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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.’
Rom_5:5
I. Love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.—It does not belong naturally to fallen human nature. Whatever power our first parents possessed of knowing and loving God was sacrificed through their disobedience. Of course, they still retained that natural instinctive love for each other, which we all possess in common with the lower animals. God has implanted even in the wildest animals an instinctive love for their own offspring. For their young, up to a certain age, they will endure hardships, and suffer privations. Still this instinctive love of men and animals is peculiarly selfish. It does not restrain them from behaving brutally to one another. There is no love lost between animals when they are being fed. Each one gets as much as it can without troubling itself about others. And there is not much to choose between them and human beings, possessed only of this instinctive love, when any situation arises which calls for restraint and self-sacrifice. Then the instinct of self-preservation asserts itself—every man for himself. Whenever we find men and women rise superior to this selfish instinct, as happily we have many instances in times of shipwreck, and fire, and disaster, it is because this love has been shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost.
II. Whatever there is of true religion in the Church, and in the hearts of her children to-day, is due to the power and presence of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and Instructor of the faithful. The Holy Ghost is the gift bestowed in Holy Baptism. The renewal of the Holy Ghost is the blessing conferred in Confirmation to all who humbly ask for it. Whatever virtue there is in the Holy Communion arises from the same Divine source. It is the Spirit of God which broods over the Blessed Sacrament, and makes it the channel of communication between God and ourselves. Through the Spirit’s power we feed upon the Body and Blood of Christ, and are thereby made once more ‘partakers of the Divine nature.’ When the Bishop and Presbytery lay their hands upon a candidate for the priesthood they do it with the words,’ Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God,’ thereby acknowledging that only through the power of the Holy Ghost can he become ‘a faithful dispenser of the Word of God and of His holy sacraments.’
III. Wherever and whenever this life-giving power of the Spirit is consciously felt, and it is consciously felt when we respond to and co-operate with the grace of God bestowed through the means of grace we have mentioned, two results inevitably follow.
(a) There is a feeling of rest and satisfaction within.
(b) There is a desire to be up and doing for the sake of others.
So long as the heart is estranged from God, it runs hither and thither, ‘seeking rest and finding none.’ It may run to and fro until it is weary with a surfeit of pleasure and heavily laden with the burden of sin, but only in Christ can it find true rest. And no sooner does this restful peace take possession of the soul within than it is moved by an anxious activity for the sake of the beloved object. Love longs to give itself, and to count the sacrifice as nothing. Once realise, by the power of the Holy Ghost, the inestimable love of God in giving His Son ‘to die for our sins and to rise again for our justification,’ and the love of Christ in giving Himself for the life of the world, and we shall long to show forth His praise ‘not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to His service.’
—
Rev. C. Rhodes Hall.
THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE LOVE OF GOD
Somewhat more literally we may read: ‘The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by means of the Holy Ghost which was given to us.’
Let us approach our text and interrogate it. In this its Divine simplicity, what is it saying to us to-day? We will seek our answer under two or three special titles.
I. ‘The love of God.’—That is to say, the love felt by God towards man; the personal affection of the Almighty. Some have seen in the words another and opposite reference, as if they meant our love for God, our love of God, as an emotion generated, or liberated, in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And some, more mystically, have read in our text the thought that the Spirit’s work is to infuse and diffuse within us the eternal love itself in such a sense that it becomes as it were our own, and returns to its source in the incense of our surrender to God, our delight and rest in Him. But the context (Rom_5:8) surely gives a decisive answer in favour of the simplest while most wonderful of the references: ‘God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us.’ That verse stands in close logical connection with this, and the reference must be the same. ‘The love of God’; His ‘marvellous lovingkindness,’ as the Psalmist has it; the tenderness and endearment of Him Who is Love towards us sinners, towards us who have fled from ourselves to Him, and laid hold on His strength, and made peace with Him in His way. This is the particular reference here of ‘the love of God’; the kindness of the eternal heart towards those who believe, towards the Lord’s own, ‘the children of men who put their trust’ in the deep ‘shadow of His wings.’
