FIRST LOVE SEEKS ACQUAINTANCE
FIRST LOVE SEEKS ACQUAINTANCE
I think that when a soul is occupied with its need, it does not dwell on the love which has done the service. The service is the one thing before it, as with the woman who touched the hem of His garment. The woman in Luke 7 loved much because she was forgiven much, but she seeks acquaintance with Him. Jonathan had this feeling for David, but this I submit is love for the service [p. 219] and not love for the Person. In Canticles we get love for the Person. When the fear is taken away by love, I believe the love occupies us. When Jonathan’s fear was removed, he loves. That is first love. First love likes to give. The advance on this is like Peter, Luke 5, he left all and followed him. The woman in Luke 7 was determined to make His acquaintance, she was relieved so fully. Jesus had been to her soul more than any one else had ever been. This acquaintance is the desire of my heart, when I know that He has not only relieved me, but that I can turn to Him as the One whom my heart can rest in. First love is gratified in meeting Him first in the solitude of one’s own room; then I find that He knows me. Secondly, I meet Him in the assembly. Thirdly, in heaven at His coming. I think the last is in one sense the most desired, because it is unchangeable, though there is this great check to it, in that, while it is possible to know something of the first two here, the last is future.
We had a very nice meeting, I spoke from 2 Corinthians 3: 18. — How we are transformed by “beholding”, and then so absorbed that we are not thinking of giving up, but we are filled with our gain. Like Moses, his face shining and unknown to himself. Then the things here which had deepest place in your heart, and which you thought indispensable to you, you are released from; you are so happy without your idol or attraction, whatever it may have been, that it is displaced. I read the last verse of Habakkuk. He could rejoice in the Lord amid the ruin here, but with him it was contrast, not, as it may be with us, absorption, in which the brightest things here as well as the darkest are displaced.