Dennis Tuuri

# Hebrews 13:1 – Brotherly Love Must Continue

Hebrews 13:1. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Hebrews 13:1, “Brotherly love must continue.” Let us pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the succinctness of this verse that we have to deal with today and its importance to our lives. We thank you, Father, for your indwelling spirit bringing us Jesus Christ and the things of him. Thank you, Lord God, that he amazingly refers to us as his brothers.

May we, Lord God, be encouraged by your word today and empowered by your spirit to take seriously this very strong admonition to us today. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

Your translation may read a little different than what I just read, but what I just said really catches the sense of the verse. The particular word that’s used here—”must continue” or “let brotherly love continue”—is only found here in the whole of the New Testament. And it is very emphatic. It is not just, “Well, this should happen too” or “Let’s keep this going.” It is an emphatic statement that brotherly love must continue.

Now, this is the beginning of a series of sermons that are practical application to the Christian life of our relationship to God through Jesus Christ. We’re in the sixth section of the book of Hebrews. I’ve got a little outline at the top of your page of the handout, but you know, it links up with the second section.

The second section was the name of Jesus and He is Son of God and Son of Man. So he brings together heaven and earth. The sixth section relates to the sixth day, the day that man was created and fell. But we’ve been brought back to life in Jesus Christ that we might live out a heavenly community here on earth. So that’s the focus of this entire section that we find ourselves in. And today begins a series of very specific statements of application to our lives.

And so we’re going to be talking a lot in the next few weeks and months about very specific details of the Christian life relating first to brotherly love, hospitality, prison visitation, marriage, sexuality, work, lots of stuff. And I feel compelled to remind us that this is not the tail end—not an appendix tacked on at the end as some have suggested, but rather the conclusion of this book has to do with specific application, but it’s all based upon the first 12 and a half chapters.

We learned a lot of doctrine and we learned a lot of what the Lord God has accomplished through Jesus Christ. We learned a lot of Christology. We learned about the exceeding excellence of Jesus Christ. You know, we learned about his comparison to the priests of the Old Testament, but then the contrast as well. I was thinking about this—that you know, a lot of times you think it’s all contrast, and so we start to think of the Old Testament as some kind of hole in the ground and Jesus is a mountain compared to that hole.

But I think the better way to think of it is that those priests in the Old Testament were wonderful, beautiful mountain peaks themselves. And we must not demean the Old Testament, but we must also see that Jesus is the great mountain. Aaron is the penultimate—the last before the end, or the first, the next to last before the end of the sequence. But Jesus is the great ultimate priest. So there’s that kind of thing.

If all you have is this dim view of the Old Testament, then your view of Jesus will be better than that. But it won’t be as exalted as if you had this exalted view of the Old Testament and then see, based on the comparison, this wonderful lofty peaks of revelation through the order of Melchizedek, etc., compared to those—Jesus is way up there. So Jesus has this tremendous lofty position.

Last week I spoke about putting God first, and today’s sermon, I guess in a way, we could say that we begin by putting God first in terms of practical application by putting our brothers first.

But as we look at these practical applications, it is very important that we don’t see them just as a way to build morality. We don’t want a moral congregation and we don’t want moral children if morality is somehow abstracted or not connected to the work of Jesus Christ.

Last week we talked about repentance and the importance of it. The Westminster Shorter Catechism has this definition of repentance: “Repentance is a saving grace wherein a sinner out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ doth with grief and hatred of his sin turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience.” So that’s a good summation of what we talked about last week—that we get out of the dilemmas we’re in through biblical repentance. A sorrow, a lamenting, a weeping over our sins and a turning to God for obedience—not just, you know, for forgiveness of sins, but for renewed obedience. But it’s very important: “who has an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ.”

There was a Hindu society in India that liked everything about this statement from the Westminster Shorter Catechism except the two words “in Christ,” and this Hindu society taught the Westminster Shorter Catechism in terms of teaching their devotees what repentance was and how important it was to turn from being bad to being good. And they liked the whole thing except they left out the two little words “in Christ.” And of course that makes all the difference. That’s moralism. So we can use those great words of the Westminster divines and, leaving out Jesus, they’re useless. They’re worse than useless. They’re an affront to God, and they make him not pleased with our lives, but even more angry that we try to achieve these things on our own.

So you know, we want to leave the phrase, the concept—”in Christ,” the truth, the reality—as we get into this series of practical exhortations to what we’re to do in our lives. These things we’re to do are impossible apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And really, they’re impossible to do without the infused, applied morality and person of Jesus Christ to us as well. The Holy Spirit comes to bring the things of Jesus.

We don’t have love for each other in our fallen state. We have hatred. We have the opposite. You can’t gin it up. If you do, it’s a self-righteous sort of thing, which is the opposite of love. But the Holy Spirit can bring that love to us. And we’re to certainly strive to walk in that spirit and not grieve him.

So we don’t want to leave Jesus out the way the Hindu society did and create a moralism, but we do certainly want to leave Jesus in. But see, that leaving Jesus into true repentance produces a desire to walk in obedience and turn to obedience and specifically today to the obedience of continuing, growing in brotherly love. So that’s what we want to talk about today.

