A Word in Season: Brotherly Love (1 Thessalonians 4:9)

Brotherly Love Taught by God in 1 Thessalonians 4:9

I think any pastor would be righteously pleased to be able to say of his congregation which he serves, I don't need to tell them about brotherly love, they've got it, they understand it in principle and they work it out in practice.

I imagine any church would be properly grateful to hear that kind of language from their elders, men who are able to say they have attained to this in some substantial measure. They grasp what it is to be the family of God both in principle and in practice.

They don't need a great extensive series on it because it's already evident among them and it bubbles up from them. That's the way the Apostle Paul was able to write the church in Thessalonica. In the first letter to the Thessalonians in chapter 4 and verse 9, he says that concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

He's just had to exhort the church to remember that they ought to be pursuing holiness. Perhaps there are some who are sliding away into sexual immorality or at least that's a threat for them. He's reminding them that the one who rejects the call to cleanness is not rejecting man but God.

Love Learned from God in Christ

But he says concerning brotherly love that is something in which you are eminent. You have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. What was the book in which these Thessalonians had read and studied this love?

What was the example that had been set before them? The great teacher of love was God himself. The book in which they'd studied love was the book of God's dealings with them in Christ Jesus. The great example that they had before them was he who had loved them and given himself for them.

And so as they strove for godliness, Paul warns them to be wary of those who don't. He says that within that body of faithful saints there is this characteristic sacrificial affection for one another.

They have so learned Christ, they have so discerned the heart of God in Christ that it has gripped their souls and spills out in their lives. It's not necessarily that every one of them could sit down and write an essay on the love of God.

It's not that they've perfected some catechetical instruction. They are showing in the life that they live that they do indeed love one another. They understand that having been loved by God individually and collectively, brought together by God out of the world to be a people for himself, that they are cemented together by the blood of Jesus Christ, that the bond which binds them together is that bond of love that has come down to them and that now flows out from them.

Loving the Brothers Near and Far

And that's not just close at hand, it's also further afield. It's the brothers who are in all Macedonia who are also the recipients of the Thessalonians' love. What a wonderful testimony! Sometimes it's very easy to love people who are further away, because we don't really know them that well, and harder to love the people who are up close and personal, whose imperfections and flaws and failings and sins are very visible to us.

On the other hand, sometimes it's a relatively easy thing to love the people who are around us and who seem familiar to us and who fit our patterns and expectations, and we can forget that there are believers further afield who are equally entitled to that family affection.

But these Thessalonians loved near and far. They were so gripped by the love with which they had been loved that it then rolled out and rolled on, so that both those who were close to them in their own spiritual community, in the church in Thessalonica, and believers throughout Macedonia, tasted that real love.

Abounding More and More in Brotherly Love

And so what does Paul say? Well, you've made it. That's as good as it gets? Not at all. He says, having learned love from God and shown that God-like love to others, I want you, I urge you, brothers, to increase more and more.

Insofar then as we've learned love, let's make sure that we show it. And if we need to advance, as we all do, let us follow the apostolic urging to abound more and more, to increase in the love that we learn from God himself in Christ.