THE FIDELITY OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST

James B Catterall

Luke 23: 7-23

John 13: 1-17; 20: 14-18; 21: 15-19

I desire at this time that the Lord may give us help together to speak of the fidelity of the love of Christ. I think we must feel that in regard of the love of Christ we touch a theme of peculiar blessedness and sweetness. At the same time, we cannot consider the subject without also feeling that we are drawing near to that which, with all its sweetness, must inevitably be very searching to our hearts. I shall take a human illustration in a simple way; I might say that in regard of human affection, where there is a pure tie between souls there will always be the desire that the expression of it should be heard and understood. One thing that marks the love of Christ, beloved, is its intensely plain speaking, and that touches us in many ways, but in whatever way it may touch our spirits, it always has the great end in view of its own satisfaction, and connected with that, the satisfaction of the Father’s heart.

It was the plain speaking and inquiry of the love of Christ that tested the spirit of Peter so intensely. Even in the ways of the Lord with ourselves, and I touch on it with all affection, we may find the Lord speaking very plainly to us. We may be, for various reasons, inclined to interpret His speaking to us thus more on the line of His lordship than of His affection and care for us. Oftentimes the Lord may speak plainly to us, and it is of all moment to us that we should hear; but there is danger lest we might too readily interpret the Lord’s plain speaking as only bearing on matters that would shew our contrariety to His mind, and the fact that they were out of line with His own pleasure and rights as Lord; but there are times when the Lord speaks with intense plainness, when, if we knew the truth, we should know it was not so much that He was drawing attention to existing wrongs, as to the fact that even on the line of rectitude there may be a lack of intensity and warmth of affection to Himself.

It is insufferable to the heart of Christ that there should be remoteness - distance - on our part. We may incline to it, but the longer we remain there, the more accustomed to it we become, and the more disinclined to leave it, but the love of Christ will not endure distance. The institution of the Supper, the service of feet-washing, the service and care of the Lord immediately on His resurrection in regard of Mary Magdalene particularly, and the dealings of the Lord with Peter at the close of His pathway here, are the plain speaking of the love of Christ that will not endure remoteness. I know of nothing that one becomes so accustomed to with all one’s knowledge of the truth, as the tendency to live in heart at a distance from the Lord. To know the things that are His pleasure and interest, to know the things that are changelessly dear to Himself, and yet, as to our personal links with Him, to be remote, could never satisfy His heart.

I should like to go over with you, as the Lord may help us, the movements of the love of Christ as indicated in the scriptures referred to. As the Lord drew near to the close of His pathway, with His own outlook before Him - death, and what death meant to Him - and to the great end that was to be the final and culminating testimony of His love to the Father, and His love to and interest in His own - one is deeply impressed with the way in which the Lord moved in regard of the passover and the Supper. I do not know that I should be justified in taking for granted that every soul here distinguishes between these, but I think it might suffice if I just say this in passing, that while we need the passover and the Supper, and each has its place, nevertheless, when we have distinguished between the two, we might lack the consideration of exercised affection for the Lord, that looks into the matter to see what bearing one has on the other, for assuredly, when we come together on the first day of the week to answer to the Lord’s desire as the One who laid down His life for us, we would - if ordered aright, come together in moral conditions that have been produced by the keeping of the feast together. Are we taking it for granted that in our hearts there is a sufficient recognition of the fact, that when we come together to answer to the Lord in the Supper, we do not come together to create conditions, but to answer to the Lord in the power of conditions present with us? In whatever way we may order or regard the occasion, we may rest assured of this, that there is that in the Supper which touches our spirits in a peculiarly tender and searching way. In many ways we have been tested, when we have come to take the Supper, and have been made to feel more than in any other way how searching was the scrutiny of the love of Christ; but it was not instituted that we might be searched, or made to feel the remissness of our affection to the Lord, it was instituted that what is due to the Lord Himself in response to His great and precious love might be presented to Himself, the worthy Object of it all.

