by Dr John Duncan
Love and Life. Love and Life are bound together, not by any arbitrary tie, but by a oneness. “He that hateth his brother abideth in death.” Love and Life; hatred and death. A life of hatred is a life in sin. That is the death which we fell into. There was death as a sentence, no doubt, because we had broken the law of justice which is the law of love; we had broken that, and in breaking that, had incurred death as a penalty, but we fell also into death as a state. For hatred is death. God is love, and God lives; and he who hates is dead, dead in trespasses and sins. For sin is the transgression of the law, and the summary of the law is, “Thou shalt love.”
Well, we commemorate a death which brings life; that death which is the life of the faith which works by love, and the love of the faith with respect to God’s love and which works in the production of love. For, as I said, this is a peculiar death. “I am the Living One, and I become dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of the unseen state and of death.” Now, “I am the Living One”, lies at the bottom of His bestowal of the life by becoming dead. How did He by becoming dead become life? Because He was the Living One, and had thus to bestow on us an infinite fountain of life. “Because of life the fountain pure remains alone with Thee.” The character of Jehovah is that He is the Living One.
Now, the Son, being in the form of God and thinking it not robbery to be equal with God, that is, having the divine nature and in it divine independence, being servant of none, took upon Him the form of a servant. He is the eternal life which was with the Father, Jehovah the living God, full of all being, of infinite being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth unchangeable. And He is the eternal life by the eternal generation.
“As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” Being the Son as contradistinguished from all creatures He hath life in Himself, this holy blessed life. But that this life might be communicated to dead sinners, He who was the life took on Him humanity, the form of a servant, for dead me, for guilty me, for unholy me. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
“I am the life.” “The fountain of life remains with Thee.” “I am the life.” “As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, even so he that eateth Me shall live by Me.” That we should eat Him and live, He took flesh and gave that flesh that we might have life through the mystical union with the only-begotten Son of God who lives by the Father.
Thus our life reverts into the three-fold union; first, that by which the three Persons are one God; secondly, that by which the two natures are one Christ, one God-man; and thirdly, that by which we are members quickened together by His Spirit and accepted through His atoning death. Thus we, by virtue of our mystical union to the Son of God, who is one with the Father and the Holy Ghost, live with a divine life from and in the Living One, who is the eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us.
Now this-death is that through which the divine life that is in Christ outflows. It is thus:— that life could not flow out, because the sentence of death had passed on us, being lawbreakers. We were not lovers, because we were haters. But love could overcome that. God cannot let go His demand of obedience to the law, but divine justice being satisfied, out flows His Spirit to bring us into connection with Him who is the giver of life; not simply because He died for us, but because He who died for us is Himself the eternal life in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. According to the Father’s and His own agreement, with the consent of the Holy Spirit, this applies; He comes and dwells in us, that we may live by union to Him who is the life.
In all this, I think it is somewhat apparent that love and life are so united, not arbitrarily, but in the very nature of things as that they are inseparable. And what does all this teach us? Surely this, “Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God,” So the gospel brings us back to the law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and soul and strength and mind: and thy neighbour as thyself”, and law and gospel unite in one covenant testimony. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in Him.” Now, love to God will make us very careful of offending the good God; and love to our neighbour—“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour”—will make us do all the good we can. For “love is the fulfilling of the law”.
And so I stop with the prayer, “The Lord direct our heart into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.” “And the Lord make as to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God.” (Extract from Table Address—“Rich Gleanings from ‘Rabbi’ Duncan”).