The Fruit of Trust in God's Love, Part 1

Trust Yields Divine Fellowship and Confidence

 

The Fruit of Trust in God’s Love

Part 1

By Fred O. Blakely

 “And we know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, even so are we in this world. There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that feareth is not made perfect in love” (I Jn. 4:16-18, ASV).

The evidence and fruit of love by the children of God, as here set forth by John, are immeasurably precious. Certainly they are to be earnestly desired and diligently sought by all who in truth call on the Father. Particular note should be made of the kind of love of which the Apostle speaks, however. It is not merely the gushing affection and sentimentality that so often parades itself as the paragon of godliness. Valid testimony of filial relationship to the Most Holy and effectual banishment of the cringing fear of Him obviously have a more substantial basis than that.

Traced to its ultimate source, the fruit of the Spirit clearly stems from the individual’s firm and implicit reliance upon God, not from self-determination or self-will. That is to say, it is rooted in the Divine mercy and grace, and is actually nothing more than the issue of those qualities from within the believer, who has received them from Above. Hence, one cannot evince his or her status as a child of the heavenly King by just starting to “love” people and be kind to, and considerate of, them. Neither can such ones banish their inherent fear of death and the eternal judgment by such tactics.

These blessings are not the result of loving the brethren.  Contrariwise, love of the saints and deliverance from fear themselves take the nature of results of something that lies beneath them. And that something is one’s utter dependence upon the God of all grace, as He is revealed and set forth in the holy Scriptures.

The Basis for our Dependence. “And we know and have believed the love which God hath in us.” There, there is secret of all that fortifies the heart and flows out of the life of the saint. It is whole-hearted faith in God and unhesitating dependence on the representation of Himself which He has given. “Herein was the love of God manifested in us,” the Apostle has previously declared, “that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (vv. 9-10). Again, “we have beheld and bear witness that the Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (v. 14). And, again, “And the witness is this, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (ch. 5:10-12, ASV).

“The Apostle gives us here a startlingly beautiful succession of truths concerning love—divine love—revealed in Christ, and laying hold of men.”  The revised rendering, “which God hath in us,” rather than “toward us,” as in the A.V. (v. 16), is to be especially noted. The believer who is pressing on unto perfection in the Son (Heb. 6:1-3) has gone much further than to know the love of God to him, as that love was historically manifested in the gift of Jesus. His awareness of that love began with the belief of the record of its objective display, but it certainly did not end there. Through the Spirit which indwells him, he knows this love in himself, as “a reviving, cheering, glowing, inspiring, life-giving power.” It is in him as the living water of which Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman, “springing up into everlasting life” (Jn. 4:14). Of a truth, as Paul remarked, the love of God has been “shed abroad” in his heart by “the Holy Spirit which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:5; cf. Tit. 3:5). “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself” (Jn. 5:10). “The Spirit Itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom. 8:16). So has the believer received Him who is the Life, Christ Himself now dwelling in his heart by faith (Eph. 3:17).

John’s order of thought here, it seems, may be expressed somewhat as follows: “Divine love is—1. A manifestation among us (v. 9). 2. An impartation to us (Rom. 5:5). 3. A reciprocal love, as ours has been called forth thereby (v. 19). 4. A transforming love, causing us to love as God loves (v. 12). 5. A self-consummating love, fulfilling its own ends in and through us, causing its outworking to be perfected in us, as its newly opened channel, through which it is flowing on to the boundless ocean of everlasting life and glory.”

The Reciprocal Indwelling. The Apostle goes on in our basic text to assert the mutual and reciprocal indwelling of God and the believer. “He that abideth,” or “dwelleth,” in the love of God, he declares, “abideth in God, and God abideth in him” (v. 16). In verse 15, he has set forth the same situation with reference to confession of the faith, though in reverse order. “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God.” Other Scriptures which represent such mutuality of fellowship include Jn. 6:56; 14:23; Rom. 8:9; II Cor. 13:5; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 2:18, 22; Col. 1:27; Rev. 3:20). Thus “he that dwells in sacred love has the love of God ‘shed abroad’ upon his heart, has the impress of God upon his spirit, the Spirit of God sanctifying and sealing him, lives in meditation, views, and tastes of the divine love, and will ere long go to dwell with God for ever.”

“In some passages, the Dweller in the heart is spoken of as Christ, sometimes as the Spirit, sometimes as the Father with the Son, sometimes as God by the Spirit. In all cases, the meaning is that there is a divine Life and Energy within the person, quickening, inspiring, and controlling him—a new directing and strengthening Force, leading on to all holy action, to patient endurance, to final victory. Man moves not upward and heavenward by a self-elicited force, but soars thither by a divine power imparted and sustained from Above.”

He who abides, or dwells, in the love of God and of the brethren is said to abide in God, “for God is love.” Here is truly a heavenly state. The soul is at home in God, and continually resides there. “God is not only a new life in him, but a new home for him, in which he abides, and from which he cannot be dislodged. His wanderings are over. He has a settled rest, an everlasting home.  It is the Father’s house, in the Father’s heart—the heart of boundless love. He is now seated in ‘the heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ (Eph. 2:6). Happy, happy home! It is heaven. It will never break up. No foe can invade it. Sin shall not mar it. Death cannot disturb it. Oh, to have found a home like this!” It is to be observed that the two indwellings compliment each other. “God dwelling in the soul ensures the soul continuously dwelling in its true home; and the soul, being always at home, has entire repose—it is full of God—leaving all its force free for happy, holy worship and service of God.”

John’s connection of the two indwellings with confession of faith and abiding in divine love is at once remarkable and deeply significant. The reciprocal abiding, he declares, is realized by him who lives and moves in God’s love and also by him who openly and continuously avows to the doctrine of Christ. Actually, the two practices—confessing and abiding—are concurrent, and are not to be contemplated in dissociation.

That Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world, and so the Revealer of God’s love, is the message addressed to faith (I Jn. 4:14). “The Christian revelation is—what should endear it to us—the revelation of divine love. The articles of our revealed faith are but so many articles relating to divine love. The history of the Lord Christ is the history of God’s love to us. All His transactions in and with His Son were but testifications of His love, and means to advance us to the love of God.”

Faith receives Christ upon the basis of God’s revelation and with Him the love and salvation which He reveals. “Confession constantly rings out the faith, and by so doing vastly increases faith’s realizing power. This, through the energy of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 12:3), makes the love of God in Christ so real to the faithful confessor, that he actually dwells in love, and so reaches the state specified as ‘dwelling in love’ (v. 16). Thus the two conditions differ only as the terminus a quo from the terminus a quem [or, the point of commencment from that of completion]. Confession is the former; dwelling in love is the latter. This is verified by the order of the phrases, being in the one case, ‘God dwelleth in him, and he in God’; and in the other, ‘dwelleth in God, and God in him.’”

(Concluded Tomorrow)