1 John 3:23

THE UNION OF FAITH AND LOVE

‘This is His commandment, That we should believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment.’

1 John 3:23

What is it that the Lord our God requires of us? Is it possible to answer that question? I am going to ask you to consider what clearly purports to be an answer. It was given by the last of the Apostles, in what was probably the latest of the New Testament writings. We may be content to accept it as the final expression of what the Christian revelation has to say to us on the subject. ‘This is His commandment, that we should believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave us commandment.’ Those are words which might well be marked in our Bibles and stamped on our memories. Let us think about them.

To believe and to love—faith and charity—is it not true that these are the noblest fruits of human life? Would not a world in which faith and love were universal be a world upon which the Maker might look with delight, which He might rejoice to display to the universe?

I. The purpose of life.—Our best and happiest days are those in which we are most able to believe and to love. The darkness and chill that come over us when we forget God and cease even for a moment to care for one another are the sure evidence that we were never meant to do either the one or the other. To believe and to love: that is the end and purpose for which individuals and nations exist. And they justify their existence just in so far as they are approaching to this, God’s goal for them. But if that be true, as I think we must allow that it is, then it becomes important and necessary that we should know more. Certainly in the high matters of the soul we greatly need a clear and definite guidance. We constantly hear people saying at the present time, almost in a despairing tone, ‘What are we to believe, and what are we to do, when some are urging one thing and some another, and when Christians are so dreadfully divided?’ Well, listen again to the words which we are considering. They do not leave us in any shadow-land of vague generalities. They bid us believe and love, and they tell us also exactly what we are to believe and how we are to love. ‘This is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ’—this first. ‘That we should believe on the Name,’ or to render more literally, ‘that we should believe the Name of His Son Jesus Christ’—believe all that is conveyed in the comprehensive title ‘His Son Jesus Christ.’ It is a compressed creed. In four words is set forth a complete statement of the nature and office of Him in Whom we are to know ‘what God and man is.’ ‘His Son’—before the world was. ‘Jesus’—born into the world. ‘Christ’—the heir and the Master of the world to come.

II. Our rule of faith.—That is to be our rule of faith. All belief and all knowledge are to be welcomed and prized according to the degree in which they make the truth as it is in Him more luminous and self-evidencing. In that light we are to expect to see light. Amid the problems of criticism and the uncertainties of philosophy this is to be our sure foundation on which to rest, from which to advance—the Divine, Human, Eternal Person of ‘His Son Jesus Christ.’ We are grateful to any who will help us to rise towards any of the higher ideals of truth and beauty; if ever our gratitude overflows it is to the teacher who makes the creed of the living Lord more intelligible and credible to us and shows us that it may become the inspiration of our souls.

III. Our rule of life.—And if the rule of faith is definite, so too is the rule of life. We ask, how are we to love? What does it mean in actual practice? In what way is the duty to be carried out in detail? Those, as we know, are questions which perpetually confront us when we think about conduct. How plain is the answer to them! We are to learn of Him, to follow in His steps. His teaching and example are to supply us with the interpretation of what love is. No case, no situation, can arise upon which light will not be shed if only we make it our aim to do what He would have us do in regard to it. The one quite certain proof that our conduct is right is to be found in the fact that those who witness it are reminded of Him.

IV. Faith and love indivisible.—The further point that I would have you note is the vital essential unity of it. Often as we examine into a thing closely we become aware that it is capable of being divided and mechanically separated into different parts. In this case the constituent elements are so combined as to be indivisible and inseparable; together they form a single whole. We are not told that these are His commandments, but that ‘This is His commandment, that we should believe … and love.’ And do not think that this is a matter of little practical importance. I am certain that it is vastly important to observe and remember it. It is not too much to say that, if we are conscious that we have but poorly fulfilled this Divine Will for our lives, it has been in large measure because we have failed to understand this point in regard to it. We have been tempted to put asunder what God has joined together. We have tried to obey one part or other of the twofold injunction rather than to obey them together. We have been inclined to argue that, if it is hard to believe and hard to love, it must be doubly hard to do both. But in the higher arithmetic it is not so. Paradox as it may sound, the two are easier than either, the half is more difficult than the whole. In truth we may go further and say that neither is possible if attempted alone. Really to love, in the full Christian sense, is out of the question in the absence of faith.

Let it be our aim and our ambition to keep His commandment, to do the things that are pleasing in His sight. What He asks from us, and for the sake of which we and, it may well be, our universe were made, what He longs to see is the life which rises and ripens at one and the same time into faith and love. Let us not think we can separate them. To strive after one and not the other must be to fail. If, in dependence upon His help, we strive after them both we may assuredly look to succeed. That cannot be a hopeless quest for which God has created and to which God is calling us all.

—Rev. Dr. A. W. Robinson.

Illustration

‘The late Judge Stephen frankly faced the alternative that Christian belief might one day be abandoned in England, and gave his deliberate opinion as to what the result must be. “I think,” he said, “that if Christian theology were exploded, Christian charity would not survive it.” That is why we Church people think it necessary to contend so earnestly for the maintenance of definite teaching of the essentials of Christian belief in our schools. Equally certain is it that Christian faith will not abide in the absence of love. There is an interesting letter written by Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, to a promising pupil who was beginning his life at the university. And what was the counsel that the elder pressed upon the younger man? He bade him remember that if he was to keep his faith it could only be as he strove to keep his sympathies tender and wide. He advised him to seek opportunities of visiting the sick and the suffering, and that for his own sake as much as for theirs. He knew full well that to believe is only possible to those who love.’