I draw your attention for a moment to the necessity in regard of the saints at Corinth, that the apostle should recall their attention particularly to the passover at the outset of his epistle. He says, “our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed”. Was there ever such a passover? Paul does not bring it to bear upon them simply to make a distinction between it and the Supper, but in order that their hearts might be freshly exercised as to the bearing of the feast on themselves. He says, “so that let us celebrate the feast ... with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”, 1 Cor 5: 7, 8. Whether in respect of the Lord Himself or in respect of one another, as bound up together with the Lord and His interests, may we be exercised that in all our goings, in all our thoughts of the saints in secret, or when together, and in our prayers for those who are precious to the Lord, that all might be maintained with us in sincerity and truth, for there is nothing that so leads souls astray from the line that pleases the Lord as the lack of these. Individuals, even souls together, may make mistakes, may be diverted, but the Lord places great value on sincerity of heart.

Sincerity, in its simple meaning, is this, that if I say I am going a certain way, then I go that way; if I say I am seeking certain things (the Lord sees my heart), then I seek these things. The Lord knows I may slip and fail in my footsteps, but sincerity and truth imply that what the lips say, the heart really knows to be true. It is not a matter of saying we love the Lord more than we do, or the brethren more than we do; sincerity and truth lie in this, that we love them more than we can tell. May we keep the feast together! What will hold us together will be sincerity and truth.

I believe, that when we come together to the Supper to answer to the Lord, even though there may be a sense of the need of the Lord’s present grace in regard of temporal things and needs, yet He, blessed be His name, gives the grace, not only to rise above that, but also that an answer may be moved in simple response to His precious love. One wishes to speak simply of the Supper as that which marks the great love of the heart of Christ. What a serious thing it would be for our hearts if ever there came a time with us when the Supper became common! Every heart can answer for itself whether there be any such tendency with us. It should ever have in our hearts the greatness of the place that the love of Christ has given it; not a place as an ecclesiastical centre, not a thing which is the centre of one ecclesiastical setting or another, but that which is the most precious and most searching of all things, for it raises a constant question with us as to whether our hearts are right with the Lord as His heart is with ours. The question raised by the love of Christ is where our hearts are. You may remember the Old Testament incident to which I refer. “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?”, 2 Kings 10: 15. This question was asked by one who was not omniscient, but who would fain know how he was regarded by another.

The Lord knows our hearts omnisciently, nevertheless in the Supper there is a constant appeal to our affections, and the nature of the appeal is this, Is your heart right, as my heart is with yours? There will never be any change in the heart of Christ; His love is the same as when He laid down His life for us. Well-known ground as the subject is, I trust that no heart here has the impression that it has become at all common ground. It never will be that to the heart of Christ, and may He grant it may never become so to us. If it become common to us, the thing that the Lord most sought in the institution of it will be that which we lack - a clear, simple, true, and affectionate answer to the Lord Himself for His own sake. He instituted the Supper; it was His own movement.

The hour of the passover had drawn near, and there is an inquiry on the part of the disciples as to the keeping of it, but the institution of the Supper came in distinctly outside the inquiry of the disciples, it came from the Lord Himself. It was not their request or desire that initiated it. Who could have taken them off the ground of the passover, bound up with their affections as it was, but the Lord Himself? Sweetly the Lord served them in taking their hearts outside of Judaism and all connected with it. The truth as we know it will make us free. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”, John 8: 36. The Lord knew what those disciples needed in regard of Judaism, and He took their hearts with Himself on to new ground in the institution of the Supper. I connect the two morally. What the Lord used for the institution of the Supper was provided for the commemoration of the passover - the bread and the wine. The bread and the cup speak to us of the body and blood of Christ. The cup speaks of the love of God. But I am speaking on this occasion of the Supper not only as the Lord’s provision, but of the conditions which the Lord would have on our side in fidelity to Him.

