THE DEVELOPMENT OF RIGHT FEELINGS IN THE SAINTS

G. C. McKay

John 11: 32–38; 2 Samuel 1: 17–27; Jeremiah 4: 19–21; 2 Corinthians 2: 4; 7: 4, 13

I seek grace, dear brethren, to speak about the development of right feelings in the saints.

What we have had in these occasions has involved the taking up of the most exalted thoughts, and the saints of the assembly are capable of such. Spiritual intelligence is a very wonderful matter, intelligence in divine things. But I think for the full development of manhood, and priesthood too, there is a need of both intelligence and right feelings and affections. I venture to speak a little of that aspect of things. It is not exactly that we are governed by our feelings.

There is a proverb that says, “The heart of a wise man is at his right hand”, Ecclesiastes 10: 2. That is a scripture that can have reference to how God has acted. His love lies behind everything but then there is His wisdom. He has directed matters in His power by His right hand. And so it should be with us, that we should have the spiritual intelligence and enlightenment that would help us to rightly direct our feelings and rightly develop them.

We are not speaking, we would say for the sake of the young people, simply about natural affection, right as that is. It is of God, and it will be a mark of the apostasy that men will be without natural affection. It has been affected by sin, but in the believer it can be taken up afresh from the point of view of the work of God in the believer and the fact that the Spirit indwells. The natural side of things can be taken up rightly, and moderated, you might say.

But I would like to speak about spiritual affections, and I might say divine affections, how they might be developed in us, and how essential they are. Some of the scriptures I read you might

say are somewhat negative. I read from Jeremiah—the weeping prophet, and of a lament by David. You might naturally say, Should we not avoid these things? No, if we are going to come into the gain of the truth really at the present time we must be developed in our feelings, we must allow the Spirit to develop us in our affections.

Therefore, I thought of David and of Jeremiah and of Paul as setting this out for us, for they were marked by this feature of which one seeks to speak. But I thought to begin with the Lord Jesus, though not putting Him on the same level as the others. In everything He is the most wonderful and supreme example to us in His blessed manhood. We have read a little of His feelings as expressed in John. But always in speaking of Christ we remember that He is not a man such as David or Jeremiah or Paul. He was a divine Person in manhood. The perfection of manhood shone in Him, coming out in the feelings that He expressed. There are many examples that can be quoted from the gospels of the Lord’s feelings, and how they came into evidence. The gospel writers are intelligent as to it, and some of them through observation are able to speak about it.

One of the matters of the Lord’s feelings that comes out most in the gospels is His compassion. He Himself said, “I have compassion on the crowd”, Matthew 15: 32. He expresses that Himself. Elsewhere we see Him moved with compassion. As coming in in grace towards men He was marked by compassion. There were other feelings too, because one important matter as to feelings is that they should be appropriate. In everything the Lord Jesus was perfect, in every word and every step, in every reaction you might say to what arose before Him. That would apply also to the feelings that He expressed. And so the One that could have compassion was the One that could cleanse the temple and cast out the money changers, “And his disciples remembered that it is written, The zeal of thy house devours me”, John 2: 17. So that it is important that we understand

what divine feelings are, both in regard to resentment as to evil, and what intrudes in the divine realm and would be offensive to God, and then what would involve divine love and sympathy, liberty of affection to move out in grace.

Perhaps we could have read in Luke where His perfect manhood is emphasised more, for example as weeping over Jerusalem. Again we would remember the One who wept over Jerusalem was Jehovah, He was God Himself. He understood as no one else could what Jerusalem meant. And He felt as no one else felt that the city was slaying the prophets and stoning those sent unto her. He felt that and wept over Jerusalem and said, “how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen her brood under her wings”, Luke 13: 34. The Lord would have done that. He was a divine Person who could do that. So we see in every circumstance with the Lord Jesus right and holy and blessed feelings.

Where we read in John 11 He is in the presence of death. It would bring out our feelings naturally, but I think it brought out something in the Lord Jesus that was profound. In the first matter that is alluded to, verse 33, it is when He saw Mary weeping and the Jews who came with her weeping. He was deeply moved in spirit. As the footnote tells us, in that expression there is a sort of groaning. There is the thought, not only of sympathy with those who were weeping, but a divine resentment at what sin had done, and how death had come in and affected the human spirit. So the Lord Jesus, it says, was deeply moved in spirit, and then it says, another word is used, He was troubled. He says, “Where have ye put him?” Think of the Lord Jesus’ sympathy then, in manhood. He was a divine Person in manhood, and John emphasises His divinity, the greatness of the Son of God, but in his gospel we have also these beautiful expressions that bring out the feelings that marked this blessed Man in His pathway here and in His movements. Thus there were those who said, “Behold how he loved him!”

