In difficult times for the church, we need to think of how to comfort and encourage each other’s hearts. When the Apostle Paul was striving to achieve this for believers in the churches of Colosse and Laodicea (and others he hadn’t even met), he identified two means — knitting together in love, and getting a clearer grasp of their shared faith. Disunity is both a sign of lack of love and something which hinders love and hence comfort. Perhaps we tend to underestimate how discouraging it is for ordinary believers to be separated by church divisions — which inherently thwart expressions of love between Christian and Christian — especially when the denominational boundaries do not reflect differences in the key doctrines we confess. Some of the distress of our hearts would be alleviated if we were more united. John Howe (1630–1705), a highly respected presbyterian minister in London who was ejected in 1662, saw this clearly. In the following extract from his sermon on Paul’s words, Howe identifies nine ways that love knits believers to each other, so as to build each other up and comfort their hearts.

In Colossians 2:2, the apostle’s blessed purpose is “to comfort their hearts,” and he conceives two means which would be most effective in attaining it: love and faith.

“That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.”

This comfort would be achieved, more or less, if they were knit or compacted together in love, made all of a piece, cohering and clinging to one another by love.

What is Christian love?

The kind of love which is meant here is specified by what it is conjoined with, “the understanding and acknowledgment of the mystery of Christianity.” It must be the love of Christians to one another as such.

It is not the love which we owe to one another as humans merely. That would be to enlarge it too much. For then we would be as much obliged to love the enemies we

are to unite against as the friends of religion we are to unite with, since all partake equally in human nature. We are to love the children of God in a different way from the children of men.

Also, it is not a love to Christians of this or that denomination only. That would be to equally unduly restrict it. This love is owing to Christians as such, and just as it belongs to them only, so it belongs to all of them who confess genuine Christianity in profession and practice. To limit our Christian love to a sub-group of Christians is so far from leading to “comforting our hearts” that it resists and defeats this end. Instead of a preservative union, it implies most destructive divisions, and scatters what it should collect and gather.

At the same time, I am not to distribute this holy love so indiscriminately as to place it at random on every one who thinks it convenient to call himself a Christian (even though I ought to love the very profession, while I do not know who makes it in sincerity). But let me once get a right grasp of the true essentials of Christianity (whether in doctrinal or vital principles), then my love will extend duly to all in whom these are found, and I come actually to apply it to this or that person as particular occasions arise. In this way I shall always be in a preparation of mind actually to unite in Christian love with every such person, whenever such occasions invite me to it.

What does Christian love do?

What would such an impartial, truly Christian, love do towards the preservation of us all, and to prevent the ruin of Christianity?

Gives life

How greatly it would contribute to the vigour of the Christian life! Then we would all equally hold the head, “from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God” (Col 2:19). In this way (as it is in the parallel text), “speaking the truth in love, we shall grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph. 4:15–16).

As obstructions in the natural body that hinder the free circulation of blood lead to languishing, so the lack of love in the body of Christ shrivels up the destitute parts, and hinders the diffusion of a nourishing, vital influence.

Inspires courage

Christians generally would be inspired with sacred courage if they knew and felt themselves to be knit together in love. If part of an army revolts, it greatly discourages the rest, for they are no longer entire, and of a piece. Mutual love animates them, as nothing else can, when they are prepared to live and die together. Love joins those who are joined by a shared danger. Otherwise, they are only so many single persons, each only caring how to look out for himself.

Likewise, it makes Christians the more resolute in their adherence to truth and goodness when they are sure of the help, the counsels and the prayers of the Christian community, and when they realise that if they decline, they grieve those whom they love, and who they know love them.

Soothes anger

Christian love extinguishes or abates the unholy fire of our anger and wrath towards one another. Then debates (if there must be any) are managed without intemperate heat.

When we become angry that we cannot make someone else adopt our own sentiments, we make ourselves less capable of reasoning aptly to convince, and we make the other person less susceptible to being persuaded.

Why are we yet to learn that “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God”? What is gained by it? Angry contention avails so little that even those who are in the right lose by it, and whatever they gain by it cannot recompense the damage and hurt that ensues to the church and to themselves.

For if the lack of love hinders the nourishment of the body, much more do the things which fill its place. For as naturally as love begets love, so do wrath, envy, malice, calumny, beget one another, and spread a poison through the body which necessarily wastes and tends to destroy it.

