[Text: Hebrews 13:1-4] “Grateful Brothers”

Gratitude. It’s such a powerful thing. And when it is missing we can be the most offensive creatures on the planet. While interning at another church, I was in the challenging position of raising the support which would enable me work. I had reached out to just about everyone I’d ever met for support and so many people showed their love through generous giving and constant prayer. The love shown by one couple was particularly meaningful. He had been my pastor for a season in life and they jumped at the chance to continue showing their love. They were one of the first to send a letter with a check, encouraging me in the work and promising $30 per month to enable it to continue!

I was grateful to them, but something was wrong – I didn’t show it.

I didn’t show gratitude at all. No thank you note. No phone call. No quick ministry update. Time ticked by – nothing. Their love was met with no grateful response. And that wounded my friends. After a couple of months I got a letter saying how deeply I had hurt them.

When gratitude isn’t expressed, when gratitude doesn’t find its way out of our hearts and into action, it means something is wrong. Something is wrong because love wasn’t met with the proper response.

The same thing can happen when it comes to the Gospel. We can hear about the incredible love of God poured into our hearts and the sacrifice of His Son that cleanses us and his continuing care of His people; we can hear about His promise of an already here and still coming kingdom…but fail to respond to that Gospel with the proper gratitude. Jesus knew the ugliness of ingratitude, when those who’d been shown great grace failed to be transformed by it. He put it like this,

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him [the equivalent of 200,000 years’ wages]. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred [days’ wages for a laborer], and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.” (Matthew 18:23-30)

Such grace had been shown to the first servant. But it was not met with gratitude. Mercy was not met with like-mercy. He wasn’t transformed by his master’s love.

The Gospel is always meant to transform hearts; God accepts us just as we are but His love does not leave us that way. It’s a process, to be sure, and it is a process that He promises to complete in us. But what we need to recognize and turn away from is the functional ingratitude that still exists in us.

I say “functional ingratitude” because – like me with my old pastor – we can be grateful to God for the forgiveness and new life given to us in Christ but fail to show that gratitude properly. Functional ingratitude is people like us – with whom God is so gentle – being less than charitable toward one another over matters of conscience or doctrine. It is us wretched, unstable sinners avoiding someone else whose sin has come to light because we think their sin is somehow less savory than our own! Functional ingratitude looks like buying in to our culture of individualism, retreating into our fortress-homes and keeping all our desperately needy neighbors a loud “Good morning!” distance away. Ingratitude can look as much like ignoring the poor of Fuquay as it does a prayer-less, thankless heart toward the God who rescued us.

So, if we know what ingratitude looks like, what would it look like to respond to the love of God in Christ with a grateful heart? If we want to turn away from ungrateful living and cooperate with God’s intention to transform us, how should we live? Funny we should ask; Hebrews 12 ended with a call to gratitude and then begins to paint a picture of what gratitude looks like.

[Read Hebrews 13:1-4 (starting in Hebrews 12:28 for context)]

We’ve spent 10 weeks listening to this early Christian sermon that is the book of Hebrews. He’s called us to listen, to pay attention to what Christ has done. He’s told us about the God who speaks and the God who came to fully identify with humanity through Christ; the God who died in the place of rebels and the God who forgives and welcomes us as sons. And now, having laid out the Gospel of Jesus, he tells us how we are supposed to respond. It starts with gratitude.

We’re supposed to be grateful. That’s it. Nothing to add to the Gospel. Nothing left to do to win God’s approval. No work to be done to pay God back for our sin and disobedience of the past (or future). Our part is to hold fast to Christ, look to Jesus as we walk to the City of God, and be grateful.

A grateful heart worships the God who brings us into His unshakable kingdom, looking with mouth hanging open at the beauty of Christ and living in reverence for him (12:28). This is the vertical component of gratitude; gratitude that looks like worshipping the one who is worthy of all our love and obedience.

But a grateful heart also takes what it has been given and gives it to fellow pilgrims as we walk together to the City of God.

What we’re talking about today is the horizontal component of living in gratitude to Christ. Because the Gospel is about a restored relationship with God but it is also about restored relationships with one another. Everything broken in the Fall is being made new in Christ! And the call to live that out with each other gets summed up in the opening verse of chapter 13.

“Let brotherly love continue.”

This is the overarching call that gets fleshed out in the rest of the chapter, although we’re only focusing on the first four verses today. It’s the call to let the grace and forgiveness shown to us by Christ transform the way we live with each other, both inside and outside the church.

