Ephesians 1:15; 1 John 3:14
I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints.
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): Love to the brethren is oft given as a character of a true saint.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Why is this so important? Why is this loving of the brethren something that comes in as an acid test immediately after faith in the Lord Jesus?
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Faith cannot be separated from love.
JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Upon this single evidence, John grounds an assurance of heaven—the Apostle having said, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you,” immediately subjoins, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” By the manner of his expression, he sufficiently intimates that the want of this love is so universal, till the Lord plants it in the heart, that if we possess it, we may thereby be sure He has given us of His Spirit and delivered us from condemnation.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Why is love for the brethren an infallible evidence and assurance of regeneration?
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Oh, I’ll tell you, it is an absolute proof of life―this love. You see, by nature, we all hate one another. You dispute that? Well, the apostle Paul says so, and I think he’s saying the truth―this is how he puts it: “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful―and hating one another,” Titus 3:3…The natural man, the man who’s not a Christian, the man who is not born again, he has no interest in Christian people, he dislikes them, he finds them dull, uninteresting, downbeat―those are his terms about them. And he certainly wouldn’t like to spend a number of hours in the presence of such a person.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): If we do not love the brethren, we are still dead.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Therefore, you see, if it can be said of a man that he loves the saints, you can be absolutely sure that the man has been given a new nature; he’s been born again.
A. W. PINK: Love to the brethren is the fruit and effect of a new and supernatural birth, wrought in our souls by the Holy Spirit, as the blessed evidence of our having been chosen in Christ by the Divine Father, before the world was―we love the brethren, because they have been made “partakers of the Divine nature,” 2 Peter 1:4.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: So you see, if we love the saints, it is a proof that the Holy Spirit is in us…I ask myself, why do I love these saints? And the answer is I love them because they are in the same relationship to God as I am. These are the people who have been segregated out of the world, chosen of God, translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. These people and I are walking together through this world of sin in the direction of heaven! I’m going to spend my eternity with people like this…We belong to the same Father, to the same household, to the same family, we are going to the same home.
MARY WINSLOW (1774-1854): I have this one evidence, if I have no other, of my election of God—I love all the saints in the bowels of Jesus Christ. I feel a oneness with them that I feel to no other.
C. H. SPURGEON: Have you a love towards the saints? Well, then you are a saint yourself! The goats will not love the sheep. And if you love the sheep, it is an evidence that you are a sheep yourself…Hypocrites do not love one another—Listen to them! They are always denouncing other people—and this is no mark of love to the brethren. They have a keen eye for the imperfections of others, but they have no love to those they censure. We must love the brethren or we lack the most plain and most necessary evidence of salvation.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: You see, a Christian is a man who’s got a new test―he’s only interested in one thing: Is he a child of God? Is he my brother? Is this my sister? Are we related?
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): Here is a test of our relationship to the family of God that never fails.
JOHN NEWTON: But as the heart is deceitful, and people may be awfully mistaken in the judgment they form of themselves, we have need to be very sure that we rightly understand what it is to love the brethren, before we draw the Apostle’s conclusion from it, and admit is as an evidence in our own favour, that we have passed from death unto life.
THOMAS WATSON (1620-1686): It is possible to love a saint, yet not to love him as a saint; we may love him for something else—for his ingenuity, or because he is affable and bountiful. A beast loves a man, but not as he is a man, but because he feeds him, and gives him provender.
JOHN NEWTON: A “party” love is also common. The objects of this are those who are of the same sentiment, worship in the same way, or are attached to the same minister. They who are united in such narrow and separate associations, may express warm affections, without giving any proof of true Christian love.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): As soon as the love of God was shed abroad in my soul, I loved all, of whatsoever denomination, who loved the Lord Jesus in sincerity of heart.
A. W. PINK: Wherever the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, the affections of that soul will necessarily flow unto all His people…If we love one saint as a “saint”—for what we see of Christ in him—we shall love all saints.
JOHN CALVIN: If we would so love the saints as to please God, we must bear in mind that their names are written in heaven and on Christ’s heart; otherwise we shall love some because they are lovely, and dislike others because of their blemishes.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: All the saints. Not only some of them. Not only the ones you happen to like, but all the saints. Not only the clever ones. Not only the learned ones. Not only the pleasant ones. Not only the ones who belong to a particular social strata. No, no, all of the saints.
C. H. SPURGEON: Yes, a love even to the bad-tempered ones, the irritating ones, the unsaint-like “saints.”
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): Then, let every Christian professor test his religion by this grace. Let him who has been prone to retire within his own narrow enclosure ask himself the question, “If I love not my brother whom I have seen, how can I love God whom I have not seen?”
RALPH ERSKINE (1685-1752): But how may we know, if our love toward the children of God be of the right sort? This is answered, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments,” 1 John 5:2.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): Do I show evidence of a regenerate soul? Do I love the brethren? Do I love the commandments of God? Is the Word of God sweet to me, and do I delight to feed on it?
