Chapter Six: Compelled by Love
CHAPTER SIX
COMPELLED BY LOVE
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:14-15
Living by grace instead of by works means you are free from the performance treadmill. It means God has already given you an A when you deserved an F; He has already given you a full day’s pay even though you may have worked only one hour. It means you don’t have to perform certain spiritual disciplines to earn God’s approval. Jesus Christ has already done that for you.
You are loved and accepted by God through the merit of Jesus, and you are blessed by God through the merit of Jesus. Nothing you ever do will cause Him to love you any more or any less. He loves you strictly by His grace given to you through Jesus.
How does this emphasis on God’s free and sovereign grace make you feel? Does it make you a little nervous? Does it seem a bit scary to hear that nothing you do will ever make God love you any more or bless you any more? Do you think, Well, if you take the pressure off like that and tell me all of my effort will never earn me one blessing, then I’m afraid I’ll slack off and stop doing the things I need to do to live a disciplined Christian life?
The Bible recognizes the possibility that the grace of God can be misunderstood and even abused. It speaks of “godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality” (Jude 1:4). Anticipating the question “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (Romans 6:1), it warns us not to use our freedom to indulge the sinful nature (see Galatians 5:13). All of these passages recognize the possibility that the Bible’s teaching that grace alone is the basis for God’s blessing can be misconstrued as an excuse for indulgent, slothful living.
The apostle Paul wrote the entire sixth chapter of Romans to answer the question, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Why did he have to deal with such a question? What had he said to even raise the issue? His whole teaching to that point in Romans was that justification is by faith in Jesus Christ alone, culminating in his sweeping statement in Romans 5:20: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”
Paul realized his unqualified presentation of the grace of God left him open to being misunderstood. Paul himself knew that his insistence on the pure grace of God without any admixture of commitment or discipline or obedience on our part could cause us to misunderstand him. He knew his readers could respond with this attitude: “Well, if that’s true, let’s go out and sin all we want. The more we sin, the more we cause God’s grace to abound.”
This type of response is always a possibility. In fact, if our concept of grace does not expose us to that possible misunderstanding, then we do not thoroughly understand grace. I believe it is because we are afraid of this attitude that we often change the doctrine of grace into a doctrine of works.
“Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” The late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones of England, one of the ablest and most respected Bible expositors of the twentieth century, said this in response to that question:
The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace.[23]
Obviously Dr. Lloyd-Jones was not saying that we should try to confuse people with our presentation of the gospel. He was simply saying that the presentation of salvation by grace alone, apart from any preconditions on the part of our hearers, leaves us open to the possibility that people may charge us with saying, “It does not matter what you do; sin as much as you like.” That charge was brought against Martin Luther and all the other great preachers of the Reformation when they preached salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ. The charge was brought against the apostle Paul himself: “Why not say —as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say —‘Let us do evil that good may result’? Their condemnation is deserved” (Romans 3:8).
The grace of salvation is the same grace by which we live the Christian life. Paul said in Romans 5:2, “We have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (emphasis added). We are not only justified by grace through faith, we stand every day in this same grace. And just as the preaching of justification by grace is open to misunderstanding, so is the teaching of living by grace.
The solution to this problem is not to add legalism to grace. Rather, the solution is to be so gripped by the magnificence and boundless generosity of God’s grace that we respond out of gratitude rather than out of a sense of duty. As Stephen Brown, pastor of Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Miami, Florida, said, “The problem [isn’t] that we made the gospel too good. The problem is that we didn’t make it good enough.”[24]
We have loaded down the gospel of the grace of God in Christ with a lot of “oughts.” “I ought to do this” and “I ought to do that.” “I ought to be more committed, more disciplined, more obedient.” When we think or teach this way, we are substituting duty and obligation for a loving response to God’s grace.
Let me be very clear at this point. I firmly believe in and seek to practice commitment, discipline, and obedience. I am thoroughly committed to submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of my life. And I believe in and seek to practice other commitments that flow out of that basic commitment. I am committed to my wife “until death do us part.” I am committed to integrity and fairness in business relationships. I am committed to seek to act in love toward everyone. But I am committed in these areas out of a grateful response to God’s grace, not to try to earn God’s blessings.
