WITHOUT
BLAME IN LOVE
BY CARRIE F. JUDD
“The fruit of the Spirit is love.”-Gal. v:22.
As we need the blessed
Spirit of God to impart faith, joy and peace to our souls, so do we need His
indwelling presence that we may know how to love “in deed and in truth.” By
nature our hearts are selfish and cold, but the Holy Spirit melts them until
they are ready flow out in love to God, and in sympathy and love towards even
the most wretched and sinful of our fellow creatures.
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| ©Hannah Clark |
“God is love,” and therefore the Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of
Love.” Our hearts must be filled with His Divine presence before we can in the
least degree comprehend the amazing manifestation of God’s love in which He
appears to us as our crucified Redeemer. Many of us are grieved and amazed at
our own stony-heartedness, but if we estimated the sinful natural heart as it
must appear in the light of God’s holiness, we would no longer deem it capable
of those high and holy emotions which can only be shed abroad in our souls by
the power of the Spirit of God.
It is impossible for our
wills to be brought in harmony with God’s will until they have been subdued by
His love. Whatever discipline He used to bring us closer to Himself, it is
always, at last, the realization of His infinite love which breaks our suborn
hearts. It is the recognition of the nail prints, and the pierced side, marks
of the love wherewith “He loved us to the end,” that conquers our unbelief and
makes us cry out with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”
What love passing conception
must that love be which the Father bestows upon “His only begotten Son,” Who in
all things delighted to do His perfect will, and yet our Saviour’s words to His
Father are these, “I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou has loved Me
and may be in them, and I in them.”-(St. John xvii:26.)
It is only by the
indwelling of Christ in our hearts that we are “rooted and grounded in love,”
and are able “to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,” and to “be
filled with all the fullness of God.”-(Eph. iii:17-19.)
We are commanded to love
the Lord with all our heart, an the
very fact that God requires our undivided affection is a proof of His marvelous
love towards us, for it is only when we truly love any one that we are jealous
of their affection. “Love is strong as death” (Cant. viii:6) and the holy
jealousy of Him, to Whom the Church is espoused, is a manifestation of His love
and care over her.
the apostle tells us
that God hath chosen us that we should be “holy, and without blame before Him
in love.” Blessed privilege! Though our judgment may often prove weak, and
erring, though our minds are devoid of what the world might deem wisdom, though
we are “the weak and foolish things” of earth, yet we be “holy, and without
blame before God, in love.” This is the “way of holiness” in which “the
wayfaring men, though fools” may walk and “not err,” for the love which the
Holy Spirit implants in our souls makes them steadfastly cling, through every
test to Him Who can alone satisfy their heaven-born longings.
It is for those who love
God that all things are made to “work together for good,” and it is for those
who love Him that God has prepared those wondrous things which “eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard,” nor heart imagine, but which are revealed unto us by the
Holy Spirit. Ah! who but those who love God are capable of receiving these
blessed revelations, for will not the marvelous joys of Heaven consist in a
perfect realization of our Redeemer’s love? And who but those who love god with
all their heart could be fitted for the eternal bliss of dwelling in His
presence?
“We shall see Him as He
is” (1 John iii:2), and this though is abundant joy to those who have learned
by faith that He is “altogether lovely,”
“the chiefest among ten thousand.” I doubt not that many of us have cried with
unutterable yearning, “Lord, let me know Thee by faith,” and to those who
persistent love is thus seeking Him, comes blessedly this answer, “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My
Father, and I will love him, and will manifest
Myself to him.”-(St. John xiv:21.)
As we rise to fullness
of life, “hid with Christ in God,” we begin to realize what love really is that
pure fervent love which ‘never faileth,” which “beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” O, how much we need this
love which “never faileth” when temptation comes, the love which is able to
recognize God’s mercy and loving kindness in clouds as well as in sunshine; and
how much we need this love which “never faileth,” towards the weak and
wandering ones who would exhaust the patience and compassion of any except
those who were filled with “the love of the Spirit.”
And when we are being
taught in the “faith which worketh by love,” how sweetly comes to us the word
of the inspired apostle, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God, and every one that
loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” –(1 John iv:7.)
We must realize that
Christ’s word to love one another was given as a command, and must be obeyed if
we would be His disciples. This “unfeigned love” was the very badge which would
distinguish His followers from those of the world who were still abiding in
death. “A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another; as I have
loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye
are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.”-(St. John xiii:34,35.)
“All men shall know,” our Saviour says, and it is indeed noticeable
that even unbelievers recognize this bond among true followers of Jesus,
without having any conception of the exalted love by which the members of the
body of Christ are thus “fitly joined together.”
There can be no schism
where love abounds. May we all, as followers of our loving Master, “increase and
abound in love one toward another, and toward all men,” “to the end He may stablish our hearts unblamable in holiness before God,
even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.”-(1
Thess. iii:12,13.)
