Of That Reconciliation To Our Neighbor, Without Which God Withdraws His Grace.
First be reconciled to thy brother.—Matt. 5:24.
Every one who desires to be reconciled to God, must of necessity endeavor to reconcile himself to his neighbor; because God takes the injury which is offered to man, as offered to himself, and the evil done to man, as done to himself.
2. When, therefore, any one offends both God and man, he cannot be restored to the favor of God before he is reconciled to man his neighbor; for having offended them both, he must also be reconciled to both, which is expressly attested by Christ himself: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Matt. 5:23, 24.
3. It will be needful, therefore, to say something further of the love of God and of our neighbor, and to show how impossible it is to separate the one from the other: and again, that this reconciliation, so joined together, proves the true source of brotherly love and affection.
4. This the beloved disciple has expressed as follows: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he that loveth God love his brother also.” 1 John 4:20, 21. So utterly impossible is it, that the love of God should subsist without the love of our neighbor. Hence, also, it follows, that he who truly and unfeignedly loves God, will also embrace his neighbor with the same sincere affection. And again, if the love which we profess to bear to God be hypocritical and false, then the love with which we seem to love our neighbor, will rise no higher than its principle, but prove false likewise. Therefore, the love of our neighbor is the test of our love of God, by the right application of which, the truth or falsehood of that love will easily be discovered.
5. This consideration gives us a true insight into the love of our neighbor, and that brotherly reconciliation which ought to attend it. There is a twofold object given by God to man, to which all the actions of his life are constantly to tend; namely, the love of God, and of our neighbor. Into this, all our endeavors ought finally to be resolved, and we ought to make a daily progress in this holy exercise; since we are to this very end, created, redeemed, and sanctified. In a word, Christ himself is the one and only scope in which all our actions ought to centre. Now, the more we approach to love, the more [pg 095] we approach to Christ, and the better we imitate his unblamable life.
6. For this end God was made man, or, the Word was made flesh, that he might set before our eyes a most lovely and living image of his infinite love and kindness, and that from hence it might appear, that God was Love itself; love in His own immense, incomprehensible, and unsearchable essence; and that man, by viewing so amiable an object of love as is displayed in Christ Jesus, might be transformed into the same image day by day.
7. Furthermore, as, in Christ, God and man are united together by an indissoluble tie, so the love of God is so closely connected with the love of our neighbor, that the former cannot exist without the latter. Nay, the love of God and of our neighbor can be no more disjoined or put asunder, than the divine and human natures in Christ. And as he who injures the humanity of Christ cannot but affront his divinity also; so he who offends man, is in like manner guilty of offending the infinite God himself. We cannot be angry with our neighbor, without being, at the same time, angry with God!
8. We will illustrate what has been said, by the following comparison. When a circle is made, and from its centre a number of lines are drawn to the circumference, all these lines, though ever so distant in the circumference, meet together in the point, which is in the middle. Here they are all united in one, and all flow into one, be they ever so wide asunder, yea, even directly opposite one to the other. Not one of all the lines, let their number be ever so great, can be broken from the rest, without losing its communication with the centre itself, wherein they all meet. So God is a point, or a centre, whose circumference is everywhere, extending in a manner, to all men upon earth. Whoever presumes to break off the lines of his love from his neighbor, must, in like manner, disjoin and break them off from God at the same time. And as all these lines cohere and concur in the centre, and therein mutually affect one another, so is there a sort of central sympathy, and a fellow-feeling, as it were, of the sufferings of our neighbor, provided we be but all united in God, the great centre of all good Christians.