LOVE AS THE BASIS AND SPRING OF SERVICE
F. C. Mutton
Deuteronomy 15: 12, 16, 17; 1 Corinthians 13: 1–3; 1 John 3: 16, 17
I desire grace and help to seek to speak of love as the only right basis and spring for all service. It is a very blessed matter, but a very serious matter, because what Paul says in 1
Corinthians 13 is drastic, almost devastating, that a man could have tremendous ability, and tremendous knowledge, you might say towering up like a mountain, and if he has no love, he is nothing. Now, I think it would be easily understood that God, being love, and having moved out to us in unlimited grace and boundless love, everything for His pleasure must spring from love; must spring from His own divine nature being formed in the saints.
Anything which springs from any other source is valueless and is nothing. I do not find it easy to speak of this because it searches me very much. What is my motive in anything I do and in any service I seek to undertake? “All things are naked and laid bare to his eyes, with whom we have to do”, Hebrews 4: 13. What a humbling thing it is, if the Lord has to look at one’s service or activities or part among the saints and say, It is nothing. Like Paul says, wood, grass, straw, to be burnt up (1 Corinthians 3: 12). Now I do not want to be discouraging at all, I rather would, I am sure the Lord would, encourage us as having each of us learned the love of Jesus, and having God’s love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, to be on the love line which is immensely fruitful and yielding to God.
So I read this well known section from Deuteronomy, though I suppose we more often use the parallel scripture in Exodus. You remember that we have the law given in Exodus 20, and then in chapter 21 we have the Hebrew bondman, and it says there that he has the opportunity as the sixth year finishes to go free.
He has a decision to make, Am I going to stay, or to go free? In Exodus, it says, “But if the bondman shall say distinctly, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free”, (Exodus 21: 5), which is a powerful expression of love working. Now, that follows the giving of the law, and it means that love is the fulfilling of the law. You have the law set out in Exodus 20, but here is a man who loves, he is fulfilling the law.
So here in Deuteronomy, what follows chapter 15, where we have the Hebrew bondman, are the feasts of Jehovah, three of them, the passover, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tabernacles; three occasions in which all the males were to appear before Jehovah, and they were not to appear empty. They came up, you might say from north, south, east and west, three times a year with their hands full to give an answer to God, and it means that that was not just a legal obligation. They would not say, O dear, the seventh month has come round again we have got to make that long trip to Jerusalem, O no, they would go there with alacrity, with holy zeal, with fervent love to appear before their God with love’s response.
Then in chapter 18 it begins, “The priests, the Levites, and the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no portion nor inheritance with Israel. Jehovah’s offerings by fire, and his inheritance shall they eat, but they shall have no inheritance among their brethren” (Deuteronomy 18: 1). Well, what does that mean? It means they are serving for love; they have forgone what is material; they have no portion nor inheritance with Israel, they had not got a bit of territory marked out, but what did they have? “Jehovah’s offerings by fire, and his inheritance shall they eat”, that is they were going to feed on Christ, as the hymn says, ‘Heaven’s choicest store’, and their motive in all their priestly service was love. I am sure that is the meaning of these chapters in Deuteronomy.
You have the Hebrew bondman who has the opportunity righteously to go free, but if he says,
“I will not go away from thee”, then his ear is bored through
with an awl into the door. You say that is painful, well, it means sacrifice, it means a deliberate solemn, irrevocable committal. Why? Because he loves. I would like to ask every brother and sister, and myself indeed. Have you reached a point of irrevocable committal to Christ and the assembly? In Christianity think the Lord takes great pleasure in definiteness.
The scripture in Exodus says, “If he shall say distinctly, I love”. Have you spoken distinctly to the Lord Jesus? How distinctly He has spoken to us! How distinctly He speaks to us every Lord’s day—This is My body—This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Has He not spoken distinctly? Has He not given Himself for us in total sacrifice and surrender and in love, the like of which we can see nowhere else? He has distinctly said, I love. What has been your answer and mine? I want to emphasize, and I think the Lord would emphasize it among us, that such committal and such genuine love to Christ and to His people, must be the soil from which all service springs. Without it activity is not only valueless, but I think it would be damaging.
So we come to that well known chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. Paul was a great lover; how he loved Christ! How he loved the Son of God! He says, “who has loved me and given himself for me”. He would say, Such a wretch as I was, persecuting the assembly, an insolent overbearing man. He loved me and gave Himself for me; he does not even just say there, He died for me, but He gave Himself for me. O, may the love of Christ constrain us! It constrained Paul, and He loved me enough to give Himself for me. You say, He loved the assembly and delivered Himself up for it, that is blessedly true, but He loved you. What, has been your answer? What is my answer to such surpassing love, the love of Christ which passes understanding?
