I would sense from your singing this morning
that you want to say hallelujah, but you're
a little too timid to do so.
Well, praise the Lord.
In his goodness we are found in his
house.
In his wonderful grace we do not meet
in his absence.
He has promised that where two or three
are gathered together in his name, he himself
is there.
He is here by his word.
We have his own word to turn to,
and he is here by his spirit.
Let us then continue to wait upon him,
and to expect him to meet us at
the point of our need, and to speak
to us clearly, unambiguously, as he alone can.
Now, last Lord's Day morning we began looking
at the passage in 2 Corinthians 5 that
begins with verse 11 and concludes with verse
15.
Time was a little too short, and we
simply mentioned the second of the two main
springs of action or motivating forces in the
life of the Apostle Paul.
Now I want to return to consider the
second of those two again this morning.
If you look at the passage, you will
see what they are.
In verse 11, the Apostle Paul refers to
the fear of the Lord.
Since then we know what it is to
fear the Lord.
We persuade man.
And that was the particular motivating force in
the Apostle's life which we were dwelling upon
and trying to expound and apply to ourselves
last Sunday morning.
There's a wonderful balance in the scriptures, and
before we come to the end of the
chapter, we read these words, and this will
be our text this morning.
Verse 14 and then verse 15.
For Christ's love compels us, because we are
convinced that one died for all, and therefore
all died.
And he died for all, that those who
live should no longer live for themselves, but
for him who died for them and was
raised again.
Without forgetting the first of these two motivating
forces, we come to the second.
The fear of God, the awesome fear of
God Almighty, holy and majestic, should always leave
its imprint upon our lives and have something
to do with our attitude when we come
to the house of God, when we walk
the streets, wherever we are, whatever we're doing.
But so too should the amazing love of
Christ.
And that is going to be our subject
now.
That the one time bigoted Pharisee, Saul of
Tarsus, arch persecutor of the Christian church in
his day, should be so transformed by the
grace of God as to become one of
the chiefest proclaimers of the gospel he previously
despised and denied, is a fact of history.
It is not always appreciated, however, what the
mainspring of his vast apostolic activity really was,
what caused him to spend his life day
after day, year after year, until from the
point of his conversion to the point of
his death in this world, he did nothing
but give of himself.
Now in these two main principles mentioned in
this passage, we see into the innermost soul
of the apostle, and we see that these
two principles pressurized him, goaded him, inspired him,
use any word you like, but they were
responsible for his immense service for the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Particularly now are we thinking of the second.
The love of Christ, he said, compels me,
or compels us.
Two things I want to try to say
this morning, and you'll find them in the
subject in the calendar.
Our title really divides the whole thing into
two main points, Christ's love and the Christian's
logic.
We are going to look first of all
at the constraining love of Christ our Savior.
The constraining love of Christ our Savior.
Why, Paul, were you prepared at any turn
to lay down your life for your Savior?
Why, Paul, did you give yourself so unremittingly,
so ceaselessly, so completely in body, in mind,
and in spirit to the service of your
Lord?
Well, here is his reply.
The love of Christ, he said, compelled me.
And yet, you see, this is the tragedy
and this is the question that emerges.
Why is it that there are many of
us who own the name of the Lord
Jesus who can come to church this morning
and go away and live the rest of
the week hardly knowing anything of this dimension?
Though Paul says that the love of Christ
constrained him, does it constrain us?
If not, why not?
But before we come to that, let's look
at the significance of his statement.
First of all, the source of this constraint.
Christ's love compels us or constrains us.
Now, linguistically, the phrase Christ's love or the
love of Christ in the King James could
legitimately be understood as referring either to Paul's
love for Christ or Christ's love for Paul.
And on that basis, many have wrongly concluded,
it would seem to us, that Paul was
here referring to his own love for the
Savior as the cause, as the mainspring of
his ministries.
I think that the context demands the other
reply to the question.
It was not so much Paul's love for
Christ as Christ's amazing love for Paul.
Now, of course, Christ's love for Paul elicited
in his heart a responsive love, that is
very true.
But in this context, if you notice, in
verses 14 and 15, the apostle goes on
to explain what this love is, and he
describes it in this way.
Christ's love compels us because we are convinced
that one died for all.
Now, that's the love that compelled him.
The love that compelled him was the love
of the one who died for all, and
that was not Paul, that was Jesus Christ.
And then he goes on to say, and
therefore all died.
