W K Tweedie
Romans 5:8. God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
So distrustful of God was the heart of man, so suspicious and so estranged, that a mere announcement of the Father’s love was not enough. Something was needed to attract attention to it – to demonstrate its depth, its ardour, its unquenchable nature. He accordingly commended it to us, and the mode of commending it was by the death of the Saviour for sinners. He died, not for friends but for enemies, not for loyal subjects but for rebels, not for those who loved but for creatures whose hearts were turned against their God.
Toward these the love of God in Christ was manifested, and the very hand that is lifted up in revolt may thus be gently taken down by the constraining love of Christ. The power which is paramount in heaven becomes paramount on earth, at least in the heart of a believer; and a new moral principle, the love of the Redeemer to the lost, comes to reign in the bosom where enmity and rebellion reigned before.
Have you felt the power of that love, or are you still a stranger to it? Have you cast away the weapons of your rebellion, and are you standing ready to exclaim, “Lord, Thou knowest all things: Thou knowest that I love Thee?” Or are you still indifferent, cold, unmoved, while God is commanding His love to sinners, even the chief?
How humbling is the discovery that God’s commanding His love is in vain unless the Holy Spirit removes the scales from our eyes so that we may see it and melts our hearts so that we may feel it! God is needed, not merely to devise such a plan of redeeming love, not merely to reveal it in our world;
3This piece is reprinted in the hope of encouraging those whom Flavel intended to encourage. However, it is questionable if the problem of believers lacking assurance is the major difficulty today that Flavel believed it was in the seventeenth century. One fears that presumption is a much greater danger nowadays. Flavel also noted, in the same series of sermons, that “if they that be Christ’s have crucified the flesh, then the number of real Christians is very small”.
1Taken, slightly edited, from Tweedie’s volume, Glad Tidings.
He is needed to make us feel it. Never does the sinner at all regard the love of God in giving His Son until the regenerating Spirit makes all things new.
May that Spirit breathe on my soul so that it may live! His first fruit is love. May that fruit appear in rich abundance in my soul, so that He who is love may be greatly glorified, and that I may never forget that the supreme proof of my love is to keep His commandments!