2 Corinthians 5:14

CONSTRAINING LOVE

‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’

2 Corinthians 5:14

The fascination of the Cross is that there the ineffable love of God is manifested. The spectacle is horrible, piteous, agonising, yet on that scene have been fixed the highest, tenderest, holiest thoughts of men for nineteen centuries. Till Christ came men feared God rather than loved Him. The Cross of Christ proclaimed a fuller revelation—‘God so loved the world.’

I. The Atonement is a great mystery and its method cannot be explained.—But from the point of Christian faith and experience see what it has done for humanity. ‘We have not a high priest who cannot be touched,’ etc. The Cross of Christ has done much to sweeten and sanctify beds of sickness and hours of suffering which before were endured with a kind of stoical apathy. (Contrast patience of Job with patience of St. Paul.) No wonder symbol of Cross meets us everywhere; it is the symbol of love of God to heart of man. It is the heart rather than the intellect which has embraced it. The ‘I know’ and ‘I am persuaded’ of St. Paul were conclusions, not of his reason, but of his faith. Love is the passion of the soul, not an inference of the understanding.

II. Does this love draw out any corresponding affection?—Christ’s love to me and my love to Christ act and react. Christ showed love that He might win love. ‘If God so loved us’ we ought also to love one another. Faith must be energised by love; love the moving and sustaining power of faith.

III. We should be strong if indeed we could lay hold of this Cross with the faith and firmness of St. Paul. ‘God forbid that I should glory,’ etc. ‘He hath made Him to be sin,’ etc. This is love of Christ in its fullness and power.

—Bishop Fraser.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

MISSIONARY SERVICE

Generosity is not extinct among us—why is it that the offerings to a cause so grand and noble as that of Christian missions are given not spontaneously, but after long solicitation, and flow with a comparatively scanty and stinted stream? Is it not in truth, let me ask you to consider, because ‘the love of Christ’ does not constrain us?

Or, again, look at the question of missions from the side of the men who go. Money will not preach the Gospel; that is a work for human souls and human tongues. The riches of all London will not convert a single soul. That is the work of the Holy Spirit of God. He uses the instrumentality of human workers. But what if He finds no co-workers? There are few, sadly too few, just to show that faith has not quite died out among us, and that the love of souls is not utterly extinct. But this, more than the other—the sparingness in money—is an ominous sign that not as it should constrain, and as it did constrain the souls of the generations of old, does ‘the love of Christ constrain us.’

I make appeal first to the young among you, and second to the mature.

I. To the young.—Has missionary enterprise no attraction for you? Does the work of winning souls not beckon you with an irresistible force? Will not some of you turn from working wholly for yourselves and for your own profit and advantage in this world, to give your lives to the noble, the Christ-like task, of striving for the highest good of others in the field of missions? I know how youth has its dreams, its high ideals, of great deeds that you would like to do, of a noble life that you would desire to live. Here may be the realisation of those desires. I do not exaggerate one iota when I declare that the life of the missionary servant of Christ, lived faithfully, is the noblest life in this world of ours, and gives opportunity for the exercise of the highest chivalry and the truest heroism. Beside it pale the commonplace careers of us who do our duty in humbler spheres at home. It does not hold out riches or an easy life, or the avoidance of danger, or a long succession of tranquil days as an inducement. But it is a calling for which, unlike some others, poverty is no disqualification. The poor may offer himself equally with the rich, if he have the indispensable qualifications of piety, ability, and obedience. Who is there among you who will make answer to the Lord’s call this day, ‘Here am I, send me’? Which of you now, in the bloom of your youth, and the freshness of your powers, feels in the depths of his heart ‘The love of Christ constraineth me ‘to do as Christ did—give away my life to bring about the salvation of souls?

II. To those of older and maturer years.—Every one of us has his lot in life providentially fixed; and if God does not call upon us to serve Him in one way, He does in another. If ‘the love of Christ constrains you,’ there will be a work for you to do at home for the good of souls, though it be a different work from those who go out to the forefront of the battle against ignorance and heathen darkness. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ Without you the strife against sin could not be carried on, for it is your part to provide the necessary funds; it is your part to encourage and strengthen the hands of those who come forward to go; it is your part to share the cares and to rejoice in the successes of those who are labouring in the field by a hearty and unwearied sympathy in the progress of the work.

Illustration

‘These words express the distinctively Christian temper—the disposition of mind that the knowledge of Jesus and the endeavour to follow and be like Him works in our souls—and which becomes the source of any and all good works which we do, missions to the heathen among the rest. They do not tell us anything expressly about missions. But they hold up for our imitation that which is the motive power of missions as of everything good that the Christian may do. They give us the reason which, in all ages, has inspired the missionary to give himself to the laborious work of preaching the Gospel—which has been to him a recompense for all that earth held dear, which he gave up; which has spurred him on to the lavish spending of health and strength in the cause of Christ; which has brought him not seldom to the fellowship of Christ’s Calvary and to the winning of the martyr’s crown.’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

TRUE RELIGION

The object of true religion is to cast the self out of the human heart and to set God in the vacant place.

I. There are three things that are insufficient to achieve the purpose, although they certainly seem to point in the direction of it. They are—

(a) The tendency to worship, which may be said to be innate in all men.

(b) The sense of duty, which is very strong in some.

(c) The inclination to aim at a lofty standard of excellence or of capability, which is characteristic of not a few.

These three things are well, so far as they go. They may lead on to higher results; but at the same time they may not. We may be religious—you know what I mean—and we may be anxious to fulfil our duty, and we may honestly strive to be better than we are; and yet the tendency which makes a man’s self the very pivot and centre of his whole existence may remain in us, with all its vitality, as strong and as unimpaired as ever.

II. We need the introduction of another influence, which shall assume the leadership and revolutionise our whole being—and that influence is the influence of love. And here it is that Christianity comes in. Christianity is the only religion on the face of the earth that works by love, that uses as its chief instrumentality the love of God for man.

III. We all know what ruling passions are.—One man lives for art—it is his thought night and day: the vision of beauty floats continually before him, and everything about him is drawn in that particular direction. Another, with an equally passionate fervour, lives for gold: for gold he rises early, and late takes rest, and eats the bread of carefulness. A third for something else. But the ruling passion of St. Paul is to follow Christ, to imitate Christ, to spend and be spent in the service of Christ; and most willingly and joyfully would the Apostle lay down his life, if only by so doing the cause of his Divine Master should be to any extent advanced in the world. And such, although on a lower level, and at a humble distance, is the feeling of every one who is born again of the Spirit and made a new creature in Jesus Christ. The man is animated by a new nature. He has, as it were, gone out of himself and become the property of another; and he is proud to be able to say, ‘I am a bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ.’

—Rev. Prebendary Gordon Calthrop.

Illustration

‘There are limits to the human affection. The mightiest and most enduring of all human loves is that of a mother for her child; and yet even that may be worn out by a long persistent course of vice and rebellion and ingratitude. It is not so with Christ. His love for us is patient, and never tires. We cannot quench it by our unworthiness. It still rises above our sin. “Having loved His own, He loved them to the end.” And there are limits to the self-sacrifice involved in the human affection. You may do much for a person you love: you may surrender comfort, property, position, credit—almost everything that belongs to you—for his sake; but you may stop short at the point of the surrender of life. It was not so with Christ. He went the whole length. He did not merely give up what belonged to Him, He gave Himself.’