THE LOVE OF GOD
[p. 123] THE LOVE OF GOD
Ezekiel 20: 35 - 37; Romans 5: 3 - 8; Jude 20, 21
I want to speak a word about the love of God. The subject is much more difficult to speak of effectively and intelligently than most of us are aware of; for it is indeed the greatest of all subjects, and one understands that the apostle had this in mind when he said that God had made him and others competent ministers of the new covenant.
The love of God has to be known, and one is reminded of the evidence of the knowledge of it in the various writers of Scripture. I do not suppose God employed any to write, save those who had some knowledge of it; and what you find with the first great Scripture writer, that is, Moses, is that at the end of his ministry, after forty years’ experience of the people in the wilderness, when he was nigh one hundred and twenty years old, he says of Jehovah, “Yea, he loved the people”. He had opportunities of witnessing the love of Jehovah for the people, and one of his last testimonies before his death begins with it, “Yea, he loved the people”.
He himself in that same section is spoken of as king in Jeshurun. He had not been wanting in love for the people; and it moves one as one contemplates how he reflected the great Mediator of the new covenant as he came down from mount Sinai with the tables of the law in his hands. The law was written, not now exactly in his heart, but it was written on the tables, and as he drew near to the camp he is made acquainted with the solemn fact that idolatry had replaced Jehovah there. There was no evidence of love for Jehovah in the camp. He had been replaced by the work of their own hands in the golden calf; so He says to Moses, “Let me [p. 124] alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation”. But Moses says, “Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book”. What a word for any one who seeks to serve Christ! Moses loved the people and so he is competent to speak of love.
So he was king in Jeshurun, and had acquired that place. No one acquires a place in the affections of the saints save he who loves the saints. He was king in Jeshurun when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together, when they were all there in their responsibility and order. They were there, and Moses was king amongst them. He was king in Jeshurun, that is, amongst an upright people, as the word ‘Jeshurun’ signifies. Every upright person in Israel would recognise the moral worth of Moses; he had proved himself a king against whom there was no rising up, and they came to value him, so that he was king in Jeshurun. And Moses, as such, is not occupied with his love for the people, but with God’s love for the people, and so he says, “Yea, he loved the people”. So, throughout Scripture we get testimony to the love of God in all the writers. Jeremiah testifies to Jehovah’s love to Israel, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee”. And so, in the last prophet, God says, “Yet I loved Jacob”. The love of God remained; and alongside of that, the commandments of God remained; for as there was a witness to His love in chapter 1, so in the last chapter there is a witness to His rights. “Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel”. These two things go together; they are allied in Scripture. Where the love of God is known. His commandments are in evidence.
But when we come to the New Testament, one is humbled as we see the working of divine affections in [p. 125] those who wrote; for you find in such a writer as Jude, the use of the word ‘beloved’. What a place the saints had in his heart! Read down the chapter and note how he addresses them, and what they were to him. He had been revelling in the full light of the love of Christ; he had sat at the table on that last night when the light of His love shone, and he knew what the saints were to Christ, and so in writing to them he uses these terms of endearment, “But, beloved, remember ye the words”; “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves”.
So with the apostle John. As you run through his epistle you will be impressed with the frequent usage of this same term of endearment. And so, too, with Paul — our own beloved apostle — as we say, one who stands out prominently in this respect; he speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ — the Son of God — as having loved him personally. He says, “Who loved me, and gave himself for me”. No one speaks thus save Paul. He had, I apprehend, a greater sense of love than any; for it will be noticed that the scripture does not say of John, “the disciple who loved Jesus”, but, “the disciple whom Jesus loved”; because we cannot assume a prominent place with the Lord. So Paul, as having such a profound sense of that love, is the one who speaks of himself with others as the competent ministers of the new covenant. How could he be a competent minister of that which brings in the love of God, save as one who knows it? I doubt whether anything is less known amongst us than love; and I am speaking of myself as well as of others. “If a man”, says Solomon, “would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned”. Such is the estimate of it in the spiritual line.
