Grace the Handmaid to Love
GRACE ACTS THAT LOVE MAY BE KNOWN
We see that grace as to man is a necessity, if God would bring him to a knowledge of Himself as LOVE. As Man, the blessed Lord needed not grace, but was ever in the enjoyment of love. “Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17: 24), this was not interrupted when He trod the earth as Man. We should not confound love and grace. It would evidently be an unscriptural thought to substitute the word grace for love in the connection of the Son with the Father.
For example, we may refer to one out of many similar passages where the words could not be interchanged. It is written, “God is love”. This is His nature and character. You cannot substitute grace here. Sin has made grace a necessity (if God has to say to man), but love is His nature. Moreover love is reciprocal, but I do not think grace can be reciprocal, and certainly not as to God and man. We see that if the Father loved the Son, the Son also loved the Father, see John 13: 35, and compare 14: 31. And “We love him, because he first loved us”, 1 John 4: 19. But if love was this portion of the Son, it was His as MAN, and it is this therefore into which we are brought.
John 17 is the atmosphere of love—the communion of the Son with the Father. Two things come out in the chapter. He goes back as MAN (v 24) into the love which He knew before the world was, and He goes back into the glory also as MAN (v 5) in order to bring us both into the love and into the glory, love’s own proper home. As to the order for us, the blessed Lord knew the love which we speak of, on earth, and so would He have us; as to the glory, it is yet future.
Love was in expression before grace, and though grace has reference to man’s need, it is well to remember that in such a passage as Proverbs 8 we are back in the ages (if we may so speak of them) when love was alone, and grace was not because man was not. Then love reigned, and now “grace reigns” in order to bring man into the LOVE. Grace comes before us in the addresses of the epistles, because the saints who are addressed, being regarded as men upon earth, need it. Sin has reigned, Grace reigns, but LOVE is to reign again, as it did before man’s creation. Faith and hope are to go, but charity is to abide, and in the coming day God will “rest in his love”, 1 Cor 13: 13; Zeph 3: 17.
In order to have a sense of what the love is, we must have by the Spirit the understanding of what Christ is now to God, and before Him, as having glorified Him on earth. This is the portion of the saints, though our bodies are not yet the suited vessels to it. Still we enjoy the love which we know now while awaiting the change of the body. I am not only the subject of present grace, I am the object of love. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us”, Rom 5: 5. Thus a love is my portion which was the Son’s—beyond grace therefore (though grace has brought me into it). Christ’s own portion before the foundation of the world, and while He was in the world, and what is His now, must be infinitely beyond grace. “And hast loved them as thou hast loved me”.
When I know that I am loved as the Son is loved, it becomes reciprocal. Then “we love him because he first loved us”. Grace is known first by us all. Grace removes every hindrance to my being brought into the love. Moreover, until I am in it there is always more or less fear. Now “perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love”, 1 John 4: 18. And what this love is we are told. It is the realm of the Father and the Son. “Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is [the Son with the Father] so are we in this world”. Fear is often an accompaniment of grace (see the returning prodigal, as to how he would be received), though he knew there was grace in his father. Fear is totally incompatible with love. It cannot exist in the atmosphere of love.
Thank God that we are loved as Christ is loved. Have you a fear then? Not if you are conscious that you are loved as Christ is loved: you cannot.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 27, 1893