And he, not me, says Paul, he died
for all, that those who live should no
longer live for themselves, but for him who
died for them and was raised again.
So the source of this constraining, this overmastering
power that galvanized the apostle Paul into constant
action is the love of Jesus Christ for
him.
A word about the force of that constraint.
The pressure that kindled Paul's devotion to Christ
is very graphically suggested by the word that
he uses here in the Greek language.
It's a very ordinary word, and yet a
very colorful one.
It can be used in so many circumstances.
You will notice that, those of you who
read the different translations, you will see how
the verb is variously translated.
In the NIV here we have, the love
of Christ compels us.
In the King James Version, the love of
Christ constrains us.
In the Revised Standard Version, the love of
Christ controls us.
In Weymouth's translation, the love of Christ overmasters
us.
And in the New English Bible, which is
probably the best of all here, leaves us
no choice.
The love of Christ leaves us no choice.
There is nothing else we can do.
It masters us.
It controls us.
It galvanizes us.
It shuts us in.
What do you mean, Paul?
Well, the word is so rich.
Having examined the various other usages of the
term in the New Testament, John R.
W.
Stott summarizes in this way, that from all
the evidence in the New Testament, it is
clear that the verb means to hem someone
in.
Like the crowds thronging Jesus, it was used
there.
Or the legions that would surround Jerusalem, to
hold someone tight as the soldiers held Jesus,
or the Sanhedrin held their ears and wouldn't
listen to him.
To have someone in one's grip as pain
or disease can wreck the body and fear
can paralyze the soul.
In each case, there is a sense of
constraint and constriction, a tight grip which prevents
you from escaping or doing anything else.
So Christ's love grips us.
We feel its hold upon us.
We are hemmed in by it.
We cannot escape its pressure.
As the N.E.B. puts it, it
leaves us no choice.
Now, perhaps we can focus attention upon three
cardinal stresses underlying the sevenfold usage of that
term in the New Testament, according to the
Arndt-Gingrich Greek-English lexicon.
And they will bring out three aspects of
this constraining love of God.
First of all, this verb describes the love
of Christ closing in upon us.
Closing in.
Now, the best illustration that I can give
of this takes me back to the county
where I was born.
And it's good to have someone in our
service this morning who also hails from that
same county, Pembrokeshire, in South Wales.
Sometimes when we were down with relatives, and
we had the children with us, we used
to go for a little tour in the
car.
And the children often wanted to return through
the country, right away from the main roads.
There was one particular fourth-class, fifth-class
road, maybe.
And when we got into it, the hedges
on either side were so constricted, high, but
so constricted, so narrow that they touched the
sides of the car.
And you could stop the car and pick
some strawberries on either side for they had
some strawberries there.
Now, if you met a person coming to
meet you, the only thing he could do
was lie against the hedge, hoping that the
car wouldn't go over his feet.
The point is, you see, you couldn't turn
to the left or you couldn't turn to
the right.
You're hedged in.
You're hemmed in.
You've got to go forwards or backwards.
Do you know anything of the love of
Calvary hedging you in?
So that you cannot turn away, you cannot
go to the right or to the left.
You've got to go forwards.
Because of the next statement, I'm going to
say you can only go forwards, you can't
go backwards.
Because the same love which closes in upon
us like two insurmountable hedges on either side
also serves as a compelling current that carries
you along within those hedges to the destination
your Lord wants you to go to.
The verb here employed is used of an
arrested prisoner being forcibly carried along.
It is used of someone caught in a
crowd and being jostled and carried involuntarily by
that throng to a place he did not
choose.
Have you ever been caught in a crowd?
Have you ever been carried along?
Have you ever come out of watching a
football game through an entrance that you'd never
expected to come through?
Now that's the pressure.
Paul is talking about something very real here.
It's not in the mind, it's in reality
and it's catching him, it's surrounding him and
it's carrying him along.
The love which encloses a person within its
embrace and compels one to move along with
its mighty current thereby controls the individual concern.
It masters him.
He becomes its slave.
That's evident from the translations.
Christ's love compels us, over masters us, controls
us, leaves us no choice.
You see, the believer who knows the love
of Christ is mastered by it.
It leaves him no choice.
He's got to go on.
Something of that compelling mastery is reflected in
the words of Samuel Trevor Francis's hymn that
we've just sung.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus.
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free.
Flowing, rolling as a mighty ocean in its
fullness over me.
Listen to this.
Underneath me, all around me is the current
of thy love.
