Any of you. So you can go to sleep and feel very comfortable. You are not going to offend me or anything.
Lord, we do rejoice to be together in Your presence. Lord, to think of You as our Sanctifier—to think of You, who has sanctified us and brought us into that place of not being ashamed to call us brethren. Lord, it is beyond our imagination to be called Your brother.
Lord, we are thankful that You desire to share Your heart with us continually. As we come to Your Word this morning, we look to You, Lord, to speak to us, to enlighten us, and to continue to equip us for the days and times in which we are living. In Your precious name, amen.
One of the things that has been on my heart recently is the Lord’s soon return and the way evil is intensifying. Everything around us is intensifying. Persecution is increasing in varying degrees. Humanism is spreading unchecked, and throughout the world we see instability. Everything that can be shaken is being shaken.
In the financial world—or whatever aspect of the world you want to look at—there is no security to be found anywhere. As I was thinking about this, I realized that you want to be able to keep going on, because there are so many things that discourage you. There is a spirit of discouragement in this day and time.
So it brought me back to this simple question: What is my motivation? Actually, what is my ambition? What is my ambition in life? When you are really captured by an ambition, you want to continue pressing on.
One of the things we need to relate to ambition is motivation. What is the motivation? Motivation is that driving force that really keeps us on the go. The question I had within my own heart was, “What is my motivation, and what am I really living for?”
At times, we can think ambition is not a Christian word. Somebody says, “You are ambitious,” and somehow it can come across in a negative sense. But actually, the word ambition is a neutral word. It depends on what your ambition is about or what you are ambitious for.
Sometimes in Christianity, we have this thought: “That person is ambitious. That means they are just doing it of the flesh.” No, they can be ambitious for the Lord.
The Scripture gives us examples of positive ambition—ambition for the Lord—and negative ambition. In 2 Corinthians 5:9, Paul writes to those in Corinth. Before this, he has been dwelling on the matter of his present dwelling, his future dwelling, walking by faith and not by sight. He had a desire to be with the Lord, but he was here in this earthly body.
He says:
Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.
What a precious testimony. This was Paul’s heart.
As he continues with this thought of being well pleasing to the Lord, he says:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he hath done, whether good or bad.
Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord—
When you think about being ambitious to be well pleasing, and then the very next thought is appearing before the judgment seat of Christ, it shows us that Paul had something within his heart that did not make him fear or draw back from the seriousness of the judgment seat of Christ.
Sometimes we talk about the judgment seat of Christ, and we want to shrink back. We will talk a little more about that later. We will all have to appear there. You can have interpretations about when that will occur; we are not going to get off on that today.
But Paul had confidence. He had an assurance within him as he looked forward to that judgment seat of Christ, because of that ambition to be pleasing to the Lord. That is the positive ambition: pleasing the Lord.
From a negative point of view, we can look in the epistle of James. James says:
But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth.
This section of James is dealing with wisdom. There is a wisdom from above, and there is a wisdom from below. I appreciate this verse because it amplifies selfish ambition. It is all about self. He puts in that little phrase, “in your heart.”
The preceding verse speaks of wisdom from above:
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good life his works in meekness of wisdom.
Then James says:
But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth.
This wisdom from ourselves can capture our hearts. It is interesting: you are lying against the truth. Do you not see that in the days in which we are living? There is a truth that is there, but mankind in self is saying, “No, that is not true.” But it is true. Everything about Christ is true.
James continues, speaking of this natural wisdom:
This wisdom is not a wisdom that cometh down from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.
For where jealousy and faction are, there is confusion and every vile deed.
You see the chaos that self brings about—an ambition to glorify self. The fruit of this is disorder and evil things because it is not from above. It is natural; it is even classified as demonic. So this whole issue of ambition can be positive or negative.
What is ambition? I went to a dictionary—and thank God for Google and all of that—to try to come up with something simple.
Ambition is a desire to act in love to honor and satisfy someone; a desire, aim, goal, or purpose in life to honor and satisfy someone.
So the big question is: Who are we desiring to honor or satisfy? It is actually a pretty simple question, because there are only two answers. You are either going to honor yourself, or you are going to honor the Lord.
Interestingly, as we go through this life, those two motives can outwardly look very similar. Think about service within the assembly: teaching a class, serving in a group, preparing a meal, sharing up here like this, or going to the meeting. All of this can outwardly appear the same.
