I need not spend time in showing that when Paul says here 'The love
of Christ,' he means Christ's love to him, not his to Christ. That is
in accordance with his continual usage of the expression; and it is
in accordance with facts. For it is not my love to Jesus, but His
love to me, that brings the real moulding power into my life, and my
love to Him is only the condition on which the true power acts upon
me. To get the fulcrum and the lever which will heave a life up to
the heights you have to get out of yourselves.
Now Paul never saw Jesus Christ in this earthly life. Timothy, who is
associated with him in this letter, and perhaps is one of the 'us,'
never saw Him either. The Corinthian believers whom he is addressing
had, of course, never seen Him. And yet the Apostle has not the
slightest hesitation in taking that great benediction of Christ's
love and spreading it over them all. That love is independent of time
and of space; it includes humanity, and is co-extensive with it.
Unturned away by unworthiness, unrepelled by non-responsiveness,
undisgusted by any sin, unwearied by any, however numerous, foiling
of its attempts, the love of Christ, like the great heavens that bend
above us, wraps us all in its sweetness, and showers upon us all its
light and its dew.
And yet, brethren, I would have you remember that whilst we thus try
to paint, in poor, poor words, the universality of that love, we have
to remember that it does not partake of the weakness that infects all
human affections, which are only strong when they are narrow, and as
the river expands it becomes shallow, and loses the force in its flow
which it had when it was gathered between straiter banks, so as that
a universal charity is almost akin to a universal indifference. But
this love that grasps us all, this river that 'proceedeth from the
Throne of God and of the Lamb,' flows in its widest reaches as deep
and as impetuous in its career as if it were held within the
narrowest of gorges. For Christ's universal love is universal only
because it is individualising and particular. We love our nation by
generalising and losing sight of the individuals. Christ loves the
world because He loves every man and woman in it, and His grace
enwraps all because His grace hovers over each.
'The sun whose beams most glorious are
Despiseth no beholder,'
but the rays come straight to each eyeball. Be sure of this: that He
who, when the multitude thronged Him and pressed Him, felt the
tremulous, timid, scarcely perceptible touch of one woman's wasted
finger on the hem of His garment, holds each of us in the grasp of
His love, which is universal, because it applies to each. You and I
have each the whole radiance of it pouring down on our heads, and
none intercepts the beams from any other. So, brethren, let us each
feel not only the love that grasps the world, but the love that
empties itself on me.
But there is one more remark that I wish to make in reference to this
constraining love of Jesus Christ, and that is, that in order to see
and feel it we must take the point of view that this Apostle takes in
my text. For hearken how he goes on. 'The love of Christ constraineth
us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died,
and that He died for all,' etc. That is to say, the death of Christ
for all, which is equivalent to the death of Christ for each, is the
great solvent by which the love of God melts men's hearts, and is the
great proof that Jesus Christ loves me, and thee, and all of us. If
you strike out that conception you have struck out from your
Christianity the vindication of the belief that Christ loves the
world. What possible meaning is there in the expression, 'He died for
all?' How can the fact of His death on a 'green hill' outside the
gates of a little city in Syria have world-wide issues, unless in
that death He bore, and bore away, the sins of the whole world? I
know that there have been many--and there are many to-day--who not
accepting what seems to me to be the very vital heart of
Christianity--viz. the death of Christ for the world's sin, do yet
cherish--as I think illogically--yet do cherish a regard for Him,
which puts some of us who call ourselves 'orthodox,' and are tepid,
to the blush. Thank God! men are often better than their creeds, as
well as worse than them. But that fact does not affect what I am
saying now, and what I beg you to take for what you find it to be
worth, that unless we believe that Jesus Christ died for all, I do
not know what claim He has on the love of the world. We shall admire
Him, we shall bow before Him, as the very realised ideal of humanity,
though how this one Man has managed to escape the taint of the
all-pervading evil remains, upon that hypothesis, very obscure. But
love Him? No! Why should I? But if I feel that His death had
world-wide issues, and that He went down into the darkness in order
that He might bring the world into the light, then--and I am sure,
on the wide scale and in the long-run only then--will men turn to
Him and say, 'Thou hast died for me, help me to live for Thee.'
Brethren, I beseech you, take care of emptying the death of Christ
of its deepest meaning, lest you should thereby rob His character of
its chiefest charm, and His name of its mightiest soul-melting power.
The love that constraineth is the love that died, and died for all,
because it died for each.
II. Now let me ask you to consider the echo of this constraining
love.
I said a moment or two ago that Christ's love to us is the
constraining power, and that ours to Him is but the condition on
which that power works. But between the two there comes something
which brings that constraining love to bear upon our hearts. And so
notice what my text goes on to adduce as needful for Christ's love to
have its effect--namely, 'because we thus judge,' etc. Then my
estimate, my apprehension of the love of Christ must come in between
its manifestation and its power to grip, to restrain, to impel me. If
I may use such a figure, He stands, as it were, bugle in hand, and
blows the sweet strains that are meant to set the echoes flying. But
the rock must receive the impact of the vibrations ere it can throw
back the thinned echo of the music. Love must be believed and known
ere it can be responded to.
Now the only answer and echo that hearts desire is the love of the
beloved heart. We all know that in our earthly life. Love is as much
a hunger to be loved as the outgoing of my own affection. The two
things are inseparable, and there is nothing that repays love but
love. Jesus Christ wishes each of us to love Him. If it is true that
He loves me, then, intertwisted with the outgoing of His heart
towards me is the yearning that my heart may go out towards Him. Dear
brethren, this is no pulpit rhetoric, it is a plain, simple fact,
inseparable from the belief in Christ's love--that He wishes you and
every soul of man to love Him, and that, whatever else you bring, lip
reverence, orthodox belief, apparent surrender, in the assay shop of
His great mint all these are rejected, and the only metal that passes
the fire is the pure gold of an answering love. Brethren! is that
what you bring to Jesus Christ?
