2 Corinthians 5
Riley2 Corinthians 5:14
LOVE—THE SUPREME 2 Corinthians 5:14IT is doubtful if there is a single phrase in the entire New Testament that comes so nearly summing up the spirit of Christianity as does this sentence. It was written to the Corinthians— Greek converts to the Church—and its important word “love” needed, therefore, a new definition. Paul has already given that in the thirteenth of I Corinthians. The reason why he took such pains in that definition, and gave such space to it, was the new significance attaching to the word.By the heathen of the Apostle’s day “love” had been degraded, and the very term was synonymous with “sentimentality” or even “sensuality”; and the Apostle must needs redeem it for Christ’s sake and give to it a new spiritual and social significance, all of which was matchlessly done in the great chapter to which we have referred.The contrast, therefore, here is a most extensive one, and in order to understand this one sentence, one must have read at least the two Epistles to the Corinthians. But when he has done that carefully, thoughtfully, considerately, he will see at least three suggestions which it is our purpose to study.THE LOVE! “The love of Christ”! The world never saw its like; in truth, had never known anything of close kinship with it. Up to that time the greatest love the world knew anything about was the love that led a father or a friend to lay down his life for his child or his boon companion. In other words, love had lived in a reciprocal realm; it gave expecting to receive again. “But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, (aliens, enemies, rebels) Christ died for us”. This, then, is the superior love—such love as the world had never seen till Calvary’s hour.The very phrase, then—“the love of Christ”— kept in mind, privileges us to make certain statements. It is superior to sensuality. Dr. W. J.
Dawson says, “At the time Christ came, love had a physical significance, but no moral or spiritual one. It was a synonym of physical sensation. It was the basis of the most abominable acts, because the word had become saturated with abominable meanings, by pagan poets, by vile Emperors, and by the filthy corruptions of a vile people.”Even today this good word has not entirely been delivered from such unholy uses. Not long since Jacob Beelhart—devotee of free love—was telling the people of the land, “Love is the guiding spirit of a universal system, and is harmony. The intellect is subjective because it is unworthy, and the bubblings of the heart are only free to direct the conduct of the spirit.”And yet, every one knows how short-lived are the sickly sentences and sentiments growing out of such definition of this good term. History has not a few illustrations akin to that to which our city has been treated this past week, in which it has been seen again that no endearing terms, in which truth is plighted, even when it is cemented by millions of cash, can hold together people who know nothing of the new meaning of this word.Thomas Dixon tells how Lord Bulwer gushed in his love letters, beginning them, “My dearest and kindest” and “most bootiful poodle”, and ending them, “my angel”, “my love”, “my light”; but after a few brief years was upon this same woman with a carving knife.
As he sprang at her, she cried, “For God’s sake, take care Edward!” at which he dropped the knife and with the ferocity of a tiger, sprang at her and bit a hole in her cheek.The lower animal life knows all about love-making, but it is on a sensual basis; there are in it no spiritual elements. There are men so animalized that they cannot understand the phrase even, “the love of Christ”; and such salacious writers insist that Jesus was in love with the Magdalenes and might have married Mary of Bethany had not His enemies hunted Him to His death.It is also superior to sentiment.
When I use the word “sentiment”, I mean to use it properly, and to employ it significantly. I have never been able to join with those people who objected to sentimentality. Love without sentiment is a rose without aroma. The woman whose husband is without sentiment will never be happy; and the husband whose wife is without sentiment and the willingness to express it, will never know the meaning of domestic sweetness.And yet, sentiment, in itself, is not sufficient. It can love those who are attractive and responsive so long as they do not cross its will or betray its trust. But a clash of wills can speedily kill sentimental love; and the betrayal of trust will bury it in the deepest of graves.
Recently a man in a hotel introduced himself to me. He was personally attractive, clean in speech, wholesome in thought, a good conversationalist, and in a few days we felt that we were mutual friends.
I invited him to my room and showed him the pictures of my wife and children, and then he opened his heart and told me his life experience and incidentally explained that of his bachelorhood. He said: “I grew up on the farm. My ideals of women were of the most exalted. As a young man of twenty-seven, I found one I supposed to be my ideal and was paying her ardent court when an intimate friend of mine asked me to give him an hour in counsel. Before he had finished the day’s conversation he had charged her with loss of character, with living an immoral life! It stunned me, and produced skepticism. I wanted to be manly, and I went to her and told her exactly what had been told me. She denied it absolutely, notwithstanding evidence that made an implicit faith impossible.