“Jesus wept”,

He ‘shed tears’, the footnote says. The suggestion there is of silent weeping. Divine affections there in that blessed One were coming out.

Again deeply moved in Himself He comes to the tomb, where there was a cave and a stone lay upon it. He is deeply moved again at the thought of death and in the presence of death.

The first groaning or the first matter of being deeply moved seems to be connected with the effect of death on the human spirit as He saw it in Mary and in the Jews. Then as He approached the tomb there were other thoughts, I believe, in His holy mind, for He Himself was going to go into death. He was going to deal with that matter, and He felt what death was, and He approaches death as it were at this point, and He is deeply moved in Himself. So what feelings marked the Lord Jesus. How often it refers in John’s gospel to the fact that He was troubled. We do not get the abandonment, or Gethsemane in John, but in John 12 the Lord Jesus looking forward to His death says, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?”, John 12: 27. So these matters are recorded for our contemplation. They are deeper no doubt than we can fully enter into but they are recorded for us. I think it is a very touching thing that divine feelings seen in Christ are brought so close to us.

At Gethsemane there were persons who could take in, who could hear what the Lord was saying. In one of the gospels He was withdrawn just a stone’s throw. It suggests that He was just within reach. They were not beside Him exactly but they were within reach, as if these holy emotions which marked the Lord Jesus and the perfection that came out in Him then is available to us in that sense. The disciples slept, we know. Nature is not able for these things.

He looked for sympathisers and found none. He looked for those that would support Him but He faced these things alone. A little later in the gospel He is again troubled in spirit. He says,

“Verily, verily, I say to you, that one of you

shall deliver me up”, John 13: 21. What feelings as He spoke to His own in that setting of love, a setting in which He had washed His disciples’ feet! He says, “one of you shall deliver me up”. So the scriptures set these matters out for our contemplation, to see what the Lord Jesus’ feelings were in the perfection of His manhood, whether it would be indignation at the power of death, or whether it would be distress, as in Mark 3, at the hardness of the heart of those in the synagogue when He was going to heal the infirm man. “Distressed”, it says, “at the hardening of their heart”, Mark 3: 5.

What I think I would like to derive just a little from this is, that if these things came out in the perfection of Christ in manhood, there is no doubt it is recorded that we should take note of them. And we should perhaps look at ourselves and consider to what extent divine feelings have been developed in us. I understand the saints of the assembly are capacitated to take in these truths and to be developed in them, not only capacitated to take in the greatest thoughts of God, as we have been having in these readings, but to be capacitated to express divine feelings. After all, the saints of the assembly are indwelt by the Spirit, and the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ and imbuing the believer would, I believe, bring in right feelings into his soul whatever occasion arises. These are deep matters, the brethren will see, and really only the Holy Spirit can bring them into our souls and help us in regard to them.

We have to be careful, and I trust nothing that I have said would infringe on the person of the Lord Jesus. We cannot look into the ark. There is something inscrutable there. There were divine affections there in a blessed Man. He wept. He wept audibly over Jerusalem, He wept silently in John 11. The gospels record His feelings, His deepest feelings. They record His agonies in Gethsemane. They record that for us, it is brought to us, within a stone’s throw.

And surely that is to impress us, and what we are impressed

with and contemplate then should I think come to mark us in measure.

I thought about these Old Testament scriptures, first what is seen in David, the great type of Christ in the Old Testament. Christ was the root of David, and there is no doubt about it that the Spirit of Christ was seen in David. The Spirit of Christ marks not only those that follow on after the incoming of Christ and His death and resurrection, but the Spirit of Christ is seen in the Old Testament because He was the source of all these features in the Old Testament saints that were pleasurable to God. Now David was marked by great military prowess and faithfulness, but he was clearly also a man of very considerable feeling. We find him weeping on more than one occasion. He wept here. I suppose that was one of the things that attracted Israel and made them love David, the beautiful spirit that marked him. Jonathan’s soul was knit with David as he listened to the gracious way that David spoke to Saul when he had slain the giant. And so there was grace with David that became attractive. He had been weeping just earlier in this narrative at Ziklag. They wept until they had no more power to weep (1

Samuel 30: 4). He wept with Jonathan too, and it says that David exceeded (1 Samuel 20: 41). So he sets out something of this element of feeling.

