There is, as you probably remember from your Junior High science class, a law of physics which declares that water seeks its own level. And if you don’t remember learning about that “law” in school, you certainly know of it from easy and frequent observation. Think, for example, of the water in a teakettle. You expect to find the level in the spout to be exactly the same as that in the main part of the kettle. A water-gauge on a steam boiler works on that same principle. Because water stands at the same level in connecting containers, the level of the water in the glass gauge outside the boiler shows exactly the level of the water inside the boiler. At the risk of belaboring the point, think also of the use some cities make of high water reservoirs. From these reservoirs, located as they are on the highest hills in town, the water flows through mains. And since water reaches always for its own level, the water piped from the main into a house will rise in the house to all the faucets.
The same sort of thing can perhaps be said to obtain in the realm of the spiritual. Life seeks its own level. What does Romans 8:5 say? “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh.” That, so to speak, is all the higher they can rise, for the carnal mind is enmity against God; it is “not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). By contrast however, “they that are after the Spirit (do mind) the things of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:5). Regeneration makes the difference of course. Those who are born from above see the kingdom of God. And of the very essence of that kingdom is that Christ lives in His people, in such a way that His life becomes theirs. Their life, therefore, to pursue the analogy, rises to a higher level.
That’s the life of sanctification. And that life is not an optional thing for the child of God. It’s not something that may be enjoyed by some children of God, while others experience nothing of it. Not only must the grace of sanctification reveal itself in the Christian, but it will do so. Just as you can depend on it that the spout of the teakettle cannot remain empty when water is poured into the main part, so surely must the new life of Christ show itself in the walk of His people.
It’s for that reason that I’m glad that the Beacon Lights staff decided that, in their proposed series of articles dealing with the fruit of the Spirit, attention should be paid to the evidence of that fruit as we see it in the life of Christ Himself. To do that is eminently practical, by the way, for, when we understand the underlying principles from which Christ’s conduct flowed, then we will know what must be the governing principles in our lives. And I say governing principles advisedly, for what is seen to be a law of life for the King must become no less than that for the citizen also. There must, in other words, be a consonance of character, in the kingdom of God, between the life of the citizen and the life of the king.
In the series of articles of which this is the first, we intend to deal with the various aspects of the fruit of the Spirit as they are enumerated for us in Galatians 5:22, 23. That the order chosen by the apostle in this enumeration is not an arbitrary one is evident already in his placing the fruit of love at the head of the list. Love is basic to all of the rest. Paul declares to the Corinthians that though a man be able to speak most eloquently about the things of the kingdom of God, yet, if he have not love, he like sounding brass — brass which, though it makes for plenty of sound when struck, is without life (I Cor. 13). Christ made love the very badge of discipleship: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). There can be little doubt therefore that we are dealing here with something which is fundamental to the life of a Christian.
What are the characteristics of this love? We agree with Arthur Pink, when he writes that “there is no safer and surer way of obtaining a right conception of the nature of Christian love than by making a thorough study of its perfect exemplification in and by the Lord Jesus.” By “thorough study” he no doubt means a comprehensive survey of all that is recorded of the life of Christ in the gospel accounts. When one make that kind of study he sees that many elements enter into a love which is characterized (as we know Christ’s to have been) by a genuine concern for the spiritual well-being of its object. Mere human sentimentality and carnal pleasantries — these never characterized the love of Christ. Listen: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” “Get thee behind me Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” It’s clear that Christ’s love was not only, for example, gentle (John 11:5, 6), patient (Luke 10:41, 42), self-sacrificing (John 15:13), and enduring (John 13:1); it could also rebuke and upbraid, be stern and uncompromising.
Nevertheless, in this and in succeeding articles dealing with the different aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, I’d prefer to concentrate on a single episode in the life of Christ. Perhaps that will not prove in every instance to be feasible; but with respect to the fruit of love, the difficulty comes not in finding a suitable example but in selecting an especially fitting one out of all of the many demonstrations of the so-great love of the Savior as they are recorded for us in the New Testament Scriptures.