Now I’ve given you on the second page of the handouts an overview of this entire chapter 13. And we can look at that just briefly before we get to the specific section we’re in. You can see that the way I’ve sort of structured it is that there are a series of six verses here that have kind of a connection in terms of what we’re supposed to do in working out the Christian faith one to the other on, I guess we could say, kind of a horizontal plane. And then the indented sections have to do with rulers, and you’ll see that at the beginning of that indented section we have “remembering those who rule over you” and at the end “obey those who rule over you.” So they’re kind of a little bracket to that center section which returns us to doctrine.

We’ll see when we get there that there’s some important truths about communion and the Lord’s Supper at the middle of that section relative to our need to submit to authorities. So that’s more of a vertical dimension of things that we’re supposed to do in terms of authorities both in the church and the state. So we’ll flow through these first horizontal relationships in terms of brothers and then strangers, prisoners, marriage and family issues, vocational issues, and then we’ll talk about government in the church and state in that middle section. And then there’s this concluding section at the end—after the bracketed middle indented sections—Paul asks for, or no, the writer of this sermon says, “Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a good conscience in all things, desiring to live honorably. But I especially urge you to do this that I may be restored to you the sooner.”

So I’ve kind of put that as bracketing these things that we’re going to be talking about in verses 1 to 6. So we want to have a good life and a good conscience toward God. And that’s related to an obedience in all these particular aspects of what it means for the spirit of God to live through us and to bring Jesus and to have us walk as Christ-bearers, Christians. So this is what the overall context of chapter 13 is.

And then the last section—the benediction—is the final and seventh section of the entire sermon. And we’ll deal with that separately when we get to it.

One other thing I wanted to point out here is that there is this connection to the verses that have gone before it. So on the handout again on page two, you’ll see I don’t start with verse one. I start with Hebrews 12:28-29: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.”

So this section—and we’ve talked about this before—represents the transition now from worship to life. So what we’ve seen before this in chapter 12, the last half of chapter 12, is the admonition to engage in the worship of the church and come to Zion and all that stuff. So we have worship, but it’s a worship, a liturgy of worship and a service of worship that flows into service in the rest of our lives.

At the end of this section, we have not the exact same word but a related word to it in verse 21, in this benediction, that “God might work in you what is well pleasing in his sight.” This is related to this word “serve God acceptably,” in a way that is well pleasing to him. So before and after this section six, in this concluding chapter, is this reference to serving God acceptably and then with lives that are well pleasing.

So we can take from that the way to move out of the worship service, out of the Lord’s day, to leave worship convinced to work out the implications of covenant renewal and the worship of God in the rest of our lives. That’s what these series of specific commandments and exhortations are. They’re the transition from worship into life. Worship without life is useless, and life without being based in worship is useless.

In the word of God, they’re connected together. Worship moves into life and practice. And so at the beginning of how worship moves into life and practice, the very first in the list is the statement that brotherly love must continue.

So if we’re going to have a good conscience, if we’re going to live lives that are pleasing to God, and if we’re going to be well pleasing and have service to God that is acceptable, then all these specific application points are not tacked on at the end. They’re sort of the capstone to what the Christian life should look like—being based on who Jesus is. The rest of this book has told us all about that. So there’s a specific context to what we’re going to talk about very specifically in one short little verse here. And that context, hopefully you sort of see that in the overall movement of this. And we’ll be dealing with this section for a number of weeks and months.

So this second page of your handouts with the text—you know, please don’t just throw that away. You can keep that and it will assist you as we move through the rest of this to see where in the flow of the movement of this chapter we are.

So we’re moving now with Hebrews 13:1 from worship to work, from worship to life. And we do it not leaving “in Christ” out, but building on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now this specific term—before we get to the seven numbered points on the outline, I’ve got a couple of other things. Christianity or churchianity—it’s sort of, I’ve been thinking about this lately. That when I got serious about the faith in the early ’70s, at that time in the movement of Christianity in America, there was sort of this reaction against “churchianity,” called “dead Orthodoxy.” So there was a resurgence of Christianity, and so you know, Christianity meant that I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. So it wasn’t some kind of dead churchianity or dead Orthodoxy. And now we’ve got, you know, Peter Leithart’s book “Against Christianity” for the church—so kind of against Christianity and moving back toward churchianity. And so what is it? You know, it gets a little confusing. I mean, if you live long enough, you tend to see things sort of cycle back, not the same, but in differing ways.

And of course, what’s going on is that we don’t want a dead orthodoxy. But we also don’t want to fall into the other ditch in the road—an individualistic Christianity where it’s just me and Jesus, right? And it’s irrelevant what I do in terms of you or my neighbor or my wife or my politics or my vocation. I’ve got a personal relationship with Jesus, which means I’ve got my ticket punched to heaven. And that’s all it really is about.

So in that concept of things, you know, the church is somewhat irrelevant, and actually this first statement about brotherly love is somewhat irrelevant, too. The scriptures affirm that indeed there is a personal sense of obedience and saving faith in Christ, and Christianity in that sense is true. But the Bible also very explicitly is in favor of churchianity in its proper sense—that Jesus ministers himself to us when we gather together as a worshipping community and when we live our lives in the context of that community.

When we’re all rugged individualists—me and Jesus and that’s it—out there we are very weak. I’ll be talking about this more when we talk about marriage, but there’s a sense in which, you know, marriage produces the ability for two people to become four. You sort of carry about your covenantal partner—you’re in union with—so you have their strengths and your strengths. You become two people instead of just one.

