“What Is A Christian? Part 9” by Romans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUnDKD1NMH4
We are continuing, tonight, our current Series, "What Is A Christian?” Last week we left off in our review and examination of agape` love as a facet of what it is to be a Christian. There is more to consider on this subtopic, so let us get in gear. Where love is concerned, I was startled and disappointed to hear fellow-believers, plural, speak about those whom they hate, present tense.
In this deeply-divided political climate in which we live, surveys and polls have revealed the troubling truth that Church members are putting political differences first, and drawing back from other brethren, thereby undermining our spiritual unity as the Body of Christ. Such division disregards the clear commands that are taught in the Word of God.
In His prayer to the Father recorded in the 17th Chapter of John's Gospel, on the night before His crucifixion, Jesus was focused on those who currently believed in Him, and those who would believe in Him because of their word. He prayed in verse 11, “And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”
Christians today, as the Body of Christ on the earth, do not reflect the Unity that Jesus prayed that we would have. The Church that the Apostle Paul described in Galatians 3:28, as “neither Jew nor Greek” and “neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” does not exist as it should.
We have, instead, become quite proficient in building walls and barriers between races, nationalities, doctrines, colors, languages, and genders all of whom are believers in Christ. There are denominations who do not recognize any Christians who are not a part of their conclave, and who not worship God exactly as they do, or understand the Word of God exactly as they do.
Let me be more specific. In the Old Testament, many musical instruments are named: Pipes, flutes, horns, stringed instruments, drums and cymbals. These were played to accompany the singing of the Psalms at the various Festivals. There is one such conclave that shall remain nameless ~ with millions of members ~ that teaches that because no musical instruments are named as being used with worship, it must, therefore, be a sin.
They go on to teach that since it is a sin (based exclusively on their own pontifical deductions), if you are a member of a denomination or congregation that uses musical instruments during worship services, y'all are going straight to Hell when you die.
This is why I call these groups conclaves and not churches: I have great difficulty applying the term church to their group with these kinds of radical and biblically indefensible doctrines and beliefs. Now someone might say to me, “Wait a minute! Didn't you just do the same exact thing by calling them a conclave instead of a church?”
I will let the Apostle Paul answer that question: “ For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another” (Galatians 5:14-15).
The leaders of what I call these “conclaves” have apparently never read Romans 14 in which the Apostle Paul lists the variations of worship and understandings held by member of the Church, there. Rather than take sides, much less disown any members for their variant understandings and practices he wrote the following:
“Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.
One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:1-5, and 10).
Consider, if you will, the Apostle Paul's comments in his first epistle to the Church at Corinth. That epistle is arguably his most critical epistle in which he chastened the members there for a wide-ranging list of departures from Christian doctrines and Christian norms.
To be specific, the Apostle Paul found it necessary to chasten the Church at Corinth in his first epistle to them for the divisions and factions among the believers based on their allegiance to different human leaders (1 Corinthians 1:10-17; 3:1-23); these allegiances prompted Paul to ask the question in verse 13: “Is Christ divided?”
He chastened them for boasting about their spiritual gifts and wisdom, while neglecting the message of the cross and the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18-31; 4:6-21).
He chastened them for tolerating a case of incest among the member where a man was in a sexual relationship with his father's wife, and failing to discipline the offender (1 Corinthians 5:1-13).
He chastened the members of the Church at Corinth for suing one another before pagan courts, instead of settling their disputes among themselves (1 Corinthians 6:1-11).
He chastened them for misunderstanding the principles of Christian liberty and sexual morality, and abusing their freedom in Christ (1 Corinthians 6:12-20; 8:1-13; 10:23-33).
He chastened them for disregarding the sanctity of marriage and the value of singleness, and having wrong views on divorce and remarriage (1 Corinthians 7:1-40).
He chastened them for abusing the Lord’s Supper by eating and drinking in an unworthy manner, and creating divisions and discrimination among the participants (1 Corinthians 11:17-34).
He chastened them for confusing the purpose and proper use of spiritual gifts, especially the gift of tongues, and failing to exercise them in love and order (1 Corinthians 12:1-31; 14:1-40).
He chastened them for denying the resurrection of Christ and the future resurrection of the believers, and losing sight of the hope and the implications of the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-58).
And He chastened them for withholding their financial support for the collection for the saints in Jerusalem, and lacking generosity and sincerity in their giving (1 Corinthians 16:1-4).
Yet, in spite of all of these departures from Christian ideals, I want you to notice, please, how he addressed that epistle of one scathing chastisement after another: “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:1-4).
