Hebrews Chapter Thirteen, Commending Love

 

Hebrews 13:1 Let brotherly love continue.

 

The writer’s tonal shift culminated with the word picture of God being a consuming fire, devouring all that offends in His children, perfecting them for the kingdom they are predestined to become inheritors of. Material creation will abate, but that which is eternal remains. And God’s purification, or sanctification of the believer will have been completed and we will stand holy and blameless before God, free not only from sin’s power, but its very presence.

In light of the heavenly kingdom, whose God is a consuming fire he writes that Christians should let brotherly love continue. The saints are to permit, allow or agree that brotherly love should continue, endure, last or remain. What is brotherly love? The definition of how Christians are to view one another (related through our adoption into the household of God), determines how the saints are to express our love. And that love is the kind those bound by blood and ancestry share. The saints have all things in common when it comes to our salvation and the glories attendant to it; this attitude is to be reflected in the mindset and behavior of the saints while on earth, Acts 2:44, 4:32.

 

Brotherly love shares selflessly. Love is, by its barest definition, selfless. Jesus taught the parable of the man who had fallen among thieves, who robbed and wounded him, leaving him for dead. The priest and Levite largely (or entirely) ignored his plight, but the Samaritan, hated by Jews, did not. He brought the wounded man to an Inn, paid for his room and care, and vouchsafed to pay more still, Luke 10:30-35. This parable sprang from a lawyer’s reading of the law, citing Leviticus 19:18 as part of what a man must do to inherit eternal life, Luke 10:25-27. But the lawyer did not appreciate the scope of his own rendering and asked what he might have considered a rhetorical question. Nonetheless Jesus answered him with the parable of the man who was saved by a stranger that treated him like family, sharing selflessly with his material possessions. This is part of what it means to love someone with a brotherly love.

 

Our Lord once told a certain lawyer that the greatest commandments in the Hebrew Law were, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Matthew 22:37, 39.  He concluded this saying by telling the lawyer, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” Matthew 22:40. Love is the commonality the commandments share. By virtue of degree, the first commandment must be greater, because it is a love that originates with God. A consuming love (as God is a consuming fire, Hebrews 12:29) is what we may more plainly classify as worship. Worship is adoration of God, who He is and what He does. A love that elevates God above anything worldly may go on to the second commandment, which is like it. We are to love our neighbor, which is every other human being, as we already love ourselves. Mankind incurably loves himself. Selfisms are nothing new. We feed and clothe and care for ourselves on the daily, even without thought. It is this daily love that Jesus commands we dole out on our neighbor in equal measure.

 

What goes wrong in our thinking here is that our conception of love is focused too much on the romantic idea of it, not the practical application of love being an action that is self effacing and simply selfless by nature. When we set another’s wellbeing or preferences over our own, we demonstrate love. Jesus explained to His Jewish audience that properly loving another ought to be an outflowing of our love for God. John wrote that anyone who claims to be in the light, but hates his brother, walks in darkness, 1 John 2:9. This darkness coincides with a love of the world, which prevents or forbids the love of God from abiding in us, because it is adversarial to such a love, 1 John 2:15, 16. One’s care goes into Satan’s kingdom, rather than our fellow man, whose need we may help alleviate if we only practiced love as Christ defined it.

 

I cannot overemphasize how we as a culture must cling to Scripture for a clear and honest depiction of love. First and foremost, love is not equivalent to sex. Love is not sexual. Do not mistake being sexually attracted to someone for being in love. In fact, the notion of “being in love,” or “falling in love” is a romantic concept caught up in humanistic whimsy. Love is not a state of being; love is a determination to act on another’s behalf for their best interests, even if we don’t feel like it or it may harm us. If we do not gain, do we still love? Love’s great quality is an innocent selflessness that sacrifices for the good of another. One can’t fall in love. Any instance of falling in Scripture is only negative in its connotation. One may fall from Heaven, as Satan did, Luke 10:18. One may fall from grace, as the Galatian Christians did, Galatians 5:4. But falling in love is a foreign concept in Scripture. Why? Because it involves, not an act of will to determine to care for and provide for another, but a seemingly irresistible power that compels the victim into an attraction toward another that cannot be avoided. Lust is perhaps a better term for such a path, the likes of which David suffered when he saw Bathsheba bathing, 2 Samuel 11:2-4. This is not to belittle the genuine feelings of affection husbands and wives have for one another, but to accentuate the point that as easily as one falls into love, one likewise falls out of it, which is why dating and divorcing are so prominent. Dating? Yes, dating is training wheels for divorce, because we date, don’t feel that intimate or romantic connection, and “break up,” like a mock divorce, making us ready to harden our selfish hearts further so we can only do what is most pleasing or beneficial to us in any relationship we find ourselves in.

 

None of these items fall under the Scriptural banner of brotherly love. Jesus our Lord demonstrated this love, and made it the standard by which the world may know that we belong to Him, John 13:34, 35. John reiterates this concept numerous times throughout his first epistle. “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another…we know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren…and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren,” 1 John 3:11, 14, 16. The message preached from the beginning, that is, shortly before the Lord’s death while He was in the upper room, was that Christians ought to love one another. An evidence that we have savingly believed is that we love our fellow saints with a love that is in, “deed and in truth,” 1 John 3:18. James concurs, which is the whole tenor of James 2:14-26. Do we want to have assurance of our salvation? Love the brethren, as Christ commanded us. John even goes as far as to say that laying down one’s life for the brethren (metaphorically or literally) is a clear depiction of the selfless love God commands His children to exude. We may lay down our lives in service, helping and strengthening others, no matter how it benefits us, or fails to benefit us.

 

Jesus predicated this type of love by saying, “as I have loved you…you also love one another,” John 13:34. This love is described as continuous and sacrificial regardless of adversity or circumstance. “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end,” John 13:1. Our Lord elaborates even further so that no misunderstanding may be made. “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends,” John 15:12, 13. Jesus’ commandment isn’t to obey the Mosaic Law, but to fulfill the entirety of its contents by loving God, and proving that you love Him by loving the brethren and the lost whom we’ve been sent to preach the good news to. This love acts, is not selfish or vain, and seeks for the good of others rather than self. See 1 Corinthians chapter 13 for an excellent depiction of biblical love’s moral character. A Christian’s prerogative is to love his brother, but loving in words alone is pointless and insulting, James 2:15, 16. Let us practice John’s counsel to love in deed and in truth.