If we have affection, what is the character of it? Is it that which stands in the power of its knowledge? For a moment I would attempt to make this distinction, that the Lord’s appeal is not best answered to by those who know most, but by those who love most. Then, you say at once, that must mean of course by those who have been a long time on the way. No, it does not mean that; but it is really given by hearts to whom the Lord in His own Person is more than anything else, any one else, time, place, or circumstance. It is hearts that love the Lord for His own sake, and respond to Him out of the sense of His own love, that please the Lord best in the Supper.

You may say any one might presume out of their knowledge. There is nothing like love for keeping people quiet. I do not know if you have tried it. I may be thinking of restless people, but there is nothing like love for keeping people quiet, for there is nothing like love so simple and easy to understand. In the presence of the love of Christ, when it lays hold of your soul and impresses your spirit, how much do you want to say? If you were speaking to my soul, which might be a little empty, I could understand your feeling much and saying it too, but in the presence of the love of Christ there oftentimes comes to us a sense that the most we can say may be said in the fewest words. We have nothing to tell the Lord about the Supper; infinite has been the patience of the Lord in what He has told us about it, and in the ministry of the Holy Spirit touching our hearts and bringing before us the great, precious, changeless love of Christ, and the love of God the Father.

The more the love of Christ settles upon our spirits individually or when together, the deeper is the sense our hearts have of the peace, the rest of the love of Christ. Then we do not say things to the Lord on the line of description, but our hearts move only on the line of response, and thus we respond with a deep sense of the way we are indebted to the love of Christ. He instituted the Supper from His own side; it was not the suggestion of the disciples; the Lord knew they could not be without it. As one goes on, one feels more and more thankful that the time between the occasions of breaking bread are just what they are and no more. I do not speak as if the Supper was a place of refuge, for the more we taste of the love of Christ as it is conveyed to us then, the more thankful our hearts become that the space between one occasion and another is no longer than it is.

I come now to the service of feet-washing as connected with the love of Christ; it was not done by the desire of His disciples. It stands on the same ground as the Supper in this respect, that it was the Lord’s institution, and as much above the understanding of the disciples on their side as above their desire. We know much about it. Were I to make a slip to-night and seem to confuse between the Lord’s feet-washing service, and His advocacy, I can understand even a young soul saying, You are confusing these things. Though I saw the distinction many years ago, I did not learn till long after what the preciousness of the love of Christ was in this particular form of service. We want the things themselves. Here we see the love of Christ moving - the same love that instituted the Supper. I would not say we come to the Supper to get our feet washed, but I believe that often and often, when we have come there we have proved in a most blessed way the manner in which the Lord touched our spirits and washed our feet - removing from our souls not only defilement but the sense of encumbrances and weights, and thus enabling our souls to move freely to the Lord with a fresh touch of the love of Christ that did it. Many things might press upon us - the care of the household, physical conditions, weariness of body, the effect of surroundings; these things might be on the spirit in coming together. God in His great wisdom made man a creature of peculiar sensitiveness. Before he sinned, I believe his sensibilities were keen, but they became blunted by distance from God and sin, but may again become sensitive as a consequence of grace having reached us. Even when we are coming together to meet the Lord, we may pass by surroundings, and places, and conditions, that touch our spirits and fain would leave a shadow. You may say, Need I be so? Would it not be better if I did not feel them? No, it would not be better if you did not feel them, but it would be better if, feeling them, you knew the intensity of the grace and the love of Christ that would serve you in regard of them. Do not get away from the feeling; it might mean more insensibility than piety.

I wish now to say a word to the young that has been impressed on my spirit by reason of certain experiences of the last few days. Possibly you pass places you have been accustomed to enter that you could not enter now, because you love the Lord and belong to Him. But you pass the place and you look at it and say, I am glad I do not go there; I know better now. But is that safety? Is your preservation from the things you used to serve and follow wrapped up in your knowledge? No, it is not. Your safeguard is in the fidelity of the love of Christ. You are not safe unless these things touch your spirit with a sense of pain which turns you to the Lord, for you are depending then on the ministry of the Lord’s grace to your spirit.

