Stir Up Great Searchings of My Heart

How my Lord speaks of the grace of brotherly love

• He returns to it a second time, 
• though He has already spoken of it in the former part of His discourse.  

He would have me know 

• that I can never think too highly of love, 
• attach too much weight to it, 
• labor too much to practice it.  

Truths which my Master thinks is needful to enforce on me by repetition, 

• must needs be of first-class importance.

He commands believers to love one another.  

• This is my commandment.  
• It is a positive duty laid on my conscience to practice this grace.  
• I have no more right to neglect it than any of the ten precepts given on Mount Sinai.

He supplies the highest standard of love - 

• Love one another as I have loved you.  
• No lower measure must content me.  
• The weakest, the lowest, the most ignorant, the most defective disciple, is not to be despised.  
• All are to be loved with an active, self-denying, self-sacrificing love.  
• If I cannot do this, or will not try to do it, I am disobeying the command of my Master.

A precept like this should stir up in me great searchings of heart.  

• It condemns the selfish, ill-natured, jealous, ill-tempered spirit in me, with a sweeping condemnation.  
• Sound views of doctrine, and knowledge of controversy, will avail me nothing at last, 
• if I have known nothing of love.  

Without charity I may pass muster very well as a church member.  

• But without charity I am no better, says Paul, than sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1)  
• Where there is no Christlike love, there is no grace, no work of the Spirit, and no reality in my faith.  

Blessed am I if I do not forget Christ's commandment! 

• I shall have right to the tree of life, 
• and enter the celestial city.  

If I am an unloving professor, I will be unfit for heaven.  

Adapted Excerpt From The Gospel of John by J.C. Ryle