Love of the brethren in 1 John

Reading: 1 John 3-4

Historically our Baptist forebears have had a great interest in answering questions about the church, questions like: Who belongs to the church? Who has authority in the church? Is there such a thing as the universal church? Among the most important of these questions is one that received a lot of attention in the early years when Baptists emerged from the matrix of Puritanism, namely, What are the marks of a true church? In other words, what distinguishes a true church from a false church? Seventeenth-century Baptists argued that a true church was one in which the Word of God was preached, the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper properly administered and biblical discipline carried out. At the close of the eighteenth century, Baptists began to argue that mission was also vital to the identity of a true church. “The true churches of Jesus Christ,” Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) wrote in 1810, “travail in birth for the salvation of men. They are the armies of the Lamb, the grand object of whose existence is to extend the Redeemer’s kingdom.”[1] Now, without taking away one particle from either of these historic Baptist perspectives, 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, to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Ephesians 5:2). 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 Timothy 1:5). The writer of Hebrews is content with a more simple admonition, “Let brotherly love continue” (Hebrews 13:1), as is Peter when the latter urges the believers in Asia Minor to “love the brethren” (1 Peter 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.[2]

1 John: its context and teaching on love

Consider one of these texts, 1 John, written by the Apostle John towards the end of a long life when he was most probably living in the great urban centre of Ephesus.[3] 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[4] and also appear to have been scornful of living lives of holiness.[5] Although these heretics had left the Ephesian church,[6] John was still profoundly concerned for the health of this community of believers. Among the things John thus 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: “everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him” (1 John 5:1) and the proof that “we have passed out of death into life” is that “we love the brothers” (1 John 3:14).

“What great love”

Now, the Apostle stresses 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. “Look at what great love the Father has given to us,” he urges his readers (1 John 3:1).[7]  We should never think that we, out of hearts naturally filled with affection, decided to lovingly embrace God prior to his coming 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,” John insists, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

“The propitiation for our sins”

Second, this love of God to which we respond is a love supremely shown in the death of Christ in the place of sinners: “this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”(1 John 4:10). 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. 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 brothers”

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

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.[8]

Some implications

Let me draw out three implications that flow out of John’s admonition to love our brothers and sisters along the lines of the template of Christ’s love.

First of all, 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.”[9] 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 has 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, it was Shields who 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 and 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, and which were reported on in many of the daily newspapers of that era, were indeed a sad spectacle. And the fallout of those battles between believers—conservative, evangelical Baptists—still have reverberations in Ontario Baptist circles today.

The beauty of sacrificial love à la 1 John 3:16: the example of Onesiphorus: 2 Timothy 1:16-18. By the way, it is obvious that if you are going to love the brethren as Oneisphorus loved Paul you must belong to a body of believers, for that is the place where you discover the needs of other Christians and can extend to them Christ-like love. Are you taking the time to develop Christian friendships?

Third, there might well be an occasion when imitation of Christ’s love demands martyrdom, but surely this imitation will most frequently take place in the hurly-burly of everyday life.[10] Note that immediately after 1 John 3:16, the Apostle John adds: “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17).

I shall never forget an important lesson I learned in this regard in my first year of seminary. There were a dozen of us that year who started the master’s programme at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto, then a small evangelical Anglican seminary. It was clear that of the twelve, eleven or so were solidly evangelical, but some of us had our doubts about one of our fellow students.

Well, I shall never forget one late October day of our second year of studies. This brother came to me with a book he had purchased at an annual book sale held in the final week of October by one of the other colleges at the University, Trinity College, which was right across the road from Wycliffe College where I was studying. It still happens and it is a tremendous book sale for anyone with an interest in biblical studies, theology, or church history for they always have tons of books in those areas. Well, this student had come across a paperback version of the Greek edition of Athanasius’ On the incarnation of the Word. He knew that I was deeply interested in the Fathers and he bought it specially for me. I was humbled by his love. I had treated him with scorn and disdain. But he had loved me as a brother in Christ and as Christ had loved the Church.

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[1] The Promise of the Spirit, the Grand Encouragement in Promoting the Gospel Friend [The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, revised Joseph Belcher (3rd. London ed.; repr. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), III, 359].

[2] Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2008), 174-175; idem, “Introduction to1 John”, ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 2425.

[3] See Georg Strecker, The Johannine Letters, trans. Linda M. Maloney and ed. Harold Attridge (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), xl-xli for Ephesus as the place of composition.

[4] 1 John 4:1-6. See also 2 John 7.

[5] 1 John 3:4-10.

[6] 1 John 2:19.

[7] See Yarbrough, 1-3 John, 175.

[8] Daniel Akin, 1, 2, 3 John (New American Commentary, v.38; Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman and Holman, 2001), 158.

[9] Gospel Charity in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (1850-1853 ed.; repr. Edinburgh/Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), IX, 259.

[10] I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1978), 194-196.