And so if each of you are becoming two people, you’re four people. There’s a connection there. Well, the same thing’s true of the body of Jesus Christ. When the church is properly functioning, when it’s growing and maturing in brotherly love and all this other stuff we’ll talk about, there’s a sense in which we have the power of the corporate body of Christ behind us wherever we go.

I mentioned last week David saying that in Iraq, you know, courage is found in a group of people. And so the ability to live out the Christian life also is connected to a group of people. And it’s not just, you know, you don’t know them. There’s a covenantal unity that’s produced amongst the brotherhood that enables us to move in a stronger sense even when we’re by ourselves in the world.

So I’m making the case, you know, that really it’s a false dichotomy to talk about, “Well, is it the church or is it our relationship with Jesus?” Those things are melded together in the scriptures.

Secondly, as we approach this text—before we begin, I’m going to talk a lot about love and our brothers. And you know, don’t be offended by that if you’re a woman or a sister because of course in the Bible the male is used in a covenantal, covenantal headship way. Male terminology is used for the whole. So when it says “love the brothers,” when it says “brotherly love has to continue,” the implication of that is that sisterly love has to continue as well. You’re under no less obligation to love your sister just because she’s not mentioned by direct reference. She is mentioned by inference with the term “brother.”

We should know that. But in our culture, we’re continually bombarded with, “This is wrong. The only thing that’s important is men.” No. Men are the heads of the culture, covenantally. They bear responsibility covenantally. So you can speak of brothers and sisters by just using the term “brother.” That’s what it means here, and that’s the way we’re going to use it.

So just by way of getting us into this discussion: Now, as I said earlier, this term “Philadelphia”—that’s the Greek term. You know, the city Philadelphia—that’s what it means. “Philo” is love, “adelphos” is brother. So “brotherly love,” the city of brotherly love in Philadelphia, or not these days, but that’s the idea. The specific word here is Philadelphia.

Now, frequently in the New Testament, we’re referred to as brothers in Christ, and the Jews are referred to as brothers to each other. And many Greek philosophical or religious cultures called each other brothers and sisters. That wasn’t new. But the use of the phrase “brotherly love” to refer to this group of people who are not related by blood—this was new. This was radical. We know it because, first of all, we have these great references now about, you know, looking at Greek terminology, and the term just wasn’t used. “Brother” and “sister” was, but not “brotherly love.”

Now you could call them “brother,” but you had no obligation to brotherly love toward them in your society or your group or your Elks Club or whatever it was. But here in the New Testament, God audaciously uses this term “brotherly love” to describe the relationship that we’re to have in the context of the church. So we know that’s unique from the absence of those references.

And then we also know it’s unique because the Greek philosophers and social commentators wrote about how ridiculous it was. It was ludicrous to the Roman mind or to the Greek mind to think that the love that exists in a family—a biological unit, brothers and sisters—that love could be or should be even attempted to be emulated in the context of a group not related by blood.

Roman culture was originally built on familism, and we sort of like that. We find out the early origins of Rome—well, it was, you know, they really stressed the family and the “paterfamilias” and the family. And then they had the breakdown of the family, and that’s what led to all their social decline. So if we want to restore America, we just need to restore the family. Uh-huh. No, that was idolatry on the part of the Romans.

As I said before, the paterfamilias could actually execute his child if he wanted to. And it’s interesting in the providence of God, of course, the legend of the founding of Rome is the story of Romulus and Remus—two brothers. And if you know the story, you know that one killed the other brother, and he killed him because he jumped over his wall of his city. So he was a statist, a city worshipper rather than a family worshipper. But that’s the way Roman culture evolved.

There’s nothing there. The Bible affirms over and over again that water is thicker than blood. You know, baptism—the bonds of baptism exceed the bonds of family connection via natural generation. And in fact, you know, from the earliest days of God’s working with the covenant with the Jews—the Mosaic covenant or the Abrahamic covenant—circumcision. The point is you can’t bring about brotherly love or family or good stuff by yourselves. It’s got to be grace. Grace, as opposed to natural privilege or our own abilities.

So the scriptures—I think it’s very significant—you know, we’re not demeaning families, but we are saying that the church exists in a way beyond and above the family. Because if a family member—and this was true in the Old Testament—if a family member tries to get you to apostatize, your wife or your husband, you’re supposed to, you know, bring them to civil sanctions, get them excommunicated. You’re not supposed to put blood relationships, you know, blood relationships to your children, for instance, above your covenantal obligations.

So this term “Philadelphia” is now appropriated for the Christian church. And that’s a significant thing. It’s a significant thing. As we move from worship to serving God, we’re to serve God by loving other people. We’re to serve God through brotherly love. And this term “brotherly love” tells us that water is thicker than blood.

It also reminds us that we’re brought into this family—ultimately the family of God—through adoption. And we’ve had wonderful, you know, things going on in our church about adoption. And you know, people wonder, “Well, should we adopt or not?” Well, Greg Bahnsen has an article from a journal of Christian Reconstruction many years ago on adoption as the model for family building according to God’s word, because we’re all sort of cut off and orphaned because of the sin of Adam, and God has adopted us into his household. And so this is really the model of Christian family, and brotherly love is to love those who are in the family by means of adoption.

And so we have, you know, the Evans now exhibiting brotherly love toward kids they’ve adopted into their parental love, and their kids’ brotherly love towards those who’ve been brought in through adoption—through water, we could say, through baptism—as they were brought into the church.

