"The Lord make
you to increase and abound in love one toward another,
and toward all men, even as we also do toward you"
(1 Thess. 3:12).
"We are bound
to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, even as
it is meet, for that your faith groweth exceedingly, and
the love of each one of you all toward one another
aboundeth" (2 Thess. 1:3).
"For this
cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
which is among you, and the love which ye show toward all
the saints..." (Eph. 1:15).
"And
whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his
commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his
sight. And this is his commandment, that we should
believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one
another, even as he gave us commandment" (1 John
3:22-23).
"Beloved, let
us love one another: for love is of God; and every one
that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God" (1
John 4:7).
The
Lord's Coming Related to Love in the Saints
There is something
which lies behind these particular passages and which
gives them their real force and value and emphasis. The
matter before us has a prominent place in Paul's letters
to the Thessalonians, and those letters themselves occupy
a place of great spiritual significance. They were the
first of the recorded letters written by Paul, and in
chronological order they ought to come right at the
beginning of his epistles, before Romans and all the
others; but, seeing that they are so largely occupied
with the Lord's coming and all the matters connected
therewith, it is as though the Holy Spirit said, 'Yes,
they come first chronologically, but really they belong
to the other end,' and so He caused them to be taken out
of their chronological order and put last in the
arrangement of the letters as we have them. All this
about the Lord's coming is after this and this and this
as represented by all the other letters. So the letters
to the Thessalonians are really the culmination of
everything in the coming of the Lord. In them we have the
last things: and the Holy Spirit has put them in their
right place - at the end and with a significance which we
are going to indicate in a moment.
We pass over to the
letters of John, and we find they also are occupied with
last things. When John wrote, every other New Testament
writer had gone to be with the Lord. His are the last
writings and they are occupied with last things - the
Lord's coming, the antichrist, and so on. He says
"it is the last hour." Here is the same feature
as in 'Thessalonians.'
But with the Lord's
coming in view, what is to be the thing which
characterises the Lord's people more than anything else?
What is the culmination of the whole process and progress
of spiritual things? What is the issue of 'Romans,'
'Corinthians,' 'Galatians,' 'Ephesians,' 'Philippians',
and 'Colossians'? What is it all to amount to? You notice
in both places where the last things and the last times
are most in view - 'Thessalonians' and 'John' - the
emphasis is upon love. That is the impressive thing here.
What is the Lord coming to? What has drawn Him at any
time? What is it that He delights to find and come to?
"Then they that feared the Lord spake one with
another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard and a book of
remembrance was written before him, for them that feared
the Lord, and that thought upon his name. And they shall
be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, even mine own
possession, in the day that I make" (Malachi
3:16-17). There you seem to have something of an
advent of the Lord, as though He saw something
there and said, 'That is what I am looking for and there
I can come.'
Heart
Love, not Head Knowledge, Attracts the Lord
Now, I am not setting
aside the personal advent of the Lord. His coming will
have many aspects. It will be for judgment, it will be
for many things; but as central to it all, must there not
be a magnet - something that draws Him out? Will He come
only to judge the nations, to judge iniquity, to judge
the man of sin - will that be enough for Him? Will He not
rather come because He has found a treasure, and
everything else of judgment is bound up with that
treasure?
A familiar illustration
is found in the life of David. When he was being driven
out from his rightful place by the usurper, for the time
being an exile from his city and throne, he sent back the
priests with the ark into the city, to be there as a
focal point for his heart's affections while he was in
exile (2 Sam. 15:25). We know well that the priestly
aspect of things in the Scriptures is the love aspect, as
the kingly is the administrative. Again, we find the love
aspect coming in with Aaron. What is almost the first
thing that is said about Aaron to Moses? - "when he
seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart" (Ex.
4:14). It was a heart matter that brought in the
priesthood. The principle obtains all the way through
Scripture. It is the priest who in his love and devotion
holds the Lord's people in a heart relationship with the
Lord; and when the Lord had to say the hardest things
that He ever did say to His own people it was because the
priests were then carrying on a system with no true heart
relationship with Himself. Yes, the sacrifices and the
services were there, but "this people draw nigh unto
me, and with their mouth and with their lips do honour
me, but have removed their heart far from me" (Isa.
29:13). There was all the priestly service without the
heart. The priest represents the heart side of things.
Now this matter of love
is the most practical thing that ever we can have to do
with. It raises more problems than anything else. But let
us look at it firstly in the light of the Lord's coming.
If the Lord is coming, what will He come to? I do not
think He will come because there are people who have a
lot of truth and a lot of exactness in their technique
and all that sort of thing. Do not let us disregard the
great value and importance of light and truth, of being
right according to the Lord's laws and principles; but
all that will never satisfy His heart. What He will come
to will be that in which He finds His heart satisfaction
because of love. Paul, in the first letter to the
Thessalonians, prays that their love for one another and
for all men may increase. In the second letter he does
not pray any longer that it may be so, he gives thanks
that it is so; their love to one another does abound
exceedingly. And in that context he opens up the matter
of the Lord's coming. I do not think we are straining our
interpretation here. The Holy Spirit is so consistent in
His thoughts. We can talk about the Lord's coming when we
can say our love aboundeth, overfloweth, but I wonder
whether we can talk about the Lord's coming with any real
heart confidence unless that condition obtains.
Love
Not Offended by Appearances
"Abound in love
one toward another." Love for those of our own
company may not be so difficult. But the Word adds
"and toward all men." That goes deeper. I have
of late felt more deeply and strongly than ever before
the force of very familiar words - "Knowledge
puffeth up, but love buildeth up" (1 Cor. 8:1), and
other words such as "maketh the increase of the body
unto the building up of itself in love" (Eph. 4:16).