And notice that it is call to “brotherly” love. The theme of brotherhood has already shown up in Hebrews. We saw it first in chapter 2 when Christ himself calls “brothers” those direct their faith toward him (2:11-13). It is the brothers of Christ who are set apart as holy (3:1) and we, as Christ’s brothers, may draw near to God in complete confidence (10:19). So, if we are brothers of Christ by faith in him, then we are brothers in him, too. And if Christ loves his brothers, then we ought to strive to do the same as we live out our gratitude to Christ.

So when we hear, “Let brotherly love continue” our first question should be, “Yes, but what does brotherly love look like?” Well, consider what the brotherly love of Christ looked like and we’ll start moving in the right direction. The love Christ showed to his brothers was sacrificial and enduring. It worked for the good of others; it was permanent; it was a love unafraid to suffer; it was a love that made sinners able to approach the Living God.

But in case that still seems too vague, the pastor gets more specific. Grateful, brotherly love looks like three things: (1) hospitality to strangers, (2) identifying with those who suffer and (3) holding marriage in honor.

First, brotherly love looks like showing hospitality to strangers. It’s interesting that v. 2 is phrased in the negative. “Do not neglect” is a way of speaking to those who are tempted to close their homes and keep to themselves. And there was good reason for the temptation! Remember, these were Christians facing intense suffering. The temptation to withdraw would be powerful, especially to withdraw from strangers who might hurt them. But the Gospel leads them to step toward strangers to show them hospitality.

Henri Nouwen said,

“At first the word ‘hospitality’ might evoke the image of soft sweet kindness, tea parties, bland conversations and a general atmosphere of coziness. Probably this has its good reasons since in our culture the concept of hospitality has lost much of its power and is often used in circles where we are more prone to expect a watered down piety than a serious search for an authentic Christian spirituality. But still, if there is any concept worth restoring to its original depth and evocative potential, it is the concept of hospitality.”

So, if hospitality is not merely “tea parties” and “bland conversations,” if we want to restore its original depth, then what is hospitality?

The best working definition I have ever heard is this: “Hospitality is the business of turning strangers into family.”[1]  Beyond mere niceties is the hard and long work of loving others as yourself. But think about how the Lord typically works to build his kingdom and the importance of hospitality becomes vividly clear.

First, in the early centuries of the church, the Gospel was often taught as the apostles and other disciples of Christ went from town to town preaching and teaching the Word of God, proclaiming Jesus as both “Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). In order for them to hear the Word again and be built up in their faith, these early Christians would need to welcome these strangers and they would be blessed in the welcoming, like Abraham who showed hospitality to angels though he did not know it.

But second, think about how the Gospel ordinarily spreads. Think about how you yourself are encouraged and grow in the faith. It happens when someone draws you in and welcomes you into their home and life as a member of their own family. Many of you here are here because someone has shown you brotherly love in the form of hospitality. And through that welcome, your heart was further opened to the Word and to the grace of God as the Spirit blessed their hospitality.

So, the call here is not a call to go across the world to make disciples of Christ. It is the simple call to open your home and love your neighbors with the love you yourselves have received. What neighbor across the street or two doors down – that neighbor who remains a stranger – what neighbor could you begin turning into a member of your family? And how might God use that to build His kingdom?

This kind of hospitality is beautiful when lived out by brothers in the Church toward each other and toward those strangers outside the Church. And as challenging as this kind of brotherly love can be, the pastor calls us to a still more difficult love…because brotherly love looks like identifying with those who are suffering.

That’s what we see in v. 3 – “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” Brotherly love is lived out by identifying with those who suffer.

Where the call to show hospitality was directed toward how Christians treated strangers, this was a call to take care of their own brothers (and sisters) who were already experiencing suffering for the sake of Christ.

Already, it seems, those who held fast to their faith in Jesus as Lord (as opposed to Caesar as Lord) were being arrested and thrown in prison. And to be in prison in those days didn’t mean that the state provided for all your needs, as it does today. No, to be in prison meant that if you were to eat or be clothed it would come by your friends taking care of you. But what would it mean for these Christians to take food or clothes to the prison for a brother in Christ? It would mean identifying themselves as a Christians, identifying themselves with a suffering brother and thereby opening themselves up to the same suffering.

These early Christians had done that once before (10:32-34). But now they were being called to keep showing that same brotherly love even if it meant they would be mistreated, too.