Well, and of course we have this going on at the Cones now. They’re in the process of this. Please pray for them about their adoption. Things are proceeding apace as a possible person—a little boy—they’ll be getting. And it’s a great thing for us to do. We started an adoption fund here. The idea of the Merks—good thing for us to be doing. It’s central to who we are.

So brotherly love—using this family term for the church—has all kinds of implications for us that are involved in it. You know, last week we brought the Conceals into membership, and one thing you find out about Doug pretty quickly is he likes to call you “brother Dennis,” you know, “brother this,” “brother that.” That’s a good thing. That’s what this is talking about. We should have, whether we use the word or not, this should be our heart attitude—to see each other really and truly as recipients of brotherly love, as if they were, you know, related to us by blood, being related to us in the context of the church.

Now God commands us on things that are needful. And so if he commands us here, he tells us very strongly, “brotherly love must continue.” He does it because it tends not to. He does it because our love for each other, while starting out strong, often times, you know, familiarity breeds contempt, and when we get to know each other, we see each other’s failings and faults. And so brotherly love needs to be admonished and built up and continued. It tends to fall apart.

Calvin said this: “Still this precept is generally very needful, for nothing flows away so easily as love when everyone thinks of himself more than he ought. He will allow to others less than he ought. And then many offenses happen daily which cause separations.”

Calvin went on to say that we cannot be Christians without being brothers. And I’ll mention that in just a minute in point one, but still by way of introduction, Calvin said, “We can’t be Christians except we be brothers. For he speaks of the love which the household of faith ought to cultivate one towards another in as much as the Lord has bound them closer together by the common bond of adoption. It was therefore a good custom in the primitive church for Christians to call one another brothers. But now the name—this is Calvin writing—now the name as well as the thing itself has become almost obsolete except that the monks have appropriated to themselves the use of it when neglected by others. While at the same time they show by their discords and intestinal factions that they are the children of the evil one.”

So in Calvin’s time, he said, you know, guys like Doug saying “brother Dennis” and “brother John” and stuff—that used to be the custom. It’s faded away, and it ought to come back.

John Owen has some excellent comments, too, about how in his day, you know, brotherly love had just gone practically.

So if we’re in a period of reformation and revival, if we’re trying to transform the fallen world by loving the triune God, then we’ll do this by paying close attention and being diligent to foster brotherly love in the context of the church. Brotherly love must continue. So this is a very important precept for us to move through in the context of our discussion today.

So let’s turn now to the rest of the outline and the seven points that follow. We’ll just move through these fairly quickly.

Now, most of these points have connected to them a series of verses. This term “brotherly love”—you’d think it would be a big deal in the New Testament, but it isn’t. It’s only used four or five times. So what I’ve done in preparing the seven points here is to look at those four or five occurrences of brotherly love. And you’ll see references to Romans 12 and 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Peter 1, and 2 Peter 1, as well as the Hebrews text here. You’ll see those peppered throughout this seven-point outline, and they’re the verses that really provide the instruction on what this means. We can look at how God uses this term. There’s few enough occurrences where we can actually look at each of them and say, “What does it mean?”

**One: Love for brothers and sisters is a summary statement of our Christian walk.**

It’s a summary statement of our Christian walk. Already in Hebrews 2:11, we read that “both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one. For which reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” So our Christian walk is tied first and foremost to Jesus. But if we’re Christians, if we leave “in Christ,” in Jesus, in the midst of our attempts to do these things, we’ll see that Jesus was not ashamed to call them—those he’s bringing to salvation—brothers.

So Jesus calls us brothers. So it’s at the core of our identity as Christians to be thought of as brothers. And later in verse 12 he says, “I will declare your name to my brethren.” Remember when we talked about that—this is the liturgical assembly, the church assembled. Jesus declaring God’s name to the brothers. So Jesus identified the church then by using this term “brothers” in Hebrews.

Let me turn to 1 Peter 1:22. Why don’t you turn there, and I’ll look at a verse there that’s pretty important. I think it’s a verse that talks about being born again and obeying the truth. And so it’s kind of one of those texts that talk about what the Christian life is. And we’ll see that this text agrees with Calvin—that we can’t be Christians without being brothers.

1 Peter 1:22: “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, so…” That’s entrance stuff—you become Christians. He says, “obeying the truth of the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren.” See, there it is. That Philadelphia term. It’s right there. One of the five occurrences. “Love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible.”

So he says it’s the essence of being born again, okay? If we’re born again, then we’re going to love the brethren. So, you see, it’s not some sort of tacked-on thing. You can’t say, “It’s me and Jesus, and I got a personal relationship to Jesus. If you don’t love anybody, if you don’t love the brothers and sisters in Christ, you can’t say that.” It’s analogous—these two terms. It’s a summary statement of whether we’re Christians or not and whether or not we walk in Christ.

Jesus says in the Gospels that “I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me.” If you don’t love your brother, then you’re not loving God. We’ve made this point often from this pulpit. Don’t say you love God whom you haven’t seen. That’s easy. But do you love the Christian, your brother, whom you have seen? And do you love him in terms of clothing him and feeding him? You see, it’s a summary statement of our obligations. And if you haven’t loved the brothers and sisters, you’re not going to heaven. That’s what it all comes down to here. You’re not going to heaven. You’re not born again. You haven’t treated Jesus right, no matter how well you think you might have prayed to him and how many hours you might spend reading your Bible. If you don’t love your brother, He says, “You haven’t loved me.”