The truth is not only simply objective or a matter of intelligence, but it involves a subjective formation that must involve feeling. It has often been pointed out that the five books of the Pentateuch bring forth the truth objectively in a full and wonderful way. Then there are the five books of the Psalms that are in correspondence. That is, the whole element of soul and response to what God sets out is in the Psalms, many of which of course David wrote, turning these experiences with God into Psalms, making them available for the service of God. It has been said that the books of the Psalms are the soul of the Old Testament. There is a great reservoir of feeling, you might say of divinely wrought feeling,

in the Psalms and David had his part in that, “the sweet psalmist of Israel”, 2 Samuel 23: 1.

What a man he was! How attractive he must have been, not only in his military ability but in his spirit. He could bow persons’ hearts, the hearts of the men of Judah. He could do that in his wondrous spirit.

The Lord Jesus affects us in that way. We speak of Him. We understand His charm, His feelings towards us, His concern for us, His consideration for us. How attractive the Lord Jesus is in that way. He attracted our hearts thus at the beginning in the glad tidings, and He continues to hold our hearts. When speaking of the Lord Jesus’ feelings I ought to have added that He is still a blessed Man. The heart of a Man beats in heaven, it has been said. And the same blessed Man has feelings. What the Lord suffered and endured, and the feelings that came out in Him then when He was tempted down here, are all put to account for us, because our great High Priest can thus sympathise with us having been through these things.

How wonderful to think then of the feelings of the Lord Jesus, not only historically in the record, but His present feelings, His feelings for His assembly, His consideration for His own, His priestly concern. Oh, if we could just have some sense of that, the depth of sympathy that lies in the heart of Christ for us, as our High Priest on high. The divine nature in all its affection and power is towards us, and we get the gain of that priesthood as we lay hold of it. We are not cut off from Him. He has gone beyond the heavens, it tells us in Hebrews (Hebrews 7: 26), but still we are not cut off from Him. His love is towards us. And as we go through experiences here that are deep and difficult we can lay hold of that love. Mr Raven says, very helpfully, that that is how we get the gain of it. We appropriate the love of the Priest (see Vol. 6, p.45). That is not only the love He showed in the past, but the love that He has for us now.

We can take account of the feelings of Christ, and we can

see them traced in David too. Here he is speaking in a lament. I do not know that I have ever been at readings on the Book of Lamentations, but there is such a book. You might say, Would that not be negative? Why did the Holy Spirit put laments into the Scripture, for there are a number of them? Jeremiah was the weeping prophet. Must another book be added, his Lamentations? Yes, the Spirit of God put another book in. It is to bring out this sort of right feeling in us, that a right spirit should be seen too in us as calamities occur. Here David is lamenting over Saul and over Jonathan his son. And what comes out most beautifully is the spirit of David. He is not rejoicing over the death of his enemy Saul, because Saul had sought his life, but weeping, weeping and lamenting over Saul and Jonathan. So we get here a magnanimous spirit, a spirit that rises above all the insult and persecution. There is no thought of self with David here. He is not thinking of the kingdom for himself. He is lamenting over the king that has been slain, and his regard for the anointing is there. How touching it is! “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan”. You know, the Lord Jesus had real affection for His disciples. Mr. Darby says in his Synopsis (Vol. 3, p.402) that His love for John had a human element. The Lord Jesus was a real Man and therefore His affection partook of that character, only according to His order of manhood no doubt. But here David says, “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan—very pleasant wast thou unto me”, and so on.

Now one of the remarkable things about this song of the bow, or use of the bow as it might be translated, is that intelligence marks it too. While there is this outpouring of feeling on David’s part as to the awful calamity that had come on God’s anointed, this disaster that had occurred, he is drawing a lesson from it too. His intelligence is in it, for he is looking at what happened, and in this song he is bringing out help and direction. The Psalms are like that.

They are not only an expression of feeling but lessons are arrived at through them. And so here David is teaching Judah a

lesson. He is pointing out that there was a problem, a weakness with Saul that contributed to the calamity. His weapons are mentioned again and again—the shield of Saul as not anointed with oil, the mighty fallen and the instruments of war perished. If you read the earlier account you will see it was the archers that harassed Saul. So this is the song of the bow, David saying as it were in the calamity that has overcome these persons we have to understand that there was a defect with them and their weapons. Therefore, David as a man of war would teach Israel that, and would say we have to find right weapons, that will not be vilely cast away, that we have to know how to undertake spiritual warfare rightly.

