First start here at verse fourteen
with me. For the love of Christ constrains
us, because we must judge that if
one died for all, then we're 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. Wherefore, henceforth
know we no man after the flesh. Yea, though we have known Christ
after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." Do you
know what that means? We didn't know Christ as a man
when he was on the earth. We didn't know Him, you know,
we once knew Him after our flesh. When we were lost in our legalism
and self-righteousness, we knew Him after the flesh. It was a
fleshly understanding, a natural understanding. You know, all
these peoples accepted Jesus and they've been won over to
the Lord. That means that we knew Him after the flesh. We
knew Him according to our flesh, according to our natural understanding. You know, and there's lots and
lots of people still that way. And that's why now we know Him
no more after the flesh. We know Him, how do we know Him
now? We know Him as the Lord. The Holy Ghost has made Him the
Lord to us. Made Him our Savior, made Him
our Redeemer, made Him our all in all. Made Him everything to
us. Therefore, if any man be in Christ,
he's a new creature. He's not even after the flesh
anymore. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are
become new. And all things are of God, who
hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given
us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses
unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for
Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ's
stead, be you reconciled to God, for he hath made him to be sin
for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him." Now, I want to find my subject
here in verse fourteen. For the love of Christ constrains
us, because we have this judgment.
God taught us this. that if Christ died for all,
Christ died for all of His elect, Christ died for all that the
Father had given Him, then all are dead with Him. There's such
a union with Christ that they all died with Him. That's what
the apostles said. But I want to talk about the
love of Christ. The love of Christ constrains
us, constrains us. Love, I believe, is the strongest
motive and motivation that anybody can have in this world. Love
will make you do things that nothing else will. Law, you may
make you do it, but you'll resent it, you'll resist it, you'll
be angry at it. But if you do what you do out
of love, love has such a strong motivation to it. You know, if
that's why Paul, he also says, faith, what does it do? It works
by love. Why did God, how do we know God
loved us? He sent his son. Made us a propitiation
portion. I want to show you something.
You keep this. And look in Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon is
right after Isaiah. Right before Isaiah, excuse me. Isaiah is right before Isaiah.
And then there's Ecclesiastes. The Song of Solomon. Look with
me in Chapter 8. You go to the beginning of Isaiah
and you're at the Song of Solomon. And look here in chapter 8, talking
about love. The love of Christ constrains
us. Talk about love. Look what he says here about
it. In verse 6, Set me as a seal upon thy heart, this is our Lord
Jesus, and as a seal upon thy arm. For love is strong as death. Death cannot cause you to quit
loving. Death will never separate. You
know, the person you love and that that you love may be gone,
but your love is always there. Death cannot kill love. Death
cannot separate love. Love is strong. It's death itself.
And jealousy is as cruel as the grave. When you love somebody,
you trust them. You watch out for them, and you're
not jealous because you're afraid what they're going to do, where
they're going to go, and what they're going to do. Because love thanketh no evil, believeth no
evil, and the coals thereof are coals of fire, when jealousy
has the most vehement flame. But listen to this, many waters
cannot quench love. Let the floods come, Let great
waters come. Let the waters of trial come.
Let the waters and troubles of trials come. Thugs can't drown
it. Can't drown it. If a man would
give all the substance of his house for love, he would utterly
be condemned. What he's saying is you can't buy it. Either you
got it or you don't. Either it's strong or it ain't.
And that's what he's talking about. I want to talk about the
love of Christ, that constraint. I want to say a few things. about
the love of Christ that constrains us. Now, I want to say the first
thing about the love of Christ is that it's an eternal love.
There never was a time of all of God's people on the face of
this earth that God did not love His people. Before they ever
existed, before you and I ever came forth from our mother's
womb, Christ loved us. You know, since God is eternal
and Christ is eternal, then everything he does has to be based on eternity. You know, we have an eternal
union with our Lord Jesus Christ. We forequoted so many times out
of Jeremiah 31.3, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. And because I love you with this
everlasting love, with cords of loving kindness and the cords
of a man through Christ, he called us and he brought us to himself.
