(4) We now turn to a most remarkable passage—Rom. 15:30. +"Now I
beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the
love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to
God for me."+ What I wish you to notice in this verse are the words
"_The love of the Spirit_." It is a wonderful thought. It teaches us
that the Holy Spirit is not a mere blind influence or power, no matter
how beneficent, that comes into our hearts and lives, but that He is
a Divine Person, loving us with the tenderest love. I wonder how many
of us have ever thought much regarding "the love of the Spirit." I
wonder how many of us ministers who are here to-day have ever preached
a sermon on the love of the Spirit. I wonder how many of you have ever
heard a sermon on the love of the Spirit. Every day of your life you
kneel down before God the Father, at least I hope you do, and say,
"Heavenly Father, I thank thee for thy great love that led thee to give
thy Son to come down to this world and die upon the cross of Calvary in
my place." Every day of your life you kneel down and look up into the
face of Jesus Christ the Son and say, "Thou blessed Son of God, I thank
thee for that great love of thine that led thee to come down to this
world in obedience to the Father and die in my place upon the cross of
Calvary." But did you ever kneel down and look up to the Holy Spirit
and say to him, "Holy Spirit, I thank thee for that great love of
thine"? And yet we owe our salvation as truly to the love of the Holy
Spirit as we do to the love of the Father and the love of the Son. If
it had not been for the love of God the Father to me, looking down upon
me in my lost estate, yes, anticipating my fall and ruin and sending
His Son down to this world to die upon the cross, to die in my place,
I would have been in hell to-day. If it had not been for the love of
Jesus Christ, the Son, coming down to this world in obedience to the
Father to lay down His life, a perfect atoning sacrifice on the cross
of Cavalry in my stead, I would have been in hell to-day. But if it had
not been for the love of the Holy Spirit to me, coming down to this
world in obedience to the Father and the Son, seeking me out in my lost
condition, following me day after day, and week after week, and month
after month, and year after year, when I would not listen to Him, when
I deliberately turned my back upon Him, when I insulted Him, following
me into places where it must have been agony for One so holy to go,
following me day after day, week after week, month after month, year
after year, until at last He succeeded in bringing me to my senses and
bringing me to realise my utterly lost condition and revealed the Lord
Jesus to me as just the Saviour I needed and induced me and enabled me
to receive the Lord Jesus as my Saviour and my Lord; if it had not been
for this patient, long-suffering, never-wearying love of the Spirit of
God to me, I would have been in hell to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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