Praise God if we are desiring to honor Him. But it can also be self—that so-called religious self that loves to have the place of preeminence, loves to get the glory, self-glory, and self-honor. Or it may be done merely out of duty or obligation, with a wrong perspective.
That is why, whenever we are serving, we need to ask the Lord to search our hearts: “Lord, why am I doing this? What is the real issue? What is the real desire within me? And if necessary, Lord, adjust me. Change me. Conform me to Your image.”
What is necessary for ambition to be realized? You may have an ambition, but in order for it to be realized, you need motivation. Motivation is the fire or power in us that makes us willing to act to achieve our ambition—willing to pay the price, whatever the cost.
I remember when I first went away after high school and went to university. My vision, my ambition, was to be a dentist. But I soon found out that I did not have the motivation to go through organic chemistry. I did not have the motivation for some of those science classes.
Lo and behold, I ended up getting into accounting. For some reason, accounting clicked. One thing in common with most everybody who majored in accounting is that nobody goes to university, first of all, to study accounting. Accounting is usually your second or third choice.
It is not that glamorous, but it is a great career. There are not any unemployed accountants—just a little advertisement there.
My whole vision changed, and I loved accounting. I am a little weird, but I loved accounting. I could study and stay up all night because I was motivated. I was going to pass that CPA exam, and I was going on. I actually finished college second in my class. I missed first place by one-tenth of a point—one girl, Juanita Leatherberry, was just a little bit ahead.
As you go through life, our vision, objectives, and ambitions change. But we are driven by something. Do we know what is driving us? Do we know what our ambition is? Do we know what our motivation is?
Ambition and motivation go together. You really cannot have one without the other in life. You can have ambition without motivation, but you are not going to amount to much. You are just a dreamer. You have all these dreams and this great ambition—“I am going to do this; I am going to do that”—but if you do not have that fire within to do it, you are just dreaming about it.
On the other hand, if you have motivation without any ambition, you are going to burn out. You are always doing something—doing this, doing that—but you do not know where you are going. You keep doing and doing and doing, and eventually you get burned out.
In our Christian life, we can have ambitions to be pleasing to God, but are we captured by Him in such a way that He is our motivation to go on and press through regardless of the cost? This is a beautiful testimony we see in Paul’s life.
Our ambition is to be well pleasing to the Lord. That is it. What pleases the Father most? We know that it is His Son. It is all about His Son.
Whenever we think about ambition and motivation, it always brings us back to Christ. To be well pleasing to the Lord is for the life of His Son to be seen and expressed in us and through us. The testimony of Christ is our life. That was Paul’s testimony.
The reality of Him is expressed through us as a living testimony. What we are doing, we are doing so that He receives the glory and honor—not ourselves, but that He would be honored and glorified. That is this whole matter of ambition.
Where does ambition come from? Ambition comes from vision. Now, that is not just a religious answer. Some people get tired of hearing about vision—vision this or vision that—but I am not just giving a religious answer.
Even in the world, if you look at all the psychobabble stuff, it boils down to having vision. You have a vision, a desire for something you want to become. That captures you.
So we have to ask the question: What vision governs our life? Some are governed by a vision for sports. They love sports. I love sports, but I was never great enough to focus on one, so I was mediocre at all of them but never good at any of them.
Some love the arts. Some pursue business. Some are into e-games. Some want to be influencers. I was looking around to see if there was an influencer here today, but I am not sure.
Some people focus on family. Their whole ambition is, “We are going to have the greatest family. We are going to have this and that.” We can go on and on, but all of those ambitions can end up being very self-satisfying.
After I finished university, I started working for one of what were then the Big Eight accounting firms. Now there are four. Oh, I just talked about him, and here he walks. Not to embarrass you, Ryan.
When I went to work for one of the accounting firms, John and I actually worked together at the same firm. I loved accounting, and I had a vision. I was pressing on, working, and moving up the chain of command. I was involved in healthcare, their national healthcare practice, and was one of their national instructors.
Then it came time for me to become a partner. They said, “Well, if you are going to be a partner, you will have to transfer offices.” This had been my goal for years—seven or eight years, I think. It was right there.
But they said I had to change offices, and there was something else going on in my life at that same time. As I looked at the cities available for transfer, we did not know of any like-minded brethren there. I knew there would be plenty of Christians in those cities, but there were not any like-minded brethren.
My overall vision was beginning to change. I was gaining something of a vision of God’s heart and purpose. So I left that firm and went into business with another person. It was quite a change.
