We are told in 2 Peter 1:7 to add “love” to “brotherly love” (JND). The common notion is that brotherly love is love, and indeed its most perfect form. This is a mistake. That brotherly love is a most sweet and precious fruit of grace is most true — precious in the heart that is filled with it and precious in its mutual development — but it is not love. The reason is simple: In brotherly love, brethren are the object, and though it surely flows from grace when genuine and pure, in us it easily clothes itself with the character which its object gives it. It tends to limit itself to the objects with which it is occupied and be governed by its feeling toward them. It is apt to end in its objects, and thus avoid all that might be painful to them or mar the mutual feeling and pleasant interaction of fellowship, and thus make them the measure of the conduct of the Christian. In a word, where brotherly love ends in itself as the main object, brethren become the motive and governing principle of our conduct, and our conduct as uncertain as the state of our brethren with whom we may be in contact. Hence Paul says, “Above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness” (Col. 3:1414And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. (Colossians 3:14)), while Peter, as we have noted, reminds us to add “to brotherly kindness, charity.”
Charity — Love
Charity is love, but will not this love exercise brotherly kindness? Undoubtedly it will, but it brings in God. “God is love.” “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:1616Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. (John 4:16)). It brings in a standard of what true love is, which mere brotherly kindness in itself cannot. It is the bond of perfectness for God, and God in active love is its measure. Brotherly kindness by itself has the brother for its object; true love is governed by, exists in virtue of, the conscious presence of God. Hence, whatever is not consistent with His presence, with Himself, with His glory, cannot be borne by the heart which is filled with it. It is in the spirit of love that it thinks and works, but in the Spirit of God by whose presence it is inwardly known and active. Love was active in Christ when He said, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers”; in Paul when he said, “I would they were even cut off which trouble you.”
True Love
True love, because it is God’s presence (and we feel His presence), is intolerant of evil. In mere brotherly kindness, the brother being the object before my mind, I am apt to put man before God, cover up evil, keep kindness going, and so far exclude and shut out God. True love is His active presence, though it will be in love to man, but it gives to God all His rights. He is love, but He is never inconsistent with Himself. His love to us was shown in what was the most solemn proof of His intolerance of evil, the cross. There is no true love apart from righteousness. If God is indifferent to evil, is not righteous, then there is no love in grace to the sinner. If He abhors evil, cannot suffer it in His presence, then His dealings with us as sinners show the most perfect love. If I have children and they go wrong and I say, “Well, I am to show love to them,” and I take no account of their evil ways, or if some of them go wrong and I treat them as if there were no difference to my mind in their well doing or evil doing, this is not love, but carelessness as to evil. This is the kind of love looked for by unconverted man — namely, God’s being as careless as to evil as they are. But this is not divine love which abhors the evil, but rises over it, dealing with it either in putting it away or in needed chastenings. Now if God were indifferent to evil, there is no holy Being to be the object of my love — nothing sanctifying. God does not own as love what admits of sin.
J. N. Darby (adapted)