You will remark that the prayer of which this verse is a part, is consequent upon the counsels of God being known. That we have in the first chapter followed by a prayer which is accomplished when these counsels are learned. The first prayer is, therefore, in a certain sense, future. But this prayer in the third chapter is present. It is what is to be formed in me consequent upon understanding the height into which God in His counsels of grace has called me; I am to have a sense of the love of Christ. The idea is that if you have got in spirit into a scene where everything sets forth what God was and is, then you have, as it were, a good opportunity for understanding the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is not Christ's service that is here put forward to engage our minds and affections. Many are occupied with that, and rightly, too, in its place, but we must not forget that there is something else—Christ's love. No doubt a mother has service for her child, but she has love also, and many a child knows the service of its parent who does not know the love that produces the service. When you have reached the consummation of all the work of Christ, when you have got into the knowledge of God's counsels, and into the height in which these counsels place you—Christ accomplishing them all-there is still something further and deeper to learn, and that is where the second prayer of the Apostle comes in, " That ye may know the love of Christ." I have learned what His service is, and I am in all the benefits of it, still I am not occupied with the benefits that result from it, but with the love that produced it. And this is a wonderful comfort, and gives great elevation and dignity to a person. I am occupied not with what one did for me, but with the love that moved him.
“That ye might be filled unto all the fullness of God," is a more exact reading of the second clause of this verse. It is the full expression of God—that is, Christ. What I propose to set forth now is the varied ways in which we learn the love of Christ, for we have to learn it practically. It is not by circumstances that we are educated in the love of the Father; on the contrary, it is the knowledge of that love that prepares us for circumstances and makes us superior to them. Circumstances would mislead you, making you very elated when they are pleasant, and depressing you when they are disagreeable. Whereas, if you knew the love of the Father, you might shun the very thing that promises ease and pleasure, and accept the trying circumstances as a check or hindrance to save you from some impending danger. The Father's love puts you above the world. The world is that which is visible. The moment the visible thing comes in faith goes out; we judge according to the sight of our eyes. This is what the love of the Father saves us from. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith." The only one who can instruct me in that love is the Son.
Now we come to consider His love-the love of Christ as distinguished from the love of the Father. The love of Christ puts me not so much above things as above man in every form. I have the knowledge of the love of a Person who knows me where I am down here. One of the ways in which He comes to us is by showing us that He has been Himself down in the circumstances that we are in. Nothing more affects a Person in this world than knowing that he has a heart thoroughly devoted to him. Is Christ's heart devoted to me? Yes, and thoroughly devoted to you if you knew it. It is an immense thing to find, too, that the person so devoted to you is One who knows all about you. Such is the love of Christ. It is the love of One who knows all about me and the circumstances I must go through, and who makes Himself known in my heart just in proportion as I surrender the man that is against Him.
You will never understand Christianity or the Bible rightly until you see that it is the history of two men. The first man failed in everything that God proposed to him. Another Man came in who met the mind of God in everything, and not only that, but when glorified in the mount—God's acknowledgment of His satisfaction and delight in Him-He descended from that point of eminence to bear the judgment due to the first man who had never done the twill of God. The question then is, to which man do you belong? Belonging to Christ I am united to Him not by the flesh as to Adam, but by the Holy Ghost. I am “not in the flesh, but in the spirit " I have received the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not only man is out, but you have got a new power in you.
I propose to show different examples of this. First let me call your attention to the difference between knowing the service of Christ and knowing His heart. I will take one example as to that before going into the examples in which we learn how the love is made known to us. I take the case of the woman who touched the hem of His garment. If you look at that case you must be greatly struck with the Divine light in her soul. She saw a poor stranger there in the crowd and she said, “That Man has got power to cure me, and not only that, but if I only touch him the cure will be imparted." Just imagine yourself for a moment in her position, and think what a feeling was in her mind, what a disclosure the Spirit of God had made to her heart. She saw in that Stranger there in the crowd One who not only had power to relieve her of this terrible illness, but also with readiness to use that power, not because of any desert, but simply by contact. Do you think it cannot be done now even more simply than it was then? Do you apprehend the Son of God as One who has all power and all readiness to impart it, not only to entreaty, but even to a touch? This woman surely then knew His service, and she is an instance of a person knowing the service of Christ-feeling the effectual working of His grace-and yet not knowing His love. She is afraid to come to Him. She has touched Him, but she has not confidence to come to Him; on the contrary, she is fearing and trembling and hesitating. Perhaps there are some souls here who have never traveled into the great reality of actual nearness to the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't say they are not converted, but they have not come to Christ. When the woman came to Him and owned to Him the blessing she had received, she gets a further thing. She learns now not His service, but His love. “And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace." “Daughter! " What a feeling her heart gets now. She goes away knowing not only that she is cured, but that she is loved by the Savior. We get the same order in the third of Ephesians. When you rise to an apprehension of the height in which you have been placed by God's grace, the great theme that is to be disclosed to you is the depth of the love of One who has been down here in all our misery and need.