Leading onward, ever homeward to my glorious rest
above.
You see, anybody caught up in this love
is going in one way.
It's the way the love of Christ constrain.
A source of the compulsion, the force of
the compulsion.
And I want to say one other word
about the course along which the love of
Christ leads its prisoners.
I just want you to look back over
the chapter, and I just want to give
two illustrations.
It would take too much time to give
more.
Go back to verse 9.
We've considered this together.
Go back to verse 9 and look at
these words of Paul's.
So we make it our goal to please
him.
Whether we are at home in the body
or away from it.
Now the context there is this.
The apostle Paul's real desire, if he had
his choice, was not to see death, but
to be alive when Jesus would come.
So that what is mortal, this body would,
as he says, be swallowed up of immortality,
and a new garment of the new body
would, as it were, be clothed over, be
placed over, like a mantle over the old,
and the Lord would effect the change.
But then he says, doesn't really matter, he
says, of one thing I'm determined.
Whether I'm in this body or out of
the body, in the intermediate state or wherever,
my desire is to please him.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, redeemed men and
women, do we know anything of this?
Whether you're in the body or out of
the body, whether you're on earth or in
heaven, wherever you are, what is your desire?
What are you out for?
What are you running for?
What are you living for?
Do you know anything of the grace of
God, wanting, yearning, determining to please the one
who loved you?
Or take another illustration.
Go to verse 13.
If you have a clearer view of the
course along which the love of Christ constrains
men and women to travel, take a look
at this verse.
If we are out of our minds, says
Paul, it's for the sake of God.
If we are in our right mind, it
is for you.
Now, it seems quite clear that the charge
brought against Paul was that he was mad,
just as it was brought against his Lord
before him, Mark 3, 17.
Because he embraced a crucified Christ risen again
and preached him as the only hope of
mankind and the only author of salvation, Paul
was deemed to be mad by Jews and
Gentiles alike.
But when he came to spend, as they
said, to squander his life in the service
of a crucified master, that only added insult
to injury.
He was a sheer fool of a man.
Very well, says Paul, you take it from
me, naturally, he didn't like to be called
a fool any more than you like to
be called a fool or I like to
be called a fool.
No, no, he didn't.
But let them call me a fool if
they will, he says, of one thing I'm
certain.
If I am a fool, I'm a fool
for God.
And if I'm not a fool, then I'm
in the service of my fellow Christians.
I have only two folk.
I am virtually they come.
They are one.
And that is God and his will for
his people.
Whether people call me sane or insane, it
matters not.
I'm going on.
Paul, why?
Oh, he says, the love of Christ constrains
me.
It keeps me going.
It set me out.
It keeps me going.
It hedges me in.
It carries me along.
It determines my life for me.
Such is the constraining love of Christ.
Not only for an apostle, an apostle living
2000 years ago, but if we are living
in the world of real Christian communion with
God, something that we should also be experiencing
ourselves.
That brings me to the compelling logic of
a Christian believer.
For Christ's love compels us.
Why, Paul?
Why does it compel you when it doesn't
compel all of us gathered here this morning
or other Christians gathering in other places?
Why?
Well, he tells us because we are convinced,
or in your King James version, because we
thus judge.
We reason.
And we've come to a conclusion.
We've thought the thing through.
Because we are convinced that one died for
all and therefore all died.
And he died for all that those who
live should no longer live for themselves, but
for him who died for them and was
raised again.
Let me pose the question again.
Why is it that our Lord's love should
in practice thus master some of his people
and not others?
If I understand this passage all right, then
Paul is telling us how this love of
Christ came to master him.
And the answer in simplest form, put in
a thimble, is this.
He thought about it.
And he meditated on it.
And he reasoned on the basis of it.
And having reasoned on the basis of it,
he came to a certain conclusion.
No, he came to a conviction.
And the conviction compelled him.
You see, my friends, you notice those words,
because we thus judge.
The tragedy with us is this, that we
know so very little, sometimes we know nothing
of the force of the because and the
therefore in Paul's words.
Oh, we see the love of Christ on
Calvary and we talk about it sometimes and
we read about it sometimes and we read
quickly through a passage of scripture to say
we've had our daily devotions and we come
to the Lord's house and we're in too
much of a hurry to go out hardly
before we've come in.
We've no real time to wait and think
and ponder and let the truth of God
saturate our soul.
The apostle had thought and reasoned and concluded
so that there was a moral compulsion upon
him.