Now Paul yielded himself to that love, he became a true bondman, he did not want to go out free. His previous course had been disastrous and he was ashamed
of it. He says that of sinners, I am the first, I persecuted the assembly. But now he is on the line of love; he loves Christ therefore he loves His people, and he loved the Corinthians. I think if ever there was a test of love, it would be to love the Corinthians, but how he loved them. He loved them, you might say, as Christ did, in all their unlovable character; it really was the love of Christ expressed in Paul. Were we lovable when the Lord Jesus set His love upon us and gave Himself for us? Indeed we were not. Despite all the trouble, and division, and sin, and wrong doctrine that was prevalent in Corinth, which almost swept the place, apart from a few it would appear, Paul loved them, and served them in love. Indeed there is a passage one might well have read toward the end of the second epistle, “Now I shall most gladly spend and be utterly spent for your souls, if even in abundantly loving you I should be less loved”, 2 Corinthians 12: 15. What a heart-breaking thing for a man to spend and be utterly spent for a local assembly, and it was possible that they might love him less. You might say, heart-breaking, utterly discouraging, but Paul would say, I am going to love whatever your attitude may be. Why was it? Because the love of Christ was constraining him, and he was actually loving in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I think it is probably safe to say that he expended more on the Corinthians than on any other local assembly. He appeals to them you might say from the depths of his heart. Three times in this second epistle he goes over his sufferings, and in chapter 12 tells us the sufferings and sacrifice and danger and peril of which we have not another similar record; really it was to touch their hearts, to demonstrate the genuineness of his love. It should not really have been necessary for him to say all this, and I think he hesitated to say it, but he expends everything that he might secure in love these beloved Corinthians. If you look at 2 Corinthians 12, “in labours exceedingly abundant, in stripes to excess, in prisons exceedingly abundant, in deaths oft. From the Jews five
times have I received forty stripes save one. Thrice have I been scourged, once I have been stoned, three times I have suffered shipwreck, a night and day I passed in the deep—in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own race, in perils from the nations, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert, in perils on the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labour and toil, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness”, 2 Corinthians 11: 23–27. Why? Because he loved. Nothing else will strengthen a man to face such an intense course of sacrifice and loss, except that he loved Jesus and he loved the saints. Now we are not, in God’s mercy and His ordering, called to face such extremity of sufferings, but are we prepared in love to devote ourselves to the Lord and to His people? What a noble life was that of Paul—what a path of excellence and distinction. When men in the world were climbing higher in their ambition and glory, here was a man in the spirit of his Master; marked by the mind that was in Christ Jesus, a suffering mind. He says elsewhere that we are become as the off-scouring of the world (see 1
Corinthians 4: 13), that is what men thought of him. I can assure you he was distinguished in heaven and why? Because he had distinctly said, I love, and all his service sprang from that precious motive which has its origin in God, and has reached us in Jesus.
Now that is why, I am sure, that he speaks in 1 Corinthians 13 so sweepingly. I do not want to dwell so much on the negative aspect of it, but there is a warning in it because pride is natural to us, it is in all our hearts, and we may take on what is spiritual and adorn ourselves with it; the Corinthians were doing that. God had given them gift, and tragically they were using it to adorn the flesh. I am sure they were having the most impressive oratorical words, profound knowledge being expressed, but Paul would say that without love it is nothing, it is sounding brass or clanging cymbal. Graciously, of course, he applies it to himself here, he did not spare the
edge of the sword, he was constantly applying it to himself. In writing to the Corinthians, he says, “it is the very smallest matter that I be examined of you ... but he that examines me is the Lord”, 1 Corinthians 4: 3, 4. O, what a safe thing for our innermost motives to be under the Lord’s scrutiny! If you brought that scrutiny to bear on Paul to find his innermost motives, the answer that would come up would be love—pure, selfless, sacrificial love—I will not go free.