Most of my understanding of scriptural truths has come gradually through my personal study and the teaching of pastors and other capable teachers. On a few rare occasions the Lord has been pleased to enlighten my understanding of some aspect of His truth in a rather sudden fashion, like someone turning on a light in a dark room. I didn’t suddenly learn a new spiritual fact, rather I understood some truth in a new and more scriptural way.
This was the case in my understanding of the sovereign grace of God. I had been a confirmed legalist, and I dutifully sought to live the Christian life that way. I was sometimes overwhelmed with what I thought were the “oughts” of the Christian life. But suddenly one day, I understood God’s grace in an entirely new way. I am now convinced, after many years, that it is a more biblical understanding.
So what was my reaction to a new and better understanding of the grace of God? Did I abandon my commitment and give up my spiritual disciplines? Not at all. I remember well what I did. I was spending a half day with God, seated in a basement room with a cold, hard tile floor. As my understanding of God’s grace was enlightened, Romans 12:1 came to mind: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God —this is your spiritual act of worship.”
I fell on my knees on that cold, hard floor and said something like this to God: “Lord, I have presented my body to You as a living sacrifice before, but I’ve never understood as I do now Your mercy and Your grace. And in view of my deeper understanding of Your grace, I now present myself to You in a new and deeper way. I give myself wholly to You without any reservation.”
Now, more than thirty years later, I still build on the commitment I made in the basement room that morning. But more than that, I still seek to grow in my understanding of God’s grace, because I know that only my growing understanding of His grace will make the commitment stick “through thick and thin.”
Steve Brown was right. We often don’t make the gospel “good enough.” We preach grace to the non-Christian and duty to the Christian. As Richard Gilbert has written, “It sometimes seems that there is plenty of grace for you if you are not a Christian, but when you become a Christian then there are all sorts of laws you must obey and you feel like you were better off before you were converted.”[25]
Even our terminology betrays the way we dichotomize the Christian life into “grace” and “works” compartments. We speak of the gift of salvation and the cost of discipleship. The “cost of discipleship” is not necessarily an unbiblical expression, but the connotation we build into it is. We often convey the idea that God’s grace barely gets us inside the door of the Kingdom, and after that, it’s all our own blood, sweat, and tears.
How did the apostle Paul approach the subject of commitment and discipline? Let’s look again at Romans 12:1. Paul’s letter to the Romans is the foundation for the Bible’s teaching on salvation. In that letter the teaching of justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone is set forth most cogently and completely. However, Paul wrote the letter to people who were already believers. He referred to them as those “who are loved by God and called to be saints.” He thanked God that their “faith is being reported all over the world,” and longed that they and he “may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith” (Romans 1:7-8, 12). Clearly he was writing to believers.
Paul wrote this letter to help them understand more fully the salvation they already possessed. He spent eleven chapters going through the gospel, showing that salvation is entirely by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ and then dealing with various questions his teaching on the grace of God would raise.
Not until Paul had spent eleven chapters teaching the gospel of the grace of God to people who were already believers did he ask for a response from them: a total commitment of themselves to God. He urged them, “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” (12:1).
Paul made a strong appeal. Charles B. Williams’s translation of the New Testament interprets the phrase “offer your bodies” as “make a decisive [footnote: once for all offer] dedication of your bodies.” The phrase “living sacrifices,” though, connotes the idea of a “perpetual sacrifice never to be neglected or recalled”[26] and a “constant dedication.”[27] So Paul called for a decisive, once for all dedication that is to be constantly reaffirmed and kindled afresh. You cannot ask for any higher level of commitment than that.
What consideration did Paul bring forward as the basis or motivation for making such a total commitment? He did not appeal to a sense of duty but to the mercy of God (“in view of God’s mercy”). He asked for a response based not on obligation but on heartfelt gratitude.
Now, the fact is, we do have a duty and obligation to God. He is the sovereign Ruler of this world, and in that capacity, He has “laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed” (Psalm 119:4). But He motivates us to obedience, not on the basis of His sovereign rule, but on the basis of His mercy to us in Jesus Christ.