That was probably the point of transition in life where business was no longer my endgame. I had a desire to serve the Lord. I did not understand a lot about it. I heard messages on God’s eternal purpose, and I knew all that was right, but I knew there was something about it that was more than just about me. It was about Him.
This vision of God’s heart and purpose—we talk about it a lot. What is it? It is not just a phrase that we like to repeat. We can fall into a trap of having our own vocabulary: “God’s eternal purpose,” “heavenly vision,” and things like that. But the reality of those things is far more than a phrase.
This vision captured me at that point in time. I was not fully captured; I do not want to overstate it. It is a process that we go through. But it changed my whole perspective of life. What used to be important was no longer important.
When the Lord captures our heart with something of His heart and purpose for us, there is a revolutionary experience. All of a sudden, we cannot really explain it, but there is a reality to it. I am thankful that this occurred in my heart and life.
It impacts our motivation too. When we see something of His heart, not only does our ambition change, but our motivation changes. We are not going to live for ourselves, but for Him who lived and died for us.
As we ask ourselves what our motivation is, we need to recognize that within Christianity there are many different motivations. It should be one thing: Christ should be our motivation. But throughout life, we can be motivated by many different things.
Is your motivation simply to escape—to avoid going to hell? A lot of people get saved simply because they do not want to go to hell. But is that why we are Christians? “Now I can relax. I do not have to go to hell.”
Is your motivation to escape the great tribulation? “I am going to be a good Christian so I do not have to go through the great tribulation.” That may be a motivating factor, but is that the motivation?
Some are motivated by a gospel that says if you really love the Lord, you are going to prosper, have a happy life, and have a good life. “God wants you to be happy.” That can motivate a lot of people. “I am not going to have problems. I can come to the Lord and just enjoy life, because it is all about me.” It becomes very me-focused.
Others may be motivated by rewards. “I am looking forward to the judgment seat of Christ so I can get my reward. My motivation is what He is going to give me.”
Or perhaps it is the prosperity gospel: “He wants me to prosper. He is going to bless me and give me everything in life.” That becomes the motivation to keep going on.
Or maybe the motivation to go to conferences and enjoy meetings together is to find a spouse. I know that never occurs here. But in some places, young people actually go to conferences looking for a spouse. That is their motivation.
Now, nobody here would ever do that. These brethren are so spiritual; they would never think about that. But the family conference is coming up—possibly; we have to add “possibly” until after January 6. There will be some young people there. What is their motivation? They want to find a spouse. Oh yeah, the teaching is good too.
When you look at these motives, what is the focus? The focus is on us: what I get, what I do not get, what I can get out of. It is all about me.
There can be other motivations that appear good. Maybe our motivation is a particular interpretation of the Lord’s return. But if it works out in a different way, do we become disillusioned? Maybe we hold on to a certain teaching, doctrine, or practice, and the Lord works in a way we did not expect, as He spoke of in Habakkuk. Will we become disillusioned?
Sometimes our motivation can be the praise of man or the fear of man. We want to please man. But man is pretty fickle. They will praise you one day and curse you the next day.
It is sad to see how many disillusioned believers there are because they have had their eyes on a man, and that man failed them—whether through sexual immorality, financial immorality, or many other things. It really takes a toll on people if they are looking at a man.
We can respect people, obviously. But what a problem we can run into if our hope is in them.
Maybe your motivation is to share the gospel. You are driven by a heart for the lost, and that is a great motivation. But what should drive us in spite of all opposition? What keeps us going in spite of disappointments, rejection, and being let down?
I appreciate a quote by Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor started the China Inland Mission. As he interviewed volunteers who wanted to go there, he would ask them, “What is your motivation? Why do you want to go?”
They would inevitably say, “I have a heart for the lost. I want to preach the gospel. I see all these thousands and thousands in China without the gospel and going to hell.” That was good, and he would encourage them in that way. But then he would take them a step further.
Hudson Taylor told them:
The only motive that will enable you to remain true to Him is Christ’s love constraining you. His love will keep you faithful in every situation, even unto death.
If your motivation is something other than Christ and His love, there will come a point in time where it fails us. But He never fails us. He never disappoints us. He carries us through all the way triumphantly.
Paul knew something of being constrained by the love of Christ. That is why he could mention his ambition and look forward to the judgment seat of Christ. He did not fear it because he knew the love of Christ.