Yes! The Church at Corinth had wandered far from Christian norms and doctrines on many issues, but in the mind of the Apostle Paul, they never stopped being the Church. They never stopped being sanctified in Christ. They never stopped being called to be saints.
Paul's chastening of them was not motivated by hatred or his dismissal of them. Nowhere does he say in that epistle that they're all going straight to Hell for the things they were doing, or doing wrong or not doing at all. In the last line of this epistle, here is what he tells them: “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen” (1 Corinthians 16:24).
In stark contrast to Paul, the conclaves I referred to earlier does not even recognize Christians as Christians if their worship and understandings of the Word of God varies from what they do and teach. They don't call them brothers and sisters or Christians. One calls them, instead, “Babylon.” Another calls them, “Christendom.” Another called them, “The churches of the world.”
I think this is the perfect time to quote what was on Jesus' mind for His followers on the night before He laid down His life and died for our sins and transgressions: “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are” (John 17:11).
The Sermon Bible says of this: “I. The Author and maintainer of Unity. "Holy Father, keep." Unity wherever it exists flows from God. He is the cloud whence the drops of peace distil first upon crowning Hermon, and then flow down to all the lower heights.
And as He is the exclusive author, so is He also the exclusive maintainer of unity. Peace and unity in families—unity, peace and concord among nations—harmony between contending parties, whether in the state or in the church—all these are the result of that maintenance and support which God as the Eternal Father is continually ministering to His creatures, and accordingly must be traced to Him as their origin.
II. Note the method by which God maintains this unity through His own Name. It is an unfeigned acknowledgment of Divine love on one hand, and Divine justice on the other, in which our Saviour here prays that God would keep His chosen. Keep their hearts ever alive to all the attributes which constitute Thy Name or character.
Proclaim Thou Thy name before them, and give them to walk conformably to it, yielding Thee an obedience, strict indeed, as with One who will not suffer sin upon them; but at the same time free and princely, and hearty and loving—the obedience not of slaves, but of dear children.
III. Note the persons between whom this unity may be expected to subsist: "Those whom Thou hast given Me." Union, real vital union, cannot exist among and with those who are ignorant of God.
IV. How close will be the bond of the fellowship; that "They may be one, as We are." What mortal shall tell, what mortal shall comprehend the exceeding closeness of that unity, perfect unity of counsels—perfect unity of will—perfect unity of ends—perfect unity of nature?
And even such a bond shall clasp the elect together, nay is now clasping them, and being gradually drawn more closely around them. E. M. Goulburn, Sermons at Holywell, p. 182. References: Joh_17:11.—New Outlines on the New Testament, p. 72; G. W. McCree, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 46; J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension to Trinity, p. 21; Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 241.
The Apostle John's adds regarding the walls and barriers, and the disowning and condemnation of fellow-believers in his first epistle: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him...
We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:16, 19-21).
Matthew Henry writes of this: “The apostle applies this in order to the excitation of holy love. God's love is thus seen and exerted in Christ Jesus; and thus have we known and believed the love that God hath to us, 1 John_4:16. The Christian revelation is, what should endear it to us, the revelation of the divine love; the articles of our revealed faith are but so many articles relating to the divine love.
The history of the Lord Christ is the history of God's love to us; all his transactions in and with his Son were but testifications of his love to us, and means to advance us to the love of God: God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, 2 Corinthians_5:19. Hence we may learn,
1. That God is love (1 John_4:16); he is essential boundless love; he has incomparable incomprehensible love for us of this world, which he has demonstrated in the mission and mediation of his beloved Son. It is the great objection and prejudice against the Christian revelation that the love of God should be so strange and unaccountable as to give his own eternal Son for us;
it is the prejudice of many against the eternity and the deity of the Son that so great a person should be given for us. It is, I confess, mysterious and unsearchable; but there are unsearchable riches in Christ. It is a pity that the vastness of the divine love should be made a prejudice against the revelation and the belief of it. But what will not God do when he designs to demonstrate the height of any perfection of his?
When he would show somewhat of his power and wisdom, he makes such a world as this; when he would show more of his grandeur and glory, he makes heaven for the ministering spirits that are before the throne. What will he not do then when he designs to demonstrate his love, and to demonstrate his highest love, or that he himself is love, or that love is one of the most bright, dear, transcendent, operative excellencies of his unbounded nature;
and to demonstrate this not only to us, but to the angelic world, and to the principalities and powers above, and this not for our surprise for a while, but for the admiration, and praise, and adoration, and felicity, of our most exalted powers to all eternity? What will not God then do?
