The
Lord’s Time of Love
by Octavius
Winslow
Your time was the time of love—Ezekiel 16:8.
The Prophet in this chapter employs the figure of an Israelitish woman,
to illustrate the deliverance of the Jewish nation from its Egyptian bondage
and its final settlement in the promised land. There is, however, something
more spiritual and far more important than this. It is, doubtless, intended
to shadow forth the emancipation of the soul, by Divine and sovereign
grace, from the bondage of sin and Satan into the glorious liberty of
the children of God—the liberty with which Christ makes His people
free—and their final and assured entrance into the heavenly kingdom—the
Canaan of bliss which Jesus has gone to prepare for His saints.
The time when the deliverance was effected is termed “the time of
love.” It was the fixed and appointed time, ordained by God, when
the people of Israel were brought out of Egypt; and their time of cruel
bondage, when they sighed and cried for deliverance by reason of their
cruel task-masters, is described as God’s time of love toward them
in their deliverance. All this is strikingly and beautifully descriptive
of the conversion of the sinner.
There is a set time for the gracious calling of God’s people, who
are described as being “called according to His purpose;” and
when that moment or period arrives, all God’s providential arrangements
are made to converge towards its accomplishment—all conspire to bring
it about; and this is emphatically and spiritually termed, “the time
of love.”
God’s love towards His people is, indeed, as we shall presently show,
eternal; eternal as His being: a love before all time; nevertheless, the
time of its first manifestation towards them is the time of conversion,
the time when they are brought up out of the horrible pit of unregeneracy,
are plucked as brands from the burning, are quickened with spiritual life,
and are graciously brought to realize their state of pardon and acceptance
with God. Such is the elevating subject which is now to engage our thoughts.
I have already discoursed to you of the heart opened by the Holy Spirit
in conversion; and then, of Jesus as the great Object which the heart,
thus opened, desires earnestly to see. Let us now direct our thoughts
to the Divine love where these and all other blessings of grace flow.
The present subject suggests two distinct parts for our consideration—the
love of God to us in Christ Jesus, and its timely and gracious manifestation.
“Your time was the time of love.”
Our first and chief subject is The Love of God Towards His People. It
is the most sublime thought, the most precious theme that could possibly
engage the study of angels or men. Angels have not such an interest in
God’s love as man, and, therefore, have no such experience of its
power. God loved not unsinning angels as He loved sinful man—His
elect Church fallen in Adam. In this the sovereignty and grace of His
love appear in their most conspicuous and engaging light. And yet the
love of God to man is the subject of their profound study. “Which
things the angels desire to look into.”
In contemplating some of the features of the great love with which God
has loved us, we naturally, in the outset, seek to trace this infinite
ocean to its source. This conducts to that great perfection of God—His
eternity. The love of God is eternal. Love is not so much an attribute
as it is the very essence of God—“God is love.” In language
the most touching God thus addresses His Church—“I have loved
you with an Everlasting Love, and therefore with loving kindness I have
drawn you.” Eternal Love planned the scheme of our salvation; eternal
Love wrote our names in the Lamb’s Book of Life, Eternal Love appointed
the time and the circumstance of our conversion; and Eternal Love will
keep us safely, will guide us skillfully, and will afterwards bring us
to glory. High let our voice ascend to its praise; and let our holy obedience
testify the deep gratitude of our hearts for the amazing love with which
God loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and in sins.
The deepest homage we can pay this love, and the most grateful return
we can make, is to accept it as the ruling principle of life. Let ours
be a life of love—love to God and love to man. Love constraining
us to filial obedience to God, to cheerful service for Christ, and to
acts of self-denial for our fellow-creatures. In this we shall be followers
and imitators of God as His children; for all the acts of our God—the
cloud that shades, as the sunbeam that brightens our path, the discipline
that embitters, as the mercy that sweeten our cup—flow from His everlasting
and unchanging love.
It is another interesting feature of God’s love that it is a divinely
revealed affection. Fallen man could never have discovered the truth that
God still loved him. He can make great discoveries in the geological structure
of the earth, and in the planetary system, in science and in art; but
left to his own powers, he could never have found out the great and wondrous
fact that, “God is love.” We could never have known His will
but for the record God has given us of it: the Bible alone teaches us
this.
