LOVE
Jim R Walkinshaw
Galatians 2: 20
John 13: 1
Ephesians 5: 22-33
I had an impression to say a few words with the Spirit’s help in relation to love. It seems to be an appropriate thing to speak about at a wedding. It is a very wide subject; there is much running through the Scriptures in relation to love. I was thinking of the example we get from the Lord Jesus Himself as to love; firstly as to what is individual; then in relation to those who we might call our own, our brethren, then in relation to the family setting and in relation to the assembly. My desire is to make much of the Lord Jesus Christ and His love. There is no doubt as to the love of the Lord Jesus. There is no doubt of the love of our brother and sister for each other, but I think as our brother and sister and all of us continue our pathway here, if the Lord leaves us here, it would help and encourage us to get a fresh impression of the love of the Lord Jesus.
The apostle speaks of “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”. I trust that everyone here can start there. You, young ones: get an impression in your soul in relation to the love of the Lord Jesus. He has loved you and given Himself for you. I believe our brother and sister may have started there in their own individual experience, they came to know the love of the Lord Jesus themselves, individually. How great and sustaining that is; as you go through life, and the trials and tribulations come, you can rely on the love of the Lord Jesus, One whom the apostle says “has loved me and given himself for me”. It is very precious to have that realisation in your soul. The Lord Jesus said Himself, “No one has greater love than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends”, John 15: 13. May we have a fresh impression every one of us, from the youngest to the oldest of the love of the Lord Jesus and may it sustain us here despite whatever may come in.
In this verse in John 13 it says of the Lord Jesus, “having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end”; that is the company. I think we need to get some impression in our hearts of the love of the Lord Jesus for the company, for those who are His own, those who have committed themselves to Him. I was thinking too of the hymn that says,
The love that gave Thyself for us
Forgotten cannot be; (Hymn 326).
If we have an impression of the love of the Lord Jesus individually, it will draw us together as a company with a common object to be here in relation to that blessed One. You think of this company here today, smaller than we would have hoped, smaller than we would have liked through the health restrictions brought in, but I think we can get an impression as we gather together in this way of the love of the Lord Jesus, the love of the Lord Jesus for this company. How He delights in it, to see a company of those that know His love individually, but they that are prepared in faithfulness to Himself to gather together to His Name. I believe that is a word for our brother and sister, to love the brethren, to learn from the Lord Jesus in relation to love, One who loved His own. We look at Him as an example; He is One who is unique; He loved His own and He loved them to the end and He loved them through everything. What He went through for this little company here: what He went through for each one of us here! But we are to learn from that and we are to learn to love the brethren.
I just want to touch on 1 John 3: 13, 14, “Do not wonder, brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren”. As we love the brethren, and as we desire to be amongst the brethren, I believe we will know what it is to experience what John says, we pass from death to life. You think of the situation in the world around, the situation with death on every hand, the fear of death marking men as never before. We should know what it is to learn from the Lord Jesus to love the brethren, and we will know what it is to pass from death to life, what a wonderful matter that is!
I was not going to say too much about the exhortations as to wives and the exhortations to husbands in these verses in Ephesians; they are well known and the scripture sets them out very powerfully and very positively, but again that we might learn from the love of the Lord Jesus: “even as the Christ also loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it”. What a love that is; I believe that the character of that love, not by any means the strength, or the power, or the efficacy of it, but the character of that love can mark us in our pathways here, as we know what it is in our family settings to love even as the assembly is loved by Christ. Then He says, “even as the Christ also loved the assembly”. That would suggest that the character of that love is something that we are able to partake of and to enter into. As we are the subjects of it, we are to know something of it. May our brother get some impression in relation to that and know, learn from our Lord Jesus Christ what that love is so that when the exhortation says “Husbands, love your own wives”, it would be in that character of love shown by the Lord Jesus, Himself: One who was prepared to deliver Himself up for it. How much the assembly cost Him! What an answer she is to Him as she takes her place subjectively at His side, and our sister might learn from that too.
I just had these simple words that we might learn love from the Lord Jesus Himself, love individually, the One who has loved me, and each take it home to himself or herself, ”loved me and given himself for me”. It is the One who has “loved his own who were in the world”, loved the brethren, “loved them to the end”, loved them through everything; and then His love for the assembly, One who “has delivered himself up for it”, in order that He might have an answer for His own heart. May He have the answer at the present time; an answer that will fill out throughout all eternity.
May these things encourage us for His Name’s sake.
Maidstone
18th September 2020