I will turn now to the examples of learning the love of Christ. The first is in Gen. 1:15-2115And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:15‑21), " And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, forgive I pray thee now the trespass of thy brethren and their sin; for they did unto thee evil; and now we pray thee forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face, and they said, Behold we be thy servants. And Joseph said, Fear not, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now, therefore, fear ye not; I will nourish you and your little ones. And he comforted them and spake kindly unto them." Every one amongst us knows pretty well the history of Joseph. He was represented to his father as dead. But when the famine came and bread was wanted, the father heard there was corn in Egypt, and sent down Joseph's brethren. There it was discovered after a time that the one who had been reported dead was the one who had the bread of life. They were made acquainted with Joseph and received under his protection. It is all a figure of a greater than Joseph, and it sets forth the restoration of Israel to Christ. But the teaching of this passage for us is that it is possible for a soul to be acquainted with the service of Christ and to have received its benefits, and yet not know His heart. Nay it is not only possible, but it is a state of soul with which we are all conversant. They will speak warmly of the goodness and kindness of the Savior as to His service, and yet they do not know what the actual feeling of Christ is towards them, because they have never come to nearness with Him. Then nothing is hidden or reserved. It is often put off to a death-bed, Then, when everything but what is eternal is passing sway, the soul glances up into that great scene of eternal light and cries, " I am going to meet my Savior now," the reality of everything is out. In the ca se of Joseph's brethren this began with very great anguish; for they say, " We have indeed behaved badly to you." They had been living for seventeen years under Joseph's shadow, and no doubt they thought there never was such a brother as he was, but they did not know his feelings about them. That only came out after the death of their father, when they were forced to cast themselves directly upon Joseph, and had no one else to whom they could look.
If you have not already passed through this, the day will come when you must do it. And then what comes out? That whilst there is the most thorough disclosure of what I am naturally towards the Lord Jesus Christ, the love that is in his heart for me shines out at the same time. What a blessed thing! “Joseph wept when they spake unto him." It was quite true, as he tells them, that they had behaved badly to him, but he loved them. That is what a guilty man finds when he really comes to close quarters with the Lord. As I have said to a guilty person, if you are really repentant there is only One with whom you ought always to be found, One who can see you without a spot. “Your sins and iniquities I will remember no more." If I am strongly sensible of my sins, the only one I can be happy with is the One who forgets them forever.
“I will nourish you and your little ones." He takes them into his house, he spreads his wing over them. “He spake to their hearts” [see margin]. This goes farther than anything Joseph had done for them. This is what the guilty man finds when he comes near to Christ, not His service merely, but the love of the Savior's heart.
For another case turn to the second chapter of the prophet Jonah. Jonah is not exactly a guilty person. The leading thought in his case is that man disappears, and the practical working of Divine grace is seen. Man has fallen and failed in everything, and he must melt as a dissolving view from before the soul, that Christ may come in in the supremacy of His blessedness and perfection supplanting man in our heart.
Jonah is not exactly the guilty man, but the willful man. He is told to do a thing and won't do it, but goes his own way, and as is always the case he finds it a very foolish way, for in the long run it lands him in the mud. What follows? “I will look again toward thy holy temple.", If your wilfulness has brought you into such a position as that, when no one has a word to say for you, and you cannot say a word for yourself, there is only One to whom you can turn. The heart turns to Him and is not disappointed. This is what Jonah learned here in the hour of his extremity, when he could not say a word for himself, just like Peter. Whom did the Lord first go and look for when He rose from the dead? He goes to comfort Peter, and to let him know His love. Then He tells him how he is to serve Him. So here God tells Jonah, “Do what I bid you."
I pass on to another example. Canticles ch. 5., "I sleep, but my heart waketh, it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh saying, open to me my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled, for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night (ver. 2). This is neither the guilty man nor the willful man, but the indolent one. Are you never indolent? How often do we hear saints say, " I am not so bright as I used to be! ") I have met many such cases lately, cases of very deep depression. Scripture accounts for it. You are inactive, i you are asleep. Sleep means inactivity. It is not inactivity in doing good works merely. To express Christ 1 is greater than any good work, and if you are expressing Christ you will not do anything badly. For, remember, it is possible to do a good thing badly. How often men do right things wrongly! The best thing is to have the glace of Christ, to be expressing Him; because if you are living Christ, when a good work comes in your way you will do it. Don't think that I disparage good works; but I insist that there is a greater thing.
