Second Sunday in Lent
February 28, 1858
“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.”—2 Corinthians v. 14, 15.
Either there is a contradiction in this passage, or St. Paul’s conception of love and its power is not the same with the one which is most prevalent among us. “The love of Christ constrains us; because we judge”: here seems to be a process of the understanding, strangely mixed up with a compulsion acting on the feelings or the heart. If the Apostle had to argue with himself that Christ died for all, because all were dead, and that men might not live to themselves, how can he affirm that a mere sense or passion of devotion to his Master urged him on to act or to suffer? If he was under the influence of such a passion, what need or what possibility of thinking, of deliberating, of concluding?
It cannot be said that this perplexity is owing to an error of the translator. St. Paul indeed uses the participle where we use a causal conjunction; he says, “The love of Christ constrains us—having judged” or “concluded”: but I do not see that this change, though noticeable on another ground, materially affects the point we are considering. St. Paul’s language assumes that the love constrains those who do come to this conclusion or have come to it; he evidently assumes that the conclusion has some very close connection with the love and with the effects which it produces.
I would not suggest this thought to any one, if I was not sure that it does suggest itself in practice to hundreds, though they may not associate it with our text. There is no class of difficulties more serious and more tormenting in all times, but especially in this time, than those which concern the respective provinces of the heart and the intellect, the obligations of duty and the obligations of affection. The forms in which these questions present themselves are very various and complicated. If we have not tried to disentangle the threads before, they seem hopelessly interwoven when we meet them in particular events and circumstances; and yet, till we have met them in these events and circumstances, it seems almost like a school-task, or a child’s play, to meddle with them. I believe the Apostle’s words which have suggested the puzzle are the best solution of it. Let us seek grace to understand what they must have meant to him, and what they mean to us.
I would remark at the outset, that the love of Christ can scarcely mean the love which the Apostle had, or which any man has, for Christ. It is very natural that this meaning should have been given to the words, for the intent of love shown to us, is to produce love in us; and we may easily fancy that the reflection or image, as it is nearer to ourselves, has more to do with us than that from which it is derived. Hence, whenever the love of Christ, or the love of God, is spoken of in the New Testament, it is supposed by many that the words must denote some feeling, or temper, or state of mind of the creature towards its Creator, of the emancipated spirit towards its Redeemer. Sermons and books of devotion have encouraged the opinion. They have recognized the fact that there was a ground for their love in the nature and acts of God; but they have thought that it was their chief business to dwell upon the results of these in men, to supply tests to discover how far they were present or absent, to point out the great blessing which will follow if they have actually been awakened, the exceeding misery and punishment which must follow if they are not to be found. I do not venture to say that such appeals to the human heart are not sometimes effectual in kindling that which is dormant, in leading men to confess their hardness and coldness. But I am afraid that just as often they produce hypocrisy, dishonest efforts to discover the requisite signs, a still more violent effort to create them, quickness in detecting the sins and deficiencies of our brethren, an inclination to set off certain feelings of our own, present or past, as a compensation for positive ill-doings, which the conscience condemns. When once we come to think of all God’s acts as a revelation of Himself, when once we really believe that the knowledge of Him standeth on eternal life, it seems impossible any longer to adopt this method. Then we feel that to present His acts and character to men must be the right, only way of producing the corresponding acts and characters in them. Idolatry, unbelief, despair, is the effect of all attempts to form images of excellence and beauty for ourselves. The Scripture, therefore, which contains the great protest against idolatry, the great warrant of faith, the great cure for despair, must always be understood as speaking first of the love which Christ exhibits, not first of that which is exhibited to him.
The very word for “constrains” seems to suggest the thought of an atmosphere surrounding us, compressing us—of a power bearing upon us. It would be the strangest phrase imaginable if it meant something which proceeded from ourselves, a smoke or incense rising up to Heaven. But if we give it this signification, surely the greatest part of the perplexity which encountered us is removed. A feeling or sympathy of ours may require to be distinguished accurately from an exercise of our judgments, even though experience tells us that there is some close relation between them. But a love coming down upon us, the love of a superior Being speaking to us, is not thus limited. The sun-light of a parent’s or a teacher’s countenance does not act merely on the affections of a child or a pupil, it acts upon his intellect, it gives him courage to think, power to perceive, vivacity in all parts of his being. The love of Christ then might well constrain the judgment to a right and reasonable conclusion, as well as the hands to right and reasonable acts. If you suppose the Divine Love at work on any creature, you would expect it to act generally, diffusively,—to leave no faculty just as it was before, to bring those out into particular clearness and vigour, which were most ready for the influence; sometimes to cause an immediate glow in the passive and susceptible feelings, sometimes to stir up the active powers; sometimes to reach the heart directly, sometimes to reach it through the narrow and winding passages of the understanding.