Today, we see our brothers in Christ still mistreated. Some are still thrown in prison for their faith and this is a call for us to remember that we are one with them in Christ, offering support through prayer if nothing else. But what about our brothers and sisters in Christ here in Fuquay who are suffering loneliness or poverty in its many forms? Are we willing to remember them in word and deed? To identify ourselves fully with them?

Whatever “remembering” those who are suffering looks like, it has to begin with two things. First, there needs to be a recognition that all believers are in the same body together. There is no such thing as a “private Christian” and there is no room for a “just me and Jesus” mentality. And second, there needs to be a willingness to share in their sufferings whether it be joining them in prison or simply bearing the scorn of a society that believes Christians to be fools. Are you willing to be counted as a fool, too?

So, brotherly love looks like hospitality to strangers. It looks like identifying with those who are suffering. But it also looks like holding marriage in honor.

In v. 4, the pastor urges the church to show the depth of their brotherly love for one another. As a Christian brother and sister live together as husband and wife, they have the opportunity to experience the fullest human expression of “affection and the mutual support that God intended for his children.”[2] It is meant to be a life-long exercise in brotherly love within the body of Christ but, lest you have any overly romanticized notions of marriage, it is a life-long exercise that will expose just how much you often love yourself instead of your spouse – at least that has been my experience.

But as we grow in gratitude for Christ and for the grace he has shown to us, we are enabled, more and more, to live out that love toward our husbands and wives in every area of life. The context the pastor brings up is perhaps the area where selfishness and selflessness can be seen most clearly – our sexuality. When the marriage bed is defiled, it is often defiled first by a deep selfishness (which is the opposite of brotherly love) so that unfaithfulness begins in the heart long before it expressed in an affair.

That deep selfishness is contrary to the brotherly love to which we are called. It is contrary to Gospel gratitude. And we hear the warning at the end of v. 4; sexual sin in all its forms is no game to God. But it isn’t too late for repentance and there is still the super-abundant grace of God in Christ to be embraced, letting gratitude replace lust and selfishness.

Just a quick survey of the New Testament would tell us that God cares deeply about our relationship with Him and our relationships with each other, especially those of us in the Church who have embraced Christ by faith. So, when brotherly love is missing, 1 John 2 (and 3 and 4) teaches us that whoever hates his brother is still in darkness. But what about apathy? Is God pleased when we functionally don’t care for strangers or the suffering?

But small faithfulness is beautiful faithfulness. A single kind word of encouragement is enormous brotherly love on display. A single meal for a lonely neighbor can turn them into family by the work of the Spirit. Remembering those who suffer is living out the family resemblance as a child of God. Listening to and honoring your wife is becoming a husband that resembles our heavenly husband.

When I got that letter from my old pastor telling me how deeply he’d been hurt by my ingratitude, I was cut to the heart and ashamed of what I had done. But I took his letter of admonition as a sign of continuing love for me. He would never have written it if he didn’t care about me. I knew he was calling my attention to something that needed to be corrected. So, I repented of my ingratitude and took a pen in my hand and wrote back to him. I confessed my failure and asked them to forgive me for my ingratitude. I said I understood why they couldn’t support me any longer and how deeply I regretted wounding them.

And my heart still beats faster when I think about the letter I got in return just a week later. The love and forgiveness that came from my friends covered over my sin and they welcomed me back with open arms. Not only was I forgiven and restored, but they gave more grace and upped their support from $30 to $50 a month. My ingratitude was met by a greater love that drew out the right response from me. I was deeply grateful.

Whether you have never believed in Christ or you are a believer who has failed in this call to brotherly love, hear again the Gospel of Jesus because his brotherly love took him all the way to the cross! And through his death and resurrection he accomplished the greatest act of hospitality this world will ever see. He turned strangers, enemies, rebels like us into his own family – his own brothers. He came to us in our prison of sin and fully identified with us. He was not ashamed to take on flesh and blood like ours and he’s not ashamed to keep on identifying with us now. And he is the one who honors his bride more fully and perfectly than any husband, keeping himself pure and purifying his unfaithful bride, cleansing us so that we are pure in his eyes.

So, let us be grateful, brothers and sisters, for belonging to such a Savior as Christ. Let’s worship him from grateful hearts and continue to love one another, too.

[Benediction, from Hebrews 13:20-21]

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

[1] Jimmy Agan, Professor of New Testament Studies at Covenant Theological Seminary.

[2] William L. Lane, Hebrews: A Call to Commitment, 173.