It is a serious thing, of course. But if we fear it—if we dread the judgment seat of Christ—we need to go back and ask the Lord to show us more and more of the love of Christ, to bring us into more and more of the greater reality of His love.
The verse concerning the love of Christ follows what we have been reading in 2 Corinthians 5:
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died;
and He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again.
This is a precious testimony. The love of Christ is controlling—constraining—us. What is Paul’s response? He says that Christ died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.
The love of Christ motivated Paul so that he lived this verse. This was not a theoretical verse or merely a teaching verse. You could almost put his name in there: “I am no longer going to live for myself, but I am going to live for Christ, who died and rose again on my behalf.”
This is a vital question for every one of us: What is motivating us in this life?
Paul speaks here of the love of Christ, and we need to clarify something. This is not Paul’s love for Christ. Our love for Him is precious. At the table this morning, as we sang and prayed, we were pouring out our love upon Him. We do love Him, and we want to pour it out upon Him.
But Paul is not speaking of that, because our love has limitations. Our love eventually will come short. When we are pressed in on something, our love will come up short. Peter got pressed in, and his love came up short.
We may think at times, “I love Christ so much, nothing can keep me from denying Him or from going on with Him.” We just do not know ourselves.
I remember when I was in the service during the Vietnam era. We all had to go through basic prisoner-of-war training—what happens when you are captured. It is amazing how not that much torture, or not that much intense pressure, whether psychological or physical, can make you change your mind pretty quickly.
It is easy to sit in a chair here on Sunday morning and say, “I will never do what Peter did.” But when we get in the fire of battle, we do not know. We had better not be confident in ourselves.
That is why our hope and confidence are not in our love for Him, but in His love for us. That is the preciousness of it.
What is this love of Christ that keeps us? Sometimes when we think of the love of Christ, we think of it only in an elementary way. We think of the children’s song, “Jesus loves me, this I know.” But it is actually very profound, fundamental, and essential in this life.
I always remember Brother Kong saying that we can never define the love of Christ, because when we define it, we end up confining it. We end up limiting it. But we can describe it.
This is what we see in the Scriptures: descriptions of the love of Christ being lived out in various lives. When I think of the love of Christ, I think of the love that left the splendor of heaven to come to a fallen world, leaving all that splendor.
It was prayed this morning: He emptied Himself of all that He had, of all that He was, coming to this earth to rescue fallen man, even taking on the form of a slave, a bondservant. That is a description of the love of Christ.
If you look upon His life, you see the pathway of the love of Christ. He went from Bethlehem, and to me this is a beautiful picture of how that love carries us through the mountains and valleys of life. Whatever we go through, He has been through it.
When we think of Him being born in Bethlehem and the humility there, we see that when we find ourselves in a humble place, a place of humiliation, His love identifies with us. He knows what we are going through. He understands us in a wonderful way.
Then He went on to Nazareth—the hidden years of His life. When we think we are overlooked, hidden, and unappreciated, we realize that we have the love of Christ: the love of One who has been there and can carry us through it.
Just as He was carried through by the love of His Father, His love carries us through whatever trials we are going through. And we will be facing them more and more.
Then He went to Judea, where those to whom He came received Him not. One of the hardest things in life, particularly with believers, is when we are rejected. How do you handle rejection? We cannot handle it ourselves.
When we think of rejection, what do we want to do? Revenge. “I will get even.” We never forget. But no: He loved them to the uttermost. When we find ourselves in times of rejection and have feelings we cannot deal with, we are thankful that there is a life within us that identifies with that and carries us through it.
Then He goes to Gethsemane: those situations in life where we have to say, “Not My will.” “Lord, I want to do this, but I know You do not want me to. I want to pray, ‘Not my will, but Your will be done.’” He has been there.
Then there is Calvary: that death, that dying daily, that saying no to ourselves and yes to Him. We have a living One within us who loves us so much and identifies with us. His love can carry us through every situation in which we find ourselves.
Then, praise God, it goes on from Calvary to the throne. That is the victory. We do not have to wait until that throne to experience His victory. We can experience the victory of the love of Christ every day in our hearts and lives as we allow Him to come forth.
As we say no to ourselves and yes to Him, that victory comes forth. The circumstance we are in may not change a bit. Maybe we were rejected, and they are still rejecting us, but we have victory over it. Maybe we have been humiliated and humbled, but we have victory over it.
