9. Concluding Words
9. Concluding Words
Keep yourselves in the love of God.—Jud 1:21
The longer we live, the less we care to speak of our love to God, and the more we dwell on God’s love to us. As we climb the hill of Christian experience, we see the ever-growing horizon of the ocean of divine tenderness; and we become ashamed even to mention the pool of our love that lies far away in the vale beneath. Besides, we come to see that all true love to God is only a reflected gleam of His great love towards us. “We love Him because He first loved us.”
There is no sweeter atmosphere in which to live than the perpetual consciousness that God loves us. Like the steady heat of the hot-house producing flowers and fruits amid the frosts of December: so, in this icy world, the genial glow of the love of God experienced perennially by the believer will produce those results which are exotics to this World, though they are native to the soil of the New Jerusalem.
When the Apostle bids us keep ourselves in the love of God, he surely does not mean that we need to exert ourselves to prevent the cessation of God’s love toward us. The love of God is without variableness, or shadow of turning. Having loved His own which are in the world, He loves them unto the end. We may rest satisfied that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. If we are faithless, He remaineth faithful. If we wander away into backsliding and coldness, He continues immutably the same. If we, like Peter, deny Him, yet He still looks on us with yearning affection, enough to break our hearts. Oh, clasp this blessed thought to your inner consciousness!—that the love of God is more tenacious than a mother’s—”she may forget’ ‘—and more lasting than hills or mountains, which “may depart.”
But the love of God to us is one thing; and our appreciation and enjoyment of that love is quite another. The one is unalterably the same; while the other is fitful and intermittent. Sometimes we are very sensible of the warm beam of God’s love shining blessedly into our souls; at other times we have no such joyous consciousness of His love: but we must remember that God’s love to us does not in any way depend on our consciousness of it. It is not most, because we happen to feel it most; or least, because we have almost ceased to feel it at all. The one is no gauge of the amount of the other. God’s love to us is ever constant, however much our appreciation of it may vary. When the sunlight beams seem to touch only a rim of the moon’s surface, we do not argue that the sun is growing cold and dark. When a child wanders far afield from home and mother, we do not suppose that the love has necessarily died out in that mother’s heart.
Nevertheless, though our consciousness of God’s love does not determine its amount or constancy, yet it is very delightful and helpful to realize it always. Thus we become most sensitive to sin. Thus we acquire purity of heart. Thus we become strong and fearless. Thus, too, we become magnetic, attracting others to Him who has made us what we are.
This then is the question with which we opened, and with which we close, these thoughts on Christian Living—” May we not live in the hourly consciousness of the love of God toward us?”
Is not this what Jesus meant when He said, “I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love?” Is not this what He meant, when He bade us keep His commandments and abide in His own love? And what else did Jude mean by bidding his fellow-Christians to keep themselves “in the love of God?”
We may not always or exclusively be dwelling on it; but continually looking up from our work, and finding that that benignant face is still smiling on us; and that that over-arching heaven of love is still above and around; not able to speak much of our love to God, but always able to speak of His love to us, like a child who plays about the house without questioning for a moment, because it feels instinctively that all around it is shining the love of the mother.
There are three or four brief hints that may be of service.
I. Take time to consider God’s love to you. God loves the world, because He loves each unit in the great sum of human life. We see the parterres of spring; to Him each flower is distinct. To us the sparrows are so similar that we cannot distinguish one from the rest; but He marks each sparrow’s fall. We stand in wonder beneath the arch of the starry sky, and are bewildered by the multitudinousness of the stardust, He calls each atom by its separate name. And so when we think of God’s love to us, we must not think He loves us as part of the race; but with a special individualizing love, which singles us out of the crowd, as a father loves each child with a love in which no other can share.
“Thou art as much His care, as if beside
Nor man, nor angel lived in heaven and earth.”
This belief in God’s personal love is very helpful. It prevents us from feeling lost in a crowd. But it is not natural or easy at first. We must be patient, and take time to allow the thought to possess us, in its mighty grasp. We must get alone, and shut the door upon the busy world, and set ourselves to comprehend the meaning of those three small words, God loves me. We must learn that it is of the very nature of an Infinite Being to be as much in one place as though He were in no other place; and to love one lonely heart as if there were none other to share His love in all the wide universe. In the morning, before you enter on the calls of daily duty, take time—-five minutes—quietly to realize that you are the object of the deep personal love of the Infinite God.