Where else do we read such precious declarations as these: “In this
was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only
begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him;” “God
so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever
believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And,
then, where should we look for that marvellous declaration of God, but
in His own Word, which we find in the first epistle of John “God
Is Love”?
What an evidence we have here of the truth of the Bible! That Book must
be divinely inspired, must be God’s Book, which could reveal to us
the fact that God loved us! But there is yet another revelation of this
love, and another evidence of the truth of God’s Word. I refer to
our personal experience—the love of God shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit given unto us. Do not let any of us rest content with
reading the declaration of God’s great love to sinners in Christ
Jesus in the letter of the Word only; but let us prayerfully and earnestly
seek to have the witness within, that God is love.
All other religion is “a vain religion.” True religion consists
in love to God influencing and sanctifying the whole life; nothing can
be its substitute—not an orthodox creed, nor an enlightened understanding,
nor great gifts, nor denominational zeal, nor beautiful worship, nor costly
benevolence, nor the highest religious profession, nor the warmest natural
affections can take the place of love to God.
All this is pleasant and acceptable to God in its proper place, when it
is the fruit of love to Him; but it may exist apart from love, and then
it is a sacrifice in which He can take no delight: “Love is heaven,
and heaven is love;” but it is love to God in Christ Jesus which
makes it so.
We reach another feature of Divine love—its self-sacrifice. The love
of the Lord Jesus to us—which is essentially the love of the Father—constrained
Him to make the great sacrifice of Himself for our sins. God’s gift
of His beloved Son, and the willing personal surrender of the Son to die
the atoning death of the cross for sinners, are instances of love’s
sacrifice which must ever stand alone, unsurpassed and unequaled in the
history of love. The grand display of God’s love to us, then, was
in parting with Jesus, in finding for us a Savior so great, in sacrificing
a Son so precious to save us. “He that spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us
all things?”
What blessing, then, do you desire, what petition do you present, what
request do you make which the love of God is not prepared to grant? Reason
from the greater to the lesser. If God has so loved you as to give you
Jesus, do you think that if you desire the renewed forgiveness of your
sins, or the assured evidence of your interest in His salvation, or council
to guide, or strength to support, or deliverance from any present or anticipated
evil, or the supply of any pressing need, that His heart will, or possibly
can, refuse you? Oh no! Venture upon His love; remind Him of what it has
already done; tell Him it is your warrant to approach, that it emboldens
you to ask not greater but other blessings at His hand who, having given
you Jesus, has promised with Jesus to give you all things.
And what self-sacrificing love is Christ’s! “Christ has loved
us and given Himself for us.” The whole history of Christ would be
an unaccountable mystery but for the explanation which His love supplies.
How otherwise could we account for the mystery of His incarnation?—“God
manifest in the flesh,”—for the mystery of His sinless obedience,
for the mystery of His soul-sorrow in Gethsemane, for the mystery of His
sufferings and death upon the cross, for the mystery of His triumphant
resurrection from the grave and His glorious ascension up into heaven—could
we not resolve it all into the great LOVE with which He loved us?
All this was love’s sacrifice to save our souls—love sacrificing
itself! In view of this amazing love of Christ, can you hesitate to come
to Him just as you are, to be saved? Will you doubt His willingness or
His ability to save you to the uttermost, if you but accept His gracious
invitation in simple unquestioning faith? His invitation is—“Come
unto Me;” His promise is, “Him that comes unto Me I’ll
never cast out.”
The love of God is a most free love. Even human love is unpurchasable:
no wealth can procure its possession, as no wealth can compensate for
its lack. How much more unpurchasable must Divine love be! The love of
God in Christ Jesus towards sinners must be spontaneous and free, since
it never could be procured by man’s merit: we had forfeited all holiness,
and goodness, and, therefore, had “nothing to pay.” No declaration
is more welcome, no truth more precious to the sin awakened heart than
that it is “by GRACE we are saved, through faith,, and that not of
ourselves; it is the gift of God.” No words more welcome to the soul
thirsting after Christ than the invitation, “Whosoever will, let
him drink of the water of life FREELY.”
Is not this like Jesus? Is it not worthy of God, that when sin had rendered
us bankrupt of all righteousness, when we had nothing of our own to plead,
but poverty and misery and unworthiness; a salvation should have been
provided without our own works, irrespective of our own merit, and proclaimed
to us as ours “without money and without price”?
