The Constraining of Love of Christ: May 2019
Table of Contents
The Constraining Love of Christ
We cannot see Christ as He was and is without being acted upon and formed according to Him. There is an assimilating power in Christ such that it is impossible to have to do with Him without feeling His constraining influence and becoming like Him. Thus knowing Him as the life, we have life ourselves. Knowing Him as the Son, we too become sons of God. If He is the King, He has made us kings. If He is the Priest, He has made us priests. Because He is our life, we have life eternal in Him. He is our righteousness, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him.
We see Him now by faith, but we shall see Him soon face to face. This gives us the desire to be more like Him now. By the Spirit we are being changed into the same image. When we see Him, we shall be both inwardly and outwardly conformed to Him. “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
We were dead in sin. By God’s love and Christ’s death and resurrection we are alive forevermore. Now His love constrains and conforms us to live, not for ourselves anymore, but for Him, displaying His love in us to our brethren and to the lost.
Christian Truth, Vol. 15 (adapted)
Constraining Love
During the Second World War, when many Jewish people in Europe were being sent to the death camps by the Nazi government in Germany, a beautiful young Jewish woman by the name of Ibi, from Hungary, ended up in Auschwitz. Some years before she was arrested and sent there, her husband had divorced her, leaving her with a young son. To support herself, she had opened a dress-making salon, and being very clever and a good seamstress, she made a reasonable living. But time and time again her estranged husband would come and kidnap the boy while she was at work, taking him away to a distant place where he lived. Time and time again Ibi would take the train to where the father lived and bring her son home again.
When both she and her son were sent to the camp, they were separated, and she was sent to one of the women’s blocks. She had no idea where her son had been taken, and as time passed, she did not know whether he was still alive. But she was optimistic that she might survive and be able to find him again.
It is horrible even to relate, but in the course of the next few months, she was selected six times to be sent to the gas chambers and was loaded on a truck with other women. But six times she managed to jump off the moving truck and went back to the block, thus evading death. For some reason the authorities, for the moment, respected her courage and let her live. Her success at being able to escape bolstered her optimism, and she felt confident that she would live and be reunited with her son.
What Motivation!
The final time she actually broke her leg in jumping from the truck and was compelled to rest in the camp’s infirmary for several months until it healed. Finally she was selected a seventh time, taken out with a number of other women, and forced to march to the gas chambers. This time she actually tried to run away, but within the camp there was simply nowhere to run, especially in her weakened condition. She was soon caught and perished with all the rest.
What gave Ibi such determination in the face of overwhelming might on the part of her enemies? What made her fight to the very end and make one desperate attempt after another to escape? Had it been only her own life that was at stake, she might well have given in, but it was her love for her son that galvanized her into almost superhuman efforts to live. Her hope of seeking and finding him again, and perhaps being able to rescue him and look after him, spurred her on in spite of everything that was against her. She did not have to do it, but her mother-love constrained her so strongly that she would take any risk, bear any punishment, suffer any privation, if only it would give her another chance to be reunited with her son.
The Love of Christ
When I have read about the constraining love of Christ, I have sometimes thought of this story. (By the way, the details are true, having been recorded by a Jewish woman physician who was also at Auschwitz and who survived the war to write down what she had seen.) The word used in 2 Corinthians 5:14 for “constraineth” has the force of actually holding someone, or even arresting them. Surely this is what the love of Christ does for the believer. I say “does,” not “should do,” for the Scripture simply makes the statement, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Every true believer is constrained by that love.
But some may say, Why is it then that I do not feel the pull of that constraint on me? Why do I not love the Lord more and do more for Him? The answer may be found, in human terms, by speaking about a magnet. We do not say, A magnet should attract iron. No, we say that it does attract iron, for that is its nature. Yet any student of physics knows that the force of a magnetic field varies as the square of the distance from the magnet. If the iron is at some distance from the magnet, its pull on it will be very faint, or perhaps almost non-existent.
So it is with the love of Christ. I cannot try to love Him more than I do, any more than I can try to love in a natural sense. But if I consider how much He loves me and how much He has done for me, my love will flow out to Him, and there will be a compulsion, a hold on me, not merely a matter of conscience, but of love that returns to the One who gave everything that I might be His. Not only has He gone to Calvary’s cross to die for us, but He has made us His own, brought us into relationship with Himself, and promised to take us to the Father’s house for all eternity. In the meanwhile, He has given us the earnest of the Spirit and “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). Truly, as another has said, “Every Christian blessing is a mountain peak beyond which even God Himself could not go.” If all this is enjoyed in the soul, there will indeed be a constraint on us that cannot be ignored or pushed aside.