Promotes kindness

This love obliges us to all acts of mutual kindness and friendship. If this love governed us, we would always be ready to serve one another in love, to bear each other’s burdens, to give advice and help to one another, and to do our uttermost to strengthen each other’s hands in Christian living. It would not let us do so absurd a thing as to confine our friendship to those of our own denomination, which is as unreasonable as being friends only with people our own height, or those whose hairstyle was most similar to our own. It would make us not be ashamed to be seen in each other’s company, or be shy of acknowledging one another. There would be no partition-wall through which love would not easily open a way of friendly interaction.

Removes suspicion

Prejudices would cease, as would jealousies about each other. We would no more suspect one another of ill designs on each other, any more than we would suspect our right hand of trying to cut off the left. We would believe one another in our mutual professions, both that we wish kindness to one another, and that we really scruple the things we say we do.

This would in turn make us earnestly covet a complete union, to reconcile all the things in which we differ. If only love would incline us to consider the matters of difference themselves, rather than to imagine some ulterior motive in the persons who differ from us, it is likely we might find ourselves much nearer to one another than we thought.

Strives for common ground

This love would make us much more apt to yield to one another as much as we can, in order to reach as full an accommodation as is any way possible. If we cannot agree on either extreme, we may at least meet in the middle. We would compete among ourselves as to who would make the largest concessions to this purpose, like Luther at Marburg, when he did not want the other side to be credited with being more desirous of peace and concord than he!

Lessens judgmentalism

Christian love would certainly make us abstain from censuring one another as insincere for our remaining differences. In defiance of the great God and our blessed Redeemer, who has so expressly forbidden us to judge, lest we be judged (Matt. 7:1), we give ourselves a vast liberty to judge! I do not criticise this as the fault of any one group, but everywhere it arises, for God knows how widespread this poison is!

But uniting, knitting love would make us refrain from judging, not merely from the restraint of God’s laws, but from a benign disposition, which would make our spirits abhor it. Then those on the one side would have no inclination to judge those who do not see things the same way, as if they had on that account cut themselves off from Christ and from the body of Christ.

Again, this love cannot permit us to think all the black thoughts we can invent of them, as if, because they don’t see with our eyes, they are therefore utterly and wilfully blind.

Respects conscience

Christian love would oblige us to hold off from urging one another over the points of difference.

Some try vehemently to get others to comply with them, either by flattery or by threats. Would love let me violate someone else’s conscience in any way? The love I bear to a fellow-Christian, if it is true, would no more let me do that than hurt the apple of my own eye.

Others try by argument to convince their reason and satisfy their consciences. But this too may be unprofitable to those they are trying to persuade, and Christian love, which pursues the peace and quiet of their brethren, should restrain them from doing this. Is it not conceivable that those who differ from me in such lesser things may have reached a settled view on them, just as I have? Is it not possible that they have weighed everything up as much as I have done? Is it not possible that all may have been said which is to be said, and the matter sifted to the very bran? So that all my further arguings will only serve to demonstrate my own vain self-confidence, as if all wisdom were to die with me.

Alternatively it serves to show that this person has a different complexion of mind from me. All cannot receive all things. We cannot make everyone share our sentiments (Rom. 14:1, 3). Is he fit for God’s communion, notwithstanding his scruple, and is he unfit for yours? By the apostle’s precept, he is not to be vexed and importuned with continual disputation.

Avoids running people down

Sincere love restored and exercised more among us would certainly make us hold off from reviling and exposing one another, and industriously seeking one another’s ruin.

What! Will nothing less than our destruction content you? Do you not know that “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him”? I know that many are apt to justify themselves in their animosity towards others by the claim that they bear the same disaffected mind towards them. But besides the fact that this is the most indefensible injustice, how contrary this vindictive spirit is to the rules and spirit of the Christian religion! Is this what it means to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us and despitefully use us? How unalike this retaliatory spirit is to the Christian temperament which Calvin displays in a letter to Bullinger. Speaking of Luther’s harshness towards him, Calvin said, “If Luther a thousand times call me devil, yet I will acknowledge him for a famous servant of God.” Surely no one will say it is against his conscience to love his brother!

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