Let brotherly love continue.

– Hebrews 13:1

Such a short verse, but so full . . .

Here is a bit of Coffman’s commentary, saying it far better than I could:

Our brother! He stands before us, like ourselves, made in the image of God, an heir of eternal life, and a beneficiary of the blood of Christ; and our love should reach out to him with all of the emotional thrust of which the heart is capable. Like me, he is compassed with infirmity, tormented by temptations, pressed with the cares of life, frustrated and defeated in many of his fondest hopes, seeing those eternal realities which he so passionately desires to believe, as through a glass darkly, being oppressed daily by the confusion and darkness that becloud man’s mortal journey, and caught up like all other people upon the escalator of time moving him inexorably to the terminus of his pilgrimage. Mortal? Yes, but immortal too, destined to live forever in joy or in remorse, needing our encouragement, our love, our aid at every step of the way, standing to benefit by our loving prayers, and to be strengthened by the handclasp of our brotherly affection. Who can withhold his love from a brother? Only the reprobate (1 John 2:11). And who is my brother? Not him alone who belongs to my little circle, but the “stranger,” as taught in the next verse, that man we may never have seen before, but a man in extremity, needing love and compassion in a world that has little of either, such a man as that befriended by the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:33) – and all this, of course, is but another way of saying all people. Every man is my brother; for, if I miss him in Christ, I shall hit him in Adam!