And now I want to dwell on it for a moment as set forth typically in Ezekiel. Ezekiel stands out in a peculiar way among the prophets. He was one [p. 126] who took his place with the people in captivity; he was among the captives by the river of Chebar. In other words, his love to the people led him to identify himself with them in their dire extremity, as they were away from their own land — from Jerusalem and Palestine. They were away in the land of the Chaldeans. He says, “I sat where they sat”. Complete identification with the people of God is one great mark of love; you go the whole length with them. And so in that position the prophet sees visions of God. The heavens are opened, for heaven deems such an one worthy of notice. He had a unique place throughout among the prophets, for he is in touch with heaven. What you find in him is, that he is entirely under the influence of Jehovah; and thus God signified in His servant His thoughts for His people. One of the greatest evidences of the prophet’s entire resignation to the will of God is, that he lies for three hundred and ninety days on his side to bear the iniquity of the house of Israel, in order to witness to the people. He foreshadows the great Mediator of the new covenant, who lay in death and bore the iniquity of the people so that their sins and their iniquities should be remembered no more.
Think of lying and being penned down to it, for three hundred and ninety days! What a witness of devotion to God and to His will! And then he gets all his beauty removed. His head is shaven, and his beard; the hair is subjected to the action of fire, and the knife, and the remainder is dispersed to the winds. He is entirely in the hand of God, so that God might witness to the people livingly in him what was in His mind.
And so love would lead us thus into correspondence with Christ. We see in the great apostle, before he wrote his second epistle to the Corinthians, how he had been brought down to death, insomuch that he despaired even of living! Was that an accident?
[p. 127] No. It was designed; it was God helping His servant to witness effectively to His love in the death of Christ — the One who Himself had been down to death, but whom God had raised from the dead. “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead; who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver”. Beautiful witness to the way God raised up Christ! We trust in God who has delivered us from so great a death. It was a great death, and undoubtedly it yielded great love. All this helps to affect us, to make us competent to speak of His love; and so the apostle can speak of his own competency. Of course God had done more than that; for He had caused the light of His glory in the face of Jesus to shine into Paul’s heart for its shining forth, but the minister accepts the breaking of the vessel.
Well, Ezekiel lost all his comeliness. But then in chapter 8 we read that he is taken up by a lock of his head, by the Spirit, and lifted up between the earth and the heavens. He is now in the position to witness effectively, not only to the love of God, but to the power of God; for the locks had grown — the hair had grown. It is as we accept the cutting off of what marks us naturally that we come into new clothes; that we are made to live in the life of Christ — the evidence of the power of God. On the third day He was raised up, and we read, “In the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight”; so we are made to live before Him by resurrection power. So that now Ezekiel in figure is in the power of the life of Christ. He has a lock of hair by which he can be lifted up. The Lord Jesus, although raised, as we read, by the glory of the Father, yet raised Himself up too. There was life inherent in Him.
I refer to these things because it brings out how [p. 128] competent Ezekiel was to speak of the covenant. He had gone through, in his experience — not in the same measure, of course — what the great Mediator had to go through later. The fourth chapter points to the death of Christ — the prophet was to lie on his side for three hundred and ninety days; the eighth chapter indicates the resurrection of Christ — Ezekiel was lifted up between earth and heaven. In chapter 20 he comes to the covenant; Jehovah says, “I will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered ... and I will bring you into the wilderness of the people”. It is in the wilderness that God teaches us His love, and there are times when things have to be removed from us. Indeed, Ezekiel had himself to experience the most dreadful bereavement; the desire of his eyes was taken away with a stroke, and the most bitter part was, he was forbidden to mourn! “Yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down”. Think of that! The light of his eyes — the object of his affections — taken away with a stroke! He says, “So I spake unto the people in the morning, and at even my wife died”. And he did as he had been commanded. You see what excruciating exercises he was to go through, so that he was competent to speak thus.