1 John 5:1: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves him who begot also loves him who is begotten of him.” Now, there’s two references there. God the Father begets the Son, and we have to love the Son. But if we love the Son, we also have to love those that are born of him. So it’s a summary statement of our duty.

It should make you worried if you’re not convinced you have much love for the brothers.

1 John 3:14 says it baldly and plainly: “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.”

How clear could God put it? So it’s very clear. I don’t care how great your family is. Are you loving your brothers and sisters at this church? You know, that’s another thing you ought to do. Localize it. Don’t do easy generality. Yeah, I love Christians. Well, it doesn’t start with the general statement here. What’s really going on is the author of this sermon to the Hebrews is telling you: you got to keep exercising brother love here at this church. You used to do it, he said, but you’re not doing it much anymore. It’s got to continue. Has to. Not optional. Has to.

That sounds, you know, it kind of scares us. On the other hand, it also is kind of an affirming thing for some people with sensitive consciences, you know—it’s hard to know. “Do I really love God now? Maybe I’m not born again. Maybe I’m not a Christian. I don’t know.” You know, people struggle with assurance. Well, you see, if you take First John seriously, you can get over that by loving the brothers. Do you love other Christians in this church? Are you doing things for them? Are you praying for them? Is your heart soft toward them? Are you loving them according to the scriptures lawfully? If you are, then I think you can pretty well trust that you’re loving God.

You see, I mean, it can go both ways. It’s an indictment against us, but it’s also an assurance to us as we move in the power of the spirit to exercise brotherly love.

So, you know, it can be seen as analogous to our life with the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you like to get around other Christians in this church? Do you relish their company? Do you admire what you see about Christ in the people here at this church? Do you wish them well? Do you pray for them? Do you seek their good? Well, if you do, then you can kind of put your conscience to bed. You can go to bed easy tonight knowing that you love God. The demonstration is you loving your brothers and sisters in the context of the church.

What a great sermon, by the way, for the Grants Pass folks to take down to that little work they’re building down there. You know, this is the base—loving your brother.

**Two: Loving our brothers is discerning. It’s not sloppy agape.**

It’s not unrelated to the love of God. Again, this comes from this text. Romans 12 talks about being kindly affectionate to one another in brotherly love. But the verse just before that says, “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.” So as we go about loving our brothers, it doesn’t mean that we like their sin. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to rebuke them. And in fact, we’ve seen over and over again in Hebrews that he refers to them as brothers. At the end in Hebrews 13:22, “I appeal to you, brothers, bear with the word of exhortation.” He beats them up pretty good in this book, but he’s doing it out of brotherly love.

So brotherly love isn’t some kind of sloppy agape that’s all affirming and never challenging or exhorting or admonishing. We’ve talked about this a lot from this book of the Bible. I don’t have to belabor the point, but it is discerning. It’s related to the law of God. It’s not a lawless love.

Hebrews 3:12 says, “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” So you’re supposed to look out for that stuff. And that goes right back to Old Testament law. You know, we don’t believe in that law is somehow detached from love. Love is the fulfilling of the law. The Bible says the middle of the Pentateuch is law—the book of Leviticus. In the middle of the book of law is chapter 19 with 70 laws restating the Ten Commandments, and at the very heart of Leviticus 19 is the single commandment to love your neighbor. Okay, so at the heart of the law is this brotherly love. It’s not in opposition to it. It’s not different from it. And we’ve talked about this before, too.

You should know that Leviticus 19—that commandment—the immediate context is, you know, “don’t talk about your brother when you see him doing bad things.” “Love you without hypocrisy. Don’t smile and then you talk about him behind their back. Rebuke your brother to his face.” Doesn’t say overlook everything. Everything’s cool. Talk to him about it. That’s part of brotherly love. Brotherly love is not sloppy agape.

Brotherly love is a discerning love. You know, it’s love, but it’s a correcting love as well.

**Three: Brotherly love starts in the heart. It’s an attitude.**

Love is a noun, we could say, right? It’s an attitude. It’s an emotion. We could say Romans 12:10: “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love in honor, giving preference to each other.” You know, to have kind affections toward your brothers and sisters in this church and other Christians that you know—but you know, leave it local here as a good test for you. Are you kindly affectionate in your heart?

1 Peter 1:22, that I just read: “You purified your souls in obeying the truth of the spirit in sincere Philadelphia, brotherly love. Love one another fervently with a pure heart.” So from the heart, you know, our heart isn’t beyond our control. You know, we think that emotions and thoughts—well, we can control our actions, but not those things. No. If you can’t control your emotions and the way you feel about things and your thoughts, you’re never going to control your actions.

Jesus says they spring from your heart. So you can repent of, you know, a hard attitude of sin, and you can put on a heart attitude of bowels of compassion. Read that at the end of the sermon today in Colossians. We’re supposed to put that on. You know, we’re not out of it. It’s not out of our reach. We’re not subject to the whims of what our hearts are doing. No, we control our heart. And we’re to positively be kindly affectioned one toward the other—toward brothers and sisters.

So brotherly love starts in the heart. It’s an attitude. It’s a noun, rather, but it’s also a verb. It’s actions.

