Seite 39 - Testimonies to Southern Africa (1977)

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Five Letters to Members of the Wessels Family in South Africa
35
Why? That in beholding such love for man, that all who believe shall
not perish, we shall manifest the same love for our fellow-men. Love
for lost souls brought Christ to Calvary’s cross. Love for souls will
lead us to self-denial, self-sacrifice in order to seek and to save that
which was lost. Ye are labourers together with God. Self must die and
our life be hid with Christ in God. Love for souls for whom Christ
died means crucifixion of self.
Love for souls cannot exist without first having supreme love to
God. Then all our desires, all our will is on the Lord’s side of the
question. Pride and desire for display cannot live in the heart where
there is love for perishing souls. We want to be diligent students to
learn in the school of Christ. Those who do not deny self, and lift the
cross and follow Jesus, cannot be His disciples.
Jesus said of His disciples, “And I have declared unto them thy
name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me
may be in them, and I in them.” That love wherewith the infinite God
loved His Son is to be conveyed to fallen man who believes in Jesus
Christ. He transfuses this love through those who believe. As our
life-blood, so is the circulating vitality of that love diffused through
every part of our nature, that it may dwell in us as it does in Him.
Wonderful statement! That it is possible for God to love us as He loves
Christ. He loves the believing soul because he is a part of Christ, a
partaker of the divine nature.
Then how grievous to the Spirit of God is anything like alienation,
discord and strife. The heart that is filled with the love of Christ will
be exercised in love toward all for whom Christ has died. There will
be the same self-denial practised by the wealthy man who believes in
Jesus, as by men who have little of this world’s goods, because he acts
from unselfish principles. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor,
[39]
that ye through His poverty might be rich.”
The Lord Jesus has given man an example in His own life. For the
selfish heart of sin, He gives the new heart of love. He changes the
heart, and produces an entire revolution in the soul. He brings light
out of darkness, love out of enmity, and holiness out of impurity, that
those who believe in Christ may represent Christ’s life and character
to the world. Says the Apostle, “We are labourers together with God;
ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.”—
Letter 28, 1892
.