Faith That Produces: Brotherly Love

2 Peter 1:5-9

Introduction: We have been looking at what we add to our faith in order to be effective in our spiritual walk. This week’s lesson and next week will be somewhat of a contrast. Both will deal with love and yet we often breeze over the word and concept of brotherly kindness or love to get to the more serious word for love, agape. Peter didn’t do that.
We live in a world that needs brotherly love, brotherly kindness.
I. A Neglected Concept
We live in a world where the concept of brotherly love or kindness is decreasing it seems. One example is a trend in architecture that separates family members. The children don’t fight as much because they can avoid each other. They don’t fight but they also don’t learn to be kind, to love in spite of the differences. As one person lamented, “People don’t even gather in the same spot to watch TV anymore.”
The decline in Christian brotherly love is seen also in the decline in civility towards people who differ with us. Opponents are shouted down, insulted, and called names. Only ugliness seems to be seen on the news, only the outrageous gets people’s attention and a hearing.
I wish I could say this was only outside the church community but in truth Christians do much the same. Instead of kindness we see the tactics of the world when Christians disagree and fight.
While we might want to rush on and talk about “agape” love I don’t think we can until we have some idea about brotherly love. The implication from Peter’s list is that brotherly love comes before the agape love that we will consider next week.
The word that Peter uses here is “philadelphia” which we know as the name of a city. It is made up of two Greek words, “phileo” which is love or affection, “adelphia” a word for brothers. “Phileo” is used less frequently in Scripture than “agape” even though it was a more common word in that day and time. It was often joined with other words. For example philosophy is to love wisdom. The word Peter uses here describes the love between family members.
II. A Human Word
Brotherly love is a very human concept, one that focuses on our relationships in the here and now. It is easy to forget how vital these relationships are. This is a word for community or family or church. The question is, “How do we add brotherly love to our faith?”
This doesn’t come naturally but it has to be purposefully worked at. I saw this in Kenya when we were at the Koma Rock church. We had about eight different tribes among our members and some were traditional enemies. It might be easy to settle for a false community in such cases much like the home I mentioned earlier. Everyone could go into their corner and avoid those that they don’t like or disagree with. It might be a type of peace but it isn’t brotherly love. Conflict doesn’t negate community and can even make a community stronger if brotherly love is present.
I don’t know your level of brotherly love. Some may feel like they are on the outside here. Others may feel I have my circle of friends and that is enough for me. We must add brotherly love, in increasing measure in order to remain productive in our faith. Complacency in this area is poison to our spiritual life.
Adding brotherly love begins with a decision, a decision to reach out, to build relationships with people. So many of us sit back and wait on others to take the initiative. Peter calls on Christians to add to their faith. That means action on our part, not passivity. It means taking an interest in others, learning about them, doing things they like to do in order to spend time with them.
We build brotherly love by listening to each other. James put it well when he wrote, James 1:19. Listening is a skill that often seems in short supply in our world of endless words. We need to listen to each other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way, “He who can no longer listen to his brother will soon no longer be listening to God, either.”[1]
One of the best ways to build brotherly love is working together. Our mission team is in Honduras for two weeks. They will come back closer to each other because of those two weeks. If you want to add brotherly love to your faith then join in some work or ministry that is going on. Vacation Bible school is coming up. People are still needed to do all kinds of things. Maybe working with children is not your thing but there are lots of other tasks that need doing and you will get to know the person you work with better.
We build brotherly love through our home groups. Those will be starting again the end of September. These groups study together, eat together, work together, and pray together. The result is they add brotherly love to their faith as well as other qualities that Peter has listed in this passage.
Lee Iacocca once asked legendary football coach Vince Lombardi what it took to make a winning team. The book records Lombardi's answer: "There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don't win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient: if you're going to play together as a team, you've got to care for one another. You've got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: 'If I don't block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his.'
"The difference between mediocrity and greatness," Lombardi said that night, "is the feeling these guys have for each other."2]
Brotherly love isn't just an afterthought for Peter. It is vitally important to faith that is productive. If we add it, in increasing measure, as Peter commands we will grow and so will our church.

Livonia Church of Christ: July 3, 2005
[1] Leadership, vol. 16.4
[2] From Leadership vol. 15.3