Surely then it will look more agreeable to the design, and grandeur, and pregnancy of his love (if I may so call it) to give an eternal Son for us, than to make a Son on purpose for our relief. In such a dispensation as that of giving a natural, essential, eternal Son for us and to us, he will commend his love to us indeed;
and what will not the God of love do when he designs to commend his love, and to commend it in the view of heaven, and earth, and hell, and when he will commend himself and recommend himself to us, and to our highest conviction, and also affection, as love itself?
And what if it should appear at last (which I shall only offer to the consideration of the judicious) that the divine love, and particularly God's love in Christ, should be the foundation of the glories of heaven, in the present enjoyment of those ministering spirits that comported with it, and of the salvation of this world, and of the torments of hell? This last will seem most strange.
But what if therein it should appear not only that God is love to himself, in vindicating his own law, and government, and love, and glory, but that the damned ones are made so, or are so punished, (1.) Because they despised the love of God already manifested and exhibited.
(2.) Because they refused to be beloved in what was further proposed and promised. (3.) Because they made themselves unmeet to be the objects of divine complacency and delight? If the conscience of the damned should accuse them of these things, and especially of rejecting the highest instance of divine love, and if the far greatest part of the intelligent creation should be everlastingly blessed through the highest instance of the divine love, then may it well be inscribed upon the whole creation of God, God is love.
2. That hereupon he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him, 1 John_4:16. There is great communion between the God of love and the loving soul; that is, him who loves the creation of God, according to its different relation to God, and reception from him and interest in him.
He that dwells in sacred love has the love God shed abroad upon his heart, has the impress of God upon his spirit, the Spirit of God sanctifying and sealing him, lives in the meditation, views, and tastes of the divine love, and will ere long go to dwell with God for ever.
We love him, because he first loved us, 1 John 4:19. His love is the incentive, the motive, and moral cause of ours. We cannot but love so good a God, who was first in the act and work of love, who loved us when we were both unloving and unlovely, who loved us at so great a rate, who has been seeking and soliciting our love at the expense of his Son's blood;
and has condescended to beseech us to be reconciled unto him. Let heaven and earth stand amazed at such love! His love is the productive cause of ours: Of his own will (of his own free loving will) begat he us. To those that love him all things work together for good, to those who are the called according to his purpose.
Those that love God are the called thereto according to his purpose (Romans 8:28); according to whose purpose they are called is sufficiently intimated in the following clauses: whom he did predestinate (or antecedently purpose, to the image of his Son) those he also called, effectually recovered thereto. The divine love stamped love upon our souls; may the Lord still and further direct our hearts into the love of God! 2 Thessalonians 3:5.
II. As love to our brother and neighbour in Christ; such love is argued and urged on these accounts: - 1. As suitable and consonant to our Christian profession. In the profession of Christianity we profess to love God as the root of religion: “If then a man say, or profess as much as thereby to say, I love God, I am a lover of his name, and house, and worship, and yet hate his brother, whom he should love for God's sake, he is a liar (1 John_4:20), he therein gives his profession the lie.”
That such a one loves not God the apostle proves by the usual facility of loving what is seen rather than what is unseen: For he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen? 1 John_4:20. The eye is wont to affect the heart; things unseen less catch the mind, and thereby the heart.
The incomprehensibleness of God very much arises from his invisibility; the member of Christ has much of God visible in him. How then shall the hater of a visible image of God pretend to love the unseen original, the invisible God himself? 2. As suitable to the express law of God, and the just reason of it:
And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also, 1 John 4:21. As God has communicated his image in nature and in grace, so he would have our love to be suitably diffused. We must love God originally and supremely, and others in him, on the account of their derivation and reception from him, and of his interest in them.
Now, our Christian brethren having a new nature and excellent privileges derived from God, and God having his interest in them as well as in us, it cannot but be a natural suitable obligation that he who loves God should love his brother also.”
Let's consider what John also wrote in his first epistle about a Christian hating his brother: “Again, a new commandment I write unto you, 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” (1 John 2:8-11).
The Pulpit Bible tells us of this: “Walking in the light excludes all hatred towards brethren, for such hatred is a form of darkness. These verses set forth in a variety of forms the affinity between love and light, hatred and darkness, and the consequent incompatibility between hatred and light.
"Hate" is not to be watered down into "neglect" or "fail to love." St. John knows nothing of such compromises. Love is love, and hate is hate, and between the two there is no neutral ground, any more than between life and death, or between Christ and antichrist. "He that is not with me is against me."
"Love is the moral counterpart of intellectual light. It is a modern fashion to represent these two tempers as necessarily opposed. But St. John is at once earnestly dogmatic and earnestly philanthropic; for the Incarnation has taught him both the preciousness of man and the preciousness of truth" (Liddon).