The Lord instituted the service of feet-washing knowing that His hour was come to depart out of the world, knowing too that He was come from God and went to God, and that the Father had given all things into His hand. The widest possible outlook as to the divine dispensation was before the Lord, and He knew it all. All the inward certainty, and peace, and steadfastness of the Lord’s own spirit - if I may speak of it in that way - was in God the Father; and in the great desire and interest of His love He turns to His own circle, and institutes the service of feet-washing. What were His brethren to Him? A sort of second-best? just something given Him because He had lost Israel? No, that is not the love of Christ; His is a love that holds the assembly as the first, and sweetest, and best thing - the treasure that is meet for His own heart and the answer to His own affection, and the gift, too, of the Father. “Thine they were, and thou gavest them me” (John 17: 6); and of all of them I have not lost even one. How He holds His own! He holds the best thing first; that which the Father would have for the Son, what the heart of the blessed God would give to Christ (I speak of it reverently) - the best thing first; He has given Him the assembly.

With that upon His heart, the Lord instituted the service of feet-washing; He inaugurated it above the desire, above the findings of the disciples’ feelings; He presented it to them in its desirability and in its dignity; actually it was the service of the slave of the house, a menial service in man’s ordering. What is its dignity? The dignity of it is that the Son of the Father, the Son of God, the lover of His own has instituted it; He did the service first. Will that ever become common to us, brethren? Shall we satisfy our hearts with the understanding of the doctrine, or do we value it in its own value as the thing Christ did first? He did it first, and as He did it must be its character to the end.

He laid aside His garments. It was His own act, done in His own dignity and in the peculiar greatness of His own Person. Then He took a linen towel and girded Himself. It speaks of the righteousness, lowliness, tenderness, and fidelity of His own affection. He took water, poured it into a basin, and began to wash the feet of His disciples. He commenced to do it - notice the word. That was its inauguration. We cannot go into details now, though the more we ponder them, the more precious they will become to our hearts. Look at the circle! I do not know how far round in the circle Peter was, but, in due course, the Lord came to him, and when He came to him, Peter spoke; he had had ample opportunity to consider the matter, but even when the Lord came to him he had not got over his difficulty about it.

Those who do not know what feet-washing is seldom continue. You say, What do you mean? Well, the sweetest thing that comes to us amongst the saints is the outcome of the understanding of the love of divine Persons, and when you get the sense that a thing that has come to you from another is for the sake of Christ, it washes your feet. You neither misunderstand the motive of the person who may be the instrument of it, nor do you misunderstand it on any false line of your deserving it or otherwise, but if the impression conveyed to your spirit is the impression of the love of Christ, your feet are washed.

How the things that are temporal drop away in the presence of the love of Christ! Preference for persons, difference of circumstances, and many other things, how they all drop out in the presence of the activities of the love of Christ in the circle of His own. You get a touch from a brother. You may think at times, Well, I wonder if I should be much profited by knowing that brother; perhaps he does not look attractive externally. How often we are surprised by the fact that from a vessel that on its exterior does not promise much, there may have been much in it to wash our feet - it was there for Christ’s sake. Our difficulty may have been rather this, that what was there was not for our sake. Brethren, what washes our feet is not for our sake, but first and most precious of all, for Christ’s sake. It must be so, if He is above all others. Everything that makes much of Christ washes the saints’ feet. Peace and comfort now from it.

May I say a word as to Peter in regard of continuance? What Peter trusted in was his own strength. In the things of God? Yes, he trusted himself. He said, Though all should be offended, yet will not I. He found himself out of touch with the Lord in feet-washing. If Peter had taken to heart the fact that the Lord had to expose to him that his own feeling was out of accord with Himself, if he had borne on his spirit that tender word of the Lord in regard of feet-washing, might he not have been spared the rest? If I be not minded to accept feet-washing, am I on a line that I can have the Lord’s support?

