We learn from 2 Cor. 5 that two motives impelled the Apostle Paul to preach the gospel. One was, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." If he thought of the solemn and awful reality of judgment to come, it urged him to go out to "persuade men." Do we feel the weight of this serious and solemn fact, that souls are perishing around us, standing, as it were, on the brink of a lost eternity?
But another motive also acted on the Apostle. He says, "The love of Christ constraineth us." That love had shone like a sunbeam into Paul's heart and produced a revolution in his whole life and thoughts. It had changed the bitter persecutor of the Church, Saul, into the earnest servant of God, Paul.
What a change the love of Christ can bring about! It can melt the hardest heart and break down the most stubborn will. And the knowledge of this can give strength and courage to make it known to others.
May the Lord Jesus so fill our hearts with the joy and blessedness of His love, that we cannot but tell, out of full hearts, the story of His wondrous grace to the poor perishing sinners around!