**Four: Brotherly love works its way out to the life.**

Charles Chambers was mentioning a Doug Wilson tape, and he has that famous line that “our theology works its way out to our fingertips” or something like that. Our theology flows to our fingertips, something. But this is the same idea here. This heart action, this affectionate heart toward each other—you know, again, it’s too easy to think, “Yeah, we really love them in our hearts, but they never do anything for them.” It works its way out.

You know, praise God. There are a number of you that had this heart affection toward brothers and sisters that you may not even know that well in Grants Pass, and it worked its way out in your fingertips by having these folks into your homes this weekend and being hospitable toward them.

We—Christine and I and Charity and Ben—were happy to host a Mrs. Uners’s Ma Ma, Dutch, I guess. I don’t know. A woman who’s a member of Gary Vander Veen’s church with her daughter, who will probably go into Lynfield College, and we had them at our house a couple of weeks ago. And it’s just a neat deal that here we have brothers and sisters—in this case, sisters—that we don’t know that well. But they’re sisters, and we can have a hard attitude that then can work itself out in actual deeds or actions.

So love is a noun, but love is also a verb. It’s an attitude, but it’s actions.

Romans 12 again—this text that talks about brotherly love says: “not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” So we’re to engage in brotherly love with diligence—not lagging in diligence. There’s a diligence to engage in these actions of brotherly love.

Verse 12 says, “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, and given to hospitality.”

Now, contributing to the needs of the saints and given to hospitality—that’s Hebrews 13:1, love the brothers, and 13:2, entertain strangers, hospitality. And we’ll get to the hospitality side, then, in terms of those, you know, not engaged, summed up in this love of the brothers. But here, love of the brothers is explicitly tied to having diligence, diligent actions.

James 2, of course, everybody knows this. You know, I’ll read it. Verses 14 to 17. “What does it profit my brothers if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?”

See, brothers, brothers, brothers, brothers, brothers. These guys all write like Doug Coner, don’t they? Calling each other brothers all the time. That’s what we all ought to do. Brotherly love. Let it continue. Hope I’m not embarrassing Doug.

“What does it profit my brethren if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? And now, okay, so that’s the point of this text. The point of this text—James seems to is not a text to say, “Be engaged in hospitable actions toward each other.” That’s an illustration. It’s an illustration of his basic point, which is: faith without works is dead. And what does he use as the illustration of what faith is? Brotherly love.

You see the connection again between our faith in Christ, our Christianity, and our churchianity. To have faith is to love the brothers. And it’s to love the brothers in a way that have works to that as well.

So he says, “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ you do not give them the things which are needed for the body. What does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

So brotherly love is the faith, and the works are these works of charitable actions—clothing people and feeding them.

Now, those are general terms. It’s good for churches to have clothing ministries. The exchange here is a good thing. It’s an exercise of brotherly love. It’s a way to remember that not everybody here can afford new clothes or new stuff all the time. And the way the economy continues, things get more and more expensive. Not many of us can. So it’s a good thing to provide clothing. It’s a good thing to provide food. They’re symbols, though, of guarding and nurturing.

So whatever we can do for one another to build each other up, to nurture each other, and to guard them against the elements, but against other things as well—these are practical actions of brotherly love.

God, Hebrews 6:10: “God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward his name in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. Why can you have expectation of being received favorably into heaven? Because God remembers not your hard attitude. He remembers your works and labor of love, ministering to the saints with actions.”

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but maybe you haven’t thought about it in quite this context. And this text tells us we need to be reminded of it. Love flows out of our focus. It starts in our hearts, but then comes out of our hands as we distribute to the needs of people.

**Five: Love is patient and useful.**

You’ve heard this one from me over and over again, but this is a useful exercise. This is not a text taken from one of the Philadelphia texts of the New Testament, but this wonderful summary statement: “God is love” in 1 Corinthians 13.

“Love suffers long and is kind.”

And it’s my belief, reinforced by Ralph Smith’s sermon here a while back, that’s a summary statement, and love is described in many ways after that—specifics—but the two general statements are patience and kindness.

Now the word “kindness” means usefulness. So love is patient toward your brothers, and love is useful toward your brothers. And the presumption is your brothers are going to mess up. Your sisters are going to sin. They’re going to fall short through both sin and through inability, ineffectiveness. You want to be patient with them. They’re going to sin against you. You got to, you know, bear up and not keep a list of wrongs suffered.

Are you patient with them or not? And are you kind? Are you useful toward your brothers and sisters? Again, “kind” is good, but see, we think of it as an attitude, and it’s an action here. It’s usefulness. And it’s a good thing to do to regularly.

I wish we knew a song with 1 Corinthians 13. I found one, but its lyrics aren’t quite good enough. But here’s another one of those songs we ought to know: 1 Corinthians 13. It’s a reminder to us. It’s a checklist we can go over. Very easy, right?

First thing it says is: love doesn’t envy. Are you envious of brothers and sisters in the church? Don’t tell me you’re not. I know you are. I know if one of us wins the lottery, we’re all kind of thinking, “Gosh, I wish it would have been me.” You know, kids at Kings Academy, if one gets a good grade: “Oh, I wish it was me.” We’re like that. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be sin. If it’s envious, it’s sinful. Are you envious? When your brothers and sisters prosper and do well, do you thank God for that and rejoice with them, or do you envy them?

