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Testimonies for the Church Volume 8
In their zeal to condemn others they forgot their own errors. They
forgot the lesson of brotherly love that Christ had taught. And, saddest
of all, they were unconscious of their loss. They did not realize that
happiness and joy were going out of their lives, and that soon they
would walk in darkness, having shut the love of God out of their hearts.
The apostle John realized that brotherly love was waning in the
church, and he dwelt particularly upon this point. Up to the day of
his death he urged upon believers the constant exercise of love for
one another. His letters to the churches are filled with this thought.
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“Beloved, let us love one another,” he writes; for love is of God....
God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live
through Him.... Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one
another.”
1 John 4:7-11
.
In the church of God today brotherly love is greatly lacking. Many
of those who profess to love the Saviour neglect to love those who are
united with them in Christian fellowship. We are of the same faith,
members of one family, all children of the same heavenly Father, with
the same blessed hope of immortality. How close and tender should be
the tie that binds us together. The people of the world are watching us
to see if our faith is exerting a sanctifying influence upon our hearts.
They are quick to discern every defect in our lives, every inconsistency
in our actions. Let us give them no occasion to reproach our faith.
It is not the opposition of the world that endangers us the most;
it is the evil cherished in the hearts of professed believers that works
our most grievous disaster and most retards the progress of God’s
cause. There is no surer way of weakening our spirituality than by
being envious, suspicious of one an other, full of faultfinding and evil
surmising. “This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly,
sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion
and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure,
then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and
good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit
of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.”
James
3:15-18
.
Harmony and union existing among men of varied dispositions is
the strongest witness that can be borne that God has sent His Son into
the world to save sinners. It is our privilege to bear this witness. But,
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in order to do this, we must place ourselves under Christ’s command.