If we carefully consider this apparently irrelevant interruption in
the sequence of the apostolic exhortations, we shall, I think, see at
once that the irrelevance is only apparent, and that the healthy
vehemence against evil and resolute clinging to good is as essential
to the noblest forms of Christian love as is the sincerity enjoined
in the previous clause. To detest the one and hold fast by the other
are essential to the purity and depth of our love. Evil is to be
loathed, and good to be clung to in our own moral conduct, and
wherever we see them. These two precepts are not mere tautology, but
the second of them is the ground of the first. The force of our
recoil from the bad will be measured by the firmness of our grasp
of the good; and yet, though inseparably connected, the one is apt to
be easier to obey than is the other. There are types of Christian men
to whom it is more natural to abhor the evil than to cleave to the
good; and there are types of character of which the converse is true.
We often see men very earnest and entirely sincere in their
detestation of meanness and wickedness, but very tepid in their
appreciation of goodness. To hate is, unfortunately, more congenial
with ordinary characters than to love; and it is more facile to look
down on badness than to look up at goodness.
But it needs ever to be insisted upon, and never more than in this
day of spurious charity and unprincipled toleration, that a healthy
hatred of moral evil and of sin, wherever found and however garbed,
ought to be the continual accompaniment of all vigorous and manly
cleaving to that which is good. Unless we shudderingly recoil from
contact with the bad in our own lives, and refuse to christen it with
deceptive euphemisms when we meet it in social and civil life, we
shall but feebly grasp, and slackly hold, that which is good. Such
energy of moral recoil from evil is perfectly consistent with honest
love, for it is things, not men, that we are to hate; and it is
needful as the completion and guardian of love itself. There is
always danger that love shall weaken the condemnation of wrong, and
modern liberality, both in the field of opinion and in regard to
practical life, has so far condoned evil as largely to have lost its
hold upon good. The criminal is pitied rather than blamed, and a
multitude of agencies are so occupied in elevating the wrong-doers
that they lose sight of the need of punishing.
Nor is it only in reference to society that this tendency works harm.
The effect of it is abundantly manifest in the fashionable ideas of
God and His character. There are whole schools of opinion which
practically strike out of their ideal of the Divine Nature abhorrence
of evil, and, little as they think it, are thereby fatally
impoverishing their ideal of God, and making it impossible to
understand His government of the world. As always, so in this matter,
the authentic revelation of the Divine Nature, and the perfect
pattern for the human are to be found in Jesus Christ. We recall that
wonderful incident, when on His last approach to Jerusalem, rounding
the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, He beheld the city, gleaming in
the morning sunshine across the valley, and forgetting His own
sorrow, shed tears over its approaching desolation, which yet He
steadfastly pronounced. His loathing of evil was whole-souled and
absolute, and equally intense and complete was His cleaving to that
which is good. In both, and in the harmony between them, He makes God
known, and prescribes and holds forth the ideal of perfect humanity
to men.
III. Let sincere and discriminating love be concentrated on Christian
men.
In the final exhortation of our text 'the love of the brethren' takes
the place of the more diffused and general love enjoined in the first
clause. The expression 'kindly affectioned' is the rendering of a
very eloquent word in the original in which the instinctive love of a
mother to her child, or the strange mystical ties which unite members
of a family together, irrespective of their differences of character
and temperament, are taken as an example after which Christian men
are to mould their relations to one another. The love which is
without hypocrisy, and is to be diffused on all sides, is also to be
gathered together and concentrated with special energy on all who
'call upon Jesus Christ as Lord, both their Lord and ours.' The more
general precept and the more particular are in perfect harmony,
however our human weakness sometimes confuses them. It is obvious
that this final precept of our text will be the direct result of the
two preceding, for the love which has learned to be moral, hating
evil, and clinging to good as necessary, when directed to possessors
of like precious faith will thrill with the consciousness of a deep
mystical bond of union, and will effloresce in all brotherly love and
kindly affections. They who are like one another in the depths of
their moral life, who are touched by like aspirations after like holy
things, and who instinctively recoil with similar revulsion from like
abominations, will necessarily feel the drawing of a unity far deeper
and sacreder than any superficial likenesses of race, or
circumstance, or opinion. Two men who share, however imperfectly, in
Christ's Spirit are more akin in the realities of their nature,
however they may differ on the surface, than either of them is to
another, however like he may seem, who is not a partaker in the life
of Christ.
This instinctive, Christian love, like all true and pure love, is to
manifest itself by 'preferring one another in honour'; or as the word
might possibly be rendered, 'anticipating one another.' We are not to
wait to have our place assigned before we give our brother his. There
will be no squabbling for the chief seat in the synagogue, or the
uppermost rooms at the feast, where brotherly love marshals the
guests. The one cure for petty jealousies and the miserable strife
for recognition, which we are all tempted to engage in, lies in a
heart filled with love of the brethren because of its love to the
Elder Brother of them all, and to the Father who is His Father as
well as ours. What a contrast is presented between the practice of
Christians and these precepts of Paul! We may well bow ourselves in
shame and contrition when we read these clear-drawn lines indicating
what we ought to be, and set by the side of them the blurred and
blotted pictures of what we are. It is a painful but profitable task
to measure ourselves against Paul's ideal of Christ's commandment;
but it will only be profitable if it brings us to remember that
Christ gives before He commands, and that conformity with His ideal
must begin, not with details of conduct, or with emotion, however
pure, but with yielding ourselves to the God who moves us by His
mercies, and being 'transformed by the renewing of our minds' and
'the indwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith.'