Unpurchasable Love

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. - Song of Solomon 8:7

    “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.”

    Love is unpurchasable. That is a general truth, which may be applied to every form of true love. You cannot purchase love. True love cannot be bought, nor sold. It is free, spontaneous, and faithful. I am not talking about the silly, sentimental passions and emotions that people call love. That is bought and sold at a very cheap price. It is as fickle as water. But true love, that love that is self-denying, self-sacrificing, and devoted, that love which is more interested in its object than it is in self, true love cannot be purchased; and it cannot be sold. “Love is strong as death…Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” Love is both free and faithful. It cannot be bought; and it cannot be destroyed.

    The love of a husband or wife cannot be purchased. Every young man and young lady, who is wise, will lay this fact to heart. You cannot buy the love of a husband. You cannot buy the love of a wife. Many homes would be much happier if there were a tithe as much love as there is wealth. It takes more than money, reputation, social standing, and luxury to build a home. A home is a place where love dwells. A home is a place where love is felt, expressed, and active. Many times, love will come in the poor man’s door, making his home a bright and happy place, when it cannot enter the luxury of the rich.

    Who could purchase a mother’s love? She loves her own child especially, because it is her own child. She watches over her baby with care. She denies herself necessary sleep at night if her baby is sick. She would be ready to part with her life at a moment’s notice to spare the fruit of her womb. Bring another woman’s child, and endow her with great wealth to induce her to love it; and you will find that it is not in her power to transfer her love from her own child to the son or daughter of another. Her own child is exceedingly precious to her. Another infant, that to an eye unprejudiced by love might be far more beautiful, can never receive the love that belongs to her own. Offer her any price; it would be utterly despised. Love cannot be purchased.

    Even the love of friends is without price. I am showing you that the language of this text applies to every form of true love. The love of Jonathan and David for one another was so great that they entered into a covenant with one another. David did not buy Jonathan’s love, nor Jonathan David’s. And no price could purchase their hearts from one another. It may or may not be true that “every man has his price;” but love has no price. No, if a man should give all the substance of his house even for human love, for the common love that exists between man and man, it would be utterly despised.

    But here the Holy Spirit speaks of a much higher love. All that I have said about love is pre-eminently true when we come to think of the love of Christ for us, and when we think of that love which springs up in the human heart for the Lord Jesus Christ when the Spirit of God has renewed our hearts and shed abroad the love of God in our souls. Neither the love of Christ for us, nor the love of our hearts for him can be purchased. If a man should offer to give all the substance of his house for either of these forms of love, it would be utterly despised.

    Christ’s love for us—unpurchasable

    We will begin at the highest point and the original source of all true love. The love of the Lord Jesus Christ for his people cannot be purchased. Our Savior is no mercenary. He does not auction his love and grace to the highest bidder. It would be a profane and monstrous blasphemy to suppose that the love of his heart could be bought with silver, gold, and earthly stores.

    If anything could enrage the heart of the eternal God, I am sure it would be the attempts of men to purchase his love and the favors of his love by what they suppose they do for him or give to him. The pride and stupidity of man is so great that he dares to suppose that the love of God is for sale, like the love of a common prostitute. Paul very plainly tells us that those preachers who are peddlers of self-righteousness who preach up law and works, as a basis of salvation, are nothing more than prostitutes. They have prostituted the gospel of Christ. (Compare Phil. 3:2 and Deut. 23:18). The love of Christ is not for sale!

    If it were, what do you suppose you might give him to buy his love? He has need of nothing. Everything in the vast universe belongs to him (Ps. 50:7-12). There is nothing, which he conceives in his infinite mind, that he could not fashion at once by his mighty power. There is nothing his heart could desire that he cannot command to appear before him.

    What do you suppose you might do for Christ to win his love? What proud worms we are to think that by giving or doing anything, we can win the love and favor of the infinite God. He is not like us. His love is not for sale. His favors cannot be purchased. The Almighty cannot be bribed.