So Jehovah says, “I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you”. Note the words “face to face”. It recalls what John wrote to Gaius: “I will not with ink and pen write unto thee: but I trust I shall shortly see thee and we shall speak face to face”. When you come to love, it is a face to face matter; it is a personal matter; it is a question of having to do with persons. So even in our baptism, we are baptised to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit — the three Persons of the Deity [p. 129] are before us. We are introduced into the sphere of these divine Persons; it is a question of Persons — it is a question of love. We are baptised “to the name”, Matthew 28: 19. We are introduced into the region where all the light of the divine nature shines, into the light of the revelation of those three blessed Persons. Think of the greatness of baptism thus! How far removed from the scriptural one is the prevalent idea of it around us! It is a question of being introduced into the light of the revelation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
John, I believe, represents this feature, and brings the Persons to us as none of the other writers do. It is face to face God would come near to us. So, I apprehend, the Spirit alluded to in Romans 5 has this in view. You will remember how intimate the transaction was when the Lord breathed into the disciples in John 20 — how His very life, His very nature, as you might say — knowing all that it meant in the way of affection — was breathed into them. Thus we see how intimate this matter is. So in Romans 5 the first mention we have of the Spirit is as bringing in the love of God. It is like the kiss of the prodigal; the father kissed him caressingly, as I understand it is. So, as we read in Acts 10, while Peter was speaking to the Gentiles — Cornelius and his company — the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were hearing the word. It is not simply a question of falling; the word ‘fell’ signifies an energetic action of the Spirit. So the Holy Spirit fell on those who heard the word. It was an energetic action of the Spirit laying hold of them with affection. It is the same word as used — as many know — of the father and the prodigal. It means that God is embracing the Gentiles. It is a personal matter; He did not leave it with Peter to receive the Gentiles; it was not a matter of administration there; it was a question of affection that God would embrace the Gentiles.
[p. 130] It is a wonderful thing, really, to know the love of God in that way. Paul in Romans refers to the Spirit as bringing in the love of God; and, mark you, it is no less than the Holy Spirit who brings the love of God into our hearts and sheds it abroad there. He brings it in personally. And He would not leave a crevice in our hearts unfilled by the love of God. We may have reserved chambers, but the Holy Spirit, coming into the heart, claims it. “My son, give me thine heart”. He claims it, and fills it with the love of God. Think of that! His function is to fill the heart of the believer with the love of God.
Referring again to Ezekiel’s prophecy, God says, “There will I plead with you face to face”. Then it goes on to say, “I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant”. Love is what God Himself is, beloved, not a mere attribute of His character. Love is His nature, it is what He is; and He wants us to know it, and so He passes His people under the rod. Now I believe that rod refers to discipline, involving also that account is taken of us as restored. Discipline is one of the things designed by God for our blessing. It is part of His education for us, so He causes us to pass under the rod. What rod is it? What can it be but the rod of the covenant? In Exodus 17 we read of Moses being charged of God to take his rod in his hand and go. “Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock”. That is another matter; the smiting of the rock with the rod of Moses has reference to Jesus having died, when all that God was against sin was there. There was the rod of Moses, but there was too the rod of Aaron.
There was needed priestly grace to lead the people into the consciousness of what was available to them, and Christ has taken up that place too as Priest to lead us into the reality of that which is in the heart of [p. 131] God for us, and to which we are called. As “having a great priest over the house of God”, we are exhorted to “draw near”. He gives us assurance and confidence to draw near to God. And I have no doubt that as called to pass under the rod, it is to remove, to break down the will, but withal to assure us that we are recognised as in relationship with God. It is love, “for whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth”. Do we understand it, dear brethren? May the Lord give us to understand it!
Discipline is designed, and in the passage in Ezekiel the being brought under the rod precedes our being brought into the bond of the covenant. I doubt whether any one of us ever comes permanently into the enjoyment of the love of God without passing under the rod. It is one thing to apprehend the love of God in the death of Christ — that is a question of light — it is quite another thing to be permanently in that, in the sense in which John speaks: “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”. God will not be content until we dwell in it; and in order to bring us to that, we pass under the rod; none are exempt. It is all to the end that we might be qualified to live in the love of God; and we do not live in the love of God, save as in holiness. Thus discipline has the effect of producing a holy state in us, and it is in that holiness that we live in the love of God. In Hebrews 12 the chastening has in view that we might be partakers of His holiness. Nothing can be greater for us than that we should live in the love of God. Paul says God commends it to us. Think of the condescension on the part of God. He who is so great, so blessed, condescending to commend His love to our hearts; and He does! He commends it to us. Stop to think of it! Think of God condescending to commend what is transcendingly blessed, and what is going to abide for ever. As taking account of our weakness, God gives us [p. 132] promises, and He commends His love in order to encourage us. So He says, “I will bring you into the bond of the covenant”. As in the sense of how great it is, we leave all to go in for it; we are content to relinquish every hindrance in committing ourselves to it.
Jude contemplates believers as already in the enjoyment of the love of God, and exhorts us to keep ourselves in it. We are to build ourselves up on our most holy faith, and, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep ourselves in the love of God. How forceful is this word at the present time, as we are surrounded by the darkness of the apostasy and the chilling influences of the world! May God give it weight in our hearts, and may we apprehend His love more and more and be preserved in it!