Martin Luther wrote on Romans 12:1, “A lawdriver insists with threats and penalties; a preacher of grace lures and incites with divine goodness and compassion shown to us; for he wants no unwilling works and reluctant services, he wants joyful and delightful services of God.”[28]
I was asked to speak on the “Lordship of Jesus Christ” at a conference. I knew the intended objective was to challenge the audience to submit to Christ’s lordship in the affairs of their everyday lives. But I began the message by speaking on God’s goodness. After I had spent fifteen or twenty minutes on the goodness of God, then I began to talk about the lordship of Christ in our lives.
Why did I develop the message in that fashion? Because submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ should be in response to the love and mercy of God. In view of God’s mercy, Paul urged the Roman believers to offer their bodies as living sacrifices. We must respond with a similar motivation to His lordship in our lives today.
Our motivation for commitment, discipline, and obedience is as important to God, perhaps even more so, than our performance. As Ernest F. Kevan wrote, “The Law’s demands are inward, touching motive and desire, and are not concerned solely with outward action.”[29]
David said to Solomon, “And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” (1 Chronicles 28:9). The apostle Paul echoed the importance of motives when he wrote that, at the Lord’s coming, “He . . . will expose the motives of men’s hearts” (1 Corinthians 4:5).
God searches the heart and understands every motive. To be acceptable to Him, our motives must spring from a love for Him and a desire to glorify Him. Obedience to God performed from a legalistic motive —that is, a fear of the consequences or to gain favor with God —is not pleasing to God. Abraham Booth (1734–1806), an English pastor and author, wrote, “To constitute a work truly good, it must be done from a right principle, performed by a right rule, and intended for a right end.”[30]
Mr. Booth defined a right principle as the love of God, that is, our love for God. He defined the right rule as God’s revealed will as contained in Scripture. The right end —or as we would say today, the right goal —is the glory of God.
Thus, our good works are not truly good unless they are motivated by a love for God and a desire to glorify Him. But we cannot have such a God-ward motivation if we think we must earn God’s favor by our obedience, or if we fear we may forfeit God’s favor by our disobedience. Such a works-oriented motivation is essentially self-serving; it is prompted more by what we think we can gain or lose from God than by a grateful response to the grace He has already given us through Jesus Christ.
Living under the grace of God instead of under a sense of duty frees us from such a self-serving motivation. It frees us to obey God and serve Him as a loving and thankful response to Him for our salvation and for blessings already guaranteed to us by His grace. Consequently, a heartfelt grasp of God’s grace —far from creating an indifferent or careless attitude in us —will actually provide us the only motivation that is pleasing to Him. Only when we are thoroughly convinced that the Christian life is entirely of grace are we able to serve Him out of a grateful and loving heart.
I knew a man who was a very strict tither. He gave exactly 10 percent of his income to God’s work: never one penny less and, as far as I know, never one penny more. I asked him why he tithed so religiously. He replied, “I’d be afraid not to.” I knew this man fairly well, and I suspect his motivation was mixed. He did somewhat enjoy giving his 10 percent; but his basic motivation was a fear of the consequences if he did not tithe. He was not motivated to tithe from a joyful and grateful heart.
By contrast, the apostle Paul appealed to Christ’s grace as a motivation to give. He said, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Paul was not “laying a guilt trip,” as we say today, on the Corinthian believers. Rather, he wanted them not only to give generously, but to give from a sense of gratitude for God’s grace. He wanted people to give, not from a sense of duty and compulsion, but cheerfully as a loving response to what God had already given them in Christ.
Many of us are often like the tither. We are motivated more by a fear that God will either punish us or withhold some blessing from us than we are from love of God. We get up early in the morning to have a quiet time, not because we truly desire fellowship with God, but because we’re afraid we will forfeit God’s blessing that day if we don’t.
Once I was on my way to a weekend conference to speak on the pursuit of holiness. As I boarded the plane, I was confronted with an extremely alluring temptation to indulge in lustful glances at a young woman. Immediately the thought came to me, You can’t do that! You’re on your way to speak about holiness. In saying that to myself, I wasn’t concerned about being truly holy in the way I would challenge others to be. Rather, I was afraid I might forfeit God’s blessing on my messages.