Love seeks for love, and our love can only be an echo of His. He
takes the beginning in everything. If I am to love Him back again, I
must have faith in His love to me. And if that be so, then the true
way by which you, imperfect Christian people, can deepen and
strengthen your love to Jesus Christ is not so much by efforts to
work up a certain warmth of sentiment and glow of affection, as by
gazing, with believing eyes of the heart, upon that which kindles
your love to Him. If you want ice to melt, put it out into the
sunshine, If you want the mirror to gleam, do not spend all your time
in polishing it. Carry it where it can catch the ray, and it will
flash it back in glory. 'We love Him because He first loved us.' Our
love is an echo; be sure that you listen for the parent note, and
link yourselves by faith with that great love which has come down
from Heaven for us all.
But how can I speak about echoes and responses when I know that there
are scores of men and women whom a preacher's words reach who would
be ashamed of themselves, and rightly, if they exhibited the same
callousness of heart and selfishness of ingratitude to some human,
partial benefactor as they are not ashamed to have exhibited all
their lives to Jesus Christ. Echo? Yes! your heartstrings are set
vibrating fast enough whenever, in the adjoining apartment, an
instrument is touched which is tuned to the same key as your heart.
Pleasures, earthly aims, worldly gifts, the sweetnesses of human
life, all these things set them thrilling, and you can hear the
music, but your hearts are not tuned to answer to the note that is
struck in 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' The bugle is blown,
and there is silence, and no echo, faint and far, comes whispering
back. Brethren, we use no one else, in whose love we have any belief,
a thousandth part so ill as we use Jesus Christ.
III. Now, lastly, let me say a word about the constraining influence
of this echoed love.
Its first effect, if it has any real power in our hearts and lives,
will be to change their centre, to decentralise. Look what the
Apostle goes on to say: 'We thus judge that He ... died for all, that
they which live should not live henceforth unto themselves.' That is
the great transformation. Secure that, and all nobleness will follow,
and 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report' will come, like
doves to their windows, flocking into the soul that has ceased to
find its centre in its poor rebellious self. All love derives its
power to elevate, refine, beautify, ennoble, conquer, from the fact
that, in lower degree, all love makes the beloved the centre, and not
the self. Hence the mother's self-sacrifice, hence the sweet
reciprocity of wedded life, hence everything in humanity that is
noble and good. Love is the antagonist of selfishness, and the
highest type of love should be, and in the measure in which we are
under the influence of Christ's love will be, the self-surrendering
life of a Christian man. I know that in saying so I am condemning
myself and my brethren. All the same, it is true. The one power that
rescues a man from the tyranny of living for self, which is the
mother of all sin and ignobleness, is when a man can say 'Christ is
my aim,' 'Christ is my object.' 'The life that I live in the flesh I
live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself
for me.' There is no secret of self-annihilation, which is
self-transfiguration, and, I was going to say, deification, like that
of loving Christ with all my heart because He has loved me so.
Again, let me remind you that, on its lower reaches and levels, we
find that all true affection has in it a strange power of
assimilating its objects to one another. Just as a man and woman who
have lived together for half a century in wedded life come to have
the same notions, the same prejudices, the same tastes, and sometimes
you can see their very faces being moulded into likeness, so, if I
love Jesus Christ, I shall by degrees grow liker and liker to Him,
and be 'changed into the same image, from glory to glory.'
Again, the love constrains, and not only constrains but impels,
because it becomes a joy to divine and to do the will of the beloved
Christ. 'My yoke is easy.' Is it? It is very hard to be a Christian.
His requirements are a great deal sterner than others. His yoke is
easy, not because it is a lighter yoke, but because it is padded with
love. And that makes all service a sacrament, and the surrender of my
own will, which is the essence of obedience, a joy.
So, dear friends, we come here in sight of the unique and blessed
characteristic of all Christian morality, and of all its practical
exhortations, and the Gospel stands alone as the mightiest moulding
power in the world, just because its word is 'love, and do as thou
wilt.' For in the measure of thy love will thy will coincide with the
will of Christ. There is nothing else that has anything like that
power. We do not want to be told what is right. We know it a great
deal better than we practise it. A revelation from heaven that simply
told me my duty would be surplusage. 'If there had been a law that
could have given life, righteousness had been by the law.' We want a
life, not a law, and the love of Christ brings the life to us.
And so, dear friends, that life, restrained and impelled by the love
to which it is being assimilated, is a life of liberty and a life of
blessedness. In the measure in which the love of Christ constrains
any man, it makes for him difficulties easy, the impossible possible,
the crooked things straight, and the rough places plain. The duty
becomes a delight, and self ceases to disturb. If the love of God is
shed abroad in a heart, and in the measure in which it is, that heart
will be at rest, and a great peace will brood over it. Then the will
bows in glad submission, and all the powers arise to joyous service.
We are lords of the world and ourselves when we are Christ's servants
for love's sake; and earth and its good are never so good as when the
power of His echoed love rules our lives. Do you know and believe
that Christ loves you? Do you know and believe that you had a place
in His heart when He hung on the Cross for the salvation of the
world? Have you answered that love with yours, kindled by your faith
in, and experience of, His? Is His love the overmastering impulse
which urges you to all good, the mighty constraint that keeps you
back from all evil, the magnet that draws, the anchor that steadies,
the fortress that defends, the light that illumines, the treasure
that enriches? Is it the law that commands, and the power that
enables? Then you are blessed, though people will perhaps say that
you are mad, whilst here; and you will be blessed for ever and ever.