Our relations were renewed and went on for nearly two years, and were rapidly approaching the climax of marriage, when I faced her with one question, ‘Tell me now, as one who must answer before God for the words that pass your lips, were the reports that reached me regarding your conduct truthful or false? I want no equivocation; I want an answer in one word, “Yes” or “No!” ‘ Upon her knees, with face mantled in blushes, and stained with tears, she said, I cannot, I will not lie longer, every word was true! I did miss the way! I did forget the instruction of my youth. The blandishments of one who professed to love me, seduced and led me astray.”And he said, “Mr. Riley, what else could I do except to say, ‘That is the end for us,’ and take my way in the world alone?” His was not the highest love.
The love that died that day was not the love of Christ; it was the death of a human sentiment— wholesome, sweet, beautiful, maybe, but inferior to the love which I am telling this morning—that love that forgives, the love that can forget, the love that is so great that it has power in itself to cleanse every spot and stain—“the love of Christ!”It is superior to sanguinity or the loss of blood relative. We count it a beautiful thing for a man to love his wife, for a woman to ardently love her husband, for parents to love their children, and children their parents, for brother to love brother or sister, for friend to love friend.
And yet, even that love is a far-cry from the love of our text. Christ said of it, “If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same”?A man has never particularly exalted himself in my judgment when he has said, “I do not see the need of being a Christian! I love my wife and treat her decently; I love my children and keep them comfortably; I live at peace with my neighbors; I care for my creditors and pay my debts; what more can be demanded?”That puts love upon almost a commercial basis. That is the arrangement of tit for tat; that is the philosophy of quid pro quo; that was the sentiment that moved the man to pray for “Me and my wife, my son John and his wife; us four and no more.”Dr. Dawson was correct when he said, “There can be no more absolutely selfish force in the world than that kind of love which limits itself to its own kith and kin. Feudalism is sufficient to teach you that.
The vital principle of feudalism was loyalty among families, tribes and clans. And what was the result?
In the Old World one is shown from castle to castle, and when he comes to Edinburgh he hardly needs to have the guide explain, “You will notice that there is only one side of this castle which is approachable.” There was only one way in which the attacking force could reach this castle, that was from the East. At Warwick the moat is still in existence—dried up, but it used to be filled with water, making it not only necessary for the enemy to scale the walls, or force the gates, but also to build an approach across this great circle of water before he could get at his enemy, spill his blood and take his house. On the North Rim of Antrim County in Ireland, you see a grand view of the castle constructed in two sections—and a drawbridge between. If the enemy attacked from the sea, they retreated landward and pulled up the bridge; if from land, seaward and pulled up the bridge. The dwellers of that castle, the family and servants of that petty king were to be protected, such was the life-interest! But such was a self-love!
No, family ties are not sufficient; the feudal plan was a poor expression of love as Christ and His Apostles employed it; and that modern feudalism, which now expresses itself in the commercial mart more strongly than elsewhere, is ten thousand times removed from the teaching of our text. It is not “The simple plan that they should take who have the power And they should keep who can!” That may create and preserve fortunes and families, and keep alive the spirit of feudalism; but it also incites riot and battle and bloodshed, and the love of Christ would perish between such conflicting forces.Thank God there is a love which expresses itself beyond that of the feudalistic spirit, beyond that which holds to the family and joins kith and kin. Let me give you an illustration: A pastor of the Highbury Quadrant Church, London, once said, “Recently there stood up in the lecture hall of my own church a woman who for the first time opened her lips in public. She got up to tell us how, by the grace of God, she had been recovered from a condition of what seemed hopeless drunkenness. She was a woman born into good society, accomplished, speaking four languages, a fine musician, widely travelled, and yet she had sunk into the lowest gutter of inebriety, thrust out by her friends, left to perish, and discovered by a Salvation Army lass who took her, with all her repulsiveness, straight away to the Salvation Army Home for Inebriates; and so little did the family of that woman love her, although they are wealthy people, moving in good society, that they have never paid that Salvation Army captain for the cab fare.“This woman comes once more before the world, after eighteen months of suffering and struggle, reclaimed. You would say, now domestic love will surely come in; now the sense of kith and kin will be revived; now her friends will open their arms to receive her!“No! No!
