Lecture XXXVI

LOVE TO GOD KEEPING HIS COMMANDMENTS AND NOT FINDING THEM GRIEVOUS

THE three elements or conditions of the “fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ,” in which John would have us to be joint partakers with himself and his fellow apostles;—Light, the primary; Righteousness, the intermediate; Love, the ultimate one;—having been considered;—we enter, as it seems to me, on a fourth section of this great treatise, in which the divine fellowship regarded as complete is viewed in its relation to the conflict that is ever going on between God and the world, between the Holy and True One and the father of lies. The position of one enjoying fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ in light, righteousness, and love, demands on the one hand very thorough loyalty, and on the other hand ensures very thorough victory; loyalty as regards God and his law; victory as regards the wicked one and the system, or state of society, which he organises and influences, the world lying in him.

Hence the fitness or propriety of the introductory text in this part of the Epistle being one that enforces not only obedience, but obedience so thoroughly loving and loyal as to be divested of all the feeling of irksomeness that is apt to embitter a state of subjection and subordination.

For the assertion,—“his commandments are not grievous,”—is not an incidental remark merely; it is of the essence of the apostle’s argument. If the test of God’s giving us of his Spirit, and so dwelling in us (3:24, and 4:13), is to be pre-eminently our loving our brother (4:7 and 20, etc.), it concerns us much that our love to our brother should be itself thoroughly tried and proved. Is it love to our fellow-men as seen by us in the same light in which God sees them and us when he loveth us? (4:20.) Is it, moreover, a love that has respect to God (4:21); that loves the begotten for the begetter’s sake (5:1); that loves the children for the relation in which they stand to the Father; out of love to the Father himself, and in obedience to him? (5:2). This last condition is what really connects our loving them with our loving him. And it does so, in virtue of a general law or principle:—“His commandments are not grievous.”

The statement is not absolute but relative. It points out, not what the commandments of God are in themselves, but what they are to us, in our sense and apprehension of them. It may indeed be most truly said of them, considered in themselves, that they are not grievous; on the contrary, they are all most reasonable, equitable and beneficent. Nothing that God orders us to do, nothing that he requires us to suffer, can fairly be called grievous. But to me they are too often very grievous. I feel them to be irksome and heavy. Yes! That is the exact word. They are heavy, weighty, burdensome.

That is my fault, you say. Be it so. Let us ask how it comes to be so; and let us ask also how it may cease to be so.

But first, let us fix it, as a first principle, in our understandings and hearts, that no keeping of God’s commandments will suffice to meet the condition or requirement now in question, that is a keeping of them as grievous. They are not kept at all, in the sense of the identification,—“this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments,”—if they are kept by us as grievous; if in keeping them we feel them to be grievous. Under this conviction, let us look into this matter of the grievousness of God’s commandments, and the way of delivery from any sense or suspicion of their being grievous.

1. Beginning at the lowest stage, it is not difficult to see how God’s commandments must be grievous to me, if I am bent on giving full scope to the movements of my inner man which are opposed to them. I cannot shake off the sense of their being binding on me; and binding on me under the sanction of terrible responsibilities. Let me drown conviction as I may in pleasure’s bowl, or stifle it in the din and whirl of worldly business, conscience will not let me take my ease; I cannot get rid of God’s commandments. They haunt and harass me; they disturb and trouble me; they are grievous; often beyond expression grievous. How shall I ever shake off the feeling of their grievousness?

2. Shall it be by keeping them scrupulously, according to the strictest letter of the law? I become a painstaking Pharisee; a rigid and exact observer of all the commandments. They shall not be grievous to me any more, on account of my wilful opposition to them. But alas! they are grievous still. I may reduce them to a minimum of obligations, and stretch my keeping of them to a maximum of fulfilment. I may make the least I can of them, by turning their living spirit into outward formal acts; and I may make the most of myself and my obedience, in the way of exaggerating my sacrifices and services. Still God’s commandments are grievous to me. My religion, such as it is, is a mere burden and oppression. I would shake it off if my conscience would allow me.

3. But my conscience will not allow me. It works in me deeper and deeper; carrying into the innermost recesses of my spiritual nature, not the letter only, but the spirit also of God’s commandments. And now, their grievousness comes out in a new and most distressing experience. For now, not only is my conscience convinced, but my will is renewed, with reference to these commandments of God. Both of these results or effects are of the Spirit. They are wrought simultaneously, and in harmony with one another; they act and react on one another. My conscience, quickened by the Spirit, sensitively apprehends a spirituality in God’s commandments,—my heart reconciled by the Spirit, lovingly owns an excellency and beauty in them,—unperceived and unfelt before. I become alive in my conscience to the imperative necessity of real spiritual conformity in my spirit to the holy and loving spirit of the law; and that precisely when I am smitten in my heart of hearts with love to it, because it is so spiritually holy and loving. And what follows? If the work of the Spirit goes on, I sink deeper and deeper, as under a heavy burden, growing always heavier. There is an increasingly oppressive sense, in my conscience, not only of obligation unfulfilled, but of new guilt contracted. There is an increasingly despairing feeling, in my heart, of the opposition of my nature to the commandments of God’s law which I love. My very love to the commandments of God, my very “delight in the law after the inner man,” brings out now more than ever the feeling of grievousness. Oh, how grievous to me are these commandments of my God, which I so heartily approve and love, but which, alas, I more and more helplessly complain that I cannot satisfy and keep! (Rom. 7:21–25.)