He was a man under pressure.
You and I who remain thoughtless, though we
talk and sing about the cross and cast
it all off like the water that flows
from a duck's back.
I know men and women who can come
to the communion service and sing with oh
a sense of awe and a sob in
their throat.
But they know nothing, I say.
They know nothing of the compulsion that takes
them in search of the lost, that enables
them to give of themselves for Christ and
give of their substance for Christ and give
of their time for Christ.
You know why?
We're too lazy to think things through or
are we afraid of it?
We know nothing of the because and the
therefore.
We're illogical even when we begin to think.
Now we're touching a raw spot here, you
see.
I'll say it again.
Christ's love for you and for me is
not one whit less than his love for
Saul of Tarsus.
You and I, by the grace of God
if we're Christian this morning, have been saved
from the same hell and eternal destruction.
You and I, by the grace of God
this morning, have been saved to the same
glory that awaits us.
You and I have the same mighty presence
and power of God within us and the
same Holy Spirit at our disposal to guide
us and to comfort us and to transform
us.
Exactly the same.
Our inheritance is the same.
Christ does not love the Apostle any more
than he's loved you and me.
Why then does not his love move me
more?
I'll put it to you in two simple
points.
Paul came to a logical conclusion concerning the
extent of the impact of Christ's substitutionary death.
He put it like this.
Christ's love compels us because we are convinced
that one died for all and therefore all
died.
Now can I try to summarize that?
I want to put it like this.
The all for whom Christ died actually died
when Christ died for them.
That's what Paul is saying.
Christ's death for them meant that they were
no longer liable to death.
The all, whatever the all represents there, the
all for whom Christ died actually died when
Christ died.
He drank their cup to the dregs.
He took their death upon himself and died
it so that nothing remains.
Death is no longer on the pathway of
the all for whom Christ died.
He's taken the sting out of it.
No, no.
He's taken it all in his own body
to the tree.
He's died our death.
So Paul was convinced that because Christ died
for all, therefore the all for whom he
died actually died in their substitute Savior, so
that death in the sense of the penalty
of sin no longer awaits those for whom
Christ died.
Now let's come to the second and this
clinches the whole thing.
Paul likewise concluded something vital concerning the intent,
the purpose of that sacrificial and substitutionary death.
He died for all, he says, so that
in order that those who live should no
longer live for themselves but for him who
died for them and was raised again.
All those for whom the Savior died have
life through his death.
Not only has he taken our death so
that death is no longer ours.
Oh, I trust we're all there this morning
that we know that the Lord Jesus died
for us and we trust him and we
believe him and that means this for you
and for me.
Death, eternal death is no longer ours.
He took it, but he did much more
than that.
He rose again as the author of life
and the prince of life and he imparts
life to all who believe in him, not
only taking death away but he imparts eternal
life.
Now the logic of that is this.
The life we now have, therefore, does not
belong to ourselves.
Christ took our death so we did not
die, therefore we are his.
He died in our place.
More than that, he gave us our life
and the life we now live in the
flesh, it is by the faith of the
Son of God who loved us and gave
himself for us.
He gives us our life and he took
our death, therefore we are doubly bound to
be his.
We are his property.
More the logic goes further.
It says this.
It was in the very intention of God
that when Christ died, he should die that
those who live through his death and resurrection
should not live anymore for themselves.
Well, what are we going to live for
then?
For him who died for them and is
risen again.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I feel a
little bit afraid in talking to you this
morning.
How may God help us?
You cannot read a passage like this, you
cannot listen to a passage like this and
be quite the same afterwards.
If you and I can, God have mercy
upon us.
I want to haunt you this morning as
this has haunted me.
If you and I, blood-bought children of
God, for whom Christ died and rose again
to impart his eternal life to us, if
we are living for ourselves, I want to
tell you, you and I are dealing in
stolen property.
You're a thief.
I'm a thief.
Well, you wouldn't like to be called a
thief and you won't come back to Knox
again, because that man in the pulpit there,
that crazy character, said, I'm a thief.
I want to tell you, you're a thief.
If you are living your life as a
Christian, according to your own desires, you've no
right to do that.
He has established crown rights over you.
He died to make you his own.
And the whole purpose of his passion was
ultimately this, to win us back to God,
not by the thunders of Sinai, though the
thunders of Sinai are still in the scriptures,
but fundamentally by the wooing, constraining, constricting love
of his own heart, appealing to the new
nature and the new life in us, and
appealing to us whose death he died and
said, come with me, do the will of
our heavenly Father.