As I realized my wrong motive, I bowed my head and said, “God, even if I never open my mouth to speak for You again, You are still worthy of my saying ‘No’ to temptation.” I changed my motive for obedience from a self-centered to a God-centered motive.
Let me clarify one thing, lest I be misunderstood. When I stress a God-ward motivation for our discipline and obedience, I am not talking about inclination or feeling. We are not to wait until we “feel like” having a quiet time to have one. And we certainly are not to wait until we are so inclined to obey God’s commands. Motive has nothing to do with feelings or inclination; rather, it refers to the reason why we do, or don’t do, something. For the person living by grace, that reason should be a loving response to the abundant grace of God already manifested in Christ.
COMPELLED BY LOVE
In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, Paul said,
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
While there is a lot of spiritual truth in this passage, the essential teaching is that Christ’s love compels us to live no longer for ourselves but for Him who died for us and was raised again.
The main subject is once again commitment to the lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of our lives. We are to live no longer for ourselves but for Him. We are to make His will the rule of our lives and His glory the goal for which we live. But what is the wellspring of this commitment? What motivating principle will cause a person to live no longer for himself but for God?
Paul said the love of Christ compels us to make this kind of commitment and to carry it out day by day. Compel is a strong word and often has a negative association with force or coercion. But here its meaning is positive. Charles Hodge wrote that the love of Christ “coerces, or presses, and therefore impels. It is the governing influence which controls the life.”[31] It is not a fear of consequences or expectation of reward that motivates Paul. Rather, the love of Christ manifested in dying for him is the driving force of his life.
The Williams New Testament is well regarded for its careful rendering of the tenses of the Greek verbs, and it is particularly helpful here. Williams translated the first phrase of 2 Corinthians 5:14 in this manner: “For the love of Christ continuously constrains me.” Note the use of the word continuously, indicating that Christ’s love is the constant wellspring of Paul’s motivation every day. Paul never lost sight of, never forgot, never took for granted the death of Christ for him. And as he reflected on this infinite love manifested in Christ’s death, he was motivated, no, he was compelled and impelled to live for the One who died for him and rose again.
Sometimes when I talk about living by grace instead of by works, I see people begin to get nervous. Some have warned me against “going too far,” by telling me stories of people who, after hearing a message on God’s grace, have committed some grossly sinful act. I grant the possibility that grace can be so misunderstood.
But I believe that, in most instances where people apparently abuse grace, they have not heard a message on grace but on freedom from the law. Freedom from the law is a result of grace and is an important application of the truth of grace, but it is not the same as grace. To teach freedom from the law without first teaching grace is like trying to build a house without laying the foundation. That approach can indeed lead to abuse. But when a person truly understands the grace of God in Christ, he or she will not abuse that grace.
Jude did speak of “godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 1:4). Obviously, Jude was referring to unbelievers —people who are “godless” and who “deny Jesus Christ” —so that passage is not applicable to Christians.
People who truly understand the grace of God, not just intellectually but in the very core of their being, will not abuse grace by living irresponsibly. During the couple of weeks I was working on this particular chapter, I happened to be reading through Romans in my daily Bible reading. One morning I came to Romans 4 and read these words in verses 7 and 8:
Blessed are they
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man
whose sin the Lord will never count against him.
When I read, “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him” (emphasis added), I wept with joy and gratitude. What a fantastic encouragement that God will never judge me for any of my sins. I know I have as wicked a sinful nature as anyone else, and apart from the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit in my life, I am fully capable of the so-called gross sins of immorality, drunkenness, stealing, and the like. But those are not the sins that trouble me at this time. Rather, I struggle with what I call “refined” sins: selfishness, pride, impatience, a critical attitude, and a judgmental spirit.
Despite my calling those areas “refined” sins, they are nevertheless very real sins. They are sins for which I would not want to give account at the judgment bar of God. They are sins that, apart from the atoning death of Christ for me, would send me to eternal hell. And if God operated on the basis of merit instead of grace in this life, they are sins that would forfeit all blessing from Him. In short, those “refined” sins are very troublesome.
