To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is
to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with
love. We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to
live to-morrow. Why do we want to live to-morrow? Is it because
there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see to-morrow,
and be with, and love back? There is no other reason why we should
live on than that we love and are beloved. It is when a man has
no one to love him that he commits suicide. So long as he has
friends, those who love him and whom he loves, he will live, because
to live is to love. Be it but the love of a dog, it will keep him
in life; but let that go, he has no contact with life, no reason
to live. He dies by his own hand.
Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ's
own definition. Ponder it. "This is life eternal, that they might
know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."
Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis,
then, love is life. Love never faileth, and life never faileth,
so long as there is love. That is the philosophy of what Paul
is showing us; the reason why in the nature of things love should
be the supreme thing--because it is going to last; because in the
nature of things it is an Eternal Life. It is a thing that we are
living now, not that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor
chance of getting when we die unless we are living now.
No worse fate
can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone,
unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate
condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and
he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is Love.
Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in
reading this chapter once a week for the next three months? A man
did that once and it changed his whole life. Will you do it? It
is for the greatest thing in the world. You might begin by reading
it every day, especially the verses which describe the perfect
character. "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not;
love vaunteth not itself." Get these ingredients into your life.
Then everything that you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It
is worth giving time to. No man can become a saint in his sleep;
and to fulfill the condition required demands a certain amount of
prayer and meditation and time, just as improvement in any direction,
bodily or mental, requires preparation and care. Address yourselves
to that one thing; at any cost have this transcendent character
exchanged for yours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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