After this somewhat negative beginning in chapter 13 we have a wonderful positive section on love. In one way it is more enjoyable to dwell on that, but I think it is necessary, because of what each of us is in the flesh, to stress what Paul stresses first, that apart from love I am nothing, and apart from love whatever I do, whatever I may appear to sacrifice, I profit nothing. That is one side of the balance sheet, but then when you come to the other side from verse 4 onwards, you find the blessed, attractive, positive features of what love is. Perhaps we should seek to go over them now, let us dwell on them. “Love has long patience, is kind; love is not emulous of others; love is not insolent and rash, is not puffed up”, and so on, but that love rejoices with the truth, bears all things, and so on—“Love never fails”. So may we be deepened with our roots going down in love. A servant of the Lord used to challenge the brethren. What is your stock of love? One index is how I regard and speak about my local brethren. If I am marked by this love which marked the beloved apostle I shall greatly value my local brethren. I am not saying, I am speaking generally now, that they are faultless. The Corinthians certainly were far from faultless, but Paul loved them, and in that love he would not be deterred from serving them to the utmost of his capacity. Why? Because he wanted to present them as a chaste virgin to Christ. He loved them, but even more he loved Christ, and wanted Christ to have His portion in His beloved people in Corinth. May this be our outlook, and the spring of all our activities in the localities in which we are set, as set among the people of God.
Now we come to John’s epistle, which was written by another apostle who knew the heart of Jesus, who had been in His bosom and had leaned on His breast; you might say he dwelt in that resting place, that source of love, and he says in 1 John 3: 16, “Hereby we have known love”, there is a footnote there, it is the perfect tense which means in effect we have known it in the past, and we are keeping on knowing it, that is the experience of it continues. “Hereby we have known love, because he has laid down his life for us”. We need to ask ourselves questions and answer them. So here is a question I might ask you or you ask me. How have I known love? Where did we get our conception of love from? From Jesus, and “we have known love because he”, that is emphatic, such a Person being who He is, having what He had, in all His worth and His glory and His perfection, that life so rich and full, and fragrant, so full of grace and love and power and compassion—He has laid down His life for us. O, may the love of the Christ constrain us; it constrained Paul, no longer to live to himself but to Christ, the One who died for him and has been raised.
John says, He has laid down His life for us, “and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”, you notice these two emphatic words—“he” is emphatic, “he has laid down his life for us”; now there is an emphatic “we”, a blessed but very solemn obligation lies upon us “we ought”. This is the only right and fit and suitable answer to the sacrificial love of Jesus—“we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”. This is the intended effect of our knowing the love of Christ, I wonder if we have answered to it. John is telling us here of the only suitable answer on your part and mine to our experience and knowledge of the surpassing love of Jesus, and what is it? That we ought, you and I, for the brethren to lay down our lives; for the brethren, those of whom the Lord spoke, as soon as He was out of death, as His brethren.
They are a distinguished company. He did not go to the temple, He did not go to the sanhedrim. He went to that little room where the doors were shut where His disciples were and honoured them with His company. Thank God we have the privilege of being among them, constantly. Let us value these privileges highly, and regard the brethren highly with something of the affections of the heart of Christ.
But then love is tested. The love of Jesus was tested more than any love ever has been, and it met the test, I need not say; it displayed itself in the utmost sacrifice and sorrow and suffering. We ought for the brethren to lay down our lives—it does not mean nowadays, for some of us at any rate, that we are called to go to the stake or to be burned. It will mean reproach certainly, and it does mean sacrifice, but what does it mean? It means that after Christ Himself the brethren are to be the object of our love, or our service, or whatever sacrifice is needed for their benefit and profit—“we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”. My life is not my own, nor is yours. If we belong to the Lord Jesus, our bodies are not our own. Every one of us of responsible years should have reached the experience of Romans 12 and presented our bodies a living sacrifice. So that our bodies are not our own, and we are not our own. All that we have, our whole lives, are to be at the disposal of the brethren, that they may benefit through whatever sacrificial service can be rendered to them. I cannot tell you what form that will take, the Lord will tell you and the Spirit will guide you; but I think there are a thousand ways in which the brethren can be served, in which they can be comforted and ministered to.
This goes on to what is material, “whoso may have the world’s, substance, and see his brother having need, and shut up his bowels from him, how abides the love of God in him?” I do thank God for the spirit of liberality which. I know is among the dear brethren in what relates
to the meeting of material needs, and the needs of the Lord’s service; how pleasing that is to the Lord. But then we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives; to find another centre, instead of being my own centre I am to find my centre in Christ, very true, but also in His beloved people. When He was here He served them, they were the object of His constant love and care and ministration. Take John 13 for example, “having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end”, (John 13: 1); then He washed their feet. In principle He was showing there that He was laying down His life for them. You know any service that we can render to the saints is a privilege and an honour. The Lord Jesus said, “But I am in the midst of you as the one that serves”, Luke 22: 27. Is that how you and I are among the brethren? O, may the Lord help us to take on His own spirit; not to be selfish, not to be self-centred, but to find our outlet, and the object of our love, in those for whom He laid down His life. It is a great privilege. May the Lord help us to answer to it for His glory. Amen.
Address at Dundee
7 December 1985