Come, then, poor sin-burdened, guilt-oppressed soul! come you who have
spent all your substance upon physicians of no value, and are nothing
better but rather have grown worse, come and drink from the infinite fountain
of the Savior’s priceless love!—drink freely and abundantly.
For, “the Free Gift is of many offences;” and, “where sin
hath abounded, grace much more abound.” “Eat, O friends, and
drink; yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” “And when they had
NOTHING TO PAY, He frankly forgave them both.” But the Lord has His
time of manifesting this love to us. The text thus expresses it—“Your
time was the time of love.” Although, as we have shown, the love
of God to His people is an everlasting love—a love from all past
eternity—yet it is revealed to us at times, and often at special
times, in our history. Every individual may recall to memory some period
in his life of marked and solemn interest; but none so sacred and momentous
to the believer as that in which he was first made to experience God’s
love. There are marked epochs in his history—sacred memorials in
his homeward travel—lofty Ebenezers studding his wilderness pathway,
upon which memory will love to linger when times and seasons are lost
in eternity.
Let us briefly glance at some of those times in which the love of God
to us is the most conspicuous. The time of our unregeneracy is the time
of the Lord’s love. It is a remarkable expression of Jude’s,
“Preserved in Christ Jesus;” that is, preserved by the love
of God in Christ Jesus, through the many long years of our unrenewed condition,
sin, and rebellion against God. The whole passage is remarkable for its
richness and beauty. “Those who are sanctified by God the Father,”—that
is, set apart by the purpose and love of God to be a distinct and peculiar
people; “and preserved in Christ Jesus,”—that is, chosen
in Christ, and placed in His hands, and in Him secretly preserved from
present death and from future condemnation, amid all the perils of our
natural and unconverted state; “and called,”—that is, by
the Spirit and grace of God, especially and effectually called out of
darkness into light, out of self into Christ—“called to be saints.”
Now this was a marked time of the Lord’s love—His secret and
hidden love. Oh how marvellous the love of God to us, as traced through
those years in which we walked according to the course of this world,
fulfilling the lusts of the flesh and of the mind, in which we lived without
God and without hope in the world. Let the thought that God loved us when
we hated Him—that His thoughts of us were peace, when ours of Him
were rebellion—lay our mouth in the dust before Him, and enkindle
a fresh flame of affection on the altar of our hearts.
The time of the soul’s conversion is the time of the Lord’s
love. How impressive His language in its spiritual application to this
end! “When I passed by you, and saw you polluted in Chine own blood
[margin—trodden under foot], I said unto you when you were in your
blood, Live! yes, I said unto you when you were in your blood, Live! When
I passed by (not as by accident—nothing in God’s dealings with
the children of men is according to what the world terms chance), when
I passed by according to my purpose of eternal love, knowing who and what
and where you were, I saw you in your blood—not with an angered,
but with a pitying eye—an eye of Divine love and infinite compassion.
In your blood—wounded, weltering, polluted, wallowing in sin—I
said unto you, Live! I spoke, and in a moment your soul became quickened
with new and spiritual life.”
Such, my reader, is real conversion. O what a golden precious time of
love is this! The time when Jesus approached us in all the greatness of
His love, in all the compassion of His nature, and in all the freeness
of His grace, and brought us to Himself! Then it was He washed away our
filthiness in His most precious blood, and we were cleansed from our sin.
Then it was He threw around our naked soul the robe of His righteousness,
and we were justified from all things. Then it was we burst our chains,
and sprang into the liberty of Christ’s free men. Then it was we
passed out of present condemnation into no condemnation, and sent up a
shout of joy, thanksgiving, and praise, with which the arch of heaven
rang.
Oh, if there is one period of our history of more thrilling interest than
another, if there is one spot in the landscape of life upon which the
sun of memory never sets—it is that of our calling by sovereign grace,
of our passing from death unto life, of our espousal to Jesus, of the
Lord’s time of revealed love to our souls, when He drew us to Himself,
and said—“You are mine!” Other spots are draped with shadows
deep and shrouding; other scenes have faded one by one from memory; but
our conversion to Christ marks an epoch of our history, and forms an event
of our life, the luster of which no shadow will ever dim, and the recollection
of which no hand will ever efface. O marvellous love of Jesus!—eternity
shall resound with its praise! Love which loved us in our sins, loved
us in our rebellion, loved us in our distance from God, and drew us so
gently yet so powerfully, so lovingly yet so effectually to His feet,
and pronounced us His!
