thought as he writes, “this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:21).

John knew because of his advanced age that his time was short. He was therefore all the more faithful in his epistles to admonish the believers to exercise brotherly love. He knew that this more than anything else would protect the church from division and announce Christ to the unbelieving ones around them. His epistles are full of passages like the following:

For this is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another… We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer… Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (1 John 3:11, 14-16)

He ends this passage with some most practical advice:

But whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? My Little children, let us not love in word, neither with the tongue; but in deed and truth…. And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he gave us commandment. (1 John 3:17-18, 23)

The 200 years after John’s passing were a time of great persecution for the church. Plagues, earthquakes, and other natural disasters were typically blamed on the Christians because they did not worship the pagan gods, and so they were often rounded up and put to death in the most inhumane ways. Amazingly, even in this environment the number of Christians multiplied greatly. Credit for this is given in large part to the display of genuine brotherly love that was so contrary to the selfishness of the pagan society around them. The historian Philip Schaff writes:

The brotherly love expressed itself, above all, in the most self-sacrificing beneficence to the poor and sick, to widows and orphans, to strangers and prisoners, particularly to confessors in bonds. It magnifies this virtue in our view, to reflect, that the Christians at that time belonged mostly to the lower classes, and in times of persecution often lost all their possessions. Every congregation was a charitable society, and in its public worship took regular collections for its needy members. The offerings at the communion and love-feasts, first held on the evening, afterwards on the mornings of the Lord's Day, were considered a part of worship. To these were added numberless private charities, given in secret, which eternity alone will reveal. (Schaff, p. 374)

It was the thought of these selfless believers that to serve their brothers and sisters was to serve the Lord himself.

It belonged to the idea of a Christian housewife, and was particularly the duty of the deaconesses, to visit the Lord, to clothe him, and give him meat and drink, in the persons of his needy disciples. (Schaff, p. 375)

Brotherly love reached beyond the local church. Following the apostle Paul’s example, who encouraged the Gentile churches to prove their love by meeting the need of their famished brothers and sisters in Judea (2 Corinthians 8:24; 9:12-14), care was offered to distant churches as needed.

This beneficence reached beyond the immediate neighborhood. Charity begins at home, but does not stay at home. In cases of general distress the bishops appointed special collections, and also fasts, by which food might be saved for suffering brethren. The Roman church sent its charities great distances abroad. Cyprian of Carthage, who, after his conversion, sold his own estates for the benefit of the poor, collected a hundred thousand sestertia, or more than three thousand dollars, to redeem Christians of Numidia, who had been taken captive by neighboring barbarians; and he considered it a high privilege “to be able to ransom for a small sum of money him, who has redeemed us from the dominion of Satan with his own blood.” (Schaff, p. 375)

Traffic between the churches was another opportunity to display brotherly love.

A travelling Christian, of whatever language or country, with a letter of recommendation from his bishop, was everywhere hospitably received as a long known friend. It was a current phrase: In thy brother thou hast seen the Lord himself. (Schaff, p. 374)

Christian love was frequently extended to unbelievers and persecutors. In this matter, the church clearly outshined pagan society.

During the persecution under Gallus (252), when the pestilence raged in Carthage, and the heathens threw out their dead and sick upon the streets, ran away from them for fear of the contagion, and cursed the Christians as the supposed authors of the plague, Cyprian assembled his congregation, and exhorted them to love their enemies; whereupon all went to work; the rich with their money, the poor with their hands, and rested not, till the dead were buried, the sick cared for, and the city saved from desolation. The same self-denial appeared in the Christians of Alexandria during a ravaging plague under the reign of Gallienus. (Schaff, pp. 375-376)

While the love of friends, says TertuIlian, is common to all men, the love of enemies is a virtue peculiar to Christians. “You forget,” he says to the heathens in his Apology, “that, notwithstanding your persecutions, far from conspiring against you, as our numbers would perhaps furnish us with the means of doing, we pray for you and do good to you; that, if we give nothing for your gods, we do give for your poor, and that our charity spreads more alms in your streets than the offerings presented by your religion in your temples.” (Schaff, p. 376)

The Lord promised that His disciples’ love one to another would identify them to all men (John 13:35). This effect is abundantly proven by the testimony of the following two antagonists.

Even such opponents of Christianity as Lucian testify to this zeal of the Christians in labors of love, though they see in it nothing but an innocent fanaticism. “It is incredible,” says Lucian, “to see the ardor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing. Their first legislator has put into their heads that they are all brethren.” (Schaff, p. 375)

Julian the Apostate, who tried to check the progress of Christianity and to revive paganism… said, it was a shame that the heathen should be left without support from their own, while “among the Jews no beggar can be found, and the godless Galileans” (i.e. the Christians) “nourish not only their own, but even our own poor.” (Schaff, pp. 376-377)

Many turned to Christ in spite of the real possibility of martyrdom. The care given by the Christians to one another and to the suffering ones around them became a testimony that could not be hidden. The New Testament was not yet canonized and theology was not yet clear, but the love of the Lord’s disciples became the gospel that saved thousands.

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God…. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:7, 11-12)

And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote to thee a new commandment, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. (2 John 1:5)

Bibliography

Schaff, Philip; History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2, Ante-Nicene Christianity, A.D. 100-325; Hendrickson Publishers, P.O. Box 3473, Peabody, MA; July, 1996