"… but the greatest of these is charity (Love.)" — I Cor. 13:12
If we are to take this thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians at face value, then we must acknowledge the fact that the unique Love of God, inherently His, and ours by grace, is, as Henry Drummond put it in his dissertation in 1891, "The Greatest Thing in the World." To know this truth, and appropriate by faith this Love, reflecting it back to God and bestowing it upon our fellows, especially our fellow-believers, is worth more in the sight of God than any other gift or grace touched upon in scripture.
It is, as we have noted, the hallmark of true discipleship, and the essence of Jesus' "new commandment" (John 13:34,35) and, it is the proof of our relationship with the Living God (cf. I John 4:7-8, 20-21.) Omit this Love, and Christianity is just another religion; affirm it, and the Christian faith becomes a manifestation of life linked with the eternal God, itself unique.
Having thus said, it is important that we understand that the Love here outlined is not ours, cannot be conjured up from within, is altogether supernatural. It is the consequence of a real and enduring fellowship with the God who is love. A few days ago this truth was brought home to my own heart in a wonderful way by C. H. Spurgeon's "Morning and Evening" meditation for the morning of June 11. Since it so well suits the occasion, and I cannot hope to improve upon it, I am reproduce it here verbatim:
"We love Him because He first loved us." — I John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great and certain truth, that we love Him for no other reason than because He first loved us. Our love to Him is the fair offspring of His love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the heart by God's Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that when we had rebelled against Him, He should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to draw us back. No! never should we have had a grain of love toward God unless it had been sown in us by the sweet seed of His love to us. Love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed abroad in the heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must be divinely nourished. Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon wither. As love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread. It cannot exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on high. Love must feed on love. The very soul and life of our love to God is His love to us.
For His glory and our good,
"Pastor" Frasier
If we are to take this thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians at face value, then we must acknowledge the fact that the unique Love of God, inherently His, and ours by grace, is, as Henry Drummond put it in his dissertation in 1891, "The Greatest Thing in the World." To know this truth, and appropriate by faith this Love, reflecting it back to God and bestowing it upon our fellows, especially our fellow-believers, is worth more in the sight of God than any other gift or grace touched upon in scripture.
It is, as we have noted, the hallmark of true discipleship, and the essence of Jesus' "new commandment" (John 13:34,35) and, it is the proof of our relationship with the Living God (cf. I John 4:7-8, 20-21.) Omit this Love, and Christianity is just another religion; affirm it, and the Christian faith becomes a manifestation of life linked with the eternal God, itself unique.
Having thus said, it is important that we understand that the Love here outlined is not ours, cannot be conjured up from within, is altogether supernatural. It is the consequence of a real and enduring fellowship with the God who is love. A few days ago this truth was brought home to my own heart in a wonderful way by C. H. Spurgeon's "Morning and Evening" meditation for the morning of June 11. Since it so well suits the occasion, and I cannot hope to improve upon it, I am reproduce it here verbatim:
"We love Him because He first loved us." — I John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great and certain truth, that we love Him for no other reason than because He first loved us. Our love to Him is the fair offspring of His love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the heart by God's Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that when we had rebelled against Him, He should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to draw us back. No! never should we have had a grain of love toward God unless it had been sown in us by the sweet seed of His love to us. Love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed abroad in the heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must be divinely nourished. Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon wither. As love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread. It cannot exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on high. Love must feed on love. The very soul and life of our love to God is His love to us.
I love thee, Lord, but with no love of mine,The subject is so vast, and so far beyond us as far as definition is concerned, that no man can do justice to it, no one more than "touch the hem of [its] garment." To consider it, even with our limited faculties, is to be humbled beyond words. Therefore we make no apology for how poorly and inadequately we have treated it, and can only pray that in some way, by God's infinite and peculiar grace, we may have whetted somewhere an appetite to meditate further and more deeply on this supernal truth, and its bearing on our professed claim to identification with the God who IS Love.
For I have none to give;
I love thee, Lord; but all the love is thine,
For by thy love I live.
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee.
For His glory and our good,
"Pastor" Frasier
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