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The Acts of the Apostles
tender, thoughtful, self-denying, willing to make any sacrifice for the
truth’s sake. In their daily association with one another, they revealed
the love that Christ had enjoined upon them. By unselfish words and
deeds they strove to kindle this love in other hearts.
Such a love the believers were ever to cherish. They were to go
forward in willing obedience to the new commandment. So closely
were they to be united with Christ that they would be enabled to fulfill
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all His requirements. Their lives were to magnify the power of a
Saviour who could justify them by His righteousness.
But gradually a change came. The believers began to look for
defects in others. Dwelling upon mistakes, giving place to unkind
criticism, they lost sight of the Saviour and His love. They became
more strict in regard to outward ceremonies, more particular about the
theory than the practice of the faith. In their zeal to condemn others,
they overlooked their own errors. They lost the brotherly love that
Christ had enjoined, 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, having shut the love of God out of their hearts,
they would soon walk in darkness.
John, realizing that brotherly love was waning in the church, urged
upon believers the constant need of this love. His letters to the church
are full of this thought. “Beloved, let us love one another,” he writes;
“for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and
knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In
this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent
His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved
us, we ought also to love one another.”
Of the special sense in which this love should be manifested by
believers, the apostle writes: “A new commandment I write unto you,
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which thing is true in Him and in you: because the darkness is past,
and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and
hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his
brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling
in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in
darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness
hath blinded his eyes.” “This is the message that ye heard from the