A Word in Season: Continuing in Love (Hebrews 13:1)

Media Gratiae

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Hebrews chapter 13 begins with what seems like a very simple and straightforward exhortation.

00:07

Let brotherly love continue. The assumption of that exhortation is that brotherly love exists among the saints to whom the letter is written.

00:19

Brotherly love is the characteristic disposition of genuine believers. It's not a general affection for other people generally.

00:28

It's not a general affection for others who share some of our opinions.

00:34

It is genuinely Christian affection for other Christians and particularly those with whom we're in immediate contact in the

00:43

Church of Jesus Christ. It's that disposition of sacrificial affection that not only esteems one another better than ourselves but is ready to act on that principle so that we go even to the point of laying down our life for the brothers.

01:01

The Lord Jesus Christ made clear that brotherly love is one of the defining characteristics of true

01:07

Christianity. The Apostle John picks that up in his first letter where he emphasizes over and over again that the absence of truly brotherly love shows the absence of true

01:20

Christianity in the soul. So the assumption of the exhortation is that brotherly love does and should exist among Christian brothers.

01:30

But there's a second assumption there that brotherly love is under assault and those assaults come in from any number of directions.

01:40

If your heart is anything like mine you'll know that one of the places from which those threats arise is your own soul, your own selfishness, your own carelessness, your own thoughtlessness.

01:53

We are not by nature loving in the way that we should. We don't know what true love is like until we've been loved by Jesus Christ, by God in Christ in this way.

02:06

Only when we've been so loved do we begin to love. The threats also come in from without us, the flaws, the faults, the follies of our brothers and sisters in the church.

02:20

So easily we are provoked. There are challenges every day to our love.

02:26

There are things that carry us away from this expression. There are those little niggles that get in amongst

02:34

God's people. There are the bigger questions that come in. There are the discussions and even the debates and disputes about sometimes significant matters.

02:44

And yet above it all the exhortation is given to let brotherly love continue.

02:50

There will be disappointments. We are none of us what we ought to be yet. And so the temptation may be to let brotherly love slide.

03:00

There are provocations. Our sins still break out. And the temptation may be to abandon or to lay aside brotherly love.

03:10

To be selective perhaps to whom we show that kind of sacrificial affection and regard.

03:18

But here is an exhortation that embraces every believer under all circumstances.

03:25

Let brotherly love continue. And truly the root of that is to go back to the love with which we have been loved.

03:33

And the love then that in God we truly owe one to another. We've been brought by such love into the family of God.

03:41

And he has loved others just as unlovely as we are with just such a love.

03:48

He has bound us together in Jesus Christ. He has made us truly the family of the

03:53

Most High. And under those circumstances regardless of what may happen without.

03:59

Regardless of the pressures from our own sinful souls. The provocations from the sins that others commit.

04:07

And even the pressures that come in from outside. Just the ordinary challenges of life in a fallen world.

04:15

Perhaps even the fact that during the last few weeks or months. Because of the pandemic we've not been able to gather together in the way that we might have wished.

04:26

Even those little distances can become easily great divisions. And so we need to strive to love one another continually.

04:35

Not to allow these things to divide us. But to seek one another's good. To do all that we can to help one another.

04:43

Build one another up. Encourage one another in the way. Whatever then may be happening to us, in us, around us.

04:51

Let us at least seek in God's grace to heed this exhortation. And to let brotherly love continue.