II. ‘The love of God is shed abroad, hath been poured out, in our hearts.’—The phrase is beautifully vivid. You cannot take it to pieces, and analyse it, and explain the process, but you can know what it means. To these human hearts of ours, deep in these living, heaving, conscious worlds within, in the very ‘springs of thought and will’ and affection, there can be somehow granted the view of this love as a fact, the sense and grasp of this love as a possession. It is there, poured out. It is no alien and separable insertion. It is poured out. Like the shower from the soft cloud, like the odour from the flower, it is there, shed abroad, suffused, pervading, changing, beautifying, glorifying all. Manifestly it was not so once. Those hearts were once as little possessed of this wonderful outpouring as the brown field in the year of drought is possessed of the genial rain. The outpouring was within, it was in the depths. But it came from above. ‘Not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.’ Does this view of the matter seem to any of us an unreality, a thing of vision and enthusiasm? Perhaps nothing in your experience corresponds to it as yet. But a human soul which yesterday was full of misgivings about God, or paralysed in indifference towards Him, to-day is able to say, with strong and sober certainty, with the clear persuasion of a true sight of Him in Christ Jesus, ‘I know Whom I have believed’; ‘He hath loved me and given Himself for me’; ‘Behold, what manner of love to me’; ‘I am persuaded that neither life nor death shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ To-day as ever the eternal Friend stands at the door and knocks, that He may come in with that light in His hand and make the dreary darkness to be day. To-day, as of old, when that door is opened His entrance brings a wonderful reality of joy. ‘I will manifest myself to Him.’
III. This work is done, this love poured out, this Lord revealed and introduced ‘by the Holy Ghost.’—Manifold are His gifts, His works. Vast indeed is the importance to our life and peace of clear views of what He is. It is blessed to know that indeed it is He, not only It; that He is no mere gale of power, no mysterious Somewhat of effluence and influence, but the personal Friend and Lord, coming to His temples to bless them with His own loving gifts of life, of purity, of power. Think of Him as the eternal Personal Worker and Teacher, understanding, handling, penetrating, knowing His own way in that heart of yours, and taking His own way to bless it. Recollect Him as somehow able, in His personal action, to make the cold, indifferent, sinful soul see and apprehend, and know, and embrace, and answer to, the love of God, the inner love of God. Remember Him as able indeed to manipulate that once rebellious will; sometimes by insensible degrees; sometimes by decisive convictions and a crisis of change memorable to us for ever and ever. Behold Him; He is the Convincer, bringing home to us, home indeed, sin and righteousness and judgment. He is the Revealer; He unveils Christ, He explains Him, and glorifies Him, and applies Him as vital balm to the aching spirit, which in the reality of its ‘exceeding need’ applies itself to Christ.
IV. ‘The Holy Ghost which was given unto us.’—‘Given’; let us note that word as we close. He is indeed a Gift, the Gift unspeakable, the Gift of God. Not an evolution from within, not an assimilation from around; He is a Gift from above. ‘From the height above all measure’ must ‘the Gracious Shower descend’; not otherwise can this knowledge of the eternal love be won by these happy ones, these temples of the Spirit.
Bishop H. C. G. Moule.
Illustration‘Not seldom has been seen the beautiful phenomenon of the philanthropist who is also the ideal father or ideal mother; a Fowell Buxton, an Elizabeth Fry; a life which to the world is known for its devotion to mankind in large and far-seeing enterprises and sacrifices, but which to the nearer circle is known as the glowing centre of home affections and intimate friendships. And can we not think so of the Eternal and Almighty? His universal lovingkindness; this is one thing, and a thing more wide and deep than created thought can measure. But His special, inmost love to His own regenerate children in His own Son is another thing, and nearer still to the heart of all life and bliss.’
THE FOUNTAIN OF GOD’S LOVE
I. The love of God is shed abroad.—God’s love to me, to everybody, is poured upon the heart, and the consciousness of it, and not the response that I make to it—that is a secondary thing—but the consciousness of it is what makes the Christian. The love of God is shed abroad, is a grand thing; but the grand thought of the text goes far deeper; it says the love of God has been shed abroad. So it carries us who are Christian men and women back to some time in our history, when in some degree the consciousness of that love was in our hearts. The difference between one man who is a Christian and one who is not is the difference between a man standing with his back to the sun and the other with his face to the sunshine; the one gets light and warmth and cheer, and the other has his face in the shadow. It is all a question of which way your faces are turned. And here is a definition, if you will have a definition of a Christian, not that he loves, but that he trusts. The love will be a sure result of the trust. The love that is shed abroad in the heart is not my poor shrunken drop of love, but it is the great stream which comes from Him, and is ready to pour into my empty vessel, if I will only be steady and let the flow fill it.
