Book of 1 John Chapter 3 Vs. 18

 Love One Another

1 John 3:18 "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth."

let us not... Two ways not to love:

1. In word—by doctrine

2. In tongue—by profession In tongue refers to mere talk. Claiming to love is not enough. Love is not sentiment, but deeds.

but in deed... Two ways to love:

1. In deed—by definite acts

2. In truth—by being genuine in doctrine, profession, and in deeds

Just talking about helping someone will not help them. We must reach in our pocket and help them, if we can. We must act out what we believe about helping others.

For of work for our fellow man it is that the question is asked half despairingly whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth (gazes at) his brother have need, and shutteth up his heart against him, how doth the love of God dwell in him. Some can quietly look at the poor brother; they see him in need. They may belong to the sluggard Pity’s vision-weaving tribe, who expend a sigh of sentiment upon such spectacles, and nothing more. Or they may be hardened professors of the dismal science, who have learned to consider a sigh as the luxury of ignorance or of feebleness. But for all practical purposes both these classes interpose a too effectual barrier between their heart and their brother’s need. But true Christians are made partakers in Christ of the mystery of human suffering. Even when they are not actually in sight of brethren in want, their ears are ever hearing the ceaseless moaning of the sea of human sorrow, with a sympathy which involves its own measure of pain, though a pain which brings with it abundant compensation. Their inner life has not merely won for itself the partly selfish satisfaction of personal escape from punishment, great as that blessing may be. They have caught something of the meaning of the secret of all love we love because He first loved us. (1Jhn. 4:19) In those words is the romance (if we may dare to call it so) of the divine love tale. Under its influence the face once hard and narrow often becomes radiant and softened; it smiles, or is tearful, in the light of the love of His face who first loved. It is this principle of St. John which is ever at work in Christian lands. In hospitals it tells us that Christ is ever passing down the wards: that He will have no stinted service; that He must have more for His sick, more devotion, a gentler touch, a finer sympathy; that where His hand has broken and blessed, every particle is a sacred thing, and must be treated reverently.

Such is the view of the Christian life in this letter-a life in which Christ’s truth is blended with Christ’s love; assimilated by thought, exhaling in worship, softening into sympathy with man’s suffering and sorrow. It calls for the believing soul, the devout heart, the helping hand. It is the perfect balance in a saintly soul, of feeling, creed, communion, and work.

Are there any who are tempted to think that our text has become antiquated; that it no longer holds true in the light of organized charity, of economic science? Let them listen to one who speaks with the weight of years of active benevolence, and with consummate knowledge of its method and duties. There are men who, in their detestation of roguery, forget that by a wholesale condemnation of charity, they run the risk of driving the honest to despair and of turning them into the very rogues of whom they desire so ardently to be quit. These men are unconsciously playing into the hands of the Socialists and the Anarchists, the only sections of society whose distinct interest it is that misery and starvation should increase. No doubt indiscriminate alms-giving is hurtful to the State as well as to the individual who receives the dole, but not less dangerous would it be to society if the principles of these stern political economists were to be literally accepted by any large number of the rich, and if charity ceased to be practised within the land. We cannot yet afford to shut ourselves up in the castle of philosophic indifference, regardless of the fate of those who have the misfortune to find themselves outside its walls.

The true test of love is not one’s verbal profession of it (loving with words or tongue) but his willingness to help and thus to love… with actions and in truth.