Whatever situation we find ourselves in, even if we feel we have been dying and wonder, “What is going to happen? I cannot live anymore,” we can have victory over this. Praise God for that.
The love of Christ controls or constrains us. This word has a twofold meaning. The first aspect is that the love of Christ restrains us. It holds us back. It is like the reins on a horse: you hold that horse back so it does not run wild.
The reins direct the horse wherever it needs to go. You city folk do not know what “gee” and “haw” are. But that is what governs—it restrains us from going our own way.
The blessing is that it restrains us from our own self-will. Our self-will and self-desires lead to self-destruction. Self-will lies to us and says, “This is the way to pleasure and glory,” but in reality it is the way to self-destruction.
It is sad when you see people who are destroying themselves because of their self-love and their own desires. They are killing themselves. But praise God, we have this life within us that can restrain us and say no to these things in very simple, practical ways.
At times, you go out shopping and see something you want. Suddenly there is a little voice within you that says, “Do not get that.” You say, “Well, it is not going to hurt me to get this. I have only got fifteen other pairs of shoes. One more pair is not going to hurt.”
But the Lord says, “No, do not get it.” Do we listen to that little voice saying, “No, you do not need that right now. Keep going on”?
The love of Christ can also affect how we spend our time and the careers we pursue. I know one brother who wanted to be a doctor. At first, he considered being a surgeon, but the Lord impressed him that if he became a surgeon, he would not have as much time for the brethren or for involvement in the assembly.
So he chose to be a dermatologist. He gave up a pretty significant salary, but he saw something beyond. It was the love of Christ restraining him from going one way he might have wanted to go and directing him in the way of the Lord. The Lord has blessed that.
Not only does the love of Christ restrain us; it governs us. It is a governing power in our lives. “For to me to live is Christ.” There were no rivals in Paul’s life. No rival throne survived: “I serve only You.”
One of the most obvious descriptions of this is a mother with a child in an emergency. There is a love within that mother. When the child is in danger, the mother does not sit there and count the cost. The mother acts.
We hear stories of a mother running into a burning building, stepping in front of a car, or even attacking a bear to save her child. She does not stop to think about it. That instinct of love governs her actions.
The Lord wants to govern us in such a way that His life within us directs us. What governs our life? What determines how we spend our time? What determines how much time each day we spend in His Word, in prayer, and in fellowship with one another?
Praise God, the love of Christ is not only restraining us—“Not I, but Christ”—but it is also governing and leading us. It works in this dual way to guide us into the victory that we have in Him.
Paul uses the phrase “the love of Christ” in three of his letters: Romans, 2 Corinthians, and Ephesians. In each case, there is a particular emphasis.
In Romans 8:35, Paul asks:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
In 2 Corinthians, we have already read:
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.
And in Ephesians 3:19, Paul speaks of the supremacy of the love of Christ:
And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Romans 8:35 begins a beautiful paragraph. Toward the end of it, Paul says:
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul says, “I am persuaded.” Some translations say, “I am convinced.” That means he had reached a conclusion based on experience. He had been through something. He had experienced the love of Christ as his security in tribulation, distress, and shipwreck.
Paul was not speaking theoretically. If you look at his life, he could say, “The love of Christ was my security when I was beaten. The love of Christ was my security when people betrayed me. The love of Christ held me through every situation.”
That did not mean he had no problems. The Lord, in His own mysterious way, uses the pressures and challenges of life. As Psalm 4:1 says:
In straits Thou hast set me at large.
In pressure, Thou hast enlarged me. That enlargement is more of Christ in us. We are decreasing, and He is increasing. There is an absolute security that we have in Him.
As I look around this room, there are people here who have been through things far beyond themselves. But because they allowed the Lord to keep them and carry them through, they know something of the security of the love of Christ that they would not have known otherwise.
We could tell many wonderful testimonies. I am thankful that the security of the love of Christ carried William through surgeries recently and all that he has had to go through. I hate to start naming people, because I can look at so many faces and see how the love of Christ has carried you through.
The way we know the Lord carried you through is because we see the fruit of it. We see the evidence in your life. We know it was hard. We know it was beyond you. But praise God, you called upon Him, and you know His faithfulness in a way you did not know before.
Sometimes people ask, “What about sin? Surely He cannot hold us during that.” But Romans 5:8 means so much to me:
But God commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
He did not wait for us to get straightened out. While we were yet sinners, He died for us. Sin does not separate us from the love of Christ. It can hinder our fellowship with Him until things are dealt with, but sin does not separate us from the love of Christ.