Lord! through many changes have I passed, and many scenes have I witnessed,
and many tokens of Your goodness and faithfulness have I received since
then, but Your love to me, whose grace sought and found and brought me
to Yourself, will be the evergreen of my life, and my undying joy through
eternity.
“That was a time of wondrous love
When Christ, my Lord, was passing by;
He felt His tender pity move,
And brought His great salvation near.
“Guilty and self-condemned I stood,
Nor thought His mercy was so near;
When He my stubborn heart subdued,
And planted all His graces there.
“When, on the verge of endless pain,
He gently whispered, ‘I am thine’
I lost my fears, and dropped my chain,
And felt ‘a transport all divine’.”
Often, my Christian reader, dwell upon this first act of God’s love
to you. The time of your public espousals to Christ and the Church—when
standing as before the altar of consecration, you openly avowed, “I
am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine,” then gave your whole
being to Him—truly was a time of love, the most solemn and memorable
of your life. Oh sacred hour, when those two hearts—Christ’s
and yours openly united in a covenant which death itself could not disannul,
and vowed eternal love and fealty! Never, never can you forget that moment;
never, never can you ignore that act.
When the world would win you back, and sin would tempt you to compromise,
and the love which then glowed so brightly within the breast would wax
cold, then let your thoughts recall the memory of that solemn and tender
scene upon which so great a cloud of witnesses fixed their eager gaze,
and leave all the allurements that would tempt you from Christ, and exclaim,
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
You from hence my all shall be
Perish every fond ambition,
All I’ve sought, or hoped, or known,
Yet how rich is my condition,
God and heaven are still my own.”
Affliction times, times of trial and sorrow—are times of love in
the experience of the saints. Never has the Lord been nearer to us than
then. Can we not testify from happy experience that the dark cloud was
pencilled with gold—that the bitter cup was sweetened with Honey—that
the chamber of suffering, and the couch of languor, and the house of mourning
have, through the visits, the sympathy, and the grace of Jesus, been to
us scenes and occasions of inexpressible love?
Thus is it now, and thus it ever will be. You are, perhaps, the child
of sorrow, the subject of affliction. Your faith is tempted, or your affections
are tried, or your character is assailed, or your heart lies bleeding
upon the green turf that covers all that once made it so happy, that lent
to the world its attraction and to life its charm. Look up! O child of
grief! Your time of sorrow, your time of temptation, your time of bereavement
is the Lord’s time of love to you.
In love “He Himself has done it!” In love He will succor and
soothe you; in love He will sustain and sanctify you; and when the rod
shall have blossomed, and the affliction shall have been fruitful, and
the purposes of love are accomplished, then the Lord will bring you forth
as gold, and you shall testify—My time of bereaved sorrow, my time
of correcting grief, was His time of unutterable love!
A word to two classes of my readers. Unconverted sinner! the present is
the time of God’s love in Christ Jesus. The time of the preaching
of the Gospel, the time of holy Sabbaths, the time of religious opportunities
is the Lord’s time of love for souls. Oh that you were awakened to
know the time of your visitation, and to flee to Christ while it is today,
and to call upon God while He is near. You may be seized with unexpected
illness, or may be suddenly summoned into eternity. O terrible thought!
to be arrested by a disease fatal to all religious thought and feeling;
to be surprised by death in a state of unpreparedness to meet God. Fly
to Jesus! He waits to be gracious! escape for your life, for “now
is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.”
Be cautious, saint of God, of attempting to antedate the events of your
future history. The times and seasons are under the control of your heavenly
Father; and when the time shall come—the time of adversity, of suffering,
of death—with it will come the love that keeps you, the grace that
sustains you, the sympathy that soothes you, and the power that will safely
conduct you out of it all, “tried, purified, and made white,”
to the glory and praise of Him that loves you.
“My times are in Your hands;” let this be the calm conclusion
of your simple, trustful, hopeful faith, leaving all with Jesus. Be it
your only solicitude and aim, by patient continuance in well doing, and
by a meek, quiet, and submissive spirit in suffering, to glorify God in
the day of visitation.
“Give to the winds your fears,
Hope, and be undismayed
God hears your sighs and counts your tears,
God shall lift up your head.
“Through waves, and clouds, and storms
He gently clears your way
Wait on His time—the darkest night
Shall end in brightest day.”