Abiding in Him
The secret to enjoying the love of Christ is to be found abiding in Him and keeping His Word, for the love of God is perfected in those who keep His Word (see 1 John 2:5). “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love” (John 15:10). In one sense, love precedes obedience, for our Lord said, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15), but in another sense, we are maintained in the enjoyment of His love when we keep His commandments. When we keep close to Jesus, we live and move in the sense of His love, and then our own love cannot help but flow out to Him. Truly, “we love because He has first loved us” (1 John 4:19 JND). He has given us new life, with a capacity for divine love — a love that responds to His love.
The only other abiding of which John speaks is to abide in darkness (John 12:46), and this is spoken of those who are not saved. The Spirit of God in John does not contemplate that a true believer would wish to walk in darkness, for John often speaks in the abstract, putting the truth, as we might say, either as black or white. But we know in our own hearts that it is possible for us to get away from the Lord, and thus practically to walk in some degree of darkness. Positionally every believer is in the light, but it is possible for us, like Peter, to follow “afar off” (Luke 22:54). But how blessed it is to abide in Him, to enjoy His love, and to find our hearts so occupied with Him that our love responds to His!
W. J. Prost
Longings after God
The new nature which God has given His children yearns after Himself — the One who is its origin, its strength, and its joy. In God’s presence, the new nature has perfect pleasure. In creation, the happiness of the creature depends upon its life being vigorous and in freedom. It is the same with the children of God. Life under restraint is always burdensome: A child of God weighted with worldly cares or half choked with worldly pleasures is a contradiction of his new nature and a denial of its yearnings.
The child of God, in a right state of soul, looks on to the future, when all hindrance shall be abolished and when he, spirit, soul and body, shall be like the Lord in the liberty of the glory. He also yearns after the conscious favor of God’s presence day by day and longs to know more of Christ and to live in His enjoyed communion until the glory comes. This, though varying in intensity and though interrupted by the influences of the world, is true of everyone who has divine life. The measure of the desires may differ, but the eternal life itself, as acted upon by the indwelling Spirit, rises up to the Father and the Son.
Eternal Life
Natural life goes on independently of our parents from whom we derived it, but eternal life, the possession of each believer, is immediately connected with its source and origin; it is not ours apart from its source, but it is in the Son. “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11). Despite the wanderings of the child of God and their sad results, we must not forget the unchangeable truth of his having eternal life in Christ.
True Christian desire may be summed up in these few words: “That I may know Him” (Phil. 3:10) — words which are the expression of the Apostle’s panting after the Son of God. David longed after Jehovah in the sanctuary; Paul longed after Jesus in the glory. He had seen Him in the glory; he knew Jesus in heaven, and his soul bounded forward in divinely-given energy to reach the goal of the Christian’s affections. When this goal shall be reached by all, the realized hope of eternal life will be the rejoicing of the children of God.
Christ Is Our Life
Paul gives the only true principle of godly life in this one word: “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). Christ is our life, and the believer desires to live Christ. God the Father gives the power to do this, by strengthening the affections, by His Spirit, in such a way that Christ may be their continual occupation. “Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Eph. 3:16-17). In proportion as Christ abides in our hearts, by faith, our hearts are truly taken up with Him as their object, and thus Christ becomes the principle of Christian living. If the many things of sight are filling our hearts, the world is the object we have in view. When such is the case, the Christian is like a heavily burdened man trying to run a race.
If we wish to thrive, Christ Himself must be filling our hearts, and not just truth about Christ. This is a necessary caution in a day when knowledge of the most sacred truths may be intellectually attained by so small an effort. It is a happy thing to understand the Word of God, but, with that Word treasured in our hearts, the aim of the Christian’s affections should be, “That I may know Him.” Desires to live out on earth what Christ is and to live with Him in heaven make the Christian separate from the world, and they separate him to the Lord. Practice flows from affection. If the heart sleeps, the Christian, like an engine without fuel, is at a standstill. The once ardent Ephesians left their first love of Christ, and from the center of lukewarm affections spiritual decay spread, till at length their privilege of light-giving for Christ was removed.
Christ died for us and rose again; it is for us, not to live to ourselves, but to Him. His love awakens ours; His love is the motive power of ours, and our lamps are lighted by the flame of His love to us. “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
Decadence
Decadence is sadly so common to all that we must speak of it. There are children of God who, burdened by their sins, once were absorbed in overwhelming desires for rest of conscience. God in grace gave them the knowledge of pardon and of deliverance, and for a short time they ran well. What has hindered them, and where are they now? Sleeping among the dead! At one time it seemed almost impossible that these eager seekers after God should ever be found in the ranks of commonplace Christians, hardly distinguishable from the world. But truth took the place in the mind which Christ should occupy in the heart. The facts of life and liberty were accepted, while going on in heart with the Lord was deficient, and they no longer shine as bright lights in the world.
