01.03. Affection for Christ: Its Decline
Affection for Christ: Its Decline
We can easily understand that if the devil has succeeded in turning Christ out of this world, it will be no pleasure to him to see a people here to whose hearts Christ is everything.
* Therefore it is his great object to corrupt our minds from simplicity as to the Christ; and this he seeks to accomplish, not by open attack upon Christ, but "as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety".
* He had introduced amongst the saints at Corinth men who pretended to be apostles of Christ, and had all the appearances of ministers of righteousness, 2 Corinthians 11:12-15.
* These men were going about amongst the saints discrediting Paul, and under a great show of doing the Lord’s work they were craftily bringing in fleshly and worldly principles, o and so far as they were accepted and tolerated, the saints’ minds were corrupted from simplicity as to the Christ.
* I dare say they were careful not to assail what we call foundation truths. The devil knows better than to put in the thick end of the wedge first.
* It would not do for them to show their colours openly at first; but everything would be modified, and more or less humanized, and stripped of its proper force and bearing.
I am sure this is of great importance to us all, for I think we should all be prepared to admit that there is a great lack of the simplicity of affection to which Christ in resurrection is everything.
* The question arises, Why is it so? Why do saints who have known what it was to be espoused unto Christ get so cold in their affections? o How are they brought to be satisfied and comfortable again in worldly and carnal things?
* I do not believe that any person who had known what it was to be espoused unto Christ would go in for worldliness until his mind had been corrupted by something that lessened his judgment as to what the world is.
* Before the outward departure the corrupting influence is at work within; the mind is being occupied and permeated with thoughts and principles that connect themselves with man and with things here, o and all this is done in such a subtle way that very often no alarm is felt in the conscience during the process.
* It is a solemn thing to say, but I believe that the decline of affection for Christ, and the corrupting process that precedes that decline, can often be traced to o the influence of ministry that is not on the line or in the current of the Spirit of God.
* I think the chapter before us shows plainly that there are two kinds of ministry - the true and the false – o that which is of Christ and the Spirit, and that which is of Satan - the one flatly opposed in its tendency and effect to the other.
* All true ministry in the power of the Spirit tends to draw our hearts away from man and from things here to Christ in resurrection.
* False ministry occupies us with man and with things here, and hence draws our hearts away from Christ, for He can only be known as outside everything here, in resurrection.
* I am speaking soberly and in sorrow when I say that the overwhelming preponderance of ministry at the present day is of the latter character.
* It is inevitably so when the minister himself is unconverted, or has never known for himself what it is to be espoused unto Christ; but we must not overlook o the fact that a man may be converted, and may know a good deal of truth, and yet the general drift of his ministry may be to occupy souls with things on this side of resurrection.
* Men may have the reputation of great piety, and they may say much that is good and true, and yet the real tendency of it all may be to occupy you with man and with things here.
* You know that as a matter of fact to be a good citizen, and to take part in everything that is supposed to tend to the improvement of the world, is looked upon o by many even evangelical believers at the present day as a part of Christianity; o and all the great religious bodies are more or less occupied in seeking to improve their position and enlarge their influence in this world. o Woe betide us if we are drawn into this current.
* True affection for Christ is completely blighted thereby, for He can only be known in resurrection, and as One utterly rejected by man.
We cannot be too careful as to the influences which we allow to act upon us.
* We are affected by all that we hear and all that we read - unconsciously it may be.
* The damage is done before we know it; like Ephraim, we have grey hairs and know it not.
* I do not think you can put yourself under the influence of the ministry which is generally found even amongst evangelical Christians at the present day, either by hearing or reading it, without suffering loss in your soul.
* You will find your heart turned back to things here - perhaps religious things - and correspondingly brought away from Christ in resurrection.
I need not say that worldly literature of all kinds has the same effect.
* I am quite sure that a man cannot soak his mind in a newspaper every morning, and retain freshness of affection for Christ.
* Of course a man in business may have to look at the market price of timber, or stone, or corn, just as a Christian slave in the apostle’s days might have had to go down to the market on his master’s business, o but you may be sure that the Christian slave who knew what it was to be espoused to Christ would turn away as quickly as possible from the tumult of the market and the idle gossip of the street, and the harangue of the political orator would have little charm for his ear.
* Some have said "But I can hear and read things without being damaged by them if I do not allow them a place in my heart".
* A very pertinent question for such persons would be, "What gain is there in occupying the mind with so much that is acknowledged to be unworthy of the heart?" o But it is precisely in this way that the heart is turned aside.
* The mind - the thoughts - are turned to things here, and the affections soon follow in the same direction.
* Nor is it a question of the actual retention in the memory of the things that are heard or read, o but of the impression that is made on the mind, and the cast that is given to the thoughts by them.
* The mind is turned back to things here, and the speedy result of this that the whole-hearted affection to which Christ was everything is lost and perhaps soon regarded as only a temporary excitement of no practical value.
* Ah! the Lord looks back to those hours of holy joy, of absorbing affection, of burning love, and He says, "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals".
* Eight hundred years had passed in Israel’s history - long centuries of backsliding and rebellion - but the Lord never forgot the brief moment in which He was everything to their hearts.