Her children are told she is dead! Her husband wishes to see no more of her.
Her own mother consents to meet her only at a public restaurant; and the woman told me how she went, with what a turbulent heart within her, and with what a yearning love for her mother. But the reception she got was so freezing cold, she could not endure it, and she said, ‘I began to ask myself whether it paid to be good, and I turned from my own mother and came back to the Salvation Army woman, the mother of my soul, for I knew that, in her, I had a love which no one else could give me.’“Ah! was not Christ right when He said, ‘If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye’? Some of us have friends who have cost us grief and shame and misery, and we know how we feel about them. We don’t wish to see them again. We prefer to forget them, and—God forgive us— we almost wish they were dead. That is the natural feeling of grieved and wronged and betrayed human love.
We are no worse than our fellows, it may be, when we acknowledge such feelings. But Christ demands that, if we are Christians, we should be much better than our fellows, and much better than the best of our fellows according to the flesh.“And, what force is there that can make us feel kind even to our own kith and kin who have bruised and hurt and put us to shame by their conduct?
What, but the love of Him who, being sinless, bore the sins of others; who, being just, died for the unjust that He might bring us to God, and never complained of the injustice of it?“Human love failed that poor woman in her worst need. Where human love fails, Christ’s love comes to the rescue, and by this ‘we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren’.”But I pass on to the second phrase concerning us:THE Sufficient for what? One might answer, for any thing; for everything! Has not Paul said of this love that it “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth”.It is sufficient, then, to overcome apathy. The need of the world is redemption from indifference. East India, with its Christian Science philosophy, is not alone in this need.
Its greater indifference is participated in, to a greater or less extent, by all men and women of the world, and Frederick W. Robertson never said a truer thing than when he said, “There are fewer signs in a soul’s state more alarming than that of religious indifference.” He might have added by way of definition, “social and spiritual indifference.”Charles Cuthbert Hall, the famous preacher, speaking in Chicago some years since, said, “We all rejoice in the remarkable growth and the excellent features of American civilization, and we are pleased at the relatively good state of the common morality of the people.
We are proud of our country and we like to speak of it in praiseworthy terms to our brothers across the water; but a deeper examination of the social side of our American life reveals a situation that causes anything but satisfaction. It is a matter of consternation and deep concern to us that the moral standard of American life is deteriorating. In the hustle and bustle of every-day activity we have astonished the world; but, morally, we are rapidly going astern—so rapidly that one is dumfounded at the contrast after a visit to some of the countries of the old world. I am an optimist through and through, but I am not a stone-blind optimist. I feel and know from observation that religion has little if any part in our American civilization today. This is a lamentable state of affairs, and it behooves each and all of us to do all we can to help to stem this tide of indifference.
Our home life is not what it should be, and it is not to be wondered at when we realize the general apathy of the people as regards their spiritual welfare.”But why this indifference even in the realm where men and women are supposed to be the most interested—the realm of the home? Simply because “the love of Christ” is not there.
It has been crowded out; oftentimes unconsciously crowded out. The father is not fully aware how effectually it has been killed; the mother is not cognizant of it; the children are not. Little by little they have let the world in and the love of the world has been death to the love of Christ, for it is not only written in John’s Epistle, but it is written into the experience of every man and every woman, as the eternal, unchangeable truth, that if you “love the world”, and “the things that are in the world,” “the love of the Father” cannot abide, “for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world”.When that gets possession spiritual apathy is inevitable. There is but one way to conquer it— Christ in the heart; Christ in the Life; Christ in the home! You can hang your motto on the wall: “Christ is the unseen Guest in this home” but that will not help a particle unless Christ be enthroned in the heart; be made indeed the Guest of the home, the central figure in morning prayer, the Counsellor of the day’s purchases, the Director in the day’s duties, in fact, the Lord of life.“The love of Christ” is the only adequate constraining force.That love can conquer prejudice. It did in His case; it will in ours!
