- Love’s Final Test

A century ago a hymn was often sung in the churches, the first stanza of which ran like this:
‘Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought,
Do I love the Lord, or no!
Am I His, or am I not?
Those who thus confessed their spiritual anxiety were serious-minded, honest men and women who could open their hearts to each other in this manner without self-consciousness or loss of face.
It is an evidence of the essential frivolity of the modern religious mind that this hymn is never sung today, and if mentioned from the pulpit at all it is quoted humorously as an example of old-fashioned religious melodrama and a proof that those who once sang it were not up on the doctrine of grace. Why ask, “Do I love the Lord, or no?” when any number of personal workers stand by to quote convenient texts from the New Testament to prove that we do?
But we had better not be too cocksure. The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord. Too much hinges on the answer to pass the matter off lightly. And it is a question that no one can answer for another. Not even the Bible can tell the individual man that he loves the Lord; it can only tell him how he can know whether or not he does. It can and does tell us how to test our hearts for love as a man might test ore for the presence of uranium, but we must do the testing.
Our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were organically united, that the keeping of His sayings would prove that we loved Him and the failure or refusal to keep them would prove that we did not. This is the true test of love, and we will be wise to face up to it.
The commandments of Christ occupy in the New Testament a place of importance that they do not have in current evangelical thought. The idea that our relation to Christ is revealed by our attitude to His commandments is now considered legalistic by many influential Bible teachers, and the plain words of our Lord are rejected outright or interpreted in a manner to make them conform to theories ostensibly based upon the epistles of Paul. Thus the Word of God is denied as boldly by evangelicals as by admitted modernists.
If we lived in a spiritual Utopia where every wind blew toward heaven and every man was a friend of God we Christians could take everything for granted, counting on the new life within us to cause us to do the will of God without effort and more or less unconsciously. Unfortunately we have opposing us the lusts of the flesh, the attractions of the world and the temptations of the devil. These complicate our lives and require us often to make determined moral decisions on the side of Christ and His commandments.
It is the crisis that forces us to take a stand for or against. The patriot may be loyal to his country for half a lifetime without giving much thought to it, but let an unfriendly power solicit him to turn traitor and he will quickly spurn its overtures. His patriotism will be brought out into the open for everyone to see.
So it is in the Christian life. When the “south wind blew softly” the ship that carried Paul sailed smoothly enough and no one board knew who Paul was or how much strength of character lay hidden behind that rather plain exterior. But when the mighty tempest, Euroclydon, burst upon them Paul’s greatness was soon the talk of everyone on the ship. The apostle, though himself a prisoner quite literally took command of the vessel, made decisions and issued orders that meant life or death to the people. And I think the crisis brought to a head something in Paul that had not previously been clear even to him. Beautiful theory was quickly crystallized into hard fact when the tempest struck.
The Christian cannot be certain of the reality and depth of his love until he comes face to face with the commandments of Christ and is forced to decide what to do about them. Then he will know. “He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings,” said our Lord. “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.
So the final test of love is obedience not sweet emotions, not willingness to sacrifice, not zeal, but obedience to the commandments of Christ. Our Lord drew a line plain and tight for everyone to see. On one side He placed those who keep His commandments and said, “These love Me.” On the other side He put those who keep not His sayings, and said, “These love Me not.”
Love for Christ is a love of willing as well as a love of feeling, and it is psychologically impossible to love Him adequately unless we will to obey His words.
In seeking to learn whether we truly love our Lord we must be careful to apply His own test. False tests can only lead to false conclusions as false signs on the highway lead to wrong destinations. The Lord made it plain enough, but with our genius for getting mixed up we have lost sight of the markers.
I think if we would turn for a while from finespun theological speculations about grace and faith and humbly read the New Testament with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: Do we love the Lord or no?