Perfect love - Chambers, Oswald
But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of god perfected. 1 john 2:5 if we love one another, god dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 1 john 4:12 1.
In abandoned indwelling (romans 5:5)
There is only one being who loves perfectly, and that is god, yet the new testament distinctly states that we are to love as god does; so the first step is obvi- ous. If ever we are going to have perfect love in our hearts we must have the very nature of god in us. In romans 5:5 the apostle paul tells us how this is possible; he says, the love of god is shed abroad in our hearts by the holy ghost which is given unto us. He is speaking not of the power to love god, but of the very love of god itself which is shed abroad a superabounding word, it means that the love of god takes possession of every crook and cranny of our nature. The practical question to ask therefore is, have i received the holy spirit? Has it ever come to an issue with me? There is nothing on earth like the love of god when once it breaks on the soul, it may break at a midnight or a dawn, but always as a great surprise, and we begin to experience the uniting of our whole being with the nature of god. Everything in that moment becomes easy, no command of jesus is difficult to obey. It is not our power to love god that enables us to obey, but the presence of the very love of god in our heart which makes it so easy to obey him that we dont even know we are obeying. As you recall to your mind the touchings of the love of god in your life they are always fewyou will never find it impossible to do anything he asks. When the love of god has been shed abroad in our hearts we have to exhibit it in the strain of life;
when we are saved and sanctified we are apt to think that there is no strain, but Paul speaks of the tribulation which worketh patience. I mean by strain, not effort, but the possibility of going wrong as well as of going right. There is always a risk, for this reason, that god values our obedience to him. When god
Saves and sanctifies a man his personality is raised to its highest pitch of freedom, he is free now to sin if he wants to; before, he is not free, sin is impelling and urging him; when he is delivered from sin he is free not to sin, or free to sin if he chooses. The doctrine of sinless perfection and consequent freedom from temptation runs on the line that because i am sancti- fied, i cannot now do wrong. If that is so, you cease to be a man. If god put us in such a condition that we could not disobey, our obedience would be of no value to him. But blessed be his name, when by his redemption the love of god is shed abroad in our hearts, he gives us something to do to manifest it. Just as human nature is put to the test in the actual circumstances of life, so the love of god in us is put to the test. Keep yourselves in the love of god, says jude, that is keep your soul open not only to the fact that god loves you, but that he is in you, in you sufficiently to manifest his perfect love in every condition in which you can find yourself as you rely upon him. The curious thing is that what we are apt, too apt, to restrain is the love of god; we have to be careless of the expression and heed only the source. Let our lord be allowed to give the holy spirit to a man, deliver him from sin, and put his own love within him, and that man will love him personally, passionately and devotedly. It is not an earning or a working for, but a gift and a receiving.
2. In abandoned identification
Love suffereth long, and is kind. (1 Corinthians 13:4 rv; see 1 Corinthians 13:47) for the love of christ constraineth us. (2 Corinthians 5:14)
The holy ghost sheds abroad the love of god in our hearts and in 1 Corinthians 13 we see how that perfect love is to be expressed in actual life. Love suffereth long, and is kind. . . . Substitute the lord for love, and it comes home. Jesus is the love of god incarnate. The only exhibition of the love of god in human flesh is our lord, and john says as he is, even so are we in this world (RV). God expects his love to be manifested in our redeemed lives. We make the mistake of imagining that service for others springs from love of others; the fundamental fact is that supreme love for our lord alone gives us the motive power of service to any extent for othersourselves your servants for Jesus sake.
That means i have to identify myself with gods interests in other people, and god is interested in some extraordinary people, viz. , in you and in me, and he is just as interested in the person you dislike as he is in you. I don’t know what your natural heart was like before god saved you, but i know what mine was like. I was misunderstood and misrepresented; everybody else was wrong and i was right. Then when god came and gave me a spring-cleaning, dealt with my sin, and filled me with the holy spirit, i began to find an extraordinary alteration in myself. I still think the great marvel of the experience of salvation is not the alteration others see in you, but the alteration you find in yourself. When you come across certain people and things and remember what you used to be like in connection with them, and realise what you are now by the grace of god, you are filled with astonishment and joy; where there used to be a well of resentment and bitterness, there is now a well of sweetness.
God grant we may not only experience the indwelling of the love of god in our hearts, but go on to a hearty abandon to that love so that god can pour it out through us for his redemptive purposes for the world. He broke the life of his own son to redeem us, and now he wants to use our lives as a sacrament to nourish others.