THE LOVE OF THE CHRIST
F. G. Suckling
2 Corinthians 5: 14, 15; Ephesians 3: 14–21
I was just thinking of this matter of the love of the Christ. The apostle says to the Corinthians, “For the love of the Christ constrains us”, and in Ephesians he says, “and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”. The love of the Christ is something that is for each one of us to enjoy, whether we are young or whether we are older. It is something that we each one can enjoy and appreciate, and it is what we are to be occupied with at all times. It is like a thread that goes through and it is to be known by us in all our experiences, that which would hold us and keep us. The Lord says to those in Philadelphia, “They ... shall know that I have loved thee”. We are reminded of it every Lord’s day, and we can thank God that the Supper has been preserved right through, and recovered to us in the revival, an occasion that we can have as an anchor and a gathering point. While we have been scattered, most of us, for a certain period in our history there has been a scattering under God’s government and wisdom—there is this gathering point that we each have as a kind of anchor, the Supper. It speaks to us so much of the love of the Christ; it is a gathering point for all the saints really, and that, among other things, is why the Lord gave us the Supper. It is the great occasion.
But then there is to be this experience of His love all the time. So that right in the middle of all that the apostle had to say to the saints in Corinth he says as he comes to this point, “For the love of the Christ constrains us”. I think he was saying that by way of his own experience, and the experience of those who were similarly minded. There would be some in Corinth who were not occupied with the love of the Christ and Paul would rally them to it and say, ‘As far as we are concerned, myself and those with me, it is the love of the Christ that constrains us’.
Then the same matter comes up in relation to the highest truth, and in this wonderful chapter 3 of Ephesians, where the apostle says he bows his knees to the Father (and he speaks about his commission, and what God had given him, and the mystery) in the middle of it all he says, “and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge. It is as if this wonderful living thread, or power, goes through everything, because it has its origin in God Himself. We think of the love that is in divine Persons and is now expressed in this glorious anointed Man, the love of the Christ. Well, it is something that is to hold us at all times, and refresh us in what is living.
The Lord says to those in Ephesus in Revelation that while they had done much for Him, and they would not accept those who said they were apostles and were not, and other things, they had left their first love (see Revelation 2: 4). Well, we could go on with a system of things and a way of life, but unless we know something of this experience of the love of the Christ it is not of much value to God, and what a lack and loss for us to be missing this wonderful experience of the love of the Christ, the love of the Lord Jesus, the love of that blessed, glorious Man, the only Man, as we have been hearing, that God has before Him, and the One who has expressed everything to us. Think of what Christ has done in love for the assembly and the great truth of “the assembly in Christ Jesus”.
Well, it is just these few thoughts that I would submit to the brethren as to this wonderful matter. We can go to the Scriptures and see it expressed everywhere. In the types from the beginning in Adam and Eve, and Isaac and Rebecca, and others right through, there is this wonderful matter of the love of the Christ. May the Lord help us in it and may we experience His love more and more in our wilderness pathway here, for His name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry, Christchurch, N.Z.
27 December 1982