If we are going to be affected by that which is present
in other people, all those features in Christians and in
Christian work and activity which are repugnant to us, we
are going to close up and withdraw in heart and nothing
is going to be done in the way of mutual helpfulness and
edification. Again and again the very practical question
arises - because of this or that which we meet in another
can anything be done, is anything possible? And very
often, in the acute consciousness of so much that appears
on the surface, we have revolted against it; and then,
going to the Lord about it and facing it out with Him, we
have been enabled to go on, and something has happened
and the Lord has wrought, and we have been surprised, and
rebuked for our original offendedness. We have to look
through all that to the heart, and be reminded every time
that the Lord looks on the heart. We are looking on all
this which is largely the result of ignorance, lack of
proper teaching and so on, and this can offend us. But
the Lord looks on the heart; He sees if there is
something deep down under all these preponderances, if
there is a real heart love for Himself, and He knows if
this is really the endeavour to express that love. There
may be misapprehension, there may be ignorance, there may
be other causes, but this which offends us is, on the
part of those concerned, their way of showing their love
for the Lord, and we must not be turned aside - we must
get close to them and find what possibilities there are
for the Lord. He is going on, He is not giving up; He is
making all He possibly can of the least bit of heart love
for Himself and for all men. The challenge of this is
very practical and very searching for us. If we are
affected by what we meet, by what we see and hear, by
that whole world of sense - I am speaking in the realm of
Christians now - we shall be put off, give up and decide
that nothing is possible. "Love buildeth up";
you find there is something possible, there is some
building up possible, more often than you would really
believe or imagine, if only you take the love line - not
the reserved line of criticism and judgment, but the love
line. If there is any possibility at all for the Lord,
that is the only way to find it, and you have to do a
good deal of digging down, and apply yourself to it with
real purpose, to discover whether, after all, there is
any genuine, pure heart devotion to the Lord behind all
the rest and wrapped up in it. And that 'all' covers a
great deal which I will not attempt to detail. If you
find that true heart love, you have found your ground of
possibility; and for us, dear friends, this is our
business, a business to be diligently pursued. It is not
a sentimental matter at all, but intensely real spiritual
business.
Love
Not Offended Because of Deficiencies
So much for the
preponderances; there are also what we may call the
deficiencies. We may say of others that we do not find in
them knowledge or truth or teaching or understanding; we
find, as we feel, nothing to work upon. We are tempted to
say 'they do not know, they have not seen'; oh, the
iniquity of a phrase like that when it is used as some
people use it! 'Poor things,' they say, in effect; 'they
have not seen this aspect of doctrine which we have
seen'; and they pass them by because they have not seen!
I say, that can be an iniquitous thing because it may be
robbing the Lord of any possibility at all. It may be
true that little or nothing is understood of that with
which we are familiar; they may know nothing about this
or that aspect of truth. But is there some heart
relationship to the Lord, even with the very minimum of
spiritual understanding and enlightenment and
instruction? Because there is nothing of all that which
we feel to be so necessary, are we going to abandon such
children of God? This is a matter in which I feel we do
need to be fully awake, and if necessary, to make
adjustments.
Love
Looks Upon the Heart
Love - not the presence
of a lot of understanding and teaching and truth, and not
the absence of all sorts of things - is the governing
matter with the Lord. It is not that He Himself in His
heart accepts the wrong things, but He sees through them,
He sees differently from ourselves. There are two
statements about David made in the Scriptures - made from
two different standpoints. Speaking of David, the Lord
said to Samuel, "Man looketh on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" (1
Sam. 16:7). That meant that the Lord's look upon David's
heart was one which was favourable. But when David went
to take bread to his brethren in the army his eldest
brother looked at him and said, "Why art thou come
down? ...I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thy
heart..." (1 Sam. 17:28). Here we have God's look and
man's look. We have to be very careful concerning the
standpoint from which we are looking upon people before
we judge them by the outward signs.
You can see there is no
hope of building up unless there is love - and love for
all men. You and I ought to be greatly concerned with
this matter of building up. Oh, God only knows how much
of spiritual increase and building is needed! It is a
paralysing situation that faces us if we look at our own
limitations. I am sure nothing is going to be done unless
we have a very large heart to look over and in and
through and beyond, refusing to be held by the thing that
is glaring at us, striking us and hurting us, and
reaching through to that which is true in the heart.
Love
Builds
In the light of the
Lord's coming, it is very important to be well instructed
and to have all the light that the Lord can give us, but
never let us think for one moment that light and truth
and teaching are inevitably the building factors, for
there are many people with a vast amount of truth and
love who are not very large spiritually; they are very
small, shrunken and closed up. It is love that builds.
Moreover, it makes differences in those who exercise it,
it brings them into rest. Truth alone may bring a
strained look into the face and eyes. Love ought to bring
into the countenance some suggestion of quiet strength
and restful confidence. Look again at those closing
verses of Romans 8 - "Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
...Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors." Look at the things in question - the
ultimate things so far as our lives are concerned. No,
none of these things can separate us from the love of
God. Well, let us sit down in the armchair of His love
and be at rest, and then get to work. You cannot work
unless you have a background rest, and rest does not
spring firstly from truth. It comes from love, God's
love. Whatever else He gives us and adds to us, may the
Lord make us a people who are characterised supremely by
this love for one another and for all men.
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1948, Vol 26-4