'The Lord direct you _into_ the love of God and the patience of Christ.'
The prayers in this letter with which we have been occupied for some
Sundays present to us Christian perfection under various aspects. But
this we may, perhaps, say is the most comprehensive and condensed of
them all. The Apostle gathers up the whole sum of his desires for his
friends, and presents to us the whole aim of our efforts for ourselves,
in these two things, a steadfast love to God, and a calm endurance of
evil and persistence in duty, unaffected by suffering or by pain. If we
have these two we shall not be far from being what God wishes to see us.
Now the Apostle's thought here, of 'leading us into' these two seems to
suggest the metaphor of a great home with two chambers in it, of which
the inner was entered from the outer. The first room is 'the love of
God,' and the second is 'the patience of Christ.' It comes to the same
thing whether we speak of the heart as dwelling in love, or of love as
dwelling in the heart. The metaphor varies, the substance of the thought
is the same, and that thought is that the heart should be the sphere and
subject of a steadfast, habitual, all-pleasing love, which issues in
unbroken calmness of endurance and persistence of service, in the face
of evil.
Let us look, then, for a moment at these two points. I need not dwell
upon the bare idea of love to God as being the characteristic of the
Christian attitude towards Him, or remind you of how strange and
unexampled a thing it is that all religion should be reduced to this one
fruitful germ, love to the Father in heaven. But it is more to the
purpose for me to point to the constancy, the unbrokenness, the depth,
which the Apostle here desires should be the characteristics of
Christian love to God. We sometimes cherish such emotion; but, alas, how
rare it is for us to dwell in that calm home all the days of our lives!
We visit that serene sanctuary at intervals, and then for the rest of
our days we are hurried to and fro between contending affections, and
wander homeless amidst inadequate loves. But what Paul asked, and what
should be the conscious aim of the Christian life, is, that we should
'dwell all our days in the house of the Lord, to behold the beauty of
the Lord and to enquire in His temple.'
Alas, when we think of our own experiences, how fair and far seems that
other, contemplated as a possibility in my text, that our hearts should
'abide in the love of God'!
Let me remind you, too, that steadfastness of habitual love all round
our hearts, as it were, is the source and germ of all perfectness of
life and conduct. 'Love and do as Thou wilt,' is a bold saying, but not
too bold. For the very essence of love is the smelting of the will of
the lover into the will of the beloved. And there is nothing so certain
as that, in regard to all human relations, and in regard to the
relations to God which in many respects follow, and are moulded after
the pattern of, our earthly relations of love, to have the heart fixed
in pure affection is to have the whole life subordinated in glad
obedience. Nothing is so sweet as to do the beloved's will. The germ of
all righteousness, as well as the characteristic spirit of every
righteous deed, lies in love to God. This is the mother tincture which,
variously coloured and with various additions, makes all the different
precious liquids which we can pour as libations on His altar. The one
saving salt of all deeds in reference to Him is that they are the
outcome and expression of a loving heart. He who loves is righteous,
and doeth righteousness. So, 'love is the fulfilling of the law.'
That the heart should be fixed in its abode in love to God is the secret
of all blessedness, as it is the source of all righteousness. Love is
always joy in itself; it is the one deliverance from self-bondage to
which self is the one curse and misery of man. The emancipation from
care and sorrow and unrest lies in that going out of ourselves which we
call by the name of love. There be things masquerading about the world,
and profaning the sacred name of love by taking it to themselves, which
are only selfishness under a disguise. But true love is the
annihilation, and therefore the apotheosis and glorifying, of self; and
in that annihilation lies the secret charm which brings all blessedness
into a life.
But, then, though love in itself be always bliss, yet, by reason of the
imperfections of its objects, it sometimes leads to sorrow. For
limitations and disappointments and inadequacies of all sorts haunt our
earthly loves whilst they last; and we have all to see them fade, or to
fade away from them. The thing you love may change, the thing you love
must die; and therefore love, which in itself is blessedness, hath
often, like the little book that the prophet swallowed, a bitter taste
remaining when the sweetness is gone. But if we set our hearts on God,
we set our hearts on that which knows no variableness, neither the
shadow of turning. _There_ are no inadequate responses, no changes that
we need fear. On that love the scythe of death, which mows down all
other products of the human heart, hath no power; and its stem stands
untouched by the keen edge that levels all the rest of the herbage. Love
God, and thou lovest eternity; and therefore the joy of the love is
eternal as its object. So he who loves God is building upon a rock, and
whosoever has this for his treasure carries his wealth with him
whithersoever he goes. Well may the Apostle gather into one potent word,
and one mighty wish, the whole fulness of his desires for his friends.
And wise shall we be if we make this the chiefest of our aims, that our
hearts may have their home in the love of God.
Still further, there is another chamber in this house of the soul. The
outer room, where the heart inhabits that loves God, leads into another
compartment, 'the patience of Christ.'
Now, I suppose I need not remind many of you that this great New
Testament word 'patience' has a far wider area of meaning than that
which is ordinarily covered by that expression. For _patience_, as we
use it, is simply a passive virtue. But the thing that is meant by the
New Testament word which is generally so rendered has an active as well
as a passive side. On the passive side it is the calm, unmurmuring,
unreluctant submission of the will to whatsoever evil may come upon us,
either directly from God's hand, or through the ministration and
mediation of men who are His sword. On the active side it is the
steadfast persistence in the path of duty, in spite of all that may
array itself against us. So there are the two halves of the virtue which
is here put before us--unmurmuring submission and bold continuance in
well-doing, whatsoever storms may hurtle in our faces.
Now, in both of these aspects, the life of Jesus Christ is the great
pattern. As for the passive side, need I remind you how, 'as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'? 'When He was
reviled He reviled not again, but committed Himself unto Him that
judgeth uprightly.' No anger ever flushed His cheek or contracted His
brow. He never repaid scorn with scorn, nor hate with hate. All men's
malice fell upon Him, like sparks upon wet timber, and kindled no
conflagration.
As for the active side, I need not remind you how 'He set His face to go
to Jerusalem'--how the great solemn '_must_' which ruled His life bore
Him on, steadfast and without deflection in His course, through all
obstacles. There never was such heroic force as the quiet force of the
meek and gentle Christ, which wasted no strength in displaying or
boasting of itself, but simply, silently, unconquerably, like the
secular motions of the stars, dominated all opposition, and carried Him,
unhasting and unresting, on His path. That life, with all its surface of
weakness, had an iron tenacity of purpose beneath, which may well stand
for our example. Like some pure glacier from an Alpine peak, it comes
silently, slowly down into the valley; and though to the eye it seems
not to move, it presses on with a force sublime in its silence and
gigantic in its gentleness, and buries beneath it the rocks that stand
in its way. The patience of Christ is the very sublimity of persistence
in well-doing. It is our example, and more than our example--it is His
gift to us.
Such passive and active patience is the direct fruit of love to God. The
one chamber opens into the other. For they whose hearts dwell in the
sweet sanctities of the love of God will ever be those who say, with a
calm smile, as they put out their hand to the bitterest draught, 'the
cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?'
Love, and evil dwindles; love, and duty becomes supreme; and in the
submission of the will, which is the true issue of love, lies the
foundation of indomitable and inexhaustible endurance and perseverance.
Nor need I remind you, I suppose, that in this resolve to do the will of
God, in spite of all antagonism and opposition, lies a condition at once
of moral perfection and of blessedness. So, dear friends, if we would
have a home for our hearts, let us pass into that sweet, calm,
inexpugnable fortress provided for us in the love of God and the
patience of Christ.