It is often said that as a man's knowledge increases his earnestness, declines. I cannot understand why it should be so. Yet I find many with a great deal of intelligence, but not a great deal of “panting " (Psa. 42). Why is this? Some intelligent man will tell me that belonged to a former dispensation. But I say it belongs to this. It is not true that as a person's knowledge increases his earnestness must decline. On the contrary, I believe that the man who has the largest and deepest sense of the love of Christ can the least do without it, and will be panting and pressing most eagerly after it. Here is inactivity—sleep—and the Lord comes to awaken. It is by a knock, not a voice. A voice is from the Word, a knock is rather circumstances. She is aroused by the knock, and opens to her beloved, but finds He has withdrawn Himself (ver. 6). This is the depression that people complain of. There are very sad cases of it. What is it all for? The Lord wants to teach you what His love to you is, to bring your heart into a deeper knowledge of Himself. How are souls recovered from this depression? We find the mode of recovery in verses 10-16. It is by occupation with what the Beloved is, all His graces and perfections.
There is an instance of it in the disciples whom the Lord met going to Emmaus. "He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." That is the point. That is what brightens up the soul. It is not seeking to find out how you fell into such a state. A man in a dark night does not watch the clouds that cover the moon, but looks for the moon that shines.
Another example different from any of those already looked at, is found in 1 Kings 17 Here is a peculiar case, and one that you would not expect, but it explains a great many experiences. Here was a poor widow at the point of starvation relieved by a prophet sent from God. Her resources were almost exhausted, she had just enough for one meal, and then no other prospect but death. “But she did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, and he, and her house did eat a full year. (This is the reading of the margin, which I believe is correct.) Just think what a happy time that must have been. A prophet in the house, and there this woman went on whether it was winter, or summer, or spring, or autumn, without fear or care; an unfailing supply of all she needed. Thus she goes on for a whole year. This represents the case of a soul that has only learned the service of Christ-here, of course, temporally. To give you a very accurate example of it, it was how the disciples knew the Lord on earth.
You do not lose this because you learn Him in a higher way. But if you only know Christ in this way a day will come when you will be in intolerable grief.
The widow's son dies. She comes to the prophet and cries, “Art thou 'come unto me to call my sin to remembrance." What! After the 365 days of direct sustenance by God? Yes. Christ was not known yet in resurrection (speaking figuratively). Elijah stretches himself three times upon the dead body of the child, and in answer to his cry the Lord revives him. Thus Christ connects Himself with death, and I see His power over it. I learn Christ outside all this scene of ruin in resurrection life. I cannot enlarge upon this subject. It is what we find in 1 John “He that hath the Son hath life."
What did this woman learn in this? A deeper and fuller sense of who this man was, and of God (ver. 24). And did she lose the value of what she had already learned, his provision for her needs? Or does anyone lose the great love of Christ on earth by learning Christ in resurrection? Having got Christ in resurrection I am not merely under His protection, but I have passed with Him out of all the ruin and disaster that I was in, and I am brought into the wonderful elevation of His own resurrection, where no evil can come, and life is the perpetual enjoyment of Himself.
This is what deepens my knowledge of Him, and my delight in Him, too. “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord" (after resurrection).
Turn now to the New Testament for another case. Luke 5 You would hardly expect to find such a case here, still it is so. It is not a case of knowing Christ only on the earth, but of serving Christ with a fleshly sentiment. Here was Peter giving up his ship, his time, and his means for the service of the Lord. What more could be desired? The Lord tells him in effect, “You do not understand the right ground of service, you have not learned what I am yet." It is not denied that he was really serving Him. But you may see a man giving his time and means for the propagation of the gospel, and yet very possibly he has never yet comet to close quarters with the Lord. What is the effect when Peter recognizes who the Lord is. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Was he doing anything wrong? No, but the Lord is teaching him what He is and what Peter is. And He brings him to this: “They forsook all and followed Him." They never doubted his love afterward. Peter could cast himself into the sea to meet Him. People think you may bring human energy and zeal into the,, service of the Lord, but it will have to die out some '.' day. You must be brought to know the reality of what Christ is, and that will show you what you are yourself. The result is what we see here. “They brought their ships to land, forsook all and followed Him."
In John 13 we learn the same thing in another way. Here we see Christ washing His disciples' feet when the close of His life is near. “Having loved His own...He loved them unto the end." Did your soul ever taste of that love of Christ? Think of the love that a parent has for a child. I don't look to see a blemish in my child. I may see it—it is poor love that does not, if it is there—but I don't want any one else to see it. And this is but a faint picture of what Christ's love is. He is satisfied with nothing for the believer but holiness—perfect holiness. And He is working to take away everything that would cause the slightest reserve between the soul and Himself. Hence in John 21 we see that He does not merely forgive Peter for what He had done, but He puts the trying question, “Lovest thou Me?” And He does not drop it till every reserve in Peter's heart is removed. Then He tells him, “Feed my sheep."