As with a nation, so with an individual; peace and liberty not infrequently induce ease and carelessness, and solemn, indeed, as it is to express it, many a believer forsook his earnestness shortly after having been delivered from doubts and fears as to his salvation. “Ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh” (Gal. 5:13). It is not too much to say that with many it seems easier to come to the Lord as a Savior at the first and to die trusting Him as a Friend at the end than to keep plodding on, day by day, in dependence upon Him. The beginning and the ending of many a Christian’s course are brighter than the middle. Is it because at the extremes there is such felt nothingness in self that Christ is necessarily all?
We Walk by Faith
We are not pieces of machinery wound up upon the day of our conversion, to move like the hands of a clock till we leave this world. We are responsible to Him who loves us, and the only way to live the daily life of a true Christian is to do so by living and walking each day by faith and keeping on going to God moment by moment, even as we breathe the air moment by moment.
What Christ’s work has effected may be understood, yet Christ Himself not be laid hold of by the heart. To know all that Christ has done for us is not sufficient; we must have Him dwelling in our hearts by faith. May it be true of each of us, as said the Apostle, “To me to live is Christ”!
H. F. Witherby (adapted)
Love and Obedience
Love is the spring of obedience. Any obedience that does not spring from love is legality, servility or selfishness. Christian obedience knows no other spring than love. The Christian obeys because he loves and because he is loved. “If ye love Me,” says the Lord, “keep My commandments,” or again, the Apostle writes, “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.”
He First Loved Us
Our love to the Lord is but the response of our hearts to His love for us. “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Thus our love is the fruit of His; it is begotten by His and is the result of it. We do not love Him in order that He may love us. That would be impossible. How could these wretched hearts force themselves to love one whom, by sin, alas, they hate? Is not the carnal mind enmity against God? How then could it love Him? Were there not a display of love on His side first of all, acting independently altogether of us, there could be none on ours.
But, blessed be God, this is the very truth unfolded in the gospel of His grace! It was when we “were dead in trespasses and sins” that God loved us. It was when we were “yet sinners” that Christ died for us and that God found occasion for this display of His own love. It was when we were hateful that the kindness and love of God appeared. And it was when we were lost that the Son of Man came to seek and to save us.
Such is the truth of the gospel. The priority of the love of God to man before that of man to God is thus distinctly revealed. For instance, “God so loved the world” is the truth that takes the soul by glad surprise, for that undeserved love shines forth in all its precious radiance without the least encouragement from man, but rather in spite of all that man could do to discourage it. Yet that timeless, changeless love beams on like a sun that no cloud can darken, because it flows from a heart, the very nature and essence of which is love itself. “God is love” is the grand and full explanation of the fact that “God so loved the world,” and the reason too of His suffering long with that world which is day by day adding to its mountain load of sin and opposition to Him.
What a wonderful and soul-delivering truth this is! How sweet to hear the story of that love or to stand by Calvary’s cross and let the proud heart be melted by that triumph of loving-kindness. Truly, “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And by such a story is the heart won, the enemy reconciled, and the sinner saved. By such a truth is there kindled in the bosom a spark of love to Him. Thus love begets love, and the enemy becomes a friend and a follower.
Lovest Thou Me?
There is a striking moral connection between the question asked by the Lord of Peter in John 21:17 and the command given to him in verse 22 of the same chapter. The question is, “Lovest thou Me?” and the command, “Follow thou Me.” The order is correct. Love is to precede obedience, and obedience is nonetheless to follow love. If the first can be established, the second will be secured. If the Lord can gain the heart, He can count upon getting the feet. And hence with divine wisdom He tests the affections of the Apostle. “Lovest thou Me,” who have so loved thee? And what was the answer of poor, heartbroken Peter? “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.” Beautiful avowal, and deeply grateful to the Lord! “Thou knowest all things,” said Peter, as though he would again have shed the bitter tears of penitence and acknowledged the threefold denial of his loved and loving Lord and Savior. “Thou knowest all things” — my weakness, my folly, my self-confidence, my sin, and my repentance, my anguish, my sorrow, too. “Thou knowest that I love Thee.” If none else should know it, Thou dost.
“Follow Me”
The Lord then said, “Follow Me.” If the Lord is really loved, He will likewise be really obeyed. Obedience will be proportionate to and commensurate with love. “He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings”; as the love, so the obedience. There may be different degrees of intelligence as to His will, but the spirit of obedience will characterize all who really love Him. An obedient heart is His delight. Such a one will be trained and nurtured by Him and, as He says, “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” Oh! that these three words, “Follow thou Me,” may stand out in bold and clear relief before the grateful and loving gaze of our renewed affections, so that we may practically esteem Him worthy of all our obedience here. And if the crown that shall decorate each saintly brow is to be cast at His feet, shall not His name be honored now by the grateful, complete and unreserved surrender of these poor hearts and hands and feet and of all that we have and are to the service of the same gracious Savior and Lord? May our inmost souls hear His question, “Lovest thou Me?” and joyfully obey His command, “Follow thou Me.”
