Reading: John 21:15-23
We are now nearing the
end of our contemplation of "His great love,"
and we shall conclude with a word on the way of love. It
is still through the Apostle John that the message is
coming to us. His writings are the last of the New
Testament, and the final and predominant feature is love.
The twenty-first
chapter of his Gospel is a kind of appendix; almost like
an afterthought. He seems to have concluded at the point
marked verse thirty-one of chapter twenty, and then, as
though on reflection, he seems to have said to himself,
"I cannot leave it there; there is something yet to
be added. I must resolve it all into a personal
application, a matter of personal love for the Lord
proved by PRACTICAL devotion." So we have -
in the first place -
"Lovest thou me
more than these?" The challenge is made very
personal and direct: not to ANY Simon, but to "Simon,
son of John." He is penned down and is not
allowed to be mixed up in a crowd of Simons. Then, it was
THIS Simon who had protested that, whatever might
be the failures of others, his love would be stronger and
more reliable than theirs. "Lovest thou me MORE
THAN THESE?" Doubtless many who read this, were they
asked by the Lord if they loved Him, would be quite
emphatic in their answer of "Yes!" But the Lord
was evidently seeking an answer that was more than Simon
was giving.
That is why He was so
insistent. "Simon, you have protested that you do
love Me; you have even gone as far as to say that you
would out-love other people; but, Simon, Simon, really
look into your own heart - do you? Why, under trial, when
I was withdrawn from you and you were left alone, and
everything seemed to have gone wrong and to have broken
down and all your personal expectations and ambitions and
visions had proved worthless, why did you say, 'I go a
fishing'? as though you said, 'I am going to find some
alternative to this kind of life, it is not satisfactory,
it is so uncertain and there are so many difficulties, I
cannot see the way, therefore I am going to make a way
myself.'"
There was another of
this group who took the course of despair, passive
despair - I refer to Thomas. But Peter put his dilemma
into a positive form and said, "I go a
fishing." We may adopt different courses in our
perplexity, in adversity, under trial. When the Lord
hides Himself and we cannot see Him, or hear Him, and we
do not feel that He is with us, He seems to be so far
away and to have gone right out of our world, all we were
expecting seems to have come to an end, and we do not
know where we are, then we are prone to go some way that
we choose for ourselves, and begin to take alternatives
to steadfast love. It is a real challenge, it is a
positive challenge, because these are experiences, these
are tests, that the Lord allows. It is not a wrong thing
to say that there are times when the Lord hides Himself,
when the Lord lets us feel that we are left alone, when
the Lord seems to close the heavens to us so that there
is no to-and-fro communication, and when everything that
we had looked for, expected and preached, seems to have
come to an end and to have broken down, we are just left
in what seems like ruins of everything; the Lord just
does do that, and peculiarly does He do that sort of
thing when He has people in view who are going to count.
Take that, brothers, sisters! People who are going to
count for Him go through deep experiences like that, and
the object is to get them on to a basis which will make
it possible for Him to use them. We will never be used
unless we can stand on our feet in the storm. We are
useless to the Lord if we go to pieces when everything
around us, and in our spiritual life, seems to have come
to a deadlock. If then we give it up, we are of no use to
the Lord. The whole question of future usefulness to the
Lord is based upon a love for the Lord which does not
give up and say, "I go a fishing," "I take
an alternative to following the Lord, I take an
alternative to going on with the Lord because of the
situation."
That is
why the Lord came back, once, twice - "Follow
me," "follow thou me." "You went back
under trial, under testing - follow thou Me." And
you have got to follow and go on following when you
cannot see Him, when you do not know where He is, you
have got to go on. These are the kind of people, and
these alone, who will be used as Peter was. The basis of
everything was that kind of personal love to the Lord
Himself, not for what He was doing for Peter at the time,
but for Himself. Oh, that is difficult - God only knows
how difficult it is - to love Him for Himself when He
does not seem to be doing anything for us at all. That is
the challenge of love.
Really
now, have we got very near to this? Love is something
more than being a nominal Christian, bearing the name of
Christian and going to meetings and taking up Christian
work and all that. Love for the Lord is something very
much more than that. The Lord says, "Lovest thou
me?" I am not stopping with the different words that
were used for "love". The Lord used one word,
Peter used another. We will leave that aside. The
challenge is this - "Lovest thou me?" What is
the calibre, the quality, the content, of your love?
"Lovest thou me?"