The Samaritan, hated by His Jewish friends, He named a good neighbor; the Gentile, denominated a “dog”, He called a Brother. The Publican and sinner, social outcasts from the Jewish standpoint, He sat with them, ate with them, and loved them even unto His death.
Truly it is when we think on Christ as the express image of the Father that we can sing the words of that old hymn:“The love of God is wider, Than the measure of man’s mind; And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind.” His love can rise above repulsion. There are so many people, some of them even in the Church of Christ, that cannot enter a sanctuary unless its every appointment is satisfactory, and its every attendant attractive.Any man who is in health, and who lays any claim to decency, when he enters the sanctuary should come in as clean in person and clothes as possible to his purse and powers; but, on the other hand, the love of Christ never disfellowships even the repulsive man. In His day the blind and the halt, the lame, were not cared for as now. The majority of the people simply put them away as domestic nuisances, social inconveniences. But to Christ they were men and women, to be loved, pitied and aided. He never passed them by without a look, a word, a touch.
The leper was not only a social outcast, but regarded, by his own family and friends, as one dead; and was actually driven into the fields lest people be compelled to look at his open sores. He must, at their nigh-approach, cry, “Unclean!
Unclean!” and hide himself. Christ called the lepers into His presence, and laid His hands upon them, and with every evidence of tenderness and love, healed them.In the Life of Livingstone we read a story which has its duplicates in that of every true missionary, of a poor African woman lying by the roadside afflicted by the most repulsive disease; and yet, Livingstone stayed his feet, stretched out his hand, and contributed in every possible way to her comfort. A great preacher says, “This was because he saw in her a creature for whom Christ died, and recognized that in that soul—dumb, confused and ignorant—there was still an immortal soul compared with which, in value, all the gold of Ophir and all the diamond fields of Africa, were but as the dust in the balance.” I think he went a little deeper still; he saw in her his own sister. And repulsion does not exist where love is truly regnant.I was in a city once where “Quo Vadis” was presented in moving pictures, and I dropped in for twenty minutes and the scenes I looked upon were those that the frightful edict of Nero affected when he caused the Christians to be drawn to the middle of the arena and driven by their brutal keepers into a little circle, and then fifty hungry, starving, lions loosed upon them. In a few minutes all that was left was the repulsive bones and torn and soiled garments. Yet, as I sat there looking upon a scene that passed nineteen centuries ago, and upon nothing better than an imaginary representation of that, those bones were not repulsive to me, and those bloody garments held for my vision no revolt!
I yearned to go into the arena and gather up the bits of torn garments and gnawed bones and bear them away at least to a quiet beautiful burial, because the stretch of nineteen centuries could not destroy from my thought the fact, “These are my brethren, my sisters in Christ.” And where the love of Christ is repulsion is unknown. You can tell when you walk the streets tomorrow and look upon the poor cripple at the side of the walk, and the blind man groping his way about the street, whether the love of Christ is in your heart or not.
Do you want to help him, or do you wish you had taken the other side of the street? That will well-nigh settle it.But I conclude withTHE PRONOUN “The love of Christ constraineth us”. Who are the “us”? I think you will consent with me—It should include all professors. There was a time, doubtless, when it did; but the day was not long prolonged. Ananias and Sapphira joined the early church, and Simon Magus sought membership in it. When the people were “called Christians first in Antioch”, the term meant a company who were followers of Christ—“dead to sin”, “buried with (Christ) by baptism”, “raised * * (to) walk in newness of life”. They were a company wholly devoted each to all and all to each.
Of them the world was compelled to remark, both upon their affection and upon their faithfulness. When they themselves employed the term “us” it swept a definite circle, the men and women who lived the new life, spake with new tongues, and enjoined love in a new meaning.But, alas, for a possibility of decline!
The principle, “Many are the elect, but few are the select”, was even then receiving its proof; and more and more, as the days have come and gone, has the opposite waxed, until now, as we employ the term, we must seek a new meaning. What do you mean by “us”?It does include all possessors—all those who have Christ in their hearts; all those who are living the new life in Him; all those who know the new motive of His love in them. Some of them very humble folk, some of them specially notable ones, belong to a common household of faith, to a common household of fellowship. Christ is the object of that faith and the center of that fellowship. Some of them may be as great as Paul; some of them as notable as Peter; some were destined to names as immortal as that of John; others of them either not known, or soon to be forgotten as were “certain others of the Apostles”. But in the last Great Day, how this circle will shine!
