Love Reproving # 3

 Love Reproving # 3

"This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands." (1 John 5:2). Go back to the previous verse for the connection, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well." We love the brethren, because they have been made "partakers of the Divine nature" - it is that, and nothing pertaining to the old creation, which is the uniting bond. How that lifts us entirely out of the realm of nature, into the spiritual sphere! It is love for God - which produces love for those who bear His image. And what is the touch-stone of my love to God? Not rapturous feelings, nor beautiful words of devotion., nor heartily singing His praises  - but by keeping His commandments - John 14:15, 21, 24; 15:10. The strength of my love for God is to be gauged by the measure of my obedience to His Word. The same principle holds good in my relations with the brethren - love to them will be manifested by efforts to encourage them in the path of obedience - and that necessarily involves rebuking them for disobedience.

To come more immediately to the opening questions. "Is it possible to be too critical of Christians? nowadays?" Why the qualifying "nowadays"? Has God lowered His standard to meet these evil times? Is it permissible or expedient for me to compromise because the present generation is so lax and carnal? Do not the days in which our lot is cast, call for a clearer drawing of the line between the Church and the world? If so, should not this help to determine my conduct toward the individual?

We are mindful that large numbers hold the view that God requires less from people in degenerate times - but we know of nothing in His Word which supports them! Rather are such days the very time when the Christian most needs to show his colors, when shallowness and hollowness marks the religious profession all around, there is greater urgency for us to make manifest the reality that we are "strangers and pilgrims" in this scene. The Scriptures are just as much the Rule - and the sole rule for us to walk by - as they were for our more godly forebears. In the Day to come, we shall be judged by them as truly as they will be. If is never right to do wrong - nor to condone wrong.

John, the apostle of love, began his third epistle with these words, "The elder unto the well-beloved Gaius, whom I love in the Truth." What a needed word is this for today, when so much that passes for love, even in avowedly Christian circles, is nothing but a sickly sentimentality at the expense of the Truth. One of the outstanding cries in the religious world, is to this effect - "though we have differed in our beliefs and practices, let us now sink our differences and come together in love." When I was the pastor of a church in Sidney, I was regarded as a narrow-minded bigot, because on what Rome calls "good Friday" I refused to take part in an "ecumenical Communion service," where Fundamentalists, Liberals, Unitarians, and Evolutionists were invited to gather together, and thereby express "brotherly love" for one another. What a travesty and mockery! The wisdom which is from above is "first pure, then peaceable." (James 3:17). The more I am walking in the Truth and the more my brother is doing the same - the more cause have we to love one another.

It may be helpful to answer the opening question by changing the form of it - Is it possible to be too critical of myself? May I permit myself a certain amount of indulgence, exclude some part of my life from the control of God, be less strict about some matter than others? In the light of such verses as "Catch the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines"; "Grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ," "whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" - is there any difficulty in answering that question! If not, am I justified in countenancing a lower standard for others than I seek to apply to myself? Am I not required to love my neighbor as myself? And am I doing so - if I gloss over something in him which I know to be against his or her spiritual interests and can only work ill for him? If it is my plain duty to warn him against physical evils - then on what ground am I justified in being silent when I see spiritual danger menacing him?

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 4)