And he said in Hosea 11.4, I will love them freely. No requirements. And I'll tell you, in Romans
chapter 8, let's look at that together. We've done this so
many times, but I want to talk about our eternal union with
Christ. You know if there's an eternal love, it's because we
were joined to Christ and loved by Christ before the foundation
of the world. That's why Paul says in Ephesians
1.4, he says, according he hath chosen us in Christ before the
foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blame before him. And the next verse says, in love. in love, having predestinated
us. And that's what he said in Romans
4.29. For whom it is for know, and
this word for know means to have an intimate knowledge of. Do
you remember when the angel came to Mary and to Joseph and says,
Joseph was going to put Mary away when she found he was with
child? And the angel Gabriel came to him and said, don't you
do that, Joseph. He said, that holy thing, that's God in her
womb, that's the Son of God in her womb. He said, don't you
do that. And the scripture says, he took
her and knew not his wife. And that means that he did not
become one in union with her. He never had that intimate relationship
with her. And here, that's why the Lord
said about that bunch, He says, depart from me, you workers of
the nickel. I never knew you. I never had
that intimate love for you, that acquaintance with you. I know
who you are. I know what you did. I know your
iniquity. That's why you're going to depart
from me. But when he says, for whom he did foreknow, them that
he had this intimate affair with, this wonderful love union with. What did he say? He also did
predestinate. What did he predestinate to?
To be conformed to the image of his son. And just as sure
as God's on His throne, we're all going to end up just like
His Son. We're going to be sinless. We're
going to be holy. We're going to be in eternity
without any hindrance to this body and this flesh. And look
what He says, and this is how we know that He foreknew us and
that He loved us, moreover, whom He did predestinate, then He
also called. Why? You found grace in my eyes.
I'm going to save you and let the rest of the world go. Abraham! Oh, listen, that's the
way he does. People that he loves, people
that he knows. How do we know that he does?
Because he calls us. Because he calls us. And oh,
you see, beloved, and I say this, while the world was just in the
mind of God, just in the purpose of God, before it ever come into
existence, before God ever said, let there be. I believe with
all my heart that we were in Christ, chosen in Christ, loved
of the Father, and He created this world, created this world
to do one thing, create a people and save those people and bring
glory to His Son ages without end. That's the only reason He
made this world. And when this one is done, He's
going to make a new heaven and a new earth. And you know who
else is going to be on it? Only those folks in Romans 8.29.
That's all that's going to be on it. And our beloved, never
was a time that God didn't love His own. And I'll tell you something,
if He loved us, When we were lost, God commends His love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, when we were yet without
strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. If God
loved us as we were, do you think we could do anything to make
Him stop loving us? There's an old woman in John
Newt's church, and I remember reading about her. John was preaching,
Mr. Newt was preaching on the love
of God, and then And talking about the eternal love of God,
this old woman told him, says, you know, he had to love me.
Before I was born, because I was so sorry after I was born, he
couldn't love me at all the way I was. So he had to love me and
choose me. He had to love us before we was.
And you know what he's going to do? He's going to just keep
whittling and whittling and whittling and whittling until we conform
to the image of his Son. Oh, that's to me, that love for
us starts in time. Love for us has something that
draws us to it. Something about somebody, and
just like I was sitting there thinking this evening, sitting
there tonight, and I thought, I'll just get up and tell these
folks how much I love them. Y'all just don't have any idea
what y'all mean to me. You just don't know. I just love
you. I just love you. I want to be
here. I want to preach to you. I want
to be among you. I want to enjoy you. So love has to start in time.
But God's love didn't start in time. And it won't stop in time. Now let me tell you something
else about the love of Christ that constrains us. You know,
His love is effectual. What does that mean? That means
that if He loves you, you're going to know it. If He loves you, you're going
to find out about it. Some preacher ain't going to
have to get up and tell you. You're going to know yourself. Some
preacher ain't going to have to get up and say, God loves
you. I love you, too. Jesus loves everybody. No, no.
If He loves you, you're going to find out that He loves you.
