THE LOVE OF GOD
[p. 47] THE LOVE OF GOD
The great theme that underlies this chapter is the love of God — that sovereign love towards His elect in which He has taken them up for His own pleasure, and according to which He ever regards them and acts for them. God’s purposes are the outcome of His love, and all that He does for His saints, and in them — all His ways with them — is the activity of that sovereign love. It is all from God’s side, and we can only account for it as we see what He is.
God has in love appropriated a people for Himself. He could say of old to Israel, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving- kindness have I drawn thee” (Jeremiah 31: 3). And again, “I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; .. . yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine” (Ezekiel 16: 8). What is said of Israel in these scriptures is true in the fullest way of God’s saints today. And if God is pleased to set His love upon His saints, we may be sure that He will prove Himself to be more than a match for all the power of evil. “If God be for us, who ... against us?”
If we advert to the history of the children of Israel we see that God was for them. Pharaoh oppressed them in Egypt; God destroyed his power and delivered them. Amalek sought to overthrow them; God discomforted him. Balak would have used Balaam to curse them, but the hireling prophet was obliged to pronounce Jehovah’s blessing upon His chosen people. Then, finally, as to all the circumstances of the wilderness journey — so humbling to the people on their side of it — God was for them. Their raiment waxed not old, nor did their foot swell. He fed them with manna,
[p. 48] and brought them forth water out of the rock of flint. Now what God was and what He did thus for Israel is typical of what He is and what He does for His saints at the present time. And I desire to point out in Romans 8 — which is very distinctly a wilderness chapter — what answers to the things of which I have just spoken.
In the first place God delivers His saints from the bondage of the oppressor. “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (verse 15). One is not prepared to enter upon the wilderness according to God until he is freed from “t he spirit of bondage”. The oppressor would fain keep us perpetually occupied with ourselves. He would keep our imperfections and our weakness so before us as to hinder us from perceiving the perfect grace and love of God. He would have us engaged with ourselves — material out of which nothing can come for God’s pleasure or our own satisfaction — and in the vain attempt to make bricks without straw he would fill us with the spirit of bondage.
If I allow the thought that what I am towards God will in some way or other affect what God is towards me, I shall be filled with the spirit of bondage. But when I see that what God is towards me is altogether the outcome of what He is, and that He is this though knowing perfectly what I am, it puts my heart in the right direction for liberty. Indeed, the truth is that when I was in the worst possible state — without strength, ungodly, a sinner, and an enemy of God — He expressed His love towards me in the most wonderful way that could be conceived (Romans 5: 6 - 8).
The first thing that we see in the type is that God placed His people under cover of the blood of the lamb (Exodus 12). He put a redemption between them and the Egyptians, and He took the firstborn for [p. 49] Himself. He appropriated them for Himself on the ground of redemption. It was God’s side of the matter. The keeping of the passover by faith is not attributed to the people in Hebrews 11 but to Moses.
But when we come to the Red Sea it is more the people’s side. “By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land” (Hebrews 11: 29). They took the way which God had opened up for them — a way typical of the death of Christ. If we find ourselves justly under condemnation and death on account of what we are, how blessed it is to see that Christ has come into that condemnation and death for us, and this not only to deliver us, but that He might bring us to the knowledge of God. His death is a firm footing for faith. And there was not only dry ground under the Israelites’ feet, but “the cloud” over their heads. They “were under the cloud” (1 Corinthians 10: 1); that is, in figure, overshadowed by the love of God.
“The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5: 5). The great positive blessing conferred upon those who believe the gospel is the gift of the Spirit, and by the Spirit God’s love is shed abroad in our hearts. In this way the spirit of bondage is displaced. For “there is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4: 18). God’s banner over us is love, and the Spirit gives us the consciousness of it.
Someone may say, “Ah, that is what I want, and have long desired, but all my efforts to attain it have been in vain”. Of course they have; it is not to be reached by effort. The word for you is, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord” (Exodus 14: 13). All the love expressed in the death of Christ is towards you, and when you see that you can do nothing, and [p. 50] that you are nothing but an ungodly and helpless sinner, you will be prepared to receive that love into your heart. It is self-sufficiency and self-occupation, or, perhaps, self-gratification, that hinders the Holy Spirit from pouring the love of God into your heart — that blessed love which flows out of its own fulness and finds in the very guilt and state of its subjects an opportunity to manifest itself in the most glorious way.
Then we see in the type that there was response on the part of the people to the way in which God revealed Himself as being for them. I refer to the song of Exodus 15, which seems to me to answer in type to what we have in Romans 8: 15, — “the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. In that song the people only view themselves according to God’s purpose and grace. They were full of delight in what He had revealed Himself to be for them, and in the thought of all His gracious purpose concerning them. I have no doubt this was the time referred to in Jeremiah 2: 2, “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness”.
The response now is the cry, “Abba, Father”. Knowing the love of God we are in liberty, and there is response to that love in our hearts by the Spirit. The love of God is poured into our hearts, and it forms affections there that flow back to their Source.
