2 Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: When we see a successful life we are always curious to know what is the secret of it. You see a man who is successful in business, and you wonder what are the qualities in him which make him the successful man he is. The motive power of life is love. 1. Some Christians make the secret of their life fear. What a horrible thing to live with nothing but that fear of death to keep a man away from the slough of animalism! 2. And the motive power of a Christian life is not conscience. A few years ago a young man who was going to enter the ministry as an apostle of ethical culture came to see me, and we talked his ministry over. He told me he was going down into one of the wards of New York City to work for the regeneration of men. He said: "I do not want merely to make them happier; I want to make them really better." I asked him: "What is the power on which you rely to make them better?" "I shall appeal to their sense of right; I shall not appeal to anything else, but I shall try to show them that they ought to be righteous because it is righteous, they ought to do right because it is right," He was going to build his religion on what? Love? No! On conscience. Judaism, Puritanism, and Ethical Culture are incarnate conscience. Christianity is incarnate love. A man may conform to law because it is righteous law; but he cannot love the law. You cannot love an abstraction. 3. Thus over against the life that is keyed to fear and the life that is keyed to conscience Paul puts the life that is keyed to love. "The love of Christ constraineth us." I want to trace the way in which that love grows up in a human soul. The child begins by loving her father or her mother. The child sees righteousness, truth, purity, patience, fidelity, love, in that father, that mother. And this child who sees in the father the Christly quality, but does not know it is Christly, and begins to love, is already loving Christ, though it is the Christ in fragment, the Christ in a hint. This child goes out into life, little by little, and learns that love is larger than she thought. She learns that father and mother do not incarnate all the phases of love. Love is not confined to the few. There are other husbands that love, other fathers that love, other mothers that love, other phases of love. No one soul can teach all the lessons of love. The length and breadth and height of love — how large it is, how multiplex it is .t Learning this, she learns to love also, bears burdens and learns the patience of love, finds the opportunity to do good and learns the service of love. For we learn love only by loving. Many stop there. They have learned the love which we call philanthropy. But they do not know that which lies beyond and is greater than all, because it is in all the love of God, the love of Christ. And so they walk always, it seems to me, in a certain sadness or possibility of sadness, I took my Greek Concordance the other day to see what this word "constrains" means; and, instead of looking up the classical Greek, I looked to see how it was used elsewhere in the New Testament. And at first I said, I am not getting much light from this investigation. I turned to one incident where it is said "the crowd thronged Jesus Christ," and I found the word "thronged" was the same as the word "constrained." And I turned to another passage where it was said that "the soldiers came and took Jesus Christ," and I found the word "took" was the same as the word in our text "constrained." And I came to another passage where it is said that "a woman was sick with a great fever," and I found the word "sick " was the same as the word here "constrained." This seemed at first strange. But pondering made it clear. Our text is an illustration of St. Paul's genius of talking in metaphor, for Paul was a poet and broke through the rules of rhetoric because his spirit was too strong to be caged by language. Paul is the poet, and it is the poet that speaks here of love. Love is a crowd. Love from father, from mother, from brother, from sister, from brethren, throngs all about Paul, and carries him, as it were, off his feet, as a man is taken by a great crowd and forced along the highway. Love is a soldier; it has come and laid violent hands upon Paul; and he is no longer his own master. Love is his master. Love has captured him, taken him prisoner; Love does with him what he will. Do not be troubled if you do not have the full experience of Paul at the beginning of your life. Have you money, and do you wonder what you shall do with it? Let love tell you. Have you a little time this week, and do you wish to know what you shall do with it? Let love tell you. Have you a friend who has done wrong to you, and you wonder what you ought to do? Let love tell you. Are you questioning what course in life you shall take? Let love tell you. (Lyman Abbott, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: |
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