THE
PROOF OF LOVE
Peter
answered, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love
thee." The Lord came back upon that declaration,
imperfect as it was, for He Himself had used another
word, the Lord came back and said, "All right, prove
it." There was the challenge of love, and then the
proof of love. "Feed my lambs." "Tend my
sheep." And where is the emphasis in that? The
emphasis is upon "my" - MY lambs, MY
sheep. Love is not for the ministry, love is not for the
work in itself. Oh, we can love to preach, we can love to
work, to be in the work. We can love the whole system of
Christian organization, activity, and all that, and find
a great deal of satisfaction in it and place for
ourselves, but it is not that at all. It is not love for
the ministry, not even for tending and feeding. There is
an awful snare in that. The love lies in this,
"Because they are Mine, just because they are Mine,
and yours is a love for Me, anything that is Mine becomes
the object of your love and your devotion and your
activity." This is really a sifting out. You perhaps
like to be in Christian work, you like to teach, to
preach, to do things and you would say that it is for the
Lord. But let us ask our own hearts, if it is because we
really love that which is dear to the Lord, is that
really the motive? Just because it is the Lord's, will we
pour ourselves out, break our hearts over it, will we
really shed tears because of genuine love for our Lord
and what matters to Him? Is it like that? Why are you
doing what you are doing, whatever it is, in relation to
the Lord's things? Sheep and lambs can be very trying and
cause us almost to despair, but love for the Lord and
because they are His will keep us from giving them up.
Oh, I
could break that up to apply it. I do not know what you
are doing, but you may be doing various things. Where it
is within the company of the Lord's people, you may be
looking after the door and bringing the people in. You
may be playing the instrument, you may be doing anything
that people do in Christian work. Why are you doing it?
Is it really out of a heart-love for the Lord, for the
Lord HIMSELF, because this is the Lord's, or can
it be put down to anything less than that - you have been
persuaded or appointed to do it. Really are you doing it
from the heart as unto the Lord? This is for the Lord
consciously and deliberately, He puts everything on that
basis. The proof of love is our concern for what is His.
It is just His, and that is all there is to it. It is
something that counts for Him, that matters to Him, and I
need no other persuasion, no other coercion, no other
urge or invitation. It is because it is the Lord's, and
that is enough.
THE
MASTERY OF LOVE
And then
the mastery of love. "When thou wast young, thou
girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but
when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy
hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee
whither THOU wouldest not." When thou was
young - in other words - you did as you liked; when you
get old, you are going to do what you would not have done
then. And love is going to make you do a lot of things
you would not have done before. It is something more than
"like"; it is love. You are going to be
mastered by another master than yourself and your own
likes and preferences. You are going to do quite a lot
out of love, because you are love-mastered, that you
would never do otherwise. When love is the master, you
are going ways you would never go otherwise.
Is not
this something that discriminates between spiritual
infancy and spiritual maturity? In effect, the Lord is
saying here, "In spiritual infancy and immaturity,
people always do as they like, as they want to do, as
they choose. But when you get to spiritual maturity it is
no longer what you want or the way you would go, it is
the way the other Master says, the Master who is
love." The day comes when you say:
"My
Master, lead me to Thy door;
Pierce this now willing ear once more:"
"At length my will is all Thine own,
Glad vassal of a Saviour's throne."
That is a
new kind of mastery. There has been service to the Lord,
but this is something new, this is maturity. You notice
that Paul said the very same thing in another way in 1
Cor. 13, "A more excellent way show I unto you.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a
clanging cymbal," and on he goes with what might
be, yet without love, and of it all being nothing, and
then he goes on to the positive unfolding of the nature
of true love. "Love suffereth long, and is kind;
love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed
up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its
own..." and then, without a break, it is not
another chapter on another subject, he says, "When
I was a child I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I
thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have
put away childish things." Oh, love, mature
love, true love, this love is not childish in its
thoughts and ideas and ways, seeking its own. But mature
grown-up love, the love now of the man as against the
child, is a different thing altogether from that. This is
the love of the mature man that Paul is talking about,
and it is his way, his lovely way, I was going to say -
his clever way of just letting the Corinthians see that
it was all childishness, this that was going on in
Corinth. "I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I
of Cephas" (1 Cor. 1:12). It is childishness and
it is not love, and when you come to mature love, when
you grow up, all that sort of thing will go. You will not
be selecting your favourites, you will not be doing any
of those things the Corinthians were doing.
When thou
shalt become a man, thou shalt be under another mastery,
and, although you will not like it, your flesh will
shrink from it, you will even go to the cross. No man
chooses that for his own fleshly comfort, he would shun
it; but you will go to the cross. "Now this he
spake, signifying by what manner of death he should
glorify God." He would be so mastered that he
would stretch forth his hands - Peter according to
tradition was crucified - he would stretch forth his
hands, he would be carried not the way he would like, but
another way because of another master, the mastery of
love, mature love, grown-up love.