This, I think, would be our general conclusion. But it is much more intelligible when we consider it in connection with St. Paul’s application of it. The opinion or judgment at which he arrives is, that if Christ died for all, all were dead. The first thought of a child or a pupil whose inner spirit has been awakened by the genial encouragements of a friend or a teacher is, “What should I be if I had not this? How cold, hard, I was, before I had it!” That impression is only partially true. If that influence had been wanting to call the seeds within into life, another might have been provided. When it is withdrawn, another more suitable to a new stage of growth may succeed it. St. Paul’s inference, though the same in kind with this, is absolute and universal. As he confesses the love of Christ to be the power which is acting upon his will and constraining it, he determines at once that there would have been no life within him, if that love were away. What he pronounces for himself, he pronounces for all. But for this primary love, there would be no life in any creature; all would be dead. He goes on a step further. He connects this discovery with that truth which we had received first of all, that Christ died for our sins. That truth presents itself to him in a new light. He seems to see into the very hidden meaning of it. He died for all, because all were dead. There was no life in the creature which it could call its own; it had nothing but what it received. He gave up His own life to His Father because it was so. He would claim nothing of His own. As He refused to make the stones bread, by His own power, for His own use, but would receive all as from His Father, so He said at last, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.” He would claim no life or power or glory apart from His Father. By His own perfect, filial dependence, He maintained the dependence of all those whose nature He had taken, upon God. Their death could only be understood by His death, their life by His life.
And it was this same love which enabled St. Paul to see into the ultimate purpose, the final cause, of that death, so far as man is concerned, that “we which live, should not henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto Him which died for us, and rose again.” He felt that as this Death was the great witness that all men in themselves were dead, so, taken together with the Resurrection, it was the witness that it was God’s design to impart to all who would receive it, anew life: not a separate, selfish life, such as men sought to make for themselves; not a life in which each is pursuing an end of his own, striving after gifts and rewards of his own, impatient of the success of his fellows, always jostling them out of the way; but the life which was first in Him Who gave Himself up for all, a life proceeding from Him, continually referred to Him, of which He is the Author and the Finisher, the Spring from which all the different streams of it descend, the Ocean in which they all meet.
In this way, I think, the different parts of this memorable sentence naturally unfold themselves out of each other, and illustrate, and receive illustration from, the whole doctrine, and from the acts of the Apostle. He is so learned a teacher, there are in his Epistles so many turnings and windings of thought, so much of intellectual subtlety, that many have been inclined to fancy that he was elaborating a great system of Theology. But all simple readers feel that they are in the presence of a man of action, and not of a schoolman; of one who has been conversant with men and with their ways, with all the perplexities of human society, as well as with all individual conflicts. Luther laid it down as a canon, that no person could thoroughly understand Cicero’s Epistles, who had not been a statesman for thirty years, or St. Paul’s, who had not been occupied in ecclesiastical affairs for forty. But through all this doctrinal wisdom and practical life, there runs a stream of vehement passion, of personal feeling. No one can ever pretend that the heart has been in the least degree crushed by the understanding, or has grown colder from an experience of the world’s indifference or unkindness. The teacher and the ruler is essentially and at all points the man; he magnifies his office, he feels himself to be nothing, and yet Paul himself is as distinct a person when he is seeking to heal the feuds in Corinth, or to remind the Galatians of the grace from which they had fallen, as when he is insisting that the magistrates of Philippi should fetch him out of his prison; or beseeching Philemon, for his sake, to deal kindly with the slave who had become a brother. Now, when we look for “the pulse of this machine,” we shall seek it in vain in one quality or another of the Apostle’s mind. We contradict his express and habitual words, if we trace his primary impulse to any feeling or calculation. There was a power of love which was urging him on, and could urge him on, in spite of all natural reluctance, to right thoughts and good deeds; which could, in spite of his natural selfishness, make him live and act as a brother and a fellow-worker in Christ’s Church. He yielded himself to that power, he besought others to yield to it, since it was for them as much as for him, since he judged that Christ died for all, that all were dead without Him, that all might live through Him. This was the secret of his theology, his philosophy, his arguments, his passionate appeals to other men’s consciences and hearts, his struggles, his joys, his sorrows, his vehemence, his weakness, his self-justification, his self-contempt, his rejection of the Law, his submission to the Law, his freedom to do all things, his labours to bring his body into subjection, his fear that he might be a castaway, his confidence that “neither height, nor depth, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, should separate him from the love of God which was in Christ Jesus his Lord.”
But if it be so, brethren, the sense in which these words were most applicable to the Apostle of the Gentiles, is the sense in which they are most applicable to us; to us as forming a society of men; to each one of us as an individual man, to the layman and to the priest. If any one of us was bold enough to say, “The love of Christ constraineth me,” meaning thereby that he was acting, consciously, deliberately acting, at every moment, from love to his Master, from zeal for the honour of His Name, from care for His flock upon earth, how many acts and words would belie and mock the pretension! How the heart and conscience within would be tormented with the recollection of paltry deeds done with a secret—often scarcely a secret purpose of self-glorification! How much worse must such deeds look in our own eyes, when we honestly scan them,—how much more mischief must they have done to others,—if there was some apparently religious or divine object on the face of them!