How magnanimous David is, how beautifully he speaks of Saul—“Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their lives. Even in their death were not divided”. He rises above all the history and he speaks of what he knew. I suppose he may have gone back in his history to what he knew of Saul earlier on, before Saul turned against him, and he did not forget Jonathan’s love for him. Yet Jonathan had not gone with him. But still, “Thy love to me was wonderful”, he says. There is a magnanimity in that. It is the Spirit of Christ really rising above what would be natural feeling. So David was a weeper. He wept. There was a time when he wept and it was not to his credit, when he was overcome by natural feeling in regard to his son Absalom. Even the great David at a certain point had to be rebuked, and rightly rebuked for it. He was overcome by natural affection. Natural affection is right in its way, but his expression of it was excessive and inappropriate at the time. But in this section he expresses freely the Spirit of Christ. How beautiful that is and that should imbue us too. As we look even at persons who ill-treat us, or think of brethren who have sometimes said things against us, even currently perhaps, a magnanimous spirit would rise above that. We can look to see if there is the anointing there. Do they belong to Christ? Is the person indwelt by the Spirit? Can we say something good about

them? And if calamity occurs can we express feelings such as David expresses?

Now Jeremiah is one of the most feeling persons in the Old Testament, the weeping prophet he is sometimes called. He was clearly by character a tender feeling man. God had a task for him in taking him up, and that task was to pronounce judgment, unsparing judgment, on Judah, because of the state in which they were. One would have thought that God would have taken up someone like Jehu, someone with vigour and definiteness, who would not be soft in what he did. But Jehovah chose a tender man, a soft man. You might say, Why should God bring in and choose such a vessel for such a task? Well God has His own way of doing things. He took a man who was tending to be weak and timid, and it says, “And I, behold, I appoint thee this day as a strong city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, against the whole land” (Jeremiah 1: 18). I am going to make you that because you are going to pronounce against Israel the words that I give thee; “against the whole land; against the kings of Judah, against its princes, against its priests, and against the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee—for I am with thee, saith Jehovah, to deliver thee”. And so this deeply feeling man was put in this position of speaking to the people on behalf of God about their terrible state and history and the impending judgment.

It really overwhelmed him at times, and he hardly felt able for such a matter. Yet he was faithful, and the words that God gave him he spoke. He felt it deeply. He felt the state of the people; as a prophet among the people, he felt the state. He was one of the people, they were his people. And then he felt the fact that judgment was coming and that God was giving him such words of judgment. He felt for the people as to the judgment that was about to fall upon them. And then he felt it that, despite his own piety and faithfulness, the people that he was speaking to were

persecuting him, speaking against him and plotting against him, on one occasion putting him down in a dungeon. He felt that deeply. So why did God act thus?

God was concerned that, in bringing out what He was going to have to do in faithfulness with His people, there should be with it an expression of divine affections. It was to be understood that God was doing these things, yet divine affections were there. It is quite a remarkable thing divine affections were there, even if it was not a time when He could express them. I have spoken about appropriate movements of affection and feelings. There is a time to embrace, and there is a time to refrain from embracing. Now the fact that you refrain from embracing does not mean you do not love the person. It does not mean that at all. It means it is just not the time for it. So you refrain from it. You might say, That is a person I know well and love. That might be, but you might have to refrain from embracing. They may have come under assembly discipline and gone on a lawless course. You cannot embrace them. It does not mean you love them any the less, but you cannot embrace them.

The Lord Jesus in Revelation is seen by John at the beginning in judicial garb, and He is bound round with a golden girdle at the breasts. Now we often say that that indicates that His affections were not free as He moved among the assemblies. That is verily true, but there is something else in it—the affection was there but He was bound round with a golden girdle, it was not the time that He could express His affection. He has to speak so solemnly to some of these assemblies. To Philadelphia He does mention His love. The love is there, you see. And even quite remarkably to Laodicea he speaks about how He rebukes and disciplines those that He loves. So the love was there but at that time He could not express it fully and freely as He wished. So you can see that something of that must enter into what Jeremiah’s task was, what his prophecy

was. While the faithful word was there, and God’s prophet was standing as a brazen wall and an iron pillar, along with that there was an outpouring of feelings that really expressed divine affections.

So that Jeremiah pleads sometimes. At one point God says, Do not intercede for the people.

At another time Jeremiah does intercede. And time and again his affections for his people and his feeling as to all that is transpiring almost overwhelm him. So we have to think about controlled affections, affections controlled and directed rightly. In Revelation the seven angels with the seven last plagues are bound round at the breasts too with golden girdles.