God so loved the whole world that He gave His Son. While we were yet sinners, He died for us. That love of Christ is there. This does not give us freedom to sin, but if we fall into sin, it does not mean that God suddenly does not love us.
It is tragic when I hear someone say that. God loves every sinner and yearns that they would come to Him. We need to have that security.
Paul was captured by this love. He knew the arms of God holding and keeping him in a wonderful way.
One of the challenges we have in the body of Christ is when our brethren let us down. It is not a matter of if they will disappoint us; brethren can hurt us, disappoint us, and let us down.
But Paul poured out his life for many, and he testified in 2 Timothy:
At my first defense no one took my part, but all forsook me: may it not be laid to their account.
But the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me.
Praise God. Even though brethren may disappoint us or desert us, the Lord stands with us. The love of Christ is a secure love.
We never want to be in that place with the brethren, but picture your worst situation. Dorothy Hall, a dear sister, would say whenever you were going through trials, “What is the worst thing that can happen?” You picture the worst thing: “All the brethren betray me.” Then she would say, “Yes, but the Lord stands with you.”
We think it is the end of the world, but God is there with us.
There is a hymn written by George Matheson: “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.”
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee.
George Matheson was about twenty years old and studying to become a minister in the Church of Scotland when he began going blind. Once his fiancée discovered that he was going blind, she left him.
But his sister gave up marriage and took care of him. She read the Bible to him, and he went through seminary. He graduated, received his doctorate, and became a pastor in the Church of Scotland. His sister read to him, read all the books to him, and wrote down his answers for tests.
Through the love of his sister, he was able to continue on. She was there. She denied herself.
About fifteen years later, one of his other sisters was getting married in another city. He did not go to the wedding. Because of what had happened with his fiancée, weddings were not high on his list. He sat at home that night, grieving over what had happened to him.
Then he began thinking of the love of Christ. It is said that he wrote the hymn “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go” in less than ten minutes. He made no revisions. It just flowed out because he knew a security in the love of Christ that would never let him go.
We need to know this security, particularly in these days. Hebrews tells us that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
We do not want to be naive and think we will not be shaken. But praise God, we have a security in the love of Christ that will hold us through all the shakings.
Every day the enemy tries to bring in a question or doubt about the love of Christ: “Does He really love you? He lets this happen and that happen.” Humanism attacks the love of Christ: “How can bad things happen to good people?” You can go down that road of destruction.
But there is a security we have in Him. That is our hope and confidence.
The second aspect is the sufficiency of the love of Christ. In 2 Corinthians, this word sufficiency or adequacy, depending on your translation, is used numerous times.
In 2 Corinthians 3:5, Paul says:
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.
This is Paul’s personal testimony throughout 2 Corinthians. He testifies of all-sufficiency in every circumstance in which he finds himself. We need to know the sufficiency of Christ.
I mentioned earlier that I left the big accounting firm and started working with another individual. We were self-employed. If you take all those personality tests that they want you to take at work, I am totally somebody who should never be self-employed. I am somebody who should work for a big company or corporation: “Just tell me what to do, and I will do it.”
But I ended up being self-employed. Through that, I have learned more and more of the sufficiency of Christ. In situations beyond me, I am thankful they are not beyond Him.
A lot of self-employed people have to go out and get business. I am not a salesman. But at different times, through word of mouth or whatever means, hospitals and clients would call. I am thankful for that provision in Him.
I have been self-employed for a little over forty years now. I actually hate that term, self-employed, because it should be “employed by the Lord,” or something like that. There is too much focus on self. But you get the picture.
God uses whatever situations we are in to reveal more of Himself to us.
One of my favorite verses of Paul’s testimony is 2 Corinthians 9:8:
And God is able to make all grace abound unto you; that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work.
Just look at the absolutes: God is able to make all grace abound unto you, that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work.
The most educated lawyer in the world could not find a loophole in that verse. He has covered it wonderfully. We try to find loopholes regarding His all-sufficiency, but praise God for the way He has equipped us. Truly, His love is sufficient.
We are familiar with Paul’s wonderful testimony:
And He hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My power is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
That is Paul’s personal testimony—the very word God gave him.
How do you know something is sufficient? Things are tested and proven. A dam is proven in a flood. An airplane is proven in a storm. You know the plane will fly because it has been through test runs.