    If the love of Christ could be won by us by something we might give or do for him, then it must be concluded that our works and our gifts are of equal merit and of equal value with his love. That cannot be. The silver and gold, which we so highly treasure, is nothing more to the Son of God than the gravel in your driveway. As Augustus Toplady wrote, “Christ loved money so little, that he had but one thief, and he made him his purse-bearer.”

    In time of pain and trouble, in heaviness and sorrow, in sickness, bereavement, and death, try to find comfort for your soul in your works or in your gifts if you dare. You will find them to be a source of torment for your conscience, but never will they bring comfort to your soul. Nothing can give our souls peace and comfort, except a saving knowledge of the love of God in Christ. If these things will not satisfy you, they certainly will not satisfy God!

    There is no emotion we have ever felt in our most sanctified moments, there is no holy desire that has ever passed through our hearts in our most hallowed times, there is no heavenly longing that has been begotten in our souls by the Spirit of God, that we should dare to put side by side with the love of Christ, and say, “This is worthy of my Savior’s love.”

    Everything we have belongs to Christ already. Everything we could possibly do for Christ, we are already lawfully obliged to do for him.

    Yet, though we could never purchase the love of Christ by any price, every believing sinner, saved by God’s free grace has his love in all its infinite fulness. Child of God, rejoice! The Son of God loves us. He has freely bestowed upon us what he never would have sold us, what we never could have purchased from him. He said, “I will love them freely” (Hosea 14:4), and he does. He has bestowed his love upon us freely, “Without money and without price.”

    His love for us is an eternal and everlasting love (Jer. 31:3). His love for us is a sovereign and free love (Rom. 9:13). His love for us is a self-sacrificing, redeeming, saving love (1 John 4:9-10). His love for us is an immutable and indestructible love (Mal. 3:6). His love for us arises entirely from within himself. The source, the spring, the cause of our Savior’s love for us is in his own holy Being.

    Here is the greatest marvel in all the world to me —This unpurchaseable love, this eternal, unending love is mine. “He loved me and gave himself for me!” You, my brother, my sister, if you have been saved by his grace, can always say, “This love is mine. The Lord Jesus Christ loves me with a love that I never could have purchased.”

    Truly, the love of Christ passeth knowledge. It is, like himself, infinite. It emerges out of every storm or flood. It survives all unworthiness, and unbelief, and rejection. It is this that fills the soul, that liberates us from bondage, that gladdens our hearts in the most sorrowful hour. Love is the true sunshine of life; and with this love Christ is to fill, not heaven only, but also earth when he comes again in his glory.

    Perhaps the one who reads these lines might think, “O how I wish I could have the love of Christ in my heart.” If you really do want the love of Christ, let this word from God guide you into the way by which you may know the love of Christ. Do not try to purchase the love of Christ; abandon that foolish notion at once. Receive the love of Christ as a free-gift, for which you are utterly unworthy, by simply trusting him.

    Our love for Christ —unpurchasable

    As Christ’s love for us could never be purchased, the believer’s love for Christ is not purchased, not even by all the Lord’s many gifts to us. It is true, “We love him, because he first loved us.” The Lord’s love for us caused our love for him. And we are and should be grateful for the many gifts of love he has so freely and bounteously bestowed upon us. But the true believer does not love Christ because of all the gifts his love has given us.

    Satan’s accusation against Job was false (Job 1:8-12, 20-21; 2:3-10). The believer’s love for Christ does not vary and alter according to our temporal circumstances. Our love for Christ does not vary with our spiritual experiences (Song of Sol. 5:8, 10-16). Even the many blessings of grace, which Christ has given us, are not the cause of our love to him.

    It is the Lord Jesus Christ himself that we love, not the things he gives us. There are several small items I possess that are precious to me. They would not be, except for one thing —They were given to me by people who love me and by people I love. In much the same way, we cherish our Savior’s gifts to us because they are his gifts; but the Object of our love is Christ himself.

