1 John 4:20

LOVE TO MEN

‘He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?’

1 John 4:20

We cannot love Him Whom we do not realise, and to realise the great invisible Influence in which we live and move and have our being, to realise the Person Who is watching over and directing us and directing all this complicated scheme of things, is harder and harder to do. And the world comes close around us and absorbs us. If that is our difficulty we may take the verse which we have read, and we may say that it teaches us that there is a training in the love of God.

I. Love of man is a training for the love of God; for, though it is hard to realise the Invisible, we have the visible. We have men; we have the love of men, which is natural to us, and easy for us in a sense. And I think that is what the Apostle means us to take as a training for the love of God—the love of our brother whom we have seen; this familiar friend, who is with us at every turn of our life, with whom we are continually thrown in contact. And in our natural life in the world this familiar friend is the means which is to train and draw out this great faculty in us—the love of our friend and of our brother-man. We are to train and exercise ourselves in the love of God by this means. And that simple, natural human affection which we feel for our brother—that is the very same faculty as that which is required for the love of God. We must not think of this love as something extraordinary, some fresh and unknown faculty which is to be given to us. No doubt all love is of God, is a gift: but all love is alike, the same affection. It is really in its essence the going out of ourselves and loving another and living for another. And whether that other be a fellow-man, or whether it be God Himself, still the impulse is the same—the putting aside of all selfish impulses, and living in and for God or men. That is love. So the love of man is, as I said, a training for the love of God, because it is the same faculty that is needed for both. And in our weakness, when we cannot rise to the love of God, let us remember that we have our Lord’s own warrant that whatsoever ‘we do unto the least of these His brethren we do unto Him.’ And when we love our brethren, it is the first step to the love of God. We cannot pass it over; we cannot rise to the love of God unless we love ‘our brethren whom we have seen.’

II. But there is a caution required.—This lesson on which I have been laying stress is too congenial to our aims, if anything. We are inclined to rest in the love of man, as if that were all our duty. We are apt to think that it is all comprised in loving man, and we forget that it is intended to lead us on to the love of God: that it is training. Our age is nothing if not philanthropic. Universal love is its ideal; its test of religions is, ‘Does it teach the love of man?’ Its test of a man’s own life is as to whether he has shown himself beneficent, benevolent, kindly, loving; and the danger in all that is lest we should forget that to which we are intended to rise—the love of God. And I think that the cause of the danger is this, that our love of man is not perfect, our love of man is limited to one side of man’s nature; for if we are to learn the love of God through the love of man, we must love that which is God-like in man. If we are to love the invisible eternal God, and to learn it by our love for our brethren, we must love the invisible and eternal in our brethren—that which is godly, that in which he was created in the image of God.

III. What is the case in our own affections?

(a) Take that general affection of philanthropy.

(b) Take friendship which links men together.

(c) Take the case of our children—is our love concerned only with their worldly welfare?

In all these respects we must have regard to God-like characteristics.

—Bishop A. T. Lyttelton.