But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. 1 Thessalonians 4:9
Give your imagination a real workout and try to place yourself among the Christians in the Assembly in Thessalonika. Be prepared for a huge welcome, plenty of warm and friendly greetings and invitations to dinner, and offers of help with anything that you are doing. These folks are bubbling over with genuine affection and kindness toward you and toward each other, so much so that you will find yourself wishing that your own Assembly were just like them. But maybe it is. I certainly hope so, because an Assembly overflowing with loving care is exactly what our Lord wants an Assembly to be, as indicated by today’s text.
Brotherly love – the Greek term is philadelphia – is not exactly the same as the agape love that is defined as the sacrificial, unconditional, and unmerited love of God. Christians ought to have our hearts filled with that agape love. And we ought to have our hands filled with philadelphia love, which is the outward expression of the love of God in our hearts. In other words, philadelphia is agape in work clothes.
How do we recognize brotherly love? First of all, we recognize it as a divine commandment. The Lord Jesus said, A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you (John 13:34). A wise person once said that if we could all learn to love like God loves, we would never need to discuss the subject of love again. God is the great source of love, and the Lord Jesus is the perfect Example of brotherly love. That brings us to the second means of recognizing brotherly love. The Lord Jesus displayed His love in humble service. His willingness to wash His disciples’ feet stands as a towering example for all who would serve Him. We see other wonderful examples in the Scriptures of men and women who displayed their brotherly love in service to others, including the apostle Paul, Timothy, Phoebe, Epaphras, and Tychicus. Another hallmark of brotherly love is kindness, as already noted. Consider the words of Romans 12:10: ‘Be ye kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another’. Ephesians 4:32 also urges us to be kind toward one another, as does 1 Corinthians 13:4: ‘Charity suffereth long, and is kind’. Brotherly love is also to be impartial. That is a hard one for some of us, because we tend to appreciate some Christians more than others. But this should not affect our brotherly love, as we read in 1 Timothy 5:21: ‘I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality’.
Brotherly love is a pretty big subject. And it’s very important to our Lord. How important is it to us? – Jim MacIntosh