J. W. Smith (adapted)
Man's Evaluation of Love, and the Christian's
The world judges men to be living in charity when they walk morally, attend to their relative duties, avoid debt, frequent their church, read the scriptures a little, and say their prayers night and morning. It is counted uncharitable to doubt that they are Christians, still more to be concerned for them as guilty and lost in the sight of God.
How different is the evaluation of Christian love as asserted in these verses! “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
Christian Love
Christian love is not the mere expression of human feeling and superficial circumstances. It is based on the truth of God and, in order to arrive at this truth, brings in and applies to the case Christ and His death. There man was proved God’s enemy, for He sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. But man would not allow the thought that he was morally dead — dead in offences and sins, the Jew as truly as the Gentile. The Jew had been warned of it more distinctly and directly than the Gentiles in the Old Testament scriptures. But for most it was in vain. “Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life,” said the blessed Savior, grieved at their unbelief. And the Gentile joined the Jew in the worst they could do to One who could and would have given life eternal to all that looked to Him for it. Rarely did Jew and Gentile unite, but they did unite to slay the Lord of glory — the One who emptied Himself of the honor proper to His deity and humbled Himself as man to death, even the death of the cross.
Good and Evil Met at the Cross
Thus He proved His love, as they their hatred, to the uttermost, for only thus could sin be divinely judged, God vindicated, and the sinner cleared. Good and evil met in the cross. Infinite goodness provided the Lamb for the sacrifice. Hatred without cause rejected and denied Him who went about doing good and healing all that were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him. Satan instigated all, but to his own destruction in the final issue. God made the righteous One sin for us — those who had nothing else but sin — and forsook Him that He might never forsake us who believe on Christ and have in Him life that can never die. Wherefore God highly exalted Him and granted Christ a name which is above every name, that in the power of that name every knee should bow, of heavenly and earthly and infernal [ones], and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11).
This glorious purpose of God will be fulfilled in His day. But what is the present result for those who now believe? It is the contrast with all those who are dead, though Christ died for all. God’s present aim is that they which live should no longer live to themselves but to Him who died for them and was raised, for the God who sent Him in love takes His part in raising Him up and giving Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God. And His joy is not only in glorifying Him who endured that death, but also in justifying those who otherwise were lost forever. Now we are not only slaves pardoned and with a divine salvation, but we live to Him who died for us and was raised.
We Were Dead — Now We Live
The true evaluation of love is that all were dead. But One died for all. This alone does not meet the desperate case, unless we believe on Him. Then we live in Him, instead of being only dead in Adam and in ourselves too. As we realize that some now live in Him as believers, constrained by His love and having His life, we understand our new privilege and duty to live not to ourselves but to Him whose death and resurrection have brought us into such a new relationship of blessedness.
It is a paltry idea of Christianity to regard it as mere pardon, and perhaps only a partial measure, with the need of some more pardon from day to day. Here in 2 Corinthians 5 it is the constraining love of Christ and the positive blessing of risen life in Him. Thus we do not judge in some vague hope, miscalled “charity,” but in the faith of His death to deliver us from evil, that we might live to Him and not to ourselves.
Bible Treasury (adapted)
Law and Grace
There is always a strong tendency in us to “savor the things of men” in the things of God. We put our construction upon the thoughts of God and draw our own inferences from them, not realizing that they are not like our thoughts, but infinitely higher and more blessed (Isa. 55:8-9). Thus we debase God’s thoughts. Look, for example, at liberty; how wide is the distinction between the human and divine thought on this very point! Liberty, according to man, is willfulness — every restraint taken from the human will, issuing in the very worst form of corruption and apostasy. The Jews in their worst state of bondage, both temporal and spiritual, had the audacity to say, “We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?” How solemn the reply of Jesus to these boasters of their freedom: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant [slave] of sin” (John 8:34-35). The Apostle Peter very plainly shows that in the days in which we live, the loudest boasters of liberty are themselves miserable slaves of corruption (2 Peter 2:18-19). We are called unto “liberty” — not a liberty for the flesh to act, but for us to serve.