But where can be the peril to any man in saying, “I feel and know that the love of Christ has constrained me to do every act which I have been enabled rightly to do, because there is a death, a lovelessness in myself, which, but for such a power, must have hindered these acts altogether. I am sure that I am compassed about by this Divine Love, that it is continually striving against the self-seeking, self-willed temper to which I so readily yield, that it is thwarting my inclination to be the poor, isolated, self-concentrated individual I am trying to be, that it is stirring up the spirit of a man within me, kindling in me sympathies with my kind, making me know that I was not created to live for myself, or die for myself”? A man may confess this constraint who is most conscious of his own struggle against it, of the effort he has made to be independent of it, of the fierce determination he has often come to, that he will entirely break the bonds of love asunder and cast away its cords from him. Still the Love of Christ has been pressing him round, above, beneath, seeking to penetrate and possess him. If he yields to it, it will not be less felt as a constraint, he will not boast that now it is his own choice which is governing him, and not another who is guiding him and leading him. He must rejoice to feel that his will has been made a captive by the true Will which it was formed to obey. He must distinctly and deliberately judge that such authority, enforcing such obedience, is the true source of all freedom.
For he will judge that if one died for all, then were all dead. It will not be a hasty, momentary act of surrender to one from whom he has received a peculiar act of mercy. It will be a considerate, quiet submission to One Who has proved Himself the rightful governor and deliverer of him and of all his race. He confesses that One has died, not for him, but for all; for him as one member of a body, because he and all the members of that body were dead in themselves; because he and all the members of the body were capable of receiving a quickening, life-giving power from their Head. He submits to this Lord and Giver of life, for experience has told him, and reason has told him, that he will not work harmoniously with his fellow-men on earth upon any other condition, and that he can work harmoniously with them while He is inspiring him, “Who died for all, that they who live should not live unto themselves, but unto Him.”
The same judgment is a warrant for charity to the good acts and the failures of his brethren. What excuse has he for undervaluing the kind deeds, and feelings, and words, of any man? How dares he minutely canvass and question the motives of them? They must proceed from the constraining love of Christ, whether he who exhibits them acknowledges that love or not, whether he is acquainted with the Name of Christ or not. They cannot proceed from the evil nature; they cannot proceed from the mere individual man, for he, apart from Christ, is dead: the death of Christ, as St. Paul says, proclaims him to be so. They must be Christ’s own acts, however they may be marred and defiled by the instrument through whom they are performed. It is blasphemy against Him to call any instance of gentleness, or meekness, or charity, in any human being, a splendid sin; it is nothing less than calling good evil, and evil good; it is confounding Christ and the Spirit of Darkness.
On the other hand, it is this judgment which enjoins us to acknowledge how the darkness which we feel in ourselves is working in others, how it is always trying to draw down the light into itself, and to extinguish it. Oh, surely there is no difficulty for any man who knows himself, to understand all the strifes, divisions, wars, fightings, heresies, schisms, of families, nations, churches! They are all in him: he feels them all, he is tormented by them. He carries about with him the witness of death, even of a second death, in which all that has been better in him, all that has bound him to his fellows, all that has separated him from beasts or devils, may be utterly extinguished. But he carries within him, too, the witness of a love—a sustaining love—which could not be about him if it were not about the world; which could not be influencing him, if it were not acting upon every one of his race.
We do homage to Christ’s love, if, when we feel our emotions ever so cold, our hearts ever so barren, we yet hold them as His liege servants and subjects, Who can renew them and infuse His own Spirit into them. The understanding, honestly exercised, pays Him service as well as the affections. A man who bows because it is his duty, conscious that he has no sacrifices of gratitude or zeal to offer which are worthy to be accepted, may find that his lips too are touched by a coal from the Altar, that Christ does not send him away empty of those gifts which he sought for in vain among his own stores. But if we believe in the constraining love of Christ, we must wish that it should make every part of us a sacrifice; that it should convert our reason, will, affections, bodies, into instruments of His good pleasure. We must desire that this love should not always strive in an element which opposes it and seems victorious over it. We must believe that this love will knit men’s hearts to each other, will mould society according to its law, will not suffer men to make another law for themselves which is one of selfishness and hatred. In the faith, however hard to entertain and to hold fast, that Christ’s constraining love is the mightiest power in the universe, that from which all powers have proceeded, and to which all powers must be subdued, we must be, think, act, struggle, day by day.
Now let us not forget that the same love which constrains all the dwellers upon earth, whether they confess the constraint and submit to it or no, must be acting more wonderfully, more perfectly, upon those who have passed out of our world, who have entered into some new region of work, with higher knowledge. How sad it would be to think that our relation to them depended upon the strength of our affection, or our memory! How often we must feel divided from them by that wilfulness, paltriness, falsehood, of which we are conscious. But when we recollect that it is Christ’s love, not ours, which binds them to us,—when we remember that they know, far better than we do, and with more reality, that in Him they are dead, that in Him only they have life— we may be sure that the tie between us is one which no circumstances can sever. And as we kneel at Christ’s altar, and confess that a love has been manifested at the Cross, which is higher than Heaven, deeper than Hell, we may rejoice that in it we have communion with all the spirits before the Throne; we may ask that all the sweetness and gentleness which Christ enabled them to show forth here, may appear in our lives; we may be sure that every hour we may know them better as we glorify Him more.