This is the first touch in John’s gospel that shews us that Peter was not in accord with the Lord’s feelings, and a peculiarly serious one it is; as if the Lord said to him, Peter, the thing that matters most to Me is the thing you do not understand. If he had taken to heart the Lord’s word, may we not legitimately suggest he might have been saved the rest? Howbeit, he reached by discipline what the Lord would have brought him into by feet-washing; such is the fidelity of the love of Christ. I speak from experience which has taught me this. There are many things I may have reached by discipline that I might have reached by feet-washing, but it is the fidelity of the love of Christ that has brought me there in the end.

In regard of the Supper, our gatherings from time to time are so variable, in what I might call their spiritual quality, that we often raise a question as to conditions from the moral point of view, but may I suggest this? that if we washed one another’s feet more, our answer to the Lord in the Supper might be more decided and sweet than it is; and I believe too that our power to worship would be greatly enlarged in us.

In regard of Mary, we see the unchangeableness and faithfulness of the love of Christ. I see the Lord, not only in the sense of His suffering and superior to it in the greatness of His love, but I see the Lord again, the living One out of death, alive for evermore, having the keys of death and hades - as He speaks in Revelation, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore”, Rev 1: 18. Ah, you say, that is a great guarantee of the fact that He will unlock the situation at the rapture. It is a sweet guarantee of the fact, brethren, that He can unlock it now. He took the affections of Mary on to entirely new ground; rapture affections, in the principle of them, are affections that are engaged with the Lord in an entirely new place. He said to Mary, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”, John 20: 17. Before the affections of Mary were in touch with the brethren, in the power of the Lord’s word they travelled to a new place. It was the power of the ministry of the Lord to Mary that took her affections from earthly hopes even in Himself, and anticipatively carried them to the place with which the declaration was connected: “my Father, and your Father … my God, and your God”.

Now He says, “go to my brethren”. She went and told them. It was the fidelity of the love of Christ securing a heart in the power of affection, connected not only with the lordship of Christ but sweetly and divinely connected with the Lord Himself - the Object of the Father’s pleasure, the Firstborn amongst many brethren, yea, I think we might say, as the Head of the assembly, His body, “the fulness of him that filleth all in all”, Eph 1: 23. Her affections went to the new place, and they went there to stay there.

I do not wish to be mystical, but I think no one can give you so much practical help in your difficulties as a person who is connected with heaven. God solves time’s difficulties for eternity. The person whose heart is where Christ is, is not necessarily an impracticable sort of person. You will find far more help in your difficulties from a man whose heart is in heaven, for the reason that he brings in the light of God’s presence on them and not the accumulated knowledge of man.

I close with one word more. The Lord spoke thrice to Peter. It was in the presence of the brethren He spoke, and I would draw your attention to this, because it may touch our spirits without leaving any undue shadow on our minds, that the reason for His plain speaking these three times to Peter was to draw out in tender expression to Himself the character and the quality of the love of Peter. He did not ask Peter if he believed. Look at the tender movement of priestly care and shepherding that reached Peter! That must have been a tender proof to the heart of Peter of how much the Lord loved him. Nevertheless, three times He spoke, “Lovest thou me?” At last Peter was grieved because the Lord said to him the third time, “Lovest thou me?” and he said, “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee”, John 21: 15-17. Brethren, that is what the Lord is seeking. Then He says to Peter, “Feed my sheep”.

The object of the Lord’s plain speaking to our hearts at this time may be, that as we are helped to answer to Himself in simple and deep feeling, He may entrust to us in a deeper way than before the things that are most precious to His heart. May we covet these things.

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King James and Darby Bibles used in quotations in this article.

This address comes from a collection of 14 articles of James Catterall’s ministry, published shortly after his death in 1927. An enlarged collection of 34 articles, entitled Memorials of Ministry by James B Catterall, is available from www.lulu.com.

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A new book, ‘The Lord’s Supper – Meetings in Indianapolis 2023’, notes of meetings held last November, is also available to order from this website