Exhortation to saints to maintain and promote peace 2/8

1. Argument. The Christian should seek peace for Christ’s sake.  And methinks, when begging for his sake I should have no nay.  When you pray to God and do but use his name in the business, you are sure to speed.  And why should not an exhortation, that woos you for Christ's sake, move your hearts to duty, as a prayer put up by you in his name, moves God’s heart to mercy?  Indeed, how can you in faith use Christ’s name as an argument to unlock God’s heart to thee, which hath not so much credit with thyself as to open thy own heart into a compliance with a duty, which is so strongly set on his heart to promote among his people?  This appears,

(1.) By the solemn charge he gave his disciples in this particular: ‘A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another,’ John 13:34.  I pray observe how he prepares their hearts to open readily, and bid his commandment kindly welcome.  He sets his own name upon it—‘a new commandment I give unto you.’  As if he had said, ‘Let this command, though as old as any other, Lev. 19:18, yet go under my name in an especial manner.  When I am gone and the fire of strife begins at any time among you, re­member what particular charge I now give you, and let it quench it presently.’  Again, observe how he delivers this precept, and that is by way of gift and privilege.  ‘A new commandment I give unto you.’ Indeed, this was Christ’s farewell sermon, the very streakings of that milk which he had fed them withal. Never dropped a sweeter discourse from his blessed lips.  He saved his best wine till the last.  He was now making his will, and amongst other things that he be­queaths his disciples, he takes this commandment, as a father would do his seal-ring off his finger, and gives it to them.  Again, thirdly, he doth not barely lay the command before them, but, to make it the more effectual, he annexeth in a few words the most powerful argument why they should, as also the most clear and full direction how they might, do this, that is possible to be given—As I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

O Christians, what may not the love of Christ command you?  If it were to lay down your lives for him that loved you to death, would you deny them? and shall not this his love persuade you to lay down your strifes and divisions?  This speaks enough, how much weight he laid upon this commandment.  But then, again, observe how Christ, in the same sermon, over and over again minds them of this; which if he had not been very solicitous of, should not have had so large a room in his thoughts at that time, when he had so little time left in which he was to crowd and sum up all the heavenly counsel and comfort he de­sired to leave with them before his departure.  Nay, so great weight he lays on this, that he seems to lock up his own joy and theirs together in the care that they should take about this one command of loving one another, ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full,’ John 15:11.  What these things were appears by the precedent verse, ‘If ye keep my commandment, ye shall abide in my love.’  These were the things that he spake of in order to {keep} his joy in them, and theirs in him, that they would ‘keep his commandments.’  Now, to let them know how high a place their obedience to this particular command of love and unity had in his heart, and how eminently it conduced to the continuing his joy in them, and filling up their own; he chooseth that above any for this instance, in order to what he had said, as you may see, ver. 12, ‘This is my command­ment, That ye love one another.’  Observe still, how Christ appropriates this commandment to himself.  ‘This is my commandment;’ as if he would signify to them that as he had one disciple, who went by the name of ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ so he would have a darling commandment, in which he takes some singular delight, and that this should be it, ‘their loving one another.