Christians are often led to connect their worship and their service with their salvation. But the truth is, they are made free by Christ in order to worship, to serve God, and serve their brethren; yea, and to serve all men, so far as they can. The gospel is the law of liberty, the law of love. And how easy and blessed is the law of love: Love has a constraining power; the law, rather a restraining power. The law of liberty is not, “Thou shalt not,” but its language is, “I will run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Psa. 119:32). Until the question of our individual acceptance is settled, the heart is not “enlarged” to serve God. We are made free from sin by the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, in order to become servants of God. Real liberty and true holiness are inseparably connected together. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” sets free from the law of sin and death. When really free ourselves, instead of judging others, we are free to intercede for them, knowing the grace in which we ourselves stand. A legal spirit is ever a fault-finding spirit. If we were more in the region of grace, we should be less in the region of judgment. But the moment we become legal, we bite and devour one another, instead of ministering grace one to another, cheering one another onward, so as to enable us to tread with a lighter step this weary wilderness.
J. L. Harris (adapted)
Accepted and Acceptable
“He hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Eph. 1:6). “Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of [acceptable to] Him” (2 Cor. 5:9).
The two words which form the heading of this paper, though rendered by the same word in our King James Version of the Bible, are not at all the same. The former has respect to the person of the believer; the latter to his practical ways. It is one thing to be accepted; it is quite another to be acceptable. The former is the fruit of God’s free grace to us as sinners; the latter is the fruit of our earnest labor as saints, though, most surely, it is only by grace we can do anything.
Accepted
It is important to understand the distinction between these two things, for it will preserve us from legality on the one hand and laxity on the other. It remains unalterably true of all believers that God has made them accepted in the Beloved. Nothing can ever touch this. The very feeblest lamb in the flock stands accepted in a risen Christ. There is no difference. The grace of God has placed them all on this high and blessed ground. We do not labor to be accepted. It is all the fruit of God’s free grace. He found us all alike dead in trespasses and sins. We were morally dead — far off from God, hopeless, Godless, Christless, children of wrath, whether Jews or Gentiles. But Christ died for us and has quickened, raised and seated us in Christ — made us accepted in Him.
This is the inalienable, eternal standing of all who believe in the name of the Son of God. Christ in His infinite grace placed Himself judicially where we were morally, and having put away our sins and perfectly satisfied, on our behalf, the claims of divine righteousness, God raised Him from the dead, and with Him all His members. In His own eternal purpose, in due time, they will be brought into the actual possession and enjoyment of the marvelous place of blessing and privilege, by the effectual operation of the Holy Spirit.
We may well take up the opening words of the epistle to the Ephesians and say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved.” All praise to His name throughout the everlasting ages!
Acceptable
But are all believers acceptable in their practical ways? Are all so carrying themselves as that their dealings and doings will bear the light of the judgment seat of Christ? Are all laboring to be agreeable to Him?
These are serious questions; let us solemnly weigh them. Let us not turn away from the sharp edge of plain, practical truth. The Apostle Paul knew he was accepted. Did that make him lax, careless or indolent? Far from it. “We labor,” he says, to be acceptable to Him. The sweet assurance that we are accepted in Him is the ground of our labor to be acceptable to Him. “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
All this is preeminently practical. We are called upon, by every argument which can govern the heart and conscience, to labor diligently to be acceptable to our blessed and adorable Lord. Is there anything of legality in this? Not the slightest tinge, but rather the very reverse. It is the holy superstructure of a devoted life, erected on the solid foundation of our eternal election and perfect acceptance in a risen and glorified Christ at God’s right hand. How could there be the very smallest atom of legality here? Utterly impossible. It is all the pure fruit of God’s free and sovereign grace from first to last.
Due Diligence
But ought we not to rouse ourselves to attend to the claims of Christ as to practical righteousness? Should we not zealously and lovingly aim at giving Him pleasure? Are we to content ourselves with talking about our acceptance in Christ, while at the same time there is no real earnest care as to the acceptability of our ways? God forbid! Rather, let us so dwell upon the rich grace that shines in the acceptance of our persons that we may be led out in diligent and fervent effort to be found acceptable in our ways.
It is greatly to be feared that there is an appalling amount of antinomianism among us — an unhallowed traffic in the doctrines of grace, without any godly care as to the application of those doctrines to our practical conduct. Most assuredly, there is a need for all who profess to be accepted in Christ to labor fervently to be acceptable to Him. (Antinomianism literally means “without law,” and represents a doctrine that carries the precious truth of justification by faith to an unbiblical conclusion, asserting that there is no need to keep the moral law or be careful of our conduct, because the work of Christ has dealt with all our sins. It is using God’s grace as an excuse to sin.)
C. H. Mackintosh (adapted)
The Soul Restored
In the scene in John 21:9-14, Jesus fed and satisfied all His disciples, testifying thus to a love which made no distinction between them. The Lord then took Peter apart with Himself, and asked him, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” Peter loved the Lord, but there was another disciple who loved Him, I do not say more, but better than Peter. While the latter was occupied in the Lord’s service, John was occupied with the Lord. He never calls himself the disciple who loved Jesus, but the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” What seemed wonderful to him to record was that Jesus should love someone such as he, and he does not weary of repeating it.