A house is proven when it stands in a hurricane. With all the high-tech automobiles today, there are driver-assist systems to keep you in the lane, to make you stop, and even to drive themselves. How do you come to know that they are sufficient? You test them.
You try to change lanes. You get close enough to see if the brakes work. You test it until it proves itself to you. Then you begin to get a little more comfortable. Do not get too comfortable, though—it is still just an automobile.
But we can be very comfortable in the Lord because He is sufficient.
One of the ways He shows the sufficiency of His love to us is through the brethren. Paul needed the brethren. Sometimes we think Paul was so spiritual that he did not need anyone. But in 2 Corinthians, he writes that he was depressed and concerned about what was happening in Corinth.
The Lord sent Titus to comfort him in his depression. Titus came to him. In Romans 16, Paul testified that Aquila and Priscilla risked their own lives for him.
When Paul was in prison, Onesiphorus came and ministered to him. Paul testified that Onesiphorus refreshed him in his chains and was not ashamed of them. He searched Paul out.
If Paul needed encouragement, strengthening, and relationship with the brethren, how much more do we? Sometimes our pride gets in the way, and we are afraid to ask for help. Pray that somebody will come alongside.
May we see the preciousness of the reality that is in Christ. Do we know the Lord as sufficient? Where do we look for our satisfaction? Do we look somewhere else, or do we look to the Lord? May this become a greater reality to us.
Finally, we come to the supremacy of the love of Christ. We read Ephesians 3:19, but consider the preceding context in Ephesians 3:17-18:
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.
Notice that Paul says, “with all the saints.” To enter into the fullness of the supremacy of the love of Christ, we need all the saints. There is a fullness there. We need one another.
Verse 17 says that Christ may dwell in your hearts. The Lord is after our hearts. The heart is the place of love; it is the vessel of love. God wants us to know the supremacy of the love of Christ, not merely in our heads, but in our hearts.
What is the supreme manifestation of the love of Christ in Ephesians? It is that He died for us. He loved us and gave Himself for us. He loved the church and gave Himself for her.
If you look at the word agape in the letter to the church in Ephesus, it is used numerous times—more than in many of Paul’s other epistles. His love is the key to the revelation of God’s heart and purpose.
We will never fully understand God’s heart and purpose unless we know something of His love. His love opens our understanding of His purpose for us, because it is beyond the individual. It is for the whole church.
That is why Paul prayed for the eyes of our hearts to be opened. He wants us to come into the reality of knowing this in a wonderful way.
As we come to the end, let us return to the beginning. What is our ambition? What is our motivation? He is our ambition—or we desire that He would be our ambition. We desire that He would be our motivation.
With His return imminent, we need to take seriously the days in which we are living. We will appear before the judgment seat of Christ, but we want to be found well pleasing to Him. That is our ambition.
There is such a lull among believers today, with many not recognizing the times in which we are living. May we be awakened to see all that He has for us.
In that awakening, as Ephesians says, we are to redeem the time, making the most of every opportunity. We need to get our priorities straight, that He would become our priority.
May we have a fuller and greater revelation of His love—not merely learning some words that begin with “S,” but allowing the reality of the security, sufficiency, and supremacy of the love of Christ to become real to us, both individually and corporately.
The time is at hand. We need to allow Him to search our hearts, because we want all this to be done for His glory and honor. We want no longer to live for ourselves, but for Him who loved us and died for us.
We are thankful that He has called us to Himself. We are thankful that He has made every provision for us in Christ Jesus. And we are thankful that we have a love of Christ that will never let us go.
Lord, we do thank You for the goodness and greatness of the life that we have in You. We thank You for Your love, Lord. We are thankful, as we remembered You at Your table, for how You went to Calvary.
We are thankful, Lord, that Your love is living, real, and alive today within each of our hearts. Lord, where we have rival thrones in our hearts, show us more of Yourself. Where we are distracted by things and desiring things of this world, Lord, show us more of Yourself.
Lord, as we see You, behold Your beauty, know Your glory, and know Your love that will never let us go, may we lean upon Your everlasting arms in a fuller and greater way.
We thank You, Lord, that You first loved us. We do respond, Lord, in our own limited way, by telling You how much we love You.
We look forward day by day to experiencing, seeing, and knowing more and more of the reality of the love of Christ, controlling and leading us unto glory, unto Yourself. We commit ourselves into Your hands. Amen.