You see, it doesn’t parade itself. Do you talk about yourself all the time? That’s not love. That’s not useful to other people. Are you puffed up? Pride. We’ll see at the end of the sermon that pride is in direct opposition to love of the brothers.

So go right through this and think of all these phrases in 1 Corinthians 13, and do a little brotherly love checkup. Do it this week. Do it this week. Good application to follow up with the sermon. Go through 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and ask yourself. Fill in some names. “Am I envious of brother Doug?” I use his name again. “Two brother Dougs.” You know, “Am I envious of?” Put in some names of people around here. “Do I talk too much around them, puffing up myself? Am I puffed up in my own attitude toward them? Do I think of myself as better than them somehow?”

You see, you can go right through a checklist here, but really the overarching theme is patience toward brothers and kindness, usefulness—something we should always remember.

**Six: Brotherly love is to grow and increase.**

Well, you don’t ever arrive with this. You see, brotherly love must continue. And the inference is continue to grow. It’s got to continue. You can’t stop, and you can’t grow stagnant at it.

1 Thessalonians 4:9 is one of these Philadelphia texts. “But concerning Philadelphia, brotherly love, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. Again, if you’re a Christian, you know you’re supposed to love each other in the body of Christ. You’re in the family of God by adoption. And indeed, he says, ‘You do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more.’”

We believe in progressive sanctification, right? There’s a definitive sanctification where you’re set aside once for all to God, but there’s growth. Sanctification is normally used as a term, properly, to talk about our growth in grace. We get better and better, more and more holy. It may not seem like that to us because we’re growing in humility, too. And we’re getting rid of pride. But we grow. You see, and that’s sanctification.

He says here, Paul to the Thessalonians, that sanctification can be thought of as an increasing, more and more, brotherly love. If you want to know if you’re growing and maturing as a Christian, are you growing and maturing in brotherly love? Loving your brothers and sisters patiently, kindly, in a discerning way. That’s what it is.

You see, so once we make the connection that this is really salvation to us—one-for-one correlation in God’s word—then it’s also to be seen as pretty indicative of our sanctification. Our sanctification doesn’t stop there, but certainly that’s kind of the baseline of whether we’re growing in grace or not. Are we growing in love?

**Seven: Finally, brotherly love is to be pursued with diligence.**

And I already sort of mentioned this. Romans 12:11: “Not lagging in diligence, being fervent in spirit serving the Lord.”

2 Peter 1:5: “Also, for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness. That’s Philadelphia, the last occurrence of it. Add to this brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love.”

And so this is to be the result of engaging in something with all diligence. It’s a big deal. In other words, it’s a high priority. It should be the subject of much of our energies. You see, all diligence is given to it.

Proverbs 6 tells us what God hates. It’s good to know what God loves, and it’s good to know what God hates—what will please Dad as we come to him. There are things that delight him.

We read responsibly Psalm 133. It’s a delight to God. What makes God happy? When we dwell together in unity, it’s a wonderful thing. Psalm 133 says it makes God happy.

What makes God angry? Well, Proverbs 6 tells us there are six things the Lord hates. Not that he just didn’t like a little bit or is unhappy—he hates them. Seven are an abomination to him.

Now these lists of six and sevens—what it means is there’s six things, but the real killer here is number seven. That’s the head of the list, so to speak—the conclusion, the culmination. So that’s what God really hates.

And what is it? Well, the first thing is a proud look. Then a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one hear it is the seventh—the thing God hates the most. You want to make God angry and get really mad at you and flare his nostrils at you? Discord among the brethren. That’s it. That’s what God hates. Hates it more than anything else.

Now there’s a connection in this list of seven. We see a seven-thing and we say, “Oh, maybe there’s some little structure to it.” Well, there is. The fourth thing is the heart of it. The heart of the seven is a heart that devises wicked plans. Hands move out from that. We’ve got hands and feet. Heart goes to hands and feet.

On other side of that, in the three and the five position, other side of that is the tongue. A lying tongue and a false witness. Those match up pretty good, too, don’t they? So clearly there’s a structure here of the heart working its way out to the hands, working its way out to the tongue, to the end points—which is pride and sowing discord.

What gets in the way of brotherly love? Thinking of ourselves too highly. Thinking of ourselves too highly. As Calvin said, pride is the thing that God hates because it results in what he really hates. It works its way out from a heart action against somebody or not being affectionate toward people, through the fingertips, and most importantly through the tongue and through those actions. So discord among the brethren—and that really ticks God off.

You don’t want to tick God off.

Our God—what did we just read before we got to Hebrews 13:1? Brotherly love must continue. Remember the phrase that is just before that? “Our God is a consuming fire.” You see, so the same way God’s wrath, his anger, is directly connected to a failure for brotherly love to continue and grow in the context of the church of God.

Revelation 3:7-13—there’s a church that’s called Philadelphia, a city that’s called Philadelphia—brotherly love. It’s in Revelation 3. It’s one of the seven churches. Let me read it to you.

“To the angel of the church in brotherly love—right?—these things say, ‘He who is holy and who is true.’” Well, compassionate and faithful, holy and true. “He who has the key of David, he who opens, no one shuts, and shuts, no one opens.” Old Testament allusion back to Hezekiah’s time, etc. “I know your work. Works. See, I have set before you an open door. No one can shut it. You have a little strength. Have kept my word.”