Now this
brings me to this point. The Lord does really need men
and women to serve His ends. In many ways there is a need
for more young men to come on in the ministry of feeding
and tending. A lot of people have interpreted that
"Feed my lambs" as Sunday School work. I do not
believe the Lord meant that at all. The lambs in this
case are not little children, although that may be your
ministry and it may be included. You know, one of the
most difficult things is to tend and minister to the
immature, the spiritually delayed in their growth. But
whatever it is, the Lord does need those who will serve
Him in ministering to His own. Young men, He does! He
needs you to preach the Gospel. He needs you to teach His
people, to feed His people. There is a great need.
Perhaps you have thought about it and perhaps you have
desired it. Perhaps that is your will or your hope. But
listen - the need is very great in all phases and
directions of the Lord's work, He needs you; but the fact
that the Lord needs you does not mean that you can do it,
or that He can come now and call you into it and open the
way for you. His need may be very great, and yet He may
not be able now to open the way for you to come in to
serve Him in meeting it. Why? It might be that you would
come in on some other ground - to be a minister, to be a
teacher, to be something; to study up the Bible and then
pass on the fruits of your study. All sorts of things you
might begin to do, and the Lord is waiting until your
heart is broken over this whole situation, and it is such
a heart-matter that you come to the place where you say,
"Lord, the only justification of my life is that
your interests are served." It must be a matter of
heart-love for the Lord and for what is His, and not for
the work, the ministry; not for anything but for your
Lord and what is His. When you get there, and you are
found upon your face before the Lord breaking your heart
because you see He is not getting what He ought to have,
when this becomes the travail of your soul, you will find
the Lord will begin to do something. This is the
necessary basis for the Lord to bring out His servants.
That is what is here. You may come in the way to the
place where you find it painful and not likeable at all,
but that basic grip of the master-love will keep you
going when everything would make you run away. When I see
young men with ambition to be ministers, I quietly say
inside, "The Lord have mercy upon them." This
is something to be guarded against unless the Lord puts
you in and holds you in. Do not have natural ambitions in
the Christian realm, but ask the Lord for this love that
will hold you in when you would give anything to run
away.
You say,
It is terrible to talk about Christian work like that!
But, in a true spiritual realm, you meet forces that you
would never have imagined existed. You meet hell when you
are seeking to build the heavenly kingdom. Well, here
again the Lord does need you. The need is there, He wants
you. There is work for you to do and plenty of it. Oh,
His people are hungry, His sheep need tending and
feeding; they need guiding, counselling, instructing, and
to be provided for, and the Lord wants you to be His
under-shepherds. I am so glad Peter wrote his letter
about the great Shepherd and the under-shepherd. Yes, He
wants you, He needs you. Do not be mistaken about that.
And if He is keeping you waiting, do not think it is
because He does not want you, because there is no need.
It is all there, clamant, pressing, but He must have you
on this basis, nothing else will do - your own personal
heart-love for Him that will not choose your own way or
go anywhere because you like it. You will go against
yourself altogether under the constraint of His mighty
love.
THE
CONCENTRATION OF LOVE
If I were
to add another word, it would be this - connected with
Peter's seemingly superficial reaction to this terrific
thing. Suddenly seeing John following on he turned round.
The Lord has said, "Follow me," and he
immediately turns round, sees John and says, "Lord,
and this man, what?" What I am going to say about it
is not all it contains, but it is this, that you are
going to be called, appointed, to your particular
ministry. Others will be called to theirs and theirs may
be different from yours, theirs may be in another realm
altogether from yours. The Lord's servants are often
characterized by a specific ministry. They have to
recognize what that is and keep to it.
Effectiveness
depends upon concentration and avoidance of either
distraction, diversion, or divided interest. There is
something in the nature of rebuke in the Lord's rejoinder
to Peter - "What is that to thee?" The whole
statement seems clearly to mean that the Lord has
sovereign rights to dispose of His servants as He wills,
and they must not allow themselves to be diverted from
what He appoints for them severally.
Love for
Him must work out in giving oneself WHOLLY to THE
thing to which they have been called. Superficially
turning therefrom to what is not THEIR calling is
itself contrary to love, it is fickleness.
Well,
Peter learned this lesson, did his job, and glorified his
Lord. He became a true shepherd. No one can read his
letters without feeling his love for his Lord above all
dividedness of heart. Love works out in faithfulness to
the particular function, and faithfulness thereto unto
the end - the long last proves the love.