Tidings for Tuesday
Let brotherly love continue. Hebrews 13:1
What a nice thing to say! Our text can be taken as the apostle urging the Christians to continue their love for each other as brothers in Christ. He is not criticizing them for not doing so; he is noting that they have been doing this, and he desires they maintain this situation. Living in a world that knew not nor cared for their Lord, they would be much like us today, finding their closest and best friends among the Lord’s people. Some versions add a few words onto the text: Let brother love continue among you as an Assembly. How much more powerful would our testimony as an Assembly be if we practiced this simple policy as we should. But I think there is another meaning we can take from this portion, if we allow ourselves to pursue it.
The expression in the text ‘brotherly love’ is the Greek term Philadelphia. In Revelation 3 we read of one of the Assemblies in Asia to whom John is to deliver a message. And what a message it was! The Philadelphian letter describes an Assembly brimming with zeal in the Gospel and fervency for their Lord. Their very name tells us that as a company of believers, they were knit together in deep affection and caring. They were in many ways an excellent pattern for Assemblies today to follow and imitate. So maybe it’s not too much of a stretch for us to rephrase our text today to say Let Philadelphia continue.
We are only fooling ourselves if we fail to see the spirit of Laodicea descending on our Assemblies today. Compared to many, we are faithful and zealous. But compared to earlier years, we are lukewarm and pathetically ineffective. Today, Christians are much better off financially than ever before in our country. We have so much better homes, so many more things, and occupy ourselves with so much more entertainment and pleasures. None of us want to give up these comforts and so-called blessings, but they in reality are robbing us of our effectiveness in the Gospel and in our testimony before the world. Rich, and increased in goods and in need of nothing, we fail to appreciate the need to reach the lost all around us. Oh, we make an effort, but how much of an effort? How much better would our spiritual life be if we could get back to the Assembly in Philadelphia! We would have less of this world’s things and more of Heaven’s interests. We would spend more time in reaching souls than in reaching the top rung. We would make an impression by how much we care rather than how much we have.
May the spirit of Philadelphia touch us today that we would continue in love for both saints and lost souls. –Jim MacIntosh