They are pouring out judgment and they are bound round at the breast. What does that mean?

That is solemn. That is for the world. Again, no expression of affection can be there. But you know, even at that awful time with these seven angels pouring out these woes, there is a testimony that the affection was there but it had been refused. God’s love had come towards them, and now that love having been rejected there was nothing for them, for the world, but judgment.

So in Jeremiah where we read he feels and expresses the whole matter. Chapter 4 refers to the organs of feeling, I suppose, typically “My bowels! My bowels! I am in travail! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart maketh a noise in me”. And why? “For thou hearest, my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the clamour or war”. The judgment is coming, he hears it in prophetic vision and his heart can hardly contain his feelings. “Destruction upon destruction is proclaimed”, and so on. Elsewhere he speaks about his wound being incurable. How he felt things! Why is it incurable? he says. Is there no balm in Gilead? Can I not get out of this situation, can I not get relief? So he went through with these things, and God stood by him and brought him through. And all the time that he was speaking to the people in faithfulness there was a testimony in his own spirit to divine feelings, I believe. God had used a vessel such that these things could

be expressed. And so we have to deal with evil too, dear brethren.

We have sometimes to deal with matters that are most distasteful. We sometimes have to act in a way that we would not wish in regard to persons. Judgment, after all, even with God is said to be His unwonted work, His strange work (Isaiah 28: 21). So sometimes affection has to be restrained. It is a question, therefore, of appropriate feelings according to what belongs to the saints of the assembly, I do believe. Well there is much more that could be said about Jeremiah as working through the prophecy. It is full of feeling and not just a cold calculated statement of judgment. His whole prophecy is imbued with feeling, and as I say, in addition to that, in addition to the prophecy you get the Lamentations of Jeremiah about this city. Now we often speak about this, dear brethren, and I wonder how much we could be up to it. The Lord Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and Jeremiah lamented over the city as desolate. Mr. Lyon used to speak about broken-hearted churchmen. Do we really feel what has happened to the church? Have we really got divinely inwrought feelings as to the disaster and as to the state of things? Do we really feel it? Can we be helped by the Spirit of Christ to feel it as Christ feels it, and thus to mourn what has come in, taking our part in it too?

Perhaps I could allude to one other section in Jeremiah. There was a section that Mr Darby loved and quoted a number of times and it is in chapter 15. Mr Darby felt that he was rather like Jeremiah. He describes himself somewhere as a man of contention, constantly in conflict (see Jeremiah 15: 10). He was having to condemn what he saw that was evil in Christendom and what had happened. He was seeking to be faithful himself in regard to all this and he was being the subject of attack. He felt a very great sympathy with Jeremiah at this time. And then, therefore, at one stage here Jeremiah turns against God. Read chapter 15: 18, “Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable? It refuseth to

be healed. Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a treacherous spring, as waters that fail?”—

strong words spoken to God Himself. But it was out of the anguish of his soul, and you would say for a moment he got away from God as feeling the terrible burden of what was laid upon him. Well, God says, Return. We had that yesterday and here is another example of it.

“Therefore thus saith Jehovah—If thou return, then will I bring thee again, thou shalt stand before me” (Jeremiah 15: 19). I will reinstate you in your office as My prophet, and then what Mr. Darby loved to quote, “and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth”. That was the section that guided him much in seeking to look for the precious and to bring it out from the vile. These precious things that we have enjoyed over these days have been taken out from the vile, out of wrong settings, and out of error. They are now for us. They have been secured through exercises like Jeremiah’s, deep exercise and concern and dealings with God. But they have come authoritatively too. I say that without any hesitation. “If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth”. If someone was made as God’s mouth I would listen to him.

In our dispensation, I think one of the great examples for us is the apostle Paul. Paul was taken up not only to be a great vessel, a great minister of the truth of the mystery. He was taken up thus, his intelligence was remarkable, his intelligence as to the mystery, but there was another divine motive in the taking up and the formation of Paul, and that is that he should set out what a Christian is, quite simply, just set out Christianity, seen in all its energy and directness in a man. It is a very wonderful thing that the Lord was able to do that, to take such a vessel and make him a demonstration of what the gospel could do, and of what Christianity can be in one who is devoted to the Lord Jesus. He is allowed to speak about himself. In fact he was forced to speak about himself to the Corinthians because they were turning against him, and he said he would have to be foolish and start

boasting. He says, Bear with me for I am going to boast. I know it is folly but I am going to have to do it. And thus he discloses his sufferings. He gives a great list of what he went through. God allowed that so that we might have some demonstration and knowledge of what Paul was. And so in his feelings, as in other matters, he demonstrates, I think, what a believer is as imbued with the Spirit of Christ.