Now, I have no time to continue with
this great theme.
It's a massive, must, massive theme of scripture.
And I want to conclude by just reminding
you that there are echoes of this everywhere.
If you really listen to the scriptures as
you read them, you will find echoes of
this principle everywhere.
In Paul's epistles, for example, the often quoted
verse Romans 12, 1, it reflects the same
principle.
Therefore, says Paul, the same logic.
I urge you brothers, in view of God's
mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices,
holy and pleasing to God, which is your
spiritual worship or your reasonable service.
Your only reasonable thing, says Paul, is this,
and it is really a worship.
The only reasonable thing a believer can do
in the light of the fact that Christ
died his death and rose again to impart
life to him and keeps him alive for
he's been given eternal life, the only reasonable
thing is this, it's to worship him and
to be caught up in his purposes and
compelled by his love.
Later on in Romans, he says, for this
very reason, Christ died and returned to life
so that he might be Lord of both
the dead and the living.
Hear one other.
To me, this has had a great formative
influence on my life.
It's in the first epistle to the Corinthians.
You remember how these Corinthians were living so
very much to themselves.
Paul pursues these rebellious men and women in
Corinth, sometimes luxuriating in supposedly spiritual experience, which
were not always spiritual, sometimes sensual.
Sometimes they were lusting in their own license
to a point beyond it isn't appropriate to
mention.
Paul haunts them with his word.
He says, look, he says, you're not your
own.
You were bought with a price.
Men and women, he says, wake up.
It's time to think.
It's time to take account of things.
You don't belong to yourselves.
Are we thoughtless then?
He pursues the rebellious Corinthians.
Does he not pursue us in the same
way?
Do you not hear the voice of God
telling you and telling me this morning we
don't belong to ourselves?
We thus judge, says the King James.
That is the language of Paul and of
all who have ever counted for God, the
thoughtless remain careless.
The thoughtful may yet count for God because
they will be caught up in the current,
caught up by the might of the marvelous
love of God in his son.
Listen to C.T. Studd.
If Christ be God and died for me,
then there's no sacrifice too great for me
to give to him or to make for
him.
Would you get that from C.T. Studd?
His love.
He thought about it.
The words and the sentiments of the hymn
we sang last Lord's Day morning, I cannot,
I cannot pass over where the whole realm
of nature mind says, or rather asks Isaac
Watts.
No, it's a statement, isn't it?
Where the whole realm of nature mind that
were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul,
my life, my all.
And George Matheson agrees.
Oh, love that wilt not let me go.
I rest my weary soul in thee.
I give thee back the life I owe.
You got it?
The life I owe, the life I owe,
the life that is not mine that I
received because Christ died and rose again.
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow may
richer, fuller be.
Oh, cross that liftest up my head.
I dare not ask to fly from thee.
I lay in dust life's glory dead and
from the ground there blossoms red life that
shall endless be.
Oh, love of God in Christ, my friend,
do you feel anything of its current around
you this morning gathering around you, hemming you
in, reminding you of the way in which
you ought to go and assuring you God
requires this of you.
Then walk in it.
Yield to it.
Surrender to it.
Bow to it.
Go with it.
For though it be the way of the
cross, it is the way to glory.
And you will not ultimately be the loser,
for you suffer on the road.
Let us bow before the throne of grace
in prayer.
Shall we pause quietly for just a moment,
remembering these two aspects of this theme in
scripture.
The love of Christ controlling his beloved.
And a Christian's logic constraining the same beloved
of the Lord.
Who have seriously thought about it, and then
acted morally and logically in the light of
it.
Our God and our Father, we confess our
sins to you.
For we cannot meditate upon a subject like
this without becoming aware of the fact that
we are not we have not been true
to the heavenly vision or the demands of
your word.
We have sinned.
Passions have driven us off course.
Satan has seduced us.
And we have gone hither and thither, and
we have defied the very current of Calvary's
love.
And thereby we have come ourselves defiled.
Oh Lord, let your love envelop us anew.
And of your mercy, grant us to know
something of the experience of the apostle, of
being constrained and hemmed in and carried along
and having no option.
But be the bond slaves of Jesus Christ.
Spirit of God, abide with us throughout this
day.
Do not let the birds come and take
the seed away, but bring forth fruit to
your glory in each of our lives.
Through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.