And you'll know personally that He loves you. I'll tell you,
look over in Ezekiel 16. You know it. I love this over
here in Ezekiel. His love is effectual. I was
reading, you know, you're reading, you look at how he called his
disciples to himself, and he would just tell them. He'd say,
follow me, and they just got up top. Zachariah was up that
tree, because Christ loved him. He was son of Abraham. He called
him down out of that tree. When our Lord calls somebody,
and He loves somebody, they're going to feel that love. They're
going to experience that love. You know, when our Lord Jesus
stood outside Lazarus' tomb, he stood there and he began to
weep. Tears went down that face. Can you imagine the Lord Jesus
Christ in tears streaming down his face? And he wasn't weeping
for himself. He was weeping for those around
him. He was weeping for the fact that he's going to have to raise
Lazarus from the dead. And Lazarus, beloved, was much
better off going to be with the Lord, but to show his power and
to glorify God and to show that he quickens the dead, he himself,
beloved, stood there and wept. He's weeping because I've got
to bring a man back that's much better off where he's at just
to glorify God and to glorify myself. And so he's standing
there weeping. And everybody said, oh, how he
loves him. But you know what that love that
he had for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, it says in John 11,
he loved Mary, Martha, and her brother Lazarus. And because
he loved Lazarus, he said, Lazarus, come forth. That's the way, if
he loves you, he'll say, come forth. And you're coming. You're
coming. Look here in Ezekiel 16. He says in verse four, as for
thy nativity, in the day you was born, thy navel was not cut. They just took you out of your
mother's womb, navel and everything still on you. Nobody picked up
some water and washed you off. And water to supple me. And he
says in the margin, when I looked upon thee, you was not salted,
you wasn't and asepticized. Nobody swallowed you and brought
you in clothes. And look what he says, none eye
pitted me. That's what they've done, and they still do that
in a lot of countries. They have a child that's born, born deformed,
or they can't afford it, or they can't take care of it. They just
take it and throw it out. Just take it and throw it out.
I heard on the news just yesterday, over in China, they got this
one-child policy. And if you have enough money,
you can pay the government, and they'll let you have two children.
But this one woman won't have a second child. She didn't have
the money for it. You know what they've done to her? They took
her and put her in the hospital and took her baby away from her.
And killed it. And they didn't do it out of
pity. There's people that has no pity. And that's what they've
done. In countries that's poor, and
people are poor, and they can't do things. and they can't do
anything for them, throw them out. Nobody pitied them. They walked by and they looked
at that baby, oh, that poor, poor baby. Nobody pitied him.
Nobody had compassion, just cast out in the open field, and they
loved your person in the day you was born. Now listen to it.
And when I pass by them, God's going to pass by you. When Jesus passed by Alaska,
old Bartimaeus said, he heard that big crowd coming and Jesus
was passing by and he said, Jesus! That's son of David. Whoever
Christ is passing by. I passed by and I saw you. Nobody
else didn't do it, but I saw you. And I saw you polluted. Trodden underfoot in your own
blood. And I said unto thee, when in you is blood, live. I
said unto you, when in you is blood, live. Look down in verse
8. Now when I passed by thee, and
looked upon thee. No, I pitted him, but he said,
I looked upon you. And listen to this now. And thy
time was the time of love. Time for me to manifest my love.
To show my love. To express my love. To let you
know you was one of mine. I spread my skirt over you. covered
your nakedness. Oh, bless His holy name. Yea,
I swear unto thee, and entered into covenant with thee, saith
the Lord. And listen to this, and thou becamest mine." Oh,
my. You know, that's the time of
love. And I'll tell you what our Lord Jesus said about the
sheep. He said, I give unto my sheep eternal life. He said,
I know my sheep, and I've known of mine. And beloved, and he
says there, he has other sheep which are not his fold. And you
know what he said? He must bring them. He must. And not only should he must,
but he said he must keep us. He says, no man's able to pluck
them out of my Father's hand. So, beloved, if Christ loves
us, His love is affection. You'll experience His love. You'll
enjoy His love. And His love will never and always
be working in you. He says the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Now, we love our... I'll just give you an illustration.
We love our children, our grandchildren, but we cannot make them. Our
love is not powerful enough to make them be the way we would
just... Halfway life for them to be.
We can't make them. But Christ's love is effectual,
and it can, and it must do its work. It must change us. It must save
us. It must keep us. It must preserve
us. And I tell you, if you ever experience
the love of God in Christ, you'll never get over it. Never get
over it. And then look back over here in our text again. Oh, my eternal love, effectual love,
and dying love. Dying love. For the love of Christ
constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all,
then we're all dead. And look what he said in verse
fifteen, that he died for all. that they which should live should
not henceforth live unto themselves, but listen to this, unto him
which lived and died for them." Oh, my. You see, this is the
thing. Paul asked a question, he said,
would you die for a good man? Goodness, our Lord said, you
know, why would a good man need you
die for? What would be the purpose? What would be the end of it?
Would you die for a righteous man? Boy, he's an awful righteous
fellow. I'd hate to see him suffer. No, but you know what God said?