Where we read in 2 Corinthians he speaks of his feelings when the Corinthians got right. It was one of the burdens he had, assemblies where things were not right. Where things were not going well, even if an individual was not going well, Paul felt it. If someone stumbled he burned. And then he had the burden of all the assemblies. What a heart he had, to take all that into his affections, like Moses of old carrying the people in his bosom. Paul had the capacity to take on this, the burden of all the assemblies. And so how he dealt with these things becomes a lesson book for us because we face these things.

We do face difficulties in localities that arise. They constantly arise and often in our own localities we are sorely tested too. Paul brings out in his skill, and in his spirit, how to deal with matters. What a problem Corinth was to him—a divided state, the parties, the immorality that existed, the terrible conditions when they came together supposedly to take the Lord’s supper. He said they were not actually taking the Lord’s supper at all. How much he had to take account of. And so he wrote the epistle. In his wisdom he kept away. He knew if he went he would have to be severe, so he thought instead he would remain away and see if the conscience of the assembly could be stirred. Thus in great Levitical skill he wrote the first epistle to the Corinthians. What a valuable letter it is, giving us instruction in divine principles in the house of God. In the first epistle he does not speak much at all about his love. It is not exactly an epistle of affection. Affection was there but it is not exactly that. He does in one place, in chapter 4, say, “Not as

chiding do I write these things to you, but as my beloved children I admonish you” (1

Corinthians 4: 14). He speaks of himself as a father. You might say his affection breaks out into expression for a moment, but he could not really express full affection and speak freely to the Corinthians as he desired. And so he had to write this serious, grievous letter, this first epistle to the Corinthians.

And then we discover in the second epistle what he went through when he wrote it. He says, I wrote that letter out of much tribulation and distress of heart, with many tears. I did not tell you at the time but that is how I wrote it. He says later on he felt so much having to bring in such strong words that he almost regretted sending the letter (2 Corinthians 7: 8). And now there is a result coming about. What feelings were there! I suppose again it was like the breasts bound round with the golden girdle. In the first epistle he could not express his affections, but in the second epistle he says his heart is expanded. He was able to move out in his affections to the Corinthians because of their getting right. Not that everything had totally been put right, but in principle they had got right and proved themselves pure in the matter.

He was overjoyed, because while there are these deep exercises connected with difficulties, what a joy there is that through the Lord’s help victory is arrived at, and the saints are secured according to God’s thoughts. So he speaks of this tribulation of heart with which he wrote, but then later on in chapter 7, verse 4, he speaks about his wonderful joy, “Great is my boldness towards you, great my exulting in respect of you; I am filled with encouragement; I over-abound in joy under all our affliction”. What joy and genuine affection was in the heart of Paul. And so you find that running through his epistles.

In chapter 6 his heart is opened, his mouth is opened, his heart is expanded. Even if their heart was not yet expanded his heart was expanded. He tells them to let their heart expand itself. Elsewhere you find his feelings in other

regards. In Philippians he weeps over persons that he says “are the enemies of the cross of Christ—whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly”, Philippians 3: 18, 19. These people must have been connected, I suppose, with the profession but had that character. You might say Paul could have denounced them without tears, but he says, I tell you even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. Then there are all the tender expressions that come into the epistles. In Philemon he describes Onesimus as his bowels, as if all Paul’s feelings and affections were bound up with this convert he had made. And you can see the tenderness of his affection in dealing with Philemon and with others too. We had allusions early in the meetings to his love and affectionate bond with the young Thessalonians. And so victory is arrived at. How wonderful this is.

Much exercise involved in it. Divine love has to express itself in the saints in an appropriate way. “The heart of a wise man is at his right hand”, Ecclesiastes 10: 2. It is not out of control.

And so Paul uses his affections rightly and restrains them, and then he comes into the liberty of expression and there is victory. You know, we have to go through many things, dear brethren. You might say when some trouble arises, Let us deal with it. That is not the first thing at all. The first thing is to feel it, feel it before God. He will help as there are right feelings. What can not be brought about amongst the saints in any difficulty, if there are right feelings amongst the saints, if what I am speaking about is formed in us and is expressed to God too in prayer? Well, I trust what has been said is right, and useful to us too, for His name’s sake.

Address at Ormond Beach/Bunnell
25 May 2009