“Loving-Kindness”

By Ian Hamilton, Editor

Reprinted from the January 2021 Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue#688

The Works of John Owen make for fascinating reading. By turns they excite, humble, challenge and inspire. Owen was by common consent the greatest of the English Puritan pastor-theologians. He understood that theology was to be God-glorifying, sinner-humbling, and believer-enriching. Owen’s theological legacy to the church is immense. His writings on the glory of Christ, communion with God and the Holy Spirit are stellar. No less stellar in their own way are his writings on “practical divinity.” I well remember the first time I read Owen’s brief treatise on mortification. As I read it I thought, “This man knows my heart.”

Recently I was re-reading Owen’s work and was struck by a passage that arrested my attention.

They have a zeal for religion; but it is accomplished with want of forbearance and universal righteousness. They deny prodigality, but with worldliness; they separate from the world, but live wholly to themselves, taking no care to exercise loving-kindness in the earth [my emphasis]: or they talk spiritually, and live vainly; mention communion with God, and are every way conformed to the world; boasting of forgiveness of sin, and never forgiving others. And with such considerations do poor creatures harden their hearts in their unregeneracy.

It was the words “taking no care to exercise loving-kindness in the earth” that made me stop and ponder. Owen is speaking about people who “have a zeal for religion” but whose Christian profession is a sham. For Owen, one of the evidences of their sham is that they take “no care to exercise loving-kindness in the earth.” Owen is writing about the duty and grace of mortification of sin. He wants to impress on his readers that mortification is both a spiritual grace and a necessary duty. It is those who take seriously the reality of remaining or indwelling sin, and who, with the help of the Holy Spirit, give themselves to the business of killing sin, who “live” (see Romans 8:13). One of the evidences of a life which is taking mortification seriously will be the “exercise of loving-kindness in the earth.” In other words, one of the marks of a healthy, devoted Christian, will be the practice of loving, not only fellow believers, but their neighbours in general, “in the earth.”

Owen is saying no more than the Lord Jesus Christ. When he was asked what was the greatest commandment, he replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law of the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). Our Saviour was highlighting the primacy of love in the life of a believer. What is often forgotten, perhaps because it is too uncomfortable, is that love for God necessarily involves love for others. The apostle John puts it starkly: “If anyone hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (John 4:20-21).

John is focusing especially on the love that is to be cherished and practiced among the saints. But Christian loving-kindness is not to be exclusively practiced within the Christian family. Jesus told us that we are to love our enemies: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mathew5:44-48). Loving the unlovely, even our enemies, is to reflect the family likeness, to be like God.

The gospel of the God of grace has come to make us “new creations.” it brings us, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, into union with Christ, the friend of sinners. Loving-kindness to lost, sin-weary, sin broken men and women, was one of the hallmarks of our Saviour’s life on earth. No less would he now have that loving-kindness practiced on earth through the lives of his people, his body.

The question that surely now arises is, What will that loving-kindness look like in practice? No doubt much could be said. However, some words in Acts 10 capture what this loving-kindness will look like. As Peter began to preach the good news of the Lord Jesus to Cornelius, he spoke these striking words, “he went about doing good.” Jesus was a “do-gooder,” He looked to do good wherever he was. Not only was he available to help and do good, he sought out opportunities to do good. Do you live near someone who is lonely, who has some disability, who is unemployed, who is unwell, who has suffered bereavement? I would think we all do. Knock on their door. Ask if you can go to the grocery store for them. Invite them for coffee and a meal (COVID-19-restrictions permitting!). Bake a cake. The list is endless. Don’t just sit in your small corner. Don’t ignore the needs which the Lord in his providence has placed around you. Practise loving-kindness.

Those words, “he went about doing good,” have somewhat haunted me for most of my life as a Christian. They sound so innocuous and can so easily be parsed. Yet, they are profound and act like a plum line searching out our hearts. Jesus’ words, “You, therefore, must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect”, climax his call for his disciples to love their enemies. Owen was perceptive when he spoke of loving-kindness being one of the primary marks of a healthy Christian life. Where loving-kindness is absent, can the grace of God in Christ be present? “Go and do likewise.”