The City on the Hill

to sum up, let all be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted and humble in spirit.  1 Peter 3:8  NASB

Brotherly – This is a word you are not likely to forget, once you know what it is.  The word is philadelphio.  We have a city in Pennsylvania by that name.  It literally means “brotherly love.”  There are four words for love in Greek.  This word combines the word adelphos (brothers) and philos (friend), producing an idiom for “loving as a brother.”  Peter uses a word that he was intimately familiar with.  After he denied that he knew Yeshua, Peter went into hiding.  Yeshua was crucified.  It looked like the end.  But God reversed everything when Yeshua rose from the dead.  By then Peter wasn’t the hard-charging, confident leader of the group.  Filled with shame, he returned to the life of fishing.  In the gospel of John, chapter 21, we see how gently Yeshua restores Peter’s frame of mind.  That chapter is filled with the interplay between phileo love and agape love.  Yeshua asks Peter if he has self-sacrificing love but Peter is only able to answer that he has brotherly love.  Peter’s shame over his denial prevents him from making the boasts he made prior to Yeshua’s death.  By the end of the story, Yeshua has given Peter back what he lost – acceptance and purpose.  It is a beautiful story of Yeshua’s way of healing our thoughts as well as our bodies.

Now Peter tells us that brotherly love toward each other is a mark of our faithfulness to Christ.  He knows this from personal experience.  There are few joys more satisfying than the embrace of friends, people you know you can count on, people who have been woven into the fabric of your life.  Sharing our lives with others who are on the same path is a great comfort and a wonderful reward.  The small group that meets in a house every week to study the Bible and share burdens becomes critically important to shalom – well-being.  Those people are real family.  They know each other in ways that express acceptance and joy for just being alive.  All of us need that kind of family.

It’s worth noting that the word adelphos means “common life from the same origin.”  Of course, that literally describes brothers, sons of the same mother.  But perhaps we need to be reminded that the focus of the community of the forgiven is common life and common origin.  Those who are your sisters and brothers in Yeshua come from the same family line and share the same way of living.

Being a follower of Yeshua is a commitment to community.  God planned it that way.  We belong to each other in ways the world cannot understand.  We are a family of the forgiven.  If you have your own “family” group, share phileo love with them.  As Peter discovered, it is an essential part of the healing process.  May you be healed today.

Topical Index: philadelphio, brotherly love, phileo, adelphos, 1 Peter 3:8