In the twenty-first chapter of the Book of the Revelation, the time comes when the Holy City is let down out of Heaven. What a thing of beauty!
The glory of God was in it! Its light was like unto a stone most precious; its gates, pearls; and the wall of the city, we are told, had twelve foundations, and in them “the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb”.That day Philip, Thomas, and Bartholomew, and Andrew, and Nathaniel, and others, little known to church history, will appear as pillars in the Church triumphant!My brother layman, occupying perhaps an inconspicuous place in the public thought, listen to this story and be encouraged. He was a middle-aged clerk in a large wholesale house; he had been in that office for twenty-five years, and for ten years had occupied the first chair in the head office. He had no chums, we are told, and no amusements; only a cozy, comfortable room in the boarding house. He was known as a contented, happy man, giving himself assiduously to his work in the store on the week days, and in the church on the Sundays. But “every heart knoweth its own bitterness”, and down beneath his serene countenance there was a spirit of restlessness.
He was beginning to ask himself whether he had not missed the mark and made a failure of his life. This night he remained in the office alone, his head upon his arm.
No one would have dreamed it, but there by himself he was sobbing and saying, “Oh, God, how little my life means in the world!” Suddenly the last delivery of the day was at hand. The postman opened the door without ceremony, flung down the letters and went his way. He gathered himself together and mechanically opened the two addressed to him. The first was from British Columbia, and from a young man who had been under him for five years, and who two years before, had gone West. It ran as follows, “Dear Mr. G——: I am writing to thank you for all your goodness to me while in your office.
I am succeeding beyond my expectations in business, and yesterday became a member of the church, having decided for Christ two months ago. For these two blessings of God I owe all to you, for in both business and religion you have been my example.
I hope in this new land to help others as you helped me.”His tears were dried; there was a something of satisfaction settling into his face when he opened the second letter, which read,“Dear Sir: I have taken your advice and once more feel like a free man. With the money you loaned me I have paid my debts, and with God’s help and yours, I will redeem the past. I cannot thank you as I ought but I do trust I will be worthy of your confidence.”A new light came into his face. The old restlessness passed forever. He walked with the step of his youth. God had held the goblet of life to his lips and he had drunk deep of “the love of Christ.”It is also a pronoun of appeal. “The love of Christ constraineth us”.
It amounts to an invitation. Come with us into a new experience and into a glorious service.
It also amounts to an appeal to us to God; for, as Dr. Dixon once said, “The two great words of the New Testament are ‘Come’ and ‘Go’!” Come to Christ. Go into all the world and preach His Gospel. Our fathers used to sing,“Fly, Christians, to their rescue fly, Preach Jesus to them e’er they die.” And there is just as much need of it today, New Theology notwithstanding. The Word of the Lord still is, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us”? I do believe that when once it is understood what martial demands our Master makes upon His converts; what sacrifices He requests, and what compensations He proposes, the spirit of true Christianity, wherever it exists, will respond in the language of the hymn that we sometimes sing, if with full meaning I do not know:“It may not be on the mountain’s height Or over the stormy sea; It may not be at the battle’s front My Lord will have need of me; But if by a still small voice He calls To paths that I do not know, I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in Thine, I’ll go where You want me to go. “I’ll go where You want me to go, dear Lord, Over mountain, or plain, or sea; I’ll say what You want me to say, dear Lord, I’ll be what You want me to be.” “Perhaps, to-day there are loving words Which Jesus would have me speak; There may be now in the paths of sin Some wand’rer whom I should seek. O Saviour, if Thou wilt be my Guide, Tho’ dark and rugged the way, My voice shall echo Thy message sweet, I’ll say what you want me to say. “There’s surely somewhere a lowly place In earth’s harvest field so wide; Where I may labor thro’ life’s short day, For Jesus the Crucified. So trusting my all to Thy tender care, And knowing Thou lovest me, I’ll do Thy will with a heart sincere, I’ll be what You want me to be.”