He said, but I commend my love. Oh, I commend my love. I died for sinners. I didn't
come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And let
me tell you something, beloved. Here's the thing that makes the
death of Christ and the love that Christ manifests on that
cross. Having loved his own, which were in the world, he loved
them unto the end. Greater love hath no man than
this, that he lay down his life. For who? His friends. He said,
you know, a servant don't know what his master's doing, so henceforth
I'll call you friends. And greater love hath no man
than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. And here's
what makes his dying love so glorious. It's who it was that
died. Who it was that died. Do you
know who it was that died? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
who it is that died. It's the eternal Son of God that
died. Ain't that what it says here
that God reconciled us unto Himself by Jesus Christ? That God made
Him to be sinned who knew no sin? That we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him? It was who it was that died.
The Lord of glory. Paul said that if they knew the
princes of this world, if they knew who he was, they wouldn't
have crucified him. The Lord of glory. In all his
dying love, it's the emptying of himself. If we could ever
just get a hold of the grasp of himself. Himself. He gave himself. He emptied himself. What does that mean? That means,
beloved, that he just emptied himself of all rights, emptied
himself of authority, emptied himself of all power. He was
crucified in weakness. He emptied himself so when people
saw him, all they saw was a naked man hanging on a cross with a
sign over his head. As a common criminal, he emptied
himself to such a degree that, beloved, nobody could see nothing
but a naked, beaten, bloody mass hanging on a cross. And that's
how far he emptied himself. He emptied himself to the place
where he says the darkness came over him, and he says, My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me? He emptied himself to the
place where the Father would even come to his call. And oh,
the humiliation. The humiliation that our Lord
suffered. And the suffering that he had.
And he's called a perpetuation. And a perpetuation is an atoning
victim. And you know the perpetuation
in the Old Testament was the mercy seat. That's where they
were put. Perpetuation means that God,
His anger is appeased, His wrath is taken away by this sacrifice,
this offering. And on the mercy seat, that high
priest went there behind that veil once a year and to put blood
on that mercy seat. And beloved, when that mercy
seat, that blood was put on it, God was propitiated for another
year. His wrath was put away, His justice
was satisfied, and that high priest walked out to bind that
curse, and all of this were raised to the heavens. And bless God,
because God accepted them again for a year. But our Lord Jesus
Christ, He was our propitiation, He is our mercy seat, and the
blood on it, and all dying love. Dear dying lamb, thy precious
blood shall never lose its power, till all the ransomed church
of God be saved to sin no more. I tell you what, doesn't that's
the power of the love of Christ? That love is so powerful that
it's death. That's why I say it's stronger
than death. You know why Christ died to save
us from our sin? To put away the ransomed God
off of us. To satisfy justice, it cannot
never come and charge us with anything. And right now, there's an altar
in heaven, a place in heaven where the blood of Christ there
speaks, even now, stronger than anything that you could ever
imagine. And when our Lord Jesus Christ, beloved, that blood constantly
and that death constantly pleads for us, And when we get to glory,
it will be as we'll see, as it hath been on a lamb, as it hath
been slain. Our Lord Jesus Christ, from the
time He took that body on Himself and the time He was crucified,
the evidence of that death will be in that body as long as He
exists. Let me give you another real
quick. Look here again in 2 Corinthians. Not only is it eternal, effectual,
dying. Dying. Son of Peter said, I'll
die with you. Oh, Peter, I know it. In your heart you think you will.
I know you really believe you will. And our Lord even died for him.
Knowing he's going to deny him three times. Look at verse 18, 19. He's a
reconciling love, too. And all things are of God, who
reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, to wit that God was in
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their
trespasses unto them. You know what reconciliation
means? When you love two parties that
are at enemies with one another. They get enemies. These people
are at enemies with one another. They've got irreconcilable differences. They're at odds with one another.
They're that immature one. This one here hates and this
one here. And so you love these two people,
these two parties, and you want to bring them back together.
You want to reconcile them. You want to make them come right
back together just as one. Well, that's what our Lord Jesus
Christ did. We were enemies in our minds
by wicked works against God. God Himself is angry with the
wicked every day. And you know what our Lord Jesus
Christ done? He really got ahold of God. And He really got ahold
of us. And He reconciled us. And you
know how He did it? By the blood of His cross. How
did He do it? First of all, He slew the enmity
that was in us. He took that enmity away that
was in us. That hatred that was in us, He
took it out of our hearts. He put it away. and He satisfied
God's wrath so God would never be angry again, and we're reconciled. We're joined. What it means is
that we're in harmony. We're in harmony with Christ.