They’re Philadelphia. They’re brotherly love. He knows they’ve kept his word and have not denied my name. It’s a denial of the name of God not to love your brother. That’s what Jesus said.

“Indeed, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan—Jews who say they are Jews and are not, but lie. Indeed, I will make them come and worship before your feet to know that I have loved you because you have kept my command to persevere in what? Brotherly love. I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. Behold, I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of my God, the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem which comes down out of heaven from my God. And I will write on him my new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church.”

What didn’t you hear? Well, if you know the book of Revelation, you know the letters to the seven churches. They’re warnings. In every other letter except this one, he commends them, but then he tells them what they’re doing wrong. The only church that hasn’t done anything wrong is the one named brotherly love.

You see, it’s that significant in the Christian walk. It’s important. It’s very important. It’s the head of all these other lists of horizontal and vertical relationships that we have. It all starts here on the Lord’s day—engaging in Christian community together, recommitting ourselves afresh. When you walk the aisle, walk the aisle, you know, committing to love your brothers and sisters, and maybe committing most of all to love the ones you don’t find so lovable here—to be kindly affectionate, to be patient, not undiscerning. You got to be patient. You don’t want to just overlook things, but to be patient and useful to them.

One for one correlation. This is the ones who are blessed. This is what the New Jerusalem is all about. Heaven and earth linked up. The sixth section linked to the second section in Hebrews. Living in heavenly community on earth means living in the context of the family of God. And this is not outside of your reach.

Colossians 3:12 says this: “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, love, longsuffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. Above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection.”

He’s talking—the word “brotherly love” isn’t used. That’s what he’s talking about. Hard attitude and actions and helping people out. That’s what he’s saying. And he’s saying that all these things—the emotions, the attitude, the actions—are things we’re to put on. It’s the essence of Christian sanctification to put on brotherly love. It’s what God wants us to do.

Calvin said that “brotherly love is a tender plant which requires much attention. If it be not watered, watched and watered, it quickly wilts. Is it? It is an exotic—for it is not a native of the soil of fallen human nature. Hateful and hating one another.” Quotation from Titus 3:3 is a solemn description of what we are in our unregenerate state. “It’s not. It’s an exotic. It needs care. Our own hearts will grow weeds. It’ll grow, you know, hatred and wickedness and malice and envy and all that stuff and impatience and unkindness.”

Calvin says it’s an exotic plant that needs watering and watching or it’ll wilt. Have you let your love for your brothers and sisters here wilt a little bit? Maybe watch it, water it, attend to it. Put on a hard attitude and put on actions. You know, a lot of times that hard attitude follows the actions. Put on the actions. Do good for people here at Reformation Covenant Church.

If we’re going to put God first in the new year, immediately we can make the application that the way we put God first is by putting Christian brothers and sisters first. Love of the brothers is what starts and is the beginning of our year.

John Owen said this: “If brotherly love is as unto its luster and splendor, retired to heaven, abiding in its power and efficacious size only in some corners of the earth—” or he said, “this is what it is”—in his time, “it was like Calvin’s time—seems to be not around too much. He says envy, wrath, selfishness, love of the world, with coldness and all the concerns of religion, have possessed the place of it. And in vain shall men wrangle and contend about their differences in faith and worship, pretending to design the advancement of religion by an imposition of their persuasions on others, unless this holy love be again reintroduced among all those who profess the name of Christ. All the concerns of religion will more and more run into ruin.”

The very name of brotherhood amongst Christians is a matter of scorn and reproach, and all the consequence of such a relation are despised.

He was describing how it was in his time.

Now God says that it’s love for brothers that the world will see and know. It is the greatest apologetic in the world. God says it is the glory of his name shining forth. It’s the glory of that parakinetic dance of the triune God dancing itself out in the church in brotherly love that all can see and observe. They see the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in that. And when they don’t see that, they don’t see the glory and love of God.

All of our well-defined arguments over doctrine and apologetics and all this stuff—all useless unless of Christian love.

Much controversy in Reformed circles this last year, last couple of years. And I’ve been saying all along, it’s a test of love. It’s a test. The test isn’t over. We all better be careful. You see, what Owen said is the same thing true of us today. We are much quicker to enter into debate and discussion and get into big arguments and not be kind and patient in our speech to one another because of doctrinal differences, particularly in the Reformed church. And God says, “Well, you know, all this is a test of your love. Don’t fail the test.”

The Lord God says that indeed when we live as a community, a family of God, this is the great blessings that God pours upon our heads—possible apart from that oil representing the Holy Spirit. But with that spirit moving in our context, God says he’ll give us back the brother we love that began this church and will continue to characterize it, must characterize it more and more for it to attain to the church of Philadelphia—a picture of the New Jerusalem—God’s kingdom come down from heaven to earth.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, give us hearts and actions of brotherly love one toward the other. Help us, Father, to be humble. Help us to root out pride in our hearts, Lord God, and help us not to be those who split apart brothers and sisters, but build each other up. Thank you, Lord God, for the clarity of this single couple-word verse to us as we begin the application inside of this sermon. Father, we thank you that you have told us that brotherly love must continue. It must continue.

Now, we pledge, Lord God, as we come forward bringing ourselves to you that we want to walk in that brotherly love. Give us the grace of the Holy Spirit. Bring, minister to us the love of Jesus who amazingly called us brothers that we may call one another brothers. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.