    Christ himself has won our hearts. I believe all the doctrines of the grace of God: Election, redemption, justification, and regeneration. I rejoice in all the blessings of grace: forgiveness, righteousness, adoption, salvation, and eternal life. I rest in the blessed promises of grace: resurrection, glorification, heaven, and eternal glory. But the love of my heart is reserved for Christ alone. I love him. All these other things are the substance of his house. They could never have won my heart until Christ himself was revealed in my heart by the Holy Spirit.

    “My Beloved is mine, and I am his.” I am truly thankful to know that his crown is mine, his throne is mine, his home is mine, his grace is mine, and his name is mine. But it is Christ himself who charms and wins my heart. Christ himself is mine. And I am His.

    No substitute for love

    Our Lord Jesus Christ will accept no substitute for love. The Lord God says to each of his children, “My Son, give me thine heart” (Pro. 23:26). There are many who wish to think they are God’s children who will give him anything, but love. Man will offer God anything, except that which has to do with the heart. A man will say, or do, or give most anything except bow his heart to God.

    Until you give Christ the love of your heart, you will never be accepted by him (Lk. 14:25-27, 33). We receive the Savior by faith in him, not by love for him. But faith in him causes love for him. Any faith that does not bring with it true love for the Son of God is false faith.

    The believing heart is motivated by love for Christ. Unless love for Christ is the motive and principle of our worship, our service, and our gifts to him, he will never accept them or us (2 Cor. 9:7). Love is a better motive than law. It does more. It gives more. It produces more. Love is devotion. Love withholds nothing. Love gives all.

    Here is a point of examination. I have challenged, searched, and tried my own heart by these questions. I call upon you to do the same. Would I do more for Christ than I am now doing for him if I thought it would have any bearing on my eternal salvation? Would my worship, devotion and faithfulness to Christ be any more sincere if I felt that my eternal salvation depended upon it? Would I give more to Christ of my time, my talents, or my money if I thought that by doing so I would gain greater riches in this world, or greater reward in heaven, or if I feared that God might punish me for giving so little as I do?

    In other words, would I be more faithful to Christ than I now am if I truly felt in my heart that my salvation and my eternal relationship with God depended upon the works of the law, rather than upon his free grace? Of this I am sure—If the threat of punishment or the promise of reward could persuade a person to do more, give more, or behave better than the constraint of love, that person is utterly void of the grace of God. I repeat, it is not love for Christ that brings salvation. Faith brings us into a saving union with Christ. But where there is a heart faith in Christ, there is a heart love for Christ (1 Cor. 16:22).

    But those who truly love Christ will not sell their love for him at any price. Offer them what you will. Bribe them with money. Bribe them with imprisonment. Bribe them with their lives. The price that you offer would be utterly despised. True love is not for sale. “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” By this test we will prove what we are. True love cannot be purchased.

    Our Savior would never give us anything as a substitute for love. Let us never attempt to give our Savior anything as a substitute for love. Though we give our body to be burned, what would that be without love? If we bring him gifts, offerings, prayers, tears, money, everything but love, we bring him nothing. Without love, what are the riches of the universe? It is love that our Savior gives. It is love he wants from us. What shall be given in exchange for love?

    Not for sale

    “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.” Look at this from another angle. The believer’s love for Christ can never be purchased at any price. It is not for sale. As his love for us is not for sale, so the love of our hearts for the Lord Jesus Christ is not for sale.

    I have seen many sell their professed love for Christ at a very cheap price. There are many Esaus among God’s professed people who are ready and willing to make a deal with Satan to sell their birthright for a bowl of soup. There are many Judases among the saints who are quite willing to sell their Master for thirty pieces of silver.

    “I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful. The Lord preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me. Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee…O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord” (Ps. 116:1-7, 16-17).

    “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 1:21).