Loveth

Rev. i. 5.

WHAT a wealth of meaning is brought out by the Revised Translation of the Doxology, caught from the minstrelsy of Heaven, with which the Apostle John opens the book of Revelation! We have been accustomed to read, “Unto Him that loved us;” but we now find it translated from the past tense to the present, “Unto Him that loveth us.” The love of Jesus to His own is an eternal noon; a perpetual present; an ocean fulness without tide or shadow of turning

Of course, He loved us, and bore us on His heart, before the worlds were made. It was for love of us that He emptied Himself, and became obedient to the death of the Cross. Yes, and He will love us, with the love of the Bridegroom towards the Bride, through those golden ages which we are to spend with Him, dating from the marriage feast, and ending never. But this is the most priceless thought of all — that He loves us now. If He loved me when He gave Himself for me, it is certain that He loves me equally to-day; because He is the same in the to-day of the present, as He was in the yesterday of the past, and as He will be in the for-ever of the future. He is always “this same Jesus.” (Acts i. n.) Time, which changes all things else, is foiled when it approaches the heart of Christ. The flight of ages cannot lessen, or chill, or affect His Love. “This Man because He continueth ever hath an unchangeable priesthood”.

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We are so apt to judge o£ the Love of Christ to us by our appreciation and enjoyment of it. It is easy to believe in it when we are bright in spirits and well in health; when the atmosphere is clear, and the air is invigorating, and the sun shines brightly; or when we are living in happy obedience, and conscious fellowship. It needs no great effort, under such circumstances, to be sure of the Love of Christ. But when our sky is overcast, and our way lies through a tangled jungle; when they are increased that trouble us, and misfortunes tread on each other’s heels; when we are conscious of failure and sin — it is not natural to us then to calculate on the unchanged love of Christ. Yet we might as well suppose that the heat given out by the sun varied with the temperature of our fickle northern climate, as think that the Love of Christ changes with every variation in ourselves. It is a constant quantity. It is not turned away by our sins. It is not lessened by our coldness or neglect. Like some perennial spring, it cannot be bound by frost, or reduced by drought, or exhausted by the demands of generations.

The truant servant, lying spiritless on the desert sands; the headstrong apostle venting denials and oaths in the midst of the servants of his Master’s foes; the back-slider, reaping the bitter harvest of his ways; the discouraged exile, mourning in the land of the Hermonites over the happy past — all these may look up to the empyrean of the love of Christ, and be sure that He loveth with a constant and unwavering attachment. Write this on the tablets of your heart, reader; that neither sin, nor depression, nor height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, shall be able to alter the fulness and constancy of the “Xwetb.”

love of Christ to you. If only Christians would really grasp this great truth, and would dare, in frequent contradiction to their own feelings, to believe in and affirm the unchanging love of God, they would reach a firm standing ground from which the great adversary of souls could never dislodge them.

“I am feeling loneless and depressed; but God loves me!” “I am groping my way through the darkness; but God loves me!” “I have fallen, and am no better than others; but God loves me!” “I am passing through a season of sore chastening; but this makes me only more sure that my Father loveth me!” This is the secret of victory and rest.

Our Lord bade us abide in His love. “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love” — of course. this means in the consciousness of His love. It is one thing to be in the light, and quite another thing to know it. There is a sense in which we are all living in the light of Christ’s love; but we do not all enjoy it as a living practical experience. “Keep yourselves in the love of God. /. e ., cultivate an habitual consciousness of the love of God toward you.

There are seven golden rules for acquiring and maintaining this consciousness.

(1) Never leave your room in the morning without a distinct apprehension of the fact that “the Father Himself loveth you.” (John xvi. 27.)

(2) Ask the Holy Spirit — who sheds abroad the love of God in the heart, and who brings all things to our remembrance — that you may hear the whispers of His still, small voice, perpetually reminding you that God loves you.

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(3) Accept all lovely things — gentle words; kindly acts; gleams of sunlight ;the songs of birds and the scent of flowers — as being the token of His love; and look up with a smile to Him, as you say, “I thank Thee.”

(4) Avoid all things that are inconsistent with the fact of your being God’s beloved child; all irritableness and fretfulness; all petulance and anger; all ill-speaking, and uncharitableness.

(5) Do the meanest and most trivial things for the love of God, as one constrained by that love not to live to self, but to Him; and let y r our one aim be to do all things as one whom God loves.

(6) Let no commandment, of which you are aware, lie on the page of Scripture unobeyed. “He that hath My commandments and keepeth them he it is that loveth Me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father; and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” (John xiv. 21.)

(7) Cultivate a spirit of disinterested love and kindness to all. “He that dwelleth in Love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

Rooted and grounded in love to others, we comprehend best the love of God to ourselves.

It was the charm of our Saviour’s life, that He was able to say, the Father loveth the Son. (John v. 20.)

Unloved and un welcomed by those whom He came to save, He found solace and a home in the unchanging love of God. On the eve of His death, He could wish for us nothing better than that we should enjoy the love wherewith the Father had loved Him.

Let us not miss our heritage by supineness or neglect. But let us live, as He did, beneath the spell of this sweet and heart-stirring strain — “He loveth us.”