4. But “there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:1). The element of grievousness is extracted from God’s commandments, only through my believing consciousness and experience of that great life-giving truth.

How complete is the provision thus made for eradicating every root of bitterness that might make us feel God’s commandments to be grievous!

There is, first, a removal of the curse, or the condemnation, and a complete restoration of our right standing with God. The element of grievousness arising out of the law’s righteous sentence of wrath is removed, in a way that completely divests the very sentence itself of all its grievousness. I cannot rebel against the judgment, however terrible, which the righteous law, with its broken commands, entails on me; I cannot complain of it as grievous when, embracing the cross, I am one with him who there on my behalf endured and exhausted it. Nor can the demand of perfect compliance with the spirit of all the commandments, as the only condition of life, grieve me now, when I see it so fully met on my behalf by the obedience unto death of God’s own beloved Son.

Then, secondly, there is the renewal of my whole moral nature, bringing it back to its original conformity to the nature of God, as that nature is expressed and manifested in his commandments. This also is essential to the removal of the feeling of grievousness. If I am a spiritual man as regards the commandments of God, then,—apart from the feeling of the utter hopelessness of my ever being justified, in the only way in which I now care to be justified, in terms of the law, fully vindicated and satisfied,—there is the other feeling of the utter hopelessness of my ever being sanctified, after the fashion of the only sort of holiness that can now content me, the holy loving law of the holy loving God. But here too my case is met. In Christ Jesus my Lord I have not only justifying righteousness but renewing grace. The grievousness of a felt discrepancy between my nature and God’s commandments, between my spirit and theirs, need not continue. There may still be a vast difference in degree; but there need be no difference in kind. My moral nature and that of God are now one, if I am renewed after his image. May not the grievousness of his commandments now cease for ever?

5. An ominous fact here looms out from across the gulf that separates the primeval paradise from our present world. Before the fall, in the garden of Eden, God’s commandment was felt to be grievous; the only commandment which he saw fit formally to give. The reptile insinuation—“Yea, hath God said ye shall not?”—found entrance into the ear, the mind, the heart of righteous innocence, created after the image of God. To Eve, to Adam, yet unfallen, with the divine likeness in which they were made still entire, the commandment of God came to be grievous. What are we to make of that?

It was the devil’s fault. Be it so; let him bear the blame. But what of his own sin and fall, the sin and fall of himself and all his host? There was no tempter admitted into their abode. There were no outward circumstances to explain the rise of any feeling of grievousness in their breasts. Yet to them, still unfallen, the commandment of God was grievous. What shall we say to these things? How do they affect us?

Ah! do they not serve to bring out a new and most blessed view of the gospel method of salvation? John says expressly and absolutely, without qualification or reserve, that “God’s commandments are not grievous.” He says this with reference to himself and all believers. His meaning must be, that he and they are in such a state, and of such a mind, as to preclude the possibility of God’s commandments ever being, or ever becoming, grievous either to him or to them. And what does that imply?

If the plan of grace made provision only for our being restored, in respect of position and nature, to what our first parents were before they fell,—if we were to be even as the angels were,—however thoroughly that end might be accomplished, it would not afford any adequate security against God’s commandments being felt to be grievous. For in fact, the risk to be obviated, the evil to be remedied and guarded against, is not that God’s commandments in detail are grievous, some more so and some less, but that his commandments as a whole are grievous. The grievance is that he commands us at all. Even when the thing commanded is most easy and pleasant, most manifestly right and good, its being commanded may make it grievous. That was the case in heaven, when the commandment to “worship the Son,” turned out to be grievous to so many of the yet unfallen angels. It was the case also in paradise, when the commandment not to eat of the forbidden tree became grievous to our first parents. It might be the case again, in paradise restored, in heaven gained, if we who are redeemed and renewed were to be merely such, in position and in nature, as the angels were in heaven, and our first parents were in paradise, before they fell.¹