* How far has He to look back to find such a moment in your history or mine?
Then there is another thing. "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me in the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water", Jeremiah 2:13.
* In the East a man sometimes spends years in hewing out a cistern in the rock, hoping to get it filled in the rainy season, that he may have a supply for the time of drought.
* At last the rains descend, the streams rush into the mouth of the cistern, but the water-level does not rise - the water runs out as fast as it runs in - it is a broken cistern.
* What a disappointment! The man has two counts to the bad - he has wasted all his labour, and he is dry.
* That is God’s picture of a man whose heart has been turned away from Christ.
* You are looking to find the present satisfaction of your heart in earthly things, but, depend upon it, sooner or later you will find that all your cisterns here are "broken".
* What a solemn thing to have to look back at the end on a wasted life! How sad to be dry with such a Fountain near!
Affection for Christ: Its Revival
I will now turn to one or two scriptures which bring before us the ways of the Lord in His restoring grace when the hearts of His own have got away from Him.
* And in connection with this I may say that we are as dependent on the Lord for restoration when we wander as we were at the beginning for salvation.
* How sweet to know that He does not, and will not give us up.
* The secret of all His gracious dealings with us lies in the fact that He loves us, and nothing but love will satisfy love.
* He is jealous over us; He must have the affection of our hearts; He values it; it is the chosen satisfaction of His love. In bringing about restoration the Lord makes use of two great agencies - Ministry and Government; or to put it in simpler words, He reaches us by His voice or by His hand.
* I am not forgetting His advocacy with the Father, for this lies behind it all.
* He takes up our whole case with the Father before there is a movement of restoring grace towards us, or any response to that movement in our souls.
* That advocacy which is in all the value of His own nearness to the Father and based upon His sin-atoning work, is the unfailing outcome of His love.
* Our sin becomes the immediate occasion for His love to concern itself on our behalf, and this with the Father.
* Then consequent upon this perfect and prevailing advocacy, there is the activity of His restoring grace toward us, and it is of this that I now speak.
"I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:
* "and hast borne, and hast patience and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.
* "Nevertheless I have against thee that thou hast left thy first love.
* "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent," Revelation 2:2-5.
Here we have ministry, or the Lord’s voice, addressing itself to those whose hearts had left their first love, and seeking to call them to repentance. o How solemn is the picture here presented to our view.
* We see an assembly that was apparently in the most perfect outward order, and in which was found an extraordinary measure of faithfulness and spiritual energy, yet lacking the one thing which alone could satisfy the heart of Christ.
* No human eye might have been able to discern that anything was lacking; there was service, fidelity, suffering for Christ’s name’s sake and endurance of no ordinary kind.
* If we knew such an assembly we should probably think they were everything that could be desired.
* But the love of their espousals had waned; they had left the bright "first love" to which Christ Himself was everything.
* Alas! it is possible for our service, our fidelity, and our testimony for Christ to become prominent in our minds, o and for these things, so excellent in themselves, to usurp the place which Christ longs to hold in our affections.
* It may have been so at Ephesus, for Satan will use even such things as these to corrupt our minds from simplicity as to the Christ, and it is often thus that the decline of affections begins.
How touching is that word, "Remember from whence thou art fallen".
* We have already seen how the Lord remembers the "first love" of His saints; He delights to call it to mind; and He counts upon it being also a sweet memory to the hearts of his own.
* This is the first effort of His restoring grace - to recall the memory of those precious hours when the holy rapture of "first love" filled the heart, and He was really everything to the soul.
* Are the best and brightest seasons of your soul’s history somewhere far behind?
* Have you to look back through the mist of intervening years to find a moment of deep joy in which Christ filled the whole vision of your soul, and His love satisfied every longing of your heart?
* Sorrowfully, but in tender love, the Lord calls you now to "remember".
* Do not allow yourself to be deceived by the fact that you know more, and that many truths are clearer to your mind.
* This may be so while the affections wither, and the soul is as dry as the desert sand.
* May the voice of the Lord really reach and recall in power every heart that has left its first love.
"And repent". I think there is an immensity of grace in that word.
* It opens the door for the aroused heart to trace its way back to the point where the decline began.
* It is, so to speak, the Lord inviting us to return to the happiness and intimacy of "first love".
* It is sad and humbling that the Lord has to use such a word to his own, but there is precious grace and comfort in it for the exercised heart.
* Instead of putting any difficulty or discouragement in the way of our return, He invites us - calls upon us - to retrace our steps.
* Yet we must needs return in a way that really sets us free in the presence of His love from the things that had diverted us from Him. Hence He says "Repent".
* It is by the judgment in His presence of the whole course by which our hearts have wandered that we are brought back to the point where the decline began.
* The soul has to travel back over its course, and to judge the presence of the Lord the true character of the things that have turned it aside, o and in doing so to judge itself for that condition which gave these things their power over it.
* This is a deep, solemn, searching process, but infinite love calls us into it, and will carry us through if we respond to that call.
* I can quite understand a backslider saying, ’But my course has been so crooked and intricate that I could never trace it out; and the beginnings of my decline were so subtle, and the stages so imperceptible, that I am quite at a loss’.
