MORNING MANNA 8-7-25
LOVING ONE ANOTHER
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).
Someone said,”This love we have to each other is the greatest sign the world will ever see that we are the disciples and followers of Christ Jesus. We can preach doctrinal sermons, sermons that are perfectly orthodox and perfectly sound, and strongly evangelistic, but if those lost people who come into our services do not see a profound outpouring of Christian love in our church, they will not see in us anything unusual, they will not think that there is anything very important going on here. But when they come into the services and fellowship times and actually see us loving each other – then will they be impressed to say, “These are the people of God. These are the people who know Jesus and follow Him.”
Spurgeon said, “Let me tell you a very remarkable instance of this. In the early days of Christianity, a terrible [pestilence] broke out in Alexandria. It was very dangerous to be near a person smitten with the disease, and to touch such a person meant almost certain death. When the [pestilence] broke out, the heathen in Alexandria [pushed] out of their houses every person who had the slightest sign of the disease upon him, and left him to starve, and would not even bury their bodies for fear of contagion. But the Christians visited one another when they were sick of the [pestilence], and no Christian was left to die [alone]. They were zealous to go and visit [and care for] each other, although they knew that they [would], in all probability, catch the [disease]; and amongst the carcasses outside the walls of Alexandria there was not found one single [unburied] corpse of a Christian…And the heathen said, ‘What is the meaning of this?’ And the answer went throughout Egypt, ‘This is the religion of Jesus of Nazareth, for these Christians love one another.’ No sermon can be so [well heard by] the world as a true manifestation of the love of Christ; and when God restores to His church genuine, hearty, and sincere love…then shall the world be more impressed by the gospel than it is at present” (ibid., pp. 249-250).
Let it be our goal as a church to so greatly love each other that, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples …” (John 13:35).