Jonathan loved David as his own soul, and yet did not sacrifice his position for him. Abigail’s love, which more resembled that of John, was the sense of its being possible for her to be loved by such a man — she who was but “a servant to wash the feet of the servants of her lord.”
Lovest Thou Me
John, like Mary Magdalene, was occupied with the person and the love of Christ; therefore he was prompt in recognizing Jesus, and did not, like Peter, need someone to tell him, “It is the Lord.” Peter, with all the impetuosity of his nature, cast himself into the sea to get to Jesus and show his affection. John is satisfied to be the object of Jesus’ love.
“Lovest thou me more than these?” Peter had said that he loved Him more, and yet had denied Him. The Lord takes him, so to speak, by the hand, and leads him back to the spot where his fall originated — confidence in his own strength and in his love for Christ. Three times during the Savior’s last interviews with His disciples Peter clearly manifests his self confidence. “Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended” (Matt. 26:33). “Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death” (Luke 22:33). And, “Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake” (John 13:37). The Lord takes up these three words, beginning with the first: “Though all men shall be offended.” “Lovest thou me more than these?” Alas, all had forsaken Him, but only Peter had denied Him, and can therefore no longer rely on his love compared to that of others. Thus humbled, he appeals, not to his feelings, but to the Savior’s knowledge. He knew. “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.” He does not add, “More than these,” for he compares himself with Christ, and in humility he esteems others better than himself.
Feed My Lambs
Then Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” Pastoral care for young souls springs from humility, together with love for the Lord. Where the Lord finds these things in His people He can trust them with this service. Other gifts are perhaps not so absolutely connected with the inner state, but one cannot really take up the needs of tender souls without self-abnegation and much love, not only for them, but for Christ.
“Feed my lambs.” This one word shows us what they are for Jesus, and the value of what the Lord confides to Peter. They are His property. The heart of Christ had not changed in regard to Simon, and He entrusted him with what He loved, at his first step in the painful pathway leading to restoration. Peter’s heart was broken, but sustained by Christ in the breaking. Jesus did not probe it three times to give him an answer only at the third question; He gave it already at the first one. What delicate affection and care in the discipline! If the three questions had been put without the encouragement of a promise with each, Peter’s heart would have been overwhelmed with sorrow; but the promise sustained him each time under the stroke intended to break him down. It was like the burning bush, which grace prevented from being consumed. Jesus probed Peter three times; he had denied Jesus three times. The last time nothing remained but what the Lord had produced and could approve. Sorrow was there too, no doubt, but joined to the certainty that the love which was the fruit of His love, though buried to the eyes of all by manifestations of the flesh, the all-seeing eye of Christ was able to discern. “Lord, Thou, knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.” After the second and third questions, the care of the sheep and the feeding of the whole flock were confided to Peter. It was when, through grace, he had seen himself, and been obliged to appeal to the Lord to discover what he gave up seeking to discover in himself, that he found himself possessed of full and unreserved blessing.
Christian Friend (adapted)
For My Sake, and the Gospel's
“Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it” (Mark 8:35).
Lord Jesus, this Thy twofold thought
Must surely twine around
Till in that love at length we bask,
Who in Thy path abound.
“For My sake and the gospel’s!” How
Remindful is the word
Which links love for the gospel now
With love for Thee, my Lord!
For great the sacrifice may be,
Yet Thy discerning eyes
Must see if it is made for Thee—
In this its value lies.
We would not love our Master’s work
More than our Master dear,
Nor would we try our cross to shirk
While following Thee here.
Loss, sufferings and labors sweet
The servant’s cross still make;
Borne still for Thee, our Object meet,
And for the gospel’s sake.
Lord, may we yield our all, we ask,
To Thee for all Thy love,
The hearts in which Thy grace has wrought,
At rest with Thee above.
S. J. B. Carter
Christian Devotedness
The power of Christian truth in the heart will display itself in devotedness.
Christ is both the life and the object or motive of life in us, giving thus its character to our walk. “To me,” says the Apostle, “to live is Christ.”
Christ was the display, at all cost to Himself, of divine love to men. His Father was His continual delight and object; His display of love and of His Father was constant and perfect. This was His devotedness. Also, He displayed undivided obedience to His Father’s will, having that will for His constant motive.
Love to the Father and obedience to Him gave form and character to His love to us.
“Be ye imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love even as Christ hath loved us and given Himself for us.” Note the fullness of motive and character which is shown for our behavior — imitators of God.
We are followers and imitators of God. We walk in love as Christ loved us. Our life is to be the exercise of divine love as displayed in Christ. It is thus we are called to walk, to imitate God, to follow Him as He displayed Himself in Christ.
