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THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AND THE LOVE OF CHRIST, AND ITS EFFECT

In order to understand a virtue I must possess it, even when it is simply human, that is, common to man. How much more then is it necessary that I should know and enjoy divine love, before I can in any way express or return it. I can never act as the love of the Father, or the love of Christ claims of me, until I have first learned what it is, because it is as I have learned it, that I am influenced by it, and that I know how to act according to it. I shall fail in acting up to it, but I cannot mistake a ^[p. 178] lower feeling for it, because I have enjoyed it, and know something of its worth and greatness.

It is said of a young man (1 John 2) that he is strong, and has “overcome the wicked one”, that if he “love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”; he does not enjoy the Father’s love. The one superior to the power of evil is not proof against the attractions of the world. It is true that through grace he had overcome the power of evil, and the word of God abideth in him; but yet, he would love the world if the love of the Father were not in him. The love of the Father has this great effect, that when it is in me, I am so satisfied and elated with the magnitude of the love which is interested about me, that I am diverted from the world and all in it, which would captivate me.

I have tasted of that which delights me and surpasses all that I could get elsewhere. I possess what the whole world could never by any means impart to me. No one could explain to me what this love is, nor could I comprehend it, until I possess it; and its effect is to place me in the enjoyment of a love as great as His power, and knows neither measure nor end. The world attracts by the things in it, which suit and gratify one’s taste; but they never can inspire you with the feeling that they sought you out as an object of peculiar love and interest. If one possessed the whole world, and everything in it, one could never derive from it the sense in any degree that there was any distinct feeling or love for one; whereas in the love of the Father, the least that is tasted of it, conveys to the possessor a profounder sentiment than will ever be fully grasped by his heart, though it will be entranced by it. It is well to put this question to the heart, Is it the things which suit me naturally which interest and attract me, or is the love of the Father so known that I am engrossed and satisfied with it? Is it natural things, the greatest naturally, or love that is the greatest and most perfect, the love of One who possesses all things?

Now the Father’s love is never known until simple deliverance from all that is against us is known. This we see in Psalm 22. Christ first clears the space, by meeting wrath and every enemy that is against us; and then when He occupies the space which He has cleared, He instructs us as to the Father. “I will declare thy name unto my brethren”. He, the Son of the Father, alone could declare the Father; and because we are children, God has “sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father”. When we are simply in grace, we know the Father; “little children” know the Father, of whom are all things and we in Him. No one is in the simplicity and reality of a child who does not know the Father. If the relationship be unknown to me, the privileges and claims of it must be unknown. But first I know the Father, then, the privileges and claims which the knowledge of Him brings. I, the prodigal, am first kissed, and thenceforward, the one great unfolding which raises me superior to all things is the love of the Father. The Lord, the Son of the Father teaches it to me, as He says, “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”. Now the effect of the love of the Father is to set me morally above the love of the world; therefore it becomes a question between things of every kind and variety - is it the world, or is it the love of Him of whom are all things? If I do not know the Father, I am not in the reality of my true relationship, and if I love the world, the love of the Father is not in me.

Now the love of Christ must be known in some measure before we can love Him. “We love him, because he first loved us”. “He that is forgiven much loveth much”. I first taste of His love, in that He loved me and gave Himself for me, and as I do, I am assured of forgiveness. The woman in the Pharisee’s house (Luke 7), though her acting was the result of forgiveness, never was assured of it until the Lord said to her, “Thy sins are forgiven”. She then was assured of His love in rendering the service, as well as of the service itself. Many, like the woman who touched the hem of His garment, are sure of His service, who are not yet assured of His love in rendering it - like Joseph’s brethren, who had been enjoying the services of their brother, for many a long year, and yet had never been assured of the love of his heart in rendering them. See Genesis 50: 15 - 18.

There is no learning the love of Christ but in solitude; I mean when nothing else intervenes and there is no rival. It is therefore peculiarly in sorrow, when the heart is bereaved of every other object, that the love of Christ is known, as it was to Mary of Bethany, John 11:12. “Thy love is better than wine”, it “passeth knowledge”. It is the love of a Person, the One who loved the assembly and gave Himself for it. It is not merely the love of the highest and greatest relation, great as that is; but it is the love of One who, out of love, gave Himself for me: who can sympathize with me, who is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities;” and “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin”; and the effect is, that as I know Him, I am kept from idols, just as when the love of the Father is in me, I am proof against the world and all that is in it.

May our hearts earnestly long to abound in both, for “if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned”.

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