“I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free.”―Exodus 21:5.
AND is it from love like this that we try to get free? “I don’t think I do.” “I’m sure I do not.”
Are you so trying? Are you quite sure? “The love of Christ constraineth us,” that we who live “should not henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto Him Who died for us.”
Why is it that we are not more under the constraining power of that wonderful love? “I love my master,” said the old Hebrew servant. I love “My Master,” said He of Whom the Hebrew servant was only a type. Ere creation was completed we see the Son rejoicing in the Father’s love. “Then I was daily His delight; rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth.” Over and over again in the Gospels there are incidents setting forth the love of the Son to the Father and the joy it was to Him to do His Father’s will.
“I love my wife.” The Hebrew servant, who so loved his wife that he would not leave her, might remain with her―but only as a bondman; and she, the wife, still a bondwoman, a slave as before.
“I love my wife,” says the Son of the Father. But how will this holy Servant, spotless, undefiled, separate from sinners, secure for His eternal delight this Bride whom He loves? Is His love to His Master and His wife sufficient to carry Him through the long dark way, away from His home of glory down to this earth, through the world, walking day by day amongst “His own,” and they receiving Him not, grieving that loving heart that yearned over them with such longing love?
Still on and on He went, few caring for or returning that love which was ever being displayed. That pathway led down—down to the dust of death. There He was forsaken even by the few who really cared to be with Him in His lonely walk down here. But what was most bitter to that loving One was being forsaken of God Himself. There, in the midst of the darkness, did that holy Servant carry out His Father’s will. By laying down His life He sealed with His own blood the testimony of His love both to God and man.
We shall never know, never be able to fathom all it meant to that Holy One; but the Father knows. He has raised out of death that obedient Servant, His beloved Son, and placed Him at His own right hand; He has crowned Him with glory and honor, and given Him a Name which is above every name.
But what about the Bride which has been bought at such a cost, the “pearl of great price”? She is still left in the world that would not accept her Beloved; in the world that, as He walked through, only tried to make that pathway more sad and lonely.
Then surely she takes no part in the doings of that cold-hearted world! How could she link herself with anything that cast out her Beloved, that wondrous Man who gave His life for her in such a manner? But is it so? Is it so today? Is she quite separate and aloof from all that refused her Beloved, the world which would not accept Him?
“I love my children.” With the same intensity of affection that the Father loves the Son, does the Son love the children. “As the Father hath loved Me, even so have I loved you; continue ye in My love.” We love Him because He first loved us. Go quietly to John 17 and listen. The Son is speaking to the Father, and what is His first concern? The Father’s glory. He asks the Father to glorify Him. It could not be otherwise; the Son could not bring glory to the Father without Himself partaking of it. “I and My Father are one.”
Then listen to the way He speaks of His own, the “children.” He was going down into death for them, and then up―up to the heights of glory that He might receive them to Himself. But He knows, none so well, the dreary loneliness they will feel when He Whom they love is gone. So again and again He gives them into the Father’s keeping. And that is where we are now―in the Father’s keeping, watched over and guarded and loved with the same love as that in which His Son, His well-beloved, ever dwells.
“I love my children.” But do we see beauty in Him? Do we often sit with great delight under His shadow waiting quietly for the Holy Spirit to teach us more of the Son, and the Father to Whom the Son has returned?
“He is despised and rejected of men.” But is this still true? After giving expression in such an unmistakable way to the love of His heart, is it so? Yes! Emphatically in the present tense is that one sad sentence! Much of that beautiful 53rd chapter of Isaiah is past, some of it is future, but at this present time God’s Lamb is “despised and rejected of men.” And His children, the children whom He loves, they too are despised; they must be rejected by the world that cast out their Saviour. Living each day close tb the Lord Who brought them near to the Father, Who gave His well-beloved Son to die for them, the world would have no attraction for their hearts. They would not wish to be counted part of it, to be known as belonging to it.
Is that the position taken by each one of us? Are we so “in the love of God” that from the bottom of our hearts we can say―
“Saviour, I long to follow Thee,
Daily Thy cross to bear”?
Can it be that the world has still some hold on our heart’s affections? Should we be more truthful if we said―
“Saviour, I long to follow Thee:
Do Thou my heart prepare
To count all else, whate’er it be
Unworthy of my care”?
Let us be honest with ourselves, and find out exactly what we are doing with this priceless love which so yearns for a fuller return from our affections; love which would wrap itself around us and preserve us from all which might through its seeming fairness draw us away from Him.
God grant that if He be pleased to leave us a little longer down here we may learn more of the love of that blessed Servant; that the Spirit, not being grieved by our lack of appreciation of Christ, may conduct us farther into the things of God. E.