We're in harmony. We're in one, in union with Christ. And Christ is that enmity. There
was a time God wasn't in harmony with us and He wasn't in harmony
with Him. And you know, there's There's
people that, and they teach this, and I don't hold it against them,
but, you know, I understand where they're coming from. They say
that if God loved us, that He never was angry with us. But
now let me show you the difference. God as a Father, God as a Father
always loved us. He loved us in Christ. But God
as the Governor, God as the Judge, God as the Just God, He cannot
never look with approval on sin. And so you see, beloved, there's
a time that we understand that God's against us, and that's
why we desperately need Christ, and He takes that that God has
against us and moves it out of His hands. And everything that
was in us that kept God from coming to us, and everything
that was in us that kept us from coming to God, Christ filled
it with His blood. He put it away with His blood. And now we're in harmony with
God. Oh, I love God just the way He
is. God loves me the way I am. I'm not upset with Him. He ain't
upset with me. He can do what He wants to in
this world, and I'm just as happy as if I had good sense. He can
do what he wants to with me, with you, and we rejoice in it.
Don't we? And oh my, oh bless his heart,
he reconciled us to God. And then redeeming love. Redeeming
love. Look over in Ephesians with me
just a moment. Ephesians 1. You know what redeeming
means? Yeah, they'll say, boy, he's
got some redeeming qualities. Well, Christ's love is redeeming
love. And to redeem, it means to, redeeming means to compensate
for a lack of quality in or faults in another. Well, Christ's redeeming
love compensated for our lack of quality and for all of our
faults. Huh? Look what he said here in
Ephesians 1, in verse 4. according as He hath
chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him, in love, having predestinated
us under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, to
the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us
accepted in the Beloved." Listen to this, "...in whom we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according
to the riches of His grace. His blood and His love compensated. See, the first commandment, the first
commandment, and our Lord asked the lawyer, they have asked our
Lord, said, what's the greatest commandment? He says, love the
Lord thy God with all your heart. Love God with all your heart.
With all your mind. With all your strength. And with
all your soul. That means with everything that
you've got in your being. And then love your neighbors
yourself. Now how in the world are we going to get over not
loving like that? Huh? Well, Christ redeeming love. That's how. He loved his Father. His love for the Father and before
the Father makes up for all that's wrong in us. You know what? He loved God enough for all of
his people, for all of the ages. He obeyed God for us enough that
God counts all of his obedience to be our obedience. His holiness
is enough to make all of his people holy for all eternity. He is submissive enough for all
of us. He has passion enough for all
of us. He has humility enough for all
of us. His love makes up for all that's
wrong with us. God still requires love from
us, but where does He get it from? He gets it from Christ. We ain't got an ounce of humility
compared to what our Lord does, but He had enough humility for
all of us. He compensated for us. Our love
has not got the quality, but his quality of his love, perfect. Everything about him. He walked
before God perfectly. We walk before God perfectly.
And what he did, he did enough for all of his people, for all
time, and all eternity. And that's why it says, when
he hath made us accepted. We're at him, the Beloved. God
made Christ unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And then back over and let's
look at that verse again, 2 Corinthians 5.14. Let me ask you a couple
of questions in closing. He says, For the love of Christ
constrains us. Is this love, is this love enough
to constrain us? Is the love of Christ enough
to constrain us? Is it love enough to constrain
us to love Him, to love one another, to provoke us to good works? Does His love constrain us to
prayer, to be generous, to be kind, to
be gracious? To be as our Master was, as much
as God will enable us, the love of Christ constrains us. If that
don't do it, oh, that's enough. That's enough, ain't it? That's
enough, the love of Christ. Our Savior, in the blessed, blessed
name of Christ our Lord, thank You for Your abundant mercy given
us in Him before the foundation of the world. Bless this Word
to our hearts, our minds, our understandings tonight. Oh, what
a joy it was to meet with the people of God, to enjoy your
gospel again, to enjoy the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. We
thank you. Amen. Get your chorus book out. Let's sing the love of God. Twenty-one. Number twenty-one
in this book. Let's stand together and sing
this. Number twenty-one. So, The love of God is greater far
than on earth. The highest star, it reaches
to the lowest heaven. God gave His Son to win His every
child He reconciled and quieted from His sin O love of God, I
will sing Sings an angel's song. Before it dies, shall pass away, Shall run and crawl,
sad things of song. If you hear the jester's song, Cause I'm down for sure tonight You have a great blessing in
your soul. Oh, by the God of Israel, how
great you are and strong. It shall forevermore endure. The ocean mill. And where's the
skyline? Here I go O love of God, ever rich and
pure, how measureless and strong, it shall forevermore endure. Amen.