He that saith. For the fifth time St. John points out a glaring inconsistency which is possible between profession and fact. In all these passages the case is put hypothetically; but in some of the Gnostic teaching of the age this inconsistency existed beyond a doubt. Is in darkness even until now.
His supposing that hatred is compatible with light proves the darkness in which he is. Nay, more, it shows that, in spite of his having nominally entered the company of the children of light, he has really never left the darkness. "If ye loved only your brethren, ye would not yet be perfect; but if ye hate your brethren, what are ye? where are ye?".
Whereas he who loves his brother has not only entered the region or’ light, but has made it his home: he abideth in the light. It is difficult to determine whether the "occasion of stumbling" is in reference to himself or to others. The context here and John 11:9-10 are in favour of the former. It is a man’s own salvation that is under consideration here, not his influence over others: and seems exactly parallel.
To have no light in one is to be in danger of stumbling; to have light in one is to have no occasion of stumbling. But elsewhere in the New Testament means a stumbling-block or snare in another’s way, not in one’s own way; and this makes sense here. There is yet a third explanation: "in it," i.e., "in the light there is no occasion of stumbling." This makes a good antithesis to the close of John 11:11, "knoweth not whither he goeth."
The brother-hater has darkness as his habitual condition and as the atmosphere in which he lives and works; and long ago (aorist tense of the verb) the continual darkness deprived him of the very power of sight, so that he is in ignorance as to the course he is taking. Cf. "They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness" (Psalm 82:5);
"The fool walketh in darkness" (Ecclesiastes 2:14). "St. John scouts all the pretences of men to illumination which do not involve the practical acknowledgment of brotherhood. A man may say he is in the light as much as he pleases; but to be in the light implies that he is able to see his brethren, and not to stumble against them" (Maurice).”
The Cambridge Bible Commentary adds to this: “For the fifth time the Apostle indicates a possible inconsistency of a very gross kind between profession and conduct (1John 1:6, 8 and 10). We shall have a sixth in 1 John_4:20. In most of these passages he is aiming at some of the Gnostic teaching already prevalent. And this introduces a fresh pair of contrasts. We have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood; we now have love and hate.
his brother: Does this mean ‘his fellow-Christian’ or ‘his fellow-man’, whether Christian or not? The common meaning in N.T. is the former; and though there are passages where ‘brother’ seems to have the wider signification, (see Matthew 5:22; Luke 6:41; James_4:11), yet even here the spiritual bond of brotherhood is perhaps in the background.
In St. John’s writings, where it does not mean actual relationship, it seems generally if not universally to mean ‘Christians’: not that other members of the human race are excluded, but they are not under consideration. Just as in the allegories of the Fold and of the Good Shepherd, nothing is said about goats, and in that of the Vine nothing is said about the branches of other trees... They are not shut out, but they are not definitely included...
Years before this St. Paul had declared (1 Corinthians 13:2), ‘If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, … but have not love, I am nothing.’ The light in a man is darkness until it is warmed by love. The convert from heathendom who professes Christianity and hates his brother, says St. Augustine, is in darkness even until now.
is in darkness even until now] Or, as in 1John 1:6, in order to bring out the full contrast with the light, is in the darkness. ‘Even until now’, i.e. in spite of the light which ‘is already shining’, and of which he has so little real experience that he believes light and hatred to be compatible.”
Finally, Albert Barnes tells us of this: “He that saith he is in the light - That he has true religion, or is a Christian, And hateth his brother - The word “brother” seems here to refer to those who professed the same religion. The word is indeed sometimes used in a larger sense, but the reference here appears to be to that which is properly brotherly love among Christians.
Is in darkness even until now - That is, he cannot have true religion unless he has love to the brethren. The command to love one another was one of the most solemn and earnest which Christ ever enjoined, John 15:17; he made it the special badge of discipleship, or that by which his followers were to be everywhere known, John 13:35;
and it is, therefore, impossible to have any true religion without love to those who are sincerely and truly his followers. If a man has not that, he is in deep darkness, whatever else he may have, on the whole subject of religion.”
There is more ~ much more ~ to review and examine in order to answer from the pages of the Word of God the question our Series poses: “What Is A Christian?” And I plan, God willing, to wade deeper into this question, and share with you what God's Word has for us, as well as the insights of the many Commentators I have leaned on to give us all a better understanding. I invite all of you who are hearing or reading my words to join me at this same place and time next week.
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “What Is A Christian? Part 9”
This Discussion was presented “live” on February 21st, 2024.
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