How do you know when a person is restored after a fall? If the Lord will use him. If ever you fall out with people and afterward want to show them that you are quite at one with them again, don't offer to do anything for them but ask them to do something for you. So the Lord gives Peter work to do. He says, “I can trust him; he is a thoroughly restored man." It was, we may be sure, a delight to Peter's heart to hear those words, “Feed my sheep." And can anyone read his epistles without observing how diligently and earnestly he sought the welfare of the flock that had been entrusted to him?
There is one example more that I want specially to bring before you, John 11:3333When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, (John 11:33), &c., " When Jesus, therefore, saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled." I have already remarked that the One who knew all about us was the One who took occasion from His very knowledge of our circumstances to show us His heart. Nothing gives us such an idea of the heart of Christ as His sympathy. Fellowship is when He raises us up to His own level, sympathy) when He comes down to our circumstances, not to our level. He came down into our circumstances to bear our judgment, too, but He never was on a level with us. Now, having borne our judgment and delivered us, He can satisfy His heart by bringing us to His own level.
It is sympathy that we have here. There are two sisters and their great stay gone. Whether man appears in guilt, willfulness, indolence, merely as a man on the earth, or in the zeal of the flesh, he must vanish. Here man dies, and what is se?? Christ. The Spirit of God alone can give us a sense of His love following us all along our path here and entering into all our circumstances. Can anything give such quiet blessed composure as to know that I am the object of perfect love, and that in One who knows all about... me? A mother with a peevish child may know the Lord's sympathy in such a trial of her spirit If she loses her temper He does not sympathize with her; He must correct her.
There are two actions of the Word of God. It corrects and it directs. If I am directed by the Word I have Christ's sympathy. I am coming out of the wilderness leaning on the arm of my Beloved. If you want a figure of it, it is like a man in a wild mountain-forest; he sees a road through it; he follows that road, and he finds company on it. Correction is a different thing. As we see here the Lord corrects Martha, and does not move out of the place where she met Him; but He walks with Mary because she is subject to His word; she waits for it and acts on it. And He weeps. Can you form an idea of a heart that can stoop down to what is in yours, the sense of your bereavement, to use that as an opportunity for the disclosure of His love? The house of mourning is more welcome to Him than the house of feasting because it gives him an opportunity for disclosing His love? He comes and walks beside one, and can comfort the bereaved heart in the assurance that he is “a Friend who sticketh closer than a brother." Death had laid hold upon the stay of Mary's heart, but death cannot lay hold upon Him. Man has failed, but the Lord fails not.
One word more as to sympathy. Nothing softens a person but this. It is easy thus to know a man who has met sympathy. The tendency of trials is to harden, but sympathy makes a man mellow, if I may use such a word. Just as the apple of an old tree is said to be mellower than the apple of a young one of the same kind. Why? Because of what the old tree has passed through; its long exposure to all kinds of weather and to the changing seasons. What makes a man mellow is not trial in itself, but the sense of the sympathy of the Lord Jesus Christ in it. It is not relief. I need not say that in the trial we look for relief. A mother with a troublesome child would honestly tell me, “I wish this peevishness in my child should cease." But that is not the Lord's way always. I say to her, “Turn your attention from this peevishness, and think of the Lord bearing you company in this trial!
The principle of the world is think of yourself, take care of yourself, for nobody else will. But how different this is? What a different tone and manner it gives me to know that there is One who cares for me, with a perfect unfailing love! In Mary's case the dearest object on earth is taken away from her, her prop and support is gone; but the Lord says, " I will use that to come in and acquaint you with my heart.
( He does not simply say, " I will raise Lazarus," though according to His wonderful grace He does raise him. What things Mary would have to talk of to her restored brother as they went along! She could say to him, " The Lord has given you back to me after teaching me how to do and bear without you; after teaching me that He can himself come in and with His wonderful sympathy supply the place of every loss."
So the Lord in His varied ways is teaching us one great lesson which should give a character to every one of us; the all-sufficiency of His love. Hence I look at everything as coming from Him. If I meet with love I from any I welcome it; for just as philosophers tell you that there is no light in the world but what came from the sun, so there is not a particle of love in the heart of a saint that has not come from the heart of Christ.
Do you complain of the lack of love? I have got more love than I can ever take in! My only regret is that I do not give out more. The cleverest man could not distinguish which lamp is lighting a particular spot in the room. They all are, they all combine. So it is with the love of Christ flowing through His people. It all combines. And there is more love in His heart than you can take in, more than you can practically understand; therefore, it is " the love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
I trust every heart here can join in the language of the apostle in the close of Rom. 8, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? "