The love that descends down from God working in man rises up always towards and to God as its just and necessary object. It can have nothing lower as its spring.
“Hereby,” says John, “know we love, because He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
We are called upon to display, as having His life, Christ Himself, in us.
The spring and source of all true devotedness is divine love filling and operating in our hearts; as Paul says, “the love of Christ constraineth us.” Its form and character must be drawn from Christ’s character and actions.
The angels learn “the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” This knits our heart to Christ, bringing us to God in Him, God in Him to us. Nothing separates us from this love. The first effect is to lead the heart up, thus sanctifying it. We bless God, adore God, thus known; our delight, adoring delight, is in Jesus.
As near to God and in communion with Him, as consciously united to Christ by the Holy Spirit, divine love flows into and through our hearts. We become animated by it through our enjoyment of it. It is really “God dwelling in us,” as John expresses it. “His love shed abroad in our hearts,” as Paul does. It flows forth to others as it did in Christ. Its objects and motives are as they are in Christ.
Christ’s death governs the heart. “Hereby know we love because He laid down His life for us.” “The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.”
The new divine life in us enjoys God. That life alone is capable of delighting, as being of like nature, in the blessedness that is in Him.
The activity of the divine nature in the new man is tested, because Christ has necessarily the first place with this nature and is the motive of its activity.
Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit; and God’s love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. It springs up like a well in us unto eternal life, and so living waters flow out from us by the Holy Spirit which we have received. All true devotedness, then, is the action of divine love in the redeemed, through the Holy Spirit given to them.
The activity of love does not destroy the sense of obligation in the saint, but alters the whole character of his work. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” In God love is active, but sovereign; in the saint it is active, but a duty, because of grace. It must be free to have the divine character — to be love. Yet we owe it all, and more than all, to Him that loved us.
The Spirit of God which dwells in us is a Spirit which fixes the heart on God’s love in a constraining way. Every right feeling in a creature must have an object, and, to be right, that object must be God, and God revealed in Christ as the Father, for in that way God possesses our souls.
Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Paul’s life was a divine life. Christ lived in him, but it was a life of faith, a life living wholly by an object, and that object Christ, and known as the Son of God loving and giving Himself for him. Here we get the practical character and motive of Christian devotedness — living to Christ.
We live on account of Christ: He is the object and reason of our life (all outside is the sphere of death). “The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, if one died for all, then were all dead: and He died for all, that they which live should not live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.” They live to and for that, and nothing else. It may be a motive for various duties, but it is the motive and end of life. “We are not our own, but bought with a price,” and have to “glorify God in our bodies.”
His constraining love is not a law contending or arresting a will seeking its own pleasure, but the blessed and thankful sense of our owning ourselves to His love, and a heart entering into that love and Himself as its object. Hence the constraining is a law of liberty.
The life constrained by His love can only have objects of service which His life can have, and the Holy Spirit can fix the heart on and that service will be the free service of delight. Flesh may seek to hinder, for its objects cannot be those of the new man and the Holy Spirit. The heart loves all the saints, for Christ does. It seeks the all for whom Christ died, yet knowing that only grace can bring any of them. It endures “all things for the elect’s sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” It seeks “to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus,” to see the saints grow up to Him who is the Head in all things, and to see them walk worthy of the Lord. It seeks to see the church presented as a chaste virgin unto Christ. It continues in its love, though the more abundantly it loves the less it be loved. It is ready to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
The motive which governs our heart characterizes our walk and judges all by it. A man of pleasure flings away money; so does an ambitious man. They judge of the value of things by pleasure and power. The covetous man thinks their path folly, judges of everything by its tendency to enrich. The Christian judges of everything by Christ. If it hinders His glory in oneself or another, it is cast away. It is judged of not as sacrifice, but cast away as a hindrance. All is dross and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. To cast away dross is no great sacrifice. How blessedly self is gone here! “Gain to me” has disappeared. What a deliverance that is! Unspeakably precious for ourselves and morally elevating!
Christ gave Himself. We have the privilege of forgetting self and living to Christ. It will be rewarded, our service in grace, but love has its own joys in serving in love. Self likes to be served; love delights to serve.
Living to God inwardly is the only possible means of living to Him outwardly. All outward activity not moved and governed by this is fleshly and even a danger to the soul — tends to make us do without Christ and brings in self.
The external activity of devotedness will be governed by God’s will and God-given competency to serve. Devotedness is a humble, holy thing, doing its Master’s will. We want wisdom: God gives it liberally. Christ is our true wisdom. We want power; we learn it in dependence through Him who strengthens us. Devotedness is a dependent, as it is a humble, spirit. So it was in Christ. It waits on its Lord. It has courage and confidence in the path of God’s will, because it leans on divine strength in Christ. He can do all things. Hence it is patient and does what it has to do according to His will and Word, for then He can work.
