Love One Another
Puritan: Hugh Binning
Source: Treatise of Christian Love
Originally Delivered: 1651, Govan, Scotland
The Lord’s Day: October 4, 2026
“By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:35
“A Christian should be like his Father; and there is nothing in which he resembles Him more than in this, to walk in love towards all men, even our enemies, for in this He gives us a pattern (Matt. 5:44-45).
This is the highest point of conformity with God, and the nearest resemblance to our Father. To be like Him in wisdom, that wretched aim did cast men as low as hell; but to aspire unto a likeness in love lifts up the soul as high as heaven. This is the burden He lays on us; this is all the recompence He seeks for His unparalleled love: “That you love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34). It is the fundamental law of the gospel, to which all positive precepts and ordinances should stoop. It is the sweet result of the united force of all graces; it is the very head and heart of the new man. And truly, charity is nothing else but divine love in a state of condescension, the love of a soul to God manifested in the flesh; it is that love moving in a circle from God towards His creatures and unto God again; as His love to the creatures begins in Himself, and end in Himself (1 Jon 3:17). Christian love should be the moderator of all our actions toward men. I am persuaded, if this rule were followed, the differences in judgment of godly men would soon be buried in the gulf of Christian affection.
Self-love is the greatest enemy to true Christian love, and pride is the fountain of self-love. Self-denial and true love are inseparable. Pride is the mother of passion, humbleness the mother of meekness. Pride is but a swelling and a tumor of mind, but love is solid piety and real religion. The heart of the wicked is as the troubled sea; no rest, no quiet in it, continual tempests raising continual waves of disquiet. Self-love looks on other men’s failings through a multiplying or magnifying glass; but she puts her own faults behind her back, therefore she can suffer much in herself but nothing in others.
There is an infinite distance and disproportion between God and man; yet He came over all that to love man. What difficulty should I have, then, to place my affection on my equal at worst, and often better? There cannot be any proportionable distance between the highest and lowest, between the richest and poorest, between the most wise and the most ignorant, between the most gracious and the most ungodly, as there is between the infinite God and a finite angel. If all that was in me did not alienate His love from me, how should any thing in others strange our love to them? If God be so kind to His enemies, and Christ so loving that He gives His life for His enemies to make them friends, what should we do to our enemies, what to our friends? This one example may make all created love to blush and be ashamed. How narrow, how limited, how selfish it is! Shall I impute that which God will not impute; or discover that which God has covered? How should I expect He should be merciful to me, when I cannot show mercy to my brother. Psalm 18:25: “With the merciful You will show Yourself merciful.” Shall I, for one or few offences, hate, bite, and devour him for whom Christ died, and loved not His life to save him (Rom. 14:15, 1 Cor. 8:11)?
What is it in another that offends me, which, if I do search within, I will not either find the same, or worse, or as evil in myself? When I look inwardly, I find a ‘desperately wicked heart’, which lodges all that iniquity I beheld in others. I cannot see so much evil in my brother as I find in myself; I see but his outside, but I know my own heart; and whenever I retire within this, I find the sea of corruption so great, that I wonder not at the streams which break forth in others; but all my wonder is that God has set bounds to it in my or in any. Whenever I find my spirit rising against the infirmities of others, and my mind swelling over them, I repress myself with this thought, ‘I myself also am a man’, Is it anything strange that weak men fail, and sinful men fall? And am not I myself a man? Therefore, I will not be high-minded but fear (Rom. 11:2). I will not be moved to indignation, but provoked to compassion, knowing that I myself am compassed with infirmities (Heb. 5:2).