The real seat of the mischief is not reached unless the very possibility of our ever feeling it grievous to be commanded is thoroughly, conclusively, and effectually precluded and barred. And what potent spell, what resistless charm, is to secure that blessed result? What but the spell, the charm of love? And what love? What but the love which is God’s very essence, manifested in a way altogether new and inconceivable beforehand; in a way in which, but for the entrance of sin and evil into his moral creation, it never could have been manifested? Yes. That love of God manifested in his sending his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,—known and believed by us,—bringing us into a perfect love-relationship to him and working in us love of the very same sort with itself,—that love of him who is love, thus manifested to us, apprehended by us, and reproduced in us,—that love it is, and that alone, which puts finally and for ever away out of our hearts every shred and vestige of the old spirit, the old leaven, which, jealous of restraint and aspiring to independence, counts it a grievance to be commanded. This is that new thing under the sun for which sin or moral evil gave occasion, and for which that alone could give occasion. This is God’s method of overcoming evil with good; higher good than could ever otherwise have been reached. This is the triumph of love; reconciling man’s proud soul to dependence and obedience; expelling the last lingering feeling of soreness because he is under authority; the last lingering feeling of desire to be his own master, or to rule himself.

Ah! if that love has its free course in me; if I know it and believe it; if I enter cordially into that perfect relationship and fellowship of love for which it makes provision, and consent to be on that footing of perfect love with God on which he would have me to be; if now, in consequence, all servile fear is clean gone out of me, and only filial reverence and affection reign within me; how can it ever, at any time, seem to me grievous that this God should command me?

Grievous! O my redeeming God, my loving Father, the loving Father of my Lord! Grievous that thou shouldst command me! Grievous that I should be under thee! Grievous that I am not independent of thee; left to choose for myself, instead of having thee to choose for me; left free to do my own will, and not thine! Nay, I will not, I cannot any more take exception to thy rightful rule over me, O thou loving God and Father who so lovingly makest me thine own! No, nor to any instance of its exercise, be the instance what it may. Whatever thou commandest, in the line of doing or of suffering, shall please me now, simply because thou commandest it. I dare not promise that there shall be no groans, and tears, and cries, in the doing or the suffering of it. There were groans, and tears, and cries, in the doing and suffering of thy will, when the doer and sufferer of it was thine own beloved Son. But to this I will seek to attain, thy grace helping me, that to me now, as one with him, not one of thy commandments shall ever be more grievous than was that “commandment” to him, in obedience to which “he laid down his life for the sheep.”

That was his loving us, with a true brother’s love, because “he loved God and kept his commandments.” That also was his “overcoming the world,” and the world’s prince. Thus he proved his love to God, by keeping his commandments; keeping them as not finding any of them to be grievous. Not grievous to him was the commandment to save his people by dying in their stead. Not grievous to him was the commandment to encounter Satan on their behalf, and win for them the victory over Satan’s world.

And now what is his word to you? Is it not a word giving you the assurance that you in him will find God’s commandments no more grievous to you than they were to him? Yes! Once more hear his voice: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” All ye that labour and are heavy laden; ye who are painfully seeking to fulfil the letter of God’s law and finding it very hard; working laboriously at religion as at a weary task; feeling God’s service to be a very drudgery and weariness of the flesh;—or ye who, smitten with a sense of the beauty of holiness, the spirituality of the commandment, and the exceeding sinfulness of sin, are desperately striving to get rid of indwelling corruption, and bring your whole inner man into subjection to God and to godliness;—“all ye who labour and are heavy laden,” not succeeding, not attaining, not able to rise above the feeling of its being, after all, a heavy load that is imposed upon you in the keeping of God’s commandments,—“Come unto me; I will give you rest.”

But how? “Take my yoke upon you.” “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Thy yoke, O blessed Jesus, easy! Thy burden light! The yoke thou didst take on thyself when thou didst consent to serve and obey, even to the laying down of thy life for us,—was that easy? The burden thou hadst to bear when, all thy life long and in thy death, thou hadst, in obedience to the Father, and as his servant, to carry our sicknesses, our sorrows, our sins,—was that light? Is it that yoke of thine that thou invitest us to take upon us? Is it that burden of thine that thou callest us to bear? And is it in the taking upon us of that yoke of thine, and in the bearing of that burden of thine, that thou assurest us we shall find rest unto our souls?

Even so. Thus and not otherwise will I give you rest when you come to me,—“Take my yoke upon you.” But that it may be really my yoke that you take upon you,—“Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.” Learn of me my own meekness and lowliness of heart. Learn of me, coming to me, abiding in me, growing up into me, getting it from me and in me,—learn of me that meek, lowly, hearty love and loyalty to my Father,—having in it no element at all of the servile, for all in it is filial,—which makes the hardest yoke easy, the heaviest burden light. For it is thus that, in the consciousness of unbroken filial oneness with him who lays on me the yoke and the burden, I can lift up to him the eye of quiet resignation and reliance, and say, —“Father, glorify thy name;” “Father, not my will, but thine be done;” Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Thy commandments are not grievous to me, for “by keeping them I abide in thy love” (John 15:10).