We are in a world where doing God’s will will be opposed and rejected, and our hearts would naturally save self. Peter presented to Christ the thought of saving Himself, and Christ treated it as Satan. We shall find the flesh shrink instinctively from the fact and from the effect of devotedness to Christ, because it is giving up self, and brings reproach, neglect, and opposition on us. We have to take up our cross to follow Christ; not to return to bid adieu to them that are at home in the house. It is our home still, if we say so, and we shall at best be “John Marks” in the work. And it will be found it is ever “suffer me first!”
If there be anything but Christ, it will be before Christ, and not devotedness to Him with a single eye. It is difficult to the heart that there should be no self-seeking, no self-sparing, no self-indulgence! Yet none of these things are devotedness to Christ and to others, but the very opposite. Hence, if we are to live to Christ, we must hold ourselves dead, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If the flesh be practically allowed, it is a continual hindrance. Reproach and opposition are then a burden, not a glory. We have with Paul to “bear about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal bodies,” and so to have the sentence of death made good in ourselves. Here the Lord’s help, through trials and difficulties, comes in. But we are “more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Nothing separates us from that love.
When we come to the management of our own heart, we shall find that this “always bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus” is the great difficulty and tests the inward state of the soul. Yet, there is no liberty of service nor power but in the measure of “always bearing ... the dying.” We have this power in the sense of grace. It is the power of the sense we have of His dying and giving Himself for us which, by grace, makes us hold ourselves as dead to all but Him.
Outward service may be comparatively easy when self and Satan’s power are not felt in opposition.
To have Christ’s dying always made good against self, detected by the cross, supposes Christ to be all in the affections. The true power and quality of service is measured by it — the operation of God’s Spirit by us.
The love of Christ in the cross constrains us to give ourselves wholly up to Him who has so loved us, given Himself wholly up for us. The winning Christ and being like Him in glory gives energy and the spring and power of hope to our path. How constraining and mighty is the motive, if we have really felt it! Yet how lowly! It makes us of little esteem to ourselves in the presence of such love. We see we are not our own, but bought with a price.
The sense of the love of Christ takes possession of the heart and constrains us. We desire to live also to Him who gave Himself for us. The perfection of the offering and the absoluteness and perfectness with which it was offered, alike His love to us in it, have power over our souls. “Through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God.”
The sense that we are not our own deepens the claim in our hearts, yet takes away all merit in the devotedness. So wise and sanctifying are God’s ways! How does the thought too of winning Him make all around us but dross and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Him!
What is all compared with pleasing Him, possessing Him, being with Him and like Him forever! It puts the value of Christ, as the motive, on everything we do. It leads to true largeness of heart, for all dear to Him becomes precious to us, yet keeps from all looseness of nature and feelings, for we are shut up to Christ. What is not His glory is impossible. It puts sin practically out of the heart by the power of divine affections, by having the heart filled with Him. Practically the new nature only lives with Christ for its object.
The constraining love of Christ applies to everything, because we have to please Christ in everything. Dress, worldly manners, worldliness in every shape disappears. They cannot be alike or agreeable to Him whom the world rejected, because He testified to it that its works were evil. The tone of the mind is unworldly, does not refer to it, save to do good to it when it can.
The place of the Christian is to be the epistle of Christ. Christ thus possessing the heart has a circumscribing power. The motives, thoughts, relationships of the world do not enter into the heart. But Christ moving all within and all being referred in the heart to Him, it carries His character out into the world. Kept from the evil, it is the active exercise of good that is in Him, the love of God. The heart is shut up to God, but all the blessedness of God goes out in the measure in which the vessel contains it.
Christ has “purified to Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” Christ’s love is active, but it is guided by the mind of Christ. It loves the brethren as Christ did; that is, it has its spring in itself, not in the object; it feels all their sorrows and infirmities, yet is above them all so as to bear and forbear, and find in them the occasion of its holy exercises. It is alike tender in spirit and firm in consistency with the divine path, for such is Christ’s love.
Christ’s life, in all its devotedness and activity, is a life of obedience. There cannot be a righteous will in a creature, for righteousness in a creature is obedience. Adam fell, having a will independent of God. Christ came to do the will of Him that sent Him, and in His highest devotedness His path was that of obedience. “The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in Me, but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given Me commandment, so I do.” This both guides in devotedness and keeps us quiet and humble.
We are called to simple, undivided devotedness to Christ with Christ the only motive of the heart, His love constraining us, in all things caring for what He cares for, with the crucified and risen Christ set before us as our hope, the center round which our whole life turns.
J. N. Darby (adapted from Christian Devotedness)