The next thing in the history of the children of Israel was that they were tested by wilderness circumstances. The wilderness is a type of all that disordered and barren state of things on earth which has come about as a consequence of sin. God never created a wilderness. It was His thought that the earth should minister to the satisfaction of man, but sin came in and brought death upon everything. Things here have become affected by sin. And now that we have been appropriated by the love of God we have to recognise [p. 51] this. As belonging to God, we cannot find satisfaction here. God would have us to learn this by the death of Christ. If we are “joint-heirs with Christ” we should expect to find sufferings and death where He suffered and died. Sin has embittered everything here, and death is upon everything. The springs here are dried up; we must look away from the earth to find satisfaction.
We have to suffer in “this present time”, and as being still in mortal bodies we are made to feel what it is to be connected with a creation that groans and travails in pain. We await sonship, that is, the redemption of our body, when the coming glory will infinitely more than compensate for “the sufferings of this present time”. But in the meantime those sufferings are very real, and “our infirmities” are such that we ofttimes “know not what we should pray for as we ought”. All this brings home to us that we are needy creatures in wilderness circumstances and condition.
Now we get the Spirit acting on a very different line from that which we have before considered. He identifies Himself, as it were, with us in our sufferings and infirmities that He may present them before God in a divine way. He takes up everything on our side, and gives a true account of us to God. He joins His help to our weakness, and intercedes for us according to God. In this way God always has our true condition and need before Him, not according to our imperfect apprehension of it, but according to the mind of the Spirit. Our sufferings and weakness, with all their effect upon us, and all the need which they create are thus ever presented to God by the Spirit with groanings that cannot be uttered. Our true need is ever presented perfectly before God, though as to our intelligence “we know not what we should pray for as we ought”.
As a result of the Spirit’s intercession we obtain help of God, so that, amidst our sufferings and weakness, we have the consciousness that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose”. God is always for us in the love which moved Him to spare not His own Son, but to deliver Him up for us all. Hence it is in the very nature of things that they should work together for good to them that love God, for His hand is over everything in power and love. He is for us in view of His own purpose, not in view of things here. The “good” is not in connection with things here, but in connection with God’s purpose. Things may work together in such a way that the Christian suffers loss here, but all is for the good of his soul.
I now pass on to what was typified by Amalek (Exodus 17: 8 - 16). I understand this to be pressure from without in the way of persecution. That is, such things as are spoken of in Romans 8: 35 — tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword. It is those who are spiritually feeble, and who lag behind, who fall soonest under the power of the persecutor. It is said of Amalek that he “smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God” (Deuteronomy 25: 18). If saints are spiritually feeble, and are not pressing on with vigour in the things of God, a very little touch of persecution is enough to dishearten them altogether.
What will make us spiritually strong? To be nourished by the love of Christ. That infinite and blessed love which has reached down even to death, and which is now active at the right hand of God where He makes intercession for us, is the divine Source of all our strength for conflict here. The uplifted hands of Moses on the top of the hill were the [p. 53] secret of victory over Amalek in the plain below. Christ is in the place of power on high, but He is there to make intercession for us, and nothing can separate us from His love. As our souls are nourished by a sense of this we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
Then, finally, at the end of the wilderness Balak hired Balaam to curse the people. No doubt it appeared to the enemy a fit time to bring a curse upon them. All their badness had come out. The desert was strewed with the bones of one generation, and another generation had sprung up as bad as their fathers. Such a moment seemed to present a fine opportunity to the accuser of God’s people to bring condemnation upon them. But “who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth” (Romans 8: 33).
If the testings of the wilderness had brought to light all the evil that was in the people, the brazen serpent lifted up had shewn, in figure, that God had a way of dealing with sin in the flesh so as to maintain His own glory, and establish in righteousness their blessing. On the ground of what had been set forth typically in the brazen serpent God could view His elect people, according to His own purpose and grace, as being sanctified, justified, and invested with divine beauty. The hireling prophet looked down from the top of the rocks and saw the people according to God’s mind and thoughts respecting them. “He hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it. He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel” (Numbers 23: 20, 21).
The testings of the wilderness may discover to us in a thousand unexpected ways what we are, but all this makes us more thankful to know that all this has come under condemnation in Christ’s death. All that in us (that is, in our flesh) which was so offensive to [p. 54] God has been removed in holy judgment in the death of His Son. And now we are justified and invested with divine beauty in Christ Jesus. “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?” God silences every accusing voice; He has blessed, He does bless, and He will bless His people because of what He is Himself. He will make manifest the riches and the glory of His grace.
God is for His saints, and He is above every creature. His saints are before Him for His pleasure in Christ Jesus. Every thought of God’s mind has failed of accomplishment in man after the order of Adam, but all the thoughts and purposes of His love have been established in Christ Jesus. God has secured satisfaction for His heart in the glorified Man who is at His right hand. As saints — God’s elect — we are of that Man and in Him, and thus we come under the love of God.
No creature can dispossess God’s saints of their blessing in Christ Jesus, or separate them “from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. We are blessed in the Man of God’s counsel, and in Him we come under the love of God and are bound up with it for ever.
May our hearts be affected and subdued by the love of God! The true blessedness of the Christian lies in the knowledge of that holy love. “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.