The love of Christ is, of course, nowhere more clearly illustrated than at the cross. We see there, first of all, His love for God. As the late Rev. Gerrit Vos wrote many years ago in the Standard Bearer, the cry of Jesus, “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is really “the answer to God’s demand: Love Me! Love Me, even when I make Thee experience My hell! Love me! Thou standest in the room of My beloved people, and they did not love Me. Now love Me in their stead, and do it in Thy very hell in this My darkness. And Jesus gives the answer: My God! My God! Oh, note that possessive pronoun. It is more than mere possession. In it throbs the love of Jesus for His Father, even while that Father makes Him taste a hell such as devils shall never taste.”
Such indeed was the love of Jesus for His God. And we do well to learn from His example also in this regard. How much “hurt” are we ready to endure because of our love to God? How much of what this world has to offer are we ready to deny ourselves because we love God?
But it’s at the cross, too, that we see how great was the love wherewith Jesus loved us. Such a love beggars description, for He gave His very life — and, as the song writer has it, “for such a worm as I.” Just think again of the circumstances which attended that sacrifice. He had been roughly seized in the garden, at which time he was also forsaken by His disciples, all of whom had fled into the night. He was abused by the Sanhedrin, condemned to die by the Roman authorities, nailed by wicked hands to the cross, and mocked and ridiculed by soldiers, chief priests, and passers-by alike. And all the while, by His own testimony, He had it in His power to call “twelve legions of angels” in His defense. For that matter, there had been a brief demonstration of the power He had over His enemies, when His would-be captors all fell prostrate to the ground before Him in that garden. But He suffered Himself to be taken. He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; and He hid not His face from shame and spitting (Is. 50:6). And He did all that for the great love which He had for His people.
One of those saints of His was hanging on a cross next to His own. A career of crime had brought this man to the cross. Tried in the courts of the land, he had been found worthy of death for having trampled underfoot the laws of men. By the Jews he must have been viewed correctly as an apostate from the faith. For not only had he shown himself to be without natural affection toward fellow men, he had most emphatically refused to bow before the law of God. In this man there had been no evidence of love, either to men or to God. In fact, the accounts both of Matthew and Mark suggest that he may have joined at first in the mockery of Jesus on the cross (see Matt. 27:44 and Mark 15:32). However that may have been, there can be no reasonable doubt that this man, who himself acknowledges in the end that crucifixion is for him the due reward for his deeds, must have been a hardened criminal, and one who stood condemned also before the tribunal of God. Had he known anything at all about Jesus, prior to this decisive moment on the cross, he would have had nothing but contempt for the prophet from Galilee. And the amazing fact is that Jesus knew all of that, knew that there was here an enemy of God and of His Christ, one who by his great and terrible sins had in effect shut himself out from the kingdom of God’s Son (as do we all); and yet He loved him. That, I say, is an amazing love. Christ saw the one thief surely as an elect of God; but what we must remember is that He loved him (and us) while we were yet sinners. He stayed on that terrible cross to save from death those who hated Him. (What an example to us — who bear only with great difficulty the supposed grievances by which others affect us! Think of Jesus’ parable of The Unmerciful Servant!) At the time of the short conversation which followed between Christ and that condemned criminal, the sacrifice of atonement had not yet been made, the price of redemption had yet to be paid. But the Father, as it were, “hands His dying Son a trophy of victory in the repentance of this malefactor.’’ The power of the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, wrought in the man’s heart, so that what was hard as stone became soft. The effect was that the now penitent thief casts himself on the mercy of Christ. And that is never done in vain. “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.’’ “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
May we not only be filled with gratitude for the love which kept Jesus on the cross of Calvary, but also be inspired and energized by that love to love each other. May we learn Christ’s “commandment,” namely, “That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). For it is indeed in our loving of one another that “His love is perfected in us” (I John 4:12).