II. Ask yourself, do I know and believe the love that God has?—That is the meaning of the love of God being shed abroad. You remember the old story of Christ at the marriage feast of Cana, the six water-pots full of water, like our hearts, with all the cold, dismal, unsatisfactory joys and affections of earth, and He puts His hand upon the vessels and turns the water of the human affections into the wine of the heavenly Canaan. And instead of our hearts being filled with the insufficiencies and hollownesses of earthly things, He pours into them the great things, and the quickening of his own love.
III. The way by which this consciousness of the love of God, the foundation of God’s love, may belong to me is by His Holy Spirit which He has given to me. You have all got faith if you are Christian men and women, and the measure of your faith is the measure of your possession of the Spirit of God. For the teaching of the New Testament is this, that the spirit is given to them that believe, and if your hearts are charged with the happy sense of God’s love, which the Spirit of God kindles and fosters there, there are two things, one is your faith, and the other is your believing contemplation of God’s truth. Here are two surface facts in reference to the working on us by the Holy Spirit; that He works this on men we believe, and that the means by which the Spirit of God works upon us is the truth that is here. So then, plainly, the inference is, do you want to have a deeper, more constant, firmer, brighter, gladder consciousness of God’s love going with you all through life? Do not work yourself into it, but look and look, ever look with simple confidence to the great fact in which all that love is expressed—the love of God shed abroad in our hearts is the true foundation, and the only foundation upon which we can build any substantial hope for the future.
Illustration
‘The sunshine of life is its love. Always be trying how much love you can put into the day. Do not keep a narrow circle. “Shed it abroad.” “Shed it abroad” as God “sheds it abroad in your hearts.” Let the thought of every one when he gets up in the morning be—“What love shall I show to-day? Whom can I make happier? What kind act can I do to any poor person, or to any rich person, or to any child, or to anybody?” That is the nearest thing to heaven upon earth—for that is—more than anything else on this earth—closest to the image of God.’
LOVE SHED ABROAD
I. Here, then, is the first condition. You must be united to Christ before you love God.—The Holy Ghost must then enter into you and do His own work. And you must believe and realise it as His own solitary prerogative. Therefore, if you wish to love, look well to it that you begin, where every good thing does begin, with Christ. That you are His—that He is yours.
II. Then take care that nothing grieves and stops the Spirit; that there is no bar across—by sin, or by the world, or by self—to stop the channel of that river of life.
III. And then the result is sure: ‘The love of God will be shed abroad’—far and wide, into every crevice of your heart, ‘by the Holy Ghost which is given unto you.’
IV. And now, subject to this great law, let me suggest to you one or two ways by which this love is to take effect in your heart.
(a) At this moment, there is some one with whom your conscience tells you you are not now on the terms on which you ought to be. That feeling you have, that you are not on right terms with that person, is part of the ‘shedding.’ Honour it. Honour it at once. Adjust your relationships with that person.
(b) Or the present state of things in your heart may be worse than that. There may be some one with whom you are really at enmity. It is almost, if not quite, a quarrel. There is a distance; an unbrotherly feeling, and a proud spirit—if not positive anger and dislike. Or, if you have forgiven, and if the first heat of the anger is gone, you have not said it. The reconciliation is not confessed—therefore it is not complete. Yet, at this moment, you have a conviction about it, and a compunction of heart, a desire, which is the Holy Ghost. Then go and do it. Take the lower ground. Humble yourself. Say that you wish to be friends.
—
Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustration‘There are a great many who are still very worldly, but the real desire of their hearts is that they could love God. Whether such a desire is not of itself a proof that it is already love, I do not now stop to consider—I think it is; but the persons to whom I refer have not yet (their own hearts would say they have not yet) much real, practical love to God. They do not treat Him as if they loved Him. And there is not a Christian on earth who does not feel his love poor and cold in comparison with what it ought to be—so poor, and so cold, that he must very often confess—“I have none.” His first wish and prayer every day is—“O God! more love! more love!” ’