* This may serve to prove that you cannot restore yourself.
* The Lord alone can lead us back over the history of our souls, and if our hearts really turn to Him He will do it.
* He can show us exactly what turned us aside, and what it was that prepared us to be turned aside, and He can give us His own judgment about it all.
* There is no legal effort about this, but the soul, sitting down before the Lord to judge with Him the whole course of departure.
* The results of it is that we are brought back, with a deepened knowledge of self and a truer judgment of the world, to find our entire satisfaction in the unchanging love of His heart.
* We are brought back to the freshness and simplicity of that "first love" to which Christ is everything. But there is another agency employed by the Lord to reach the consciences and hearts of His backsliding people, and that is Government.
* To bring this before you, I will read from the Old Testament: o "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. o "And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now," Hosea 2:6-7.
* Here we see the movement of the Lord’s hand in restoring grace.
* He will not allow the backslider to go unchecked in his self-chosen way; He hedges it up with thorns, and builds a wall across it. Do not our hearts know something of this?
* We thought to take a seemingly pleasant path, but Christ was not before our hearts when we entered it, and every step in it was taking us further from Him, and in His grace He put a hedge of thorns across it.
* He allowed our path to land us in painful circumstances, and the thorns tore our flesh.
* Did we consider that it was restoring grace which hedged up our way?
* Then again, we thought we saw a straight smooth way before us; it fell in with our wishes, our judgment approved it, and we entered on it with the greatest assurance.
* But presently we came to a dead block; there was a wall right across the road, we could neither get over it nor round it.
* Ah! it was restoring grace which built that wall, and which seeks to remind us by it that Christ was not before us when we turned that way. Have you ever pursued an object without any success, and been mortified by the disappointment?
* Or, having obtained the desired end, found it very different from what you had expected?
* Have you ever sought gratification in things here, and been surprised that they yielded so little?
* You have followed without overtaking, and you have sought without finding.
* You have been proving that the cisterns here are broken and can hold no water.
* Does not the dealing of the Lord’s hand with you constrain you to say, "I will go and return to my first husband; for then it was better than now"?
Let us read further. "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her (margin, "to her heart")", Hosea 2:14.
* If our affections are true to Christ, they will make this world a wilderness to us; but if our affections do not make it a wilderness, His government will.
* He loves us too well to allow our hearts to nestle here; and He makes us conscious that it is a wilderness that He may have opportunity in our loneliness and our sorrow to speak to our hearts.
* The Voice that could not be heard in the din and bustle, and amid the laughter of the city, can be heard in the silence and solitude of the wilderness.
* Have you never had a wilderness interview with the Lover of your soul?
Then further. "And I will give her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope," Hosea 2:15.
* How significant is this! The valley of Achor (trouble) was the place where Achan was stoned, and he and his family, and his ill-gotten spoil, were burned with fire.
* This is very remarkable, for the sin of Achan was the first movement of departure after the people got into the land, o and the place where that first movement was so thoroughly judged is the place given as a "door of hope" for a backsliding people.
* Does it not again impress upon our hearts the solemn and imperative necessity of judging the root and secret cause of the first symptom of decline?
* It is the allowance of the flesh - the toleration of its tastes and tendencies - which is the root of all.
* We allow ourselves to be swayed by a man who thinks more of a "goodly Babylonish garment," or a little silver or gold, than he does of Christ.
* You may depend upon it that if Christ loses His place in our affections, we are henceforth controlled by either the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life.
* May the Lord conduct each backsliding heart through the valley of Achor, and give each one a thorough root-judgment of the flesh and the world. A few words more. "And she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt … And I will betroth thee unto me for ever … I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord," Hosea 2:15, Hosea 2:19-20.
* What a triumph of grace! Poor backsliding Israel, after more than 3000 years of wandering and rebellion, will be brought back to the kindness of her youth and to the love of her espousals.
* She will know Jehovah in His infinite grace as she has never known Him before - no longer as her Master, but as her Husband (see verse 16) - and she will enter afresh and for ever into the joy of her betrothal to Him.
Beloved brethren, if this is the manner of His grace to Israel, surely our hearts are entitled to appropriate its sweetness to ourselves, who are called, through infinite love, to know Him in a closer relationship.
* I know that when the heart has long been a stranger to the joy of first love, o there is a great tendency to settle down and go on with things as they are, as though it were hopeless to expect to be restored.
* I am sure that if the Lord gives your heart a fresh consciousness that He really loves you, that despairing and depressing idea will be banished from your soul.
* You will awake to the blessed reality of the fact that He yearns over you in rich boundless love, and that He is ready to lead you into communion with Himself o in the judgment of the things that have turned you aside, and of yourself for giving them a place in your thoughts.
* Your heart will leap for joy to think that His love is really unchanged.
* Thus restored, "first love," with all that it means for you and for Him, will again fill your heart. You will sing as in the days of your youth.
* You will come back with a subdued and chastened spirit - with a humbled heart and a broken will - to the joy of that moment of espousal when Christ was everything to your heart.
C. A. C.