During the Second World War, when many Jewish people in Europe were being sent to the death camps by the Nazi government in Germany, a beautiful young Jewish woman by the name of Ibi, from Hungary, ended up in Auschwitz. Some years before she was arrested and sent there, her husband had divorced her, leaving her with a young son. To support herself, she had opened a dress-making salon, and being very clever and a good seamstress, she made a reasonable living. But time and time again her estranged husband would come and kidnap the boy while she was at work, taking him away to a distant place where he lived. Time and time again Ibi would take the train to where the father lived and bring her son home again.
When both she and her son were sent to the camp, they were separated, and she was sent to one of the women’s blocks. She had no idea where her son had been taken, and as time passed, she did not know whether he was still alive. But she was optimistic that she might survive and be able to find him again.
It is horrible even to relate, but in the course of the next few months, she was selected six times to be sent to the gas chambers and was loaded on a truck with other women. But six times she managed to jump off the moving truck and went back to the block, thus evading death. For some reason the authorities, for the moment, respected her courage and let her live. Her success at being able to escape bolstered her optimism, and she felt confident that she would live and be reunited with her son.
What Motivation!
The final time she actually broke her leg in jumping from the truck and was compelled to rest in the camp’s infirmary for several months until it healed. Finally she was selected a seventh time, taken out with a number of other women, and forced to march to the gas chambers. This time she actually tried to run away, but within the camp there was simply nowhere to run, especially in her weakened condition. She was soon caught and perished with all the rest.
What gave Ibi such determination in the face of overwhelming might on the part of her enemies? What made her fight to the very end and make one desperate attempt after another to escape? Had it been only her own life that was at stake, she might well have given in, but it was her love for her son that galvanized her into almost superhuman efforts to live. Her hope of seeking and finding him again, and perhaps being able to rescue him and look after him, spurred her on in spite of everything that was against her. She did not have to do it, but her mother-love constrained her so strongly that she would take any risk, bear any punishment, suffer any privation, if only it would give her another chance to be reunited with her son.
The Love of Christ
When I have read about the constraining love of Christ, I have sometimes thought of this story. (By the way, the details are true, having been recorded by a Jewish woman physician who was also at Auschwitz and who survived the war to write down what she had seen.) The word used in 2 Corinthians 5:14 for “constraineth” has the force of actually holding someone, or even arresting them. Surely this is what the love of Christ does for the believer. I say “does,” not “should do,” for the Scripture simply makes the statement, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Every true believer is constrained by that love.
But some may say, Why is it then that I do not feel the pull of that constraint on me? Why do I not love the Lord more and do more for Him? The answer may be found, in human terms, by speaking about a magnet. We do not say, A magnet should attract iron. No, we say that it does attract iron, for that is its nature. Yet any student of physics knows that the force of a magnetic field varies as the square of the distance from the magnet. If the iron is at some distance from the magnet, its pull on it will be very faint, or perhaps almost non-existent.
So it is with the love of Christ. I cannot try to love Him more than I do, any more than I can try to love in a natural sense. But if I consider how much He loves me and how much He has done for me, my love will flow out to Him, and there will be a compulsion, a hold on me, not merely a matter of conscience, but of love that returns to the One who gave everything that I might be His. Not only has He gone to Calvary’s cross to die for us, but He has made us His own, brought us into relationship with Himself, and promised to take us to the Father’s house for all eternity. In the meanwhile, He has given us the earnest of the Spirit and “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). Truly, as another has said, “Every Christian blessing is a mountain peak beyond which even God Himself could not go.” If all this is enjoyed in the soul, there will indeed be a constraint on us that cannot be ignored or pushed aside.
Abiding in Him
The secret to enjoying the love of Christ is to be found abiding in Him and keeping His Word, for the love of God is perfected in those who keep His Word (see 1 John 2:5). “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love” (John 15:10). In one sense, love precedes obedience, for our Lord said, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15), but in another sense, we are maintained in the enjoyment of His love when we keep His commandments. When we keep close to Jesus, we live and move in the sense of His love, and then our own love cannot help but flow out to Him. Truly, “we love because He has first loved us” (1 John 4:19 JND). He has given us new life, with a capacity for divine love — a love that responds to His love.
The only other abiding of which John speaks is to abide in darkness (John 12:46), and this is spoken of those who are not saved. The Spirit of God in John does not contemplate that a true believer would wish to walk in darkness, for John often speaks in the abstract, putting the truth, as we might say, either as black or white. But we know in our own hearts that it is possible for us to get away from the Lord, and thus practically to walk in some degree of darkness. Positionally every believer is in the light, but it is possible for us, like Peter, to follow “afar off” (Luke 22:54). But how blessed it is to abide in Him, to enjoy His love, and to find our hearts so occupied with Him that our love responds to His!
W. J. Prost