The Obligation of Divine Love
We need a new sense of divine love. There’s nothing more powerful in the whole
world than the power of love. Love will motivate and empower people to do what
nothing else can cause or compel them to do.
In Song of Solomon 8:6 we are told, “…for
love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” Death is the one power that is universally
recognized as superseding all human power. With all our
knowledge of medical science, and
in all we know about human existence and the human body, we are still helpless
before the power of death.
Why is it that many churches are doing so little in getting the gospel to
unreached peoples around the world? Is
it because we have lost our sense of obligation from divine love? If the church is to accomplish the
evangelization of the world, this one essential motive must be present in the
believer’s heart, and in the church.
Christ’s love in us gives us a burden for the souls of men, and compels us to
go to them with the message of salvation.
Remember that the Apostle Paul was consumed for his own people because
the love of Christ was in him. In Romans
9:3 he said, “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from
Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race…” In the previous verse he stated, “I have
great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.”
Paul was constantly burdened for his own people, and in Romans
10:1 he says, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites
is that they may be saved.” This
was not merely the love of a normal man, it was the divine love of God in the
heart of a spiritual man. Love is the
first evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, and anyone filled with the Spirit is
filled with the love of God. The two
experiences always go together.
David Brainerd, one of the earliest men to carry the gospel to the Native
Americans of North America, was found one morning on his knees in sub-zero
weather. With perspiration dripping off
his face, he was crying out to God for the souls of those people he had learned
to love and sought to win for Christ. He was compelled by love in his own
heart.
This is exactly what it takes to be a missionary. Human love alone cannot do it, but God’s own
love is sufficient to motivate us to go anywhere to proclaim the gospel of
Christ. It was the love of Christ that
moved Him to come into this world and go to the cross to provide salvation for
sinful man. And it must be His love in
us that motivates us to take up that cross and bear it to the ends of the earth
for His name.
Can God change
your life?
God has made it
possible for you to know Him, and experience an amazing
change in your own
life.
Discover how you
can find peace with God.