So when I read that God will never count against me my selfishness, my pride, my impatience, and so on, I wept for joy. I stopped reading and uttered a prayer of deep, heartfelt thanksgiving to God for His gracious forgiveness. Then what did I do? Did I say to myself, Well, if God is not going to count these sins against me, it really doesn’t matter whether or not I deal with them? Did I think, Since God is not going to count them against me anyway, I might as well not bother with all the spiritual pain of putting to death those ungodly traits?
Of course I did not think like that. Instead I asked God to purge those sinful traits from my character. I asked Him to enable me to become more and more aware of specific instances when I was committing those sins so that I could, by His Spirit, put them to death as Paul tells us to do in Romans 8:13. I was compelled by His love to seek to put away those sins.
REVERENCE FOR GOD
Along with a sense of profound gratitude to God for His grace, I also find myself motivated to obedience by a deep sense of reverence for Him. When Joseph was tempted to immorality by Potiphar’s wife, his response was, “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). He did not calculate the possible wrath of Potiphar or the forfeiture of God’s blessing. He was motivated by reverence for God. He was concerned about disobedience to a sovereign, holy God, even though that God had allowed him to be sold into slavery by his own brothers.
The apostle Paul combined these two elements of a God-ward motivation —gratitude and reverence —when he wrote to the Corinthian believers, “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).
Paul referred to the promises that God would be our God and Father and would make us His sons and daughters. Philip Hughes commented on this passage, “The logical consequence of possessing such promises is that Christ’s followers should make a complete break with every form of unhealthy compromise.”[32] Here again we see that promises come before duty and that duty flows out of a heartfelt response to the promises of God.
But Paul went on to say, “out of reverence for God.” Reverence is a sense of profound awe, respect, and devotion. It is a recognition of God’s intrinsic worthiness, the infinite majesty of His being, and the infinite perfection of His character. Because of who He is and what He is, God is infinitely worthy of my most diligent and loving obedience, even if I never receive a single blessing from His hand. The fact is, of course, I have received innumerable blessings from Him. But His worthiness is intrinsic within Himself; it is not conditioned on the number of blessings you or I receive from Him.
In the apostle John’s vision of God’s throne, the twenty-four elders never cease saying,
You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.
REVELATION 4:11
God is worthy of my loving obedience because of who He is, not because of what He does.
In Romans 12:1, Paul urges us, in view of God’s mercy, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to Him. Is He worthy of such sacrifice? Of course He is! He is infinitely worthy. But our motivation to obey and serve God cannot rise to such heights until we learn to live daily by grace and to experience freedom each day from the bondage of the performance treadmill.
I believe a genuine heart response to the worthiness of God is the highest possible motivation for obedience and service to God. But we cannot “break through” to that level of motivation until we are first motivated by His grace, mercy, and love. We cannot be free to think about God’s worthiness and God’s glory as long as we are struggling to earn our own acceptance with Him.
GROWING IN GRACE
The term growing in grace is most often used to indicate growth in Christian character. While I think that usage has merit, a more accurate meaning is to continually grow in our understanding of God’s grace, especially as it applies to us personally, to become progressively more aware of our own continued spiritual bankruptcy and the unmerited, unearned, and undeserved favor of God. May we all grow in grace in this sense.
As we grow in grace this way, we will grow in our motivation to obey God out of a sense of gratitude and reverence to Him. Our obedience will always be imperfect in performance in this life. We will never perfectly obey Him until we are made perfect by Him. In the same way, our motives will never be consistently pure; there will frequently be some “merit points” mentality mixed in with our genuine love and reverence for God.
So don’t be discouraged if you realize your motives have been largely merit-oriented. Just begin now to move toward grace motives. Begin to think daily about the implications of the grace of God in your life. Memorize and meditate frequently on such Scripture passages as Romans 12:1 and 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. Pray about the aspects of truth in those passages and ask God to motivate you by His mercy and love. When you recognize merit-oriented motives at work in you, renounce them and cast yourself completely on the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ. As you grow in grace in this way, you will indeed discover that His love compels you to live, not for yourself, but for Him who died for you and was raised again.