PURSUED BY LOVE

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9. The suffering of love

Love suffers because the spirit of the world antagonizes the Spirit of God. The spirit of the world is unholy, the Spirit of God is holy. This is not just opposition to the world’s spirit, but comes about because the Holy Spirit is the absolute author of all holiness. There is no point where the world’s life does not antagonize the Holy Spirit, wherever He touches it there will be conflict.
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15).

Love suffers. When love increases in our hearts due to increased activity of the Holy Spirit, it must come into conflict with all that pertains to the spirit of this world that seeks to maintain a place in our soul. Inwardly animated by the Holy Spirit there will be a clash of conscience when faced with the worldly spirit. Within families, where one breathes a worldly spirit and another testifies against it in the Spirit of holiness, this will bring trouble and strife. When the State, a school or church or society has a worldly spirit abounding, there will be trouble and strife from the divine Spirit. There can be no compromise between these two. If a worldly spirit closes our hearts to the Holy Spirit, we are lost. Or if after a long conflict, the Holy Spirit overcomes the world’s spirit, then the price of the world has nothing on us and our names are written in heaven.

There never arose among men a greater love than that of Christ. He had received the Holy Spirit without measure. Filled with tenderest love, He could embrace the truest intimacy with all that is human. He gave Himself to the human race. His love is eternal, there is no outcast too degraded or low for His compassion.

How did the world receive this love? “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11) The world was offended by it, could not bear it and responded with hatred because it denied its sinful pleasures. The whole appearance of Christ was/is a living protest against the world’s regime. Hence the world did and still does treat His love as hatred, returned it with contempt. The planting of the Cross on Calvary only a question of time.

The greatest possible sin we can commit is the refuse the love of God that the Holy Spirit brings to human hearts, to banish Him. It is quite impossible to be neutral or indifferent towards God. As soon as we decline to love God, we will begin to hate Him. It is this hatred of God that lies deep in the recesses of every unregenerate heart. Conversion must mean to be rid of all such hatred and to receive love in its place. “I love the Lord” is the mightiest confession, far above all others.

What they did to Jesus, do to His followers.
“Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.” (John 15:20)
Yield to the world or compromise and you will be received, assured of honour and glory. Loving the world with holy love will sooner or later lead to an experience of its wrath. Wrath from those too who have compromised for it exposes their betrayal. The cause for love’s suffering is its origin, the Holy Spirit. Unholy hate rejects his love.

The reversal of love is failing to cherish, uplift, enrich. It consumes and destroys. Love can bear all things, but does not tolerate everything. It will not tolerate the worldly spirit. Real love is also hatred, hatred reigns with love. He that loves the beautiful will hate the ugly. He that loves with that holiness conceived by the Holy Spirit will hate all that is unholy. Love for Christ cannot exist without hatred for Satan. The measure of love in our heart shows equally the depth of our hatred for all that is evil and for Satan. The measure of love of God in our hearts is the depth of our contempt for sin. He that loves the world knows nothing of God’s love, indeed hates God. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15).

No one can say he has nothing to do with God. No one exists without Him. He upholds, bears, carries from moment to moment, giving life and power to all and faculties. Even Satan is not self-existing, nor demons. All live and move and have their being in God (Acts 17:28).
“Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” (Acts 14:16-17)
“Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)
In return men deny the existence of Him who keeps them alive and they resist His love. To attempt to withdraw oneself from God is entirely self-defeating, impossible in fact.

Not much spoken of, but there is a hardening of the heart as a result of resisting God’s eternal love, a divine operation destructive to the sinner. At first there is a mere ‘giving up’, a letting alone. Then comes a ‘darkening’ and after this the ‘hardening of the heart’.
“Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: …And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” (Romans 1:24 & 28)
When given over to a reprobate mind, the Lord allows man the desires of his heart. When a sinner persists in evil, God sears the conscience. Sin intoxicates more and more. The greater the indulgence, the deeper the darkness. God lets the sinner go, intoxicates him so that he does not see the precipice yawning before him.

What more must God do to show His love to mankind than that which He has already done in giving His only Son? Rejecting God’s love is surely the most heinous of all possible sin and deserving of hardening and judgement. Do not want it, shall not have it.

 

“All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

(John 6:37)

 

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