II. Accept all the incidents of the day as coming from His love.I do not see how we can make distinctions between God’s ordaining and His permissive providence any more than we can between His special and general providence. All life, and its many incidents; what comes to us directly from His hand, equally with what is permitted to happen to us through the means of others—must be traced back to Himself as the ultimate final cause. Our Lord was delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God; though this did not lessen the wickedness of the hands by which He was crucified and slain. Here is the mystery of the ages; but let not the mystery rob us of the undoubted truth, that God is behind all events.
And God is love. All events, therefore, must be consistent with His love. And we must recognize this, if we would keep ourselves in its glad and constant enjoyment. When any bright thing befalls you; when any one says anything kind of you; when an unexpected gift falls at your feet; when a new friendship enters your life; when the sun shines brightly on your path—look up, and know that all lovely and helpful things are the children of the love of God. Do not be so occupied with the gift, or the channel through which it comes, as to ignore the Giver Himself.
And when unkind things are said or done; when robber bands steal your goods, as Job’s; when friends disappoint you, and Shimeis curse—then look up, and be sure that all is permitted by a love that cares for you none the less tenderly when it withholds its help. “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus: when He heard, therefore, that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was.”
Thus every event that comes to you will link you, by a golden clasp, with the love of God.
III. Be channels of God’s love to others. In the spring, the vine-root, bursting with life-power, longs for branches through which it may pour its tides of life forth to refresh thirsty souls; and surely the love of God is ever seeking for kindred hearts, who shall be channels of communication with the world. The world, too, needs love. There is nothing which can slake its thirst, but the love of God. It will ever thirst again till it drinks of that stream.
Why should not you, my reader, be one of the channels through which God’s love may pour itself out to refresh him that is weary? If you are willing, you will find yourself beginning to care for men as never before; and there will be a new power of affection opened within you which shall betray its Divine origin.
And what, think you, shall be the effect of this upon yourself, except to teach you the meaning of God’s love to you? For the water which flows along a channel can refresh the flowerets that grow upon its banks. Those that live in love to others know the love of God to themselves; and to keep other men in our love is to keep ourselves in the love of God. Forsake wrath, jealousy, and envy, in the power of God’s grace, and learn the new, glad lesson of love.
IV. Associate with those who love God. No one of us can know the fulness of God’s love in the loneliness of our own communings. We need to associate with all saints to learn its height and depth, and length and breadth. It is a mistake to isolate ourselves from communion with Christians, or from corporate Church-life; and it is my earnest advice to all young Christians, as to all secret disciples, to find some happy centre of Christian fellowship, and join it.
We see the love of God from different angles. It shines on us with different hues. And no one can fully appreciate it, and its full extent, who has not spoken with other Christians about it, and tried to catch some new beauty in their conceptions. Talk much of the love of God to those around you. Hear them, and ask them questions. So shall your heart burn within you, and Jesus will make Himself known in some deeper, sweeter guise. Christian converse is a great help towards the abiding realization of the love of God.
V. Live in obedience to every known command. “If you keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.” This is the secret—to search the Word to see if you are keeping all His commands; to seek and keep His laws; to put the government upon His shoulders; to do His will, at whatever cost to self-will; to obey, not to win aught from His hand, but just to please Him; to ask forgiveness and restoration if you have erred or gone astray. Here is the essential condition of walking in the light of His love.
Who has not been conscious of a sweet manifestation of love, when some difficult duty has been done for His dear sake alone? As when Jesus was baptized, the heavens were opened, and the voice of God declared Him to be His beloved Son.
Let us “walk in the light, as He is in the light:” so shall we be conscious not of light only, but of love.
There is no need for us to live in a cold and arctic zone, if only we fulfil the conditions here set down. We may not always be equally buoyant, or equally exuberant; or equally responsive; but we shall never lose the bright glad consciousness that we are loved by the Love that spared not the only-begotten Son.
THE END