“With faith,” that “love” is desired whereby, according to the Pauline ethics of salvation, faith works (Gal. v. 6), the love which as a vitalizing organic force creates the new man, formed in all his doings and dispositions after the image of Jesus Christ. From chapter iv. 1–3 we have learnt how “peace” and “love” attend each other. Love is the source of the forbearance, the mutual consideration and self-sacrifice, without which there is no peace within the Church. Peace springs from love: love waits on faith. Amongst brethren in Christ, members of the same household of faith, peace and love have their home. These are the sons of peace: with good will and good hope, entering or quitting their abode, we say, “Peace be to this house!”
The peace that the apostle looks for amongst Christian brethren is the fruit of peace with God through Christ. Such “peace guarding the thoughts and heart” of each Christian man, nothing contrary thereto will arise amongst them. Calm and quiet hearts make a peaceful Church. There are no clashing interests, no selfish competitions, no strife as to who shall be greatest. Differences of opinion and taste are kept within the bounds of mutual submission. The awe of God’s presence with His people, the remembrance of the dear price at which His Church was purchased, the sense of Christ’s Lordship in the Spirit and of the sacredness of our brotherhood in Him, check all turbulence and rivalry and teach us to seek the things that make for peace.
“Peace and love,” the apostle desires. Love includes peace, and more; for it labours not to prevent contention only, but to help and enrich in all ways the body of Christ. By such “toil of love” faith is made complete. We are bidden indeed, in certain matters, to “have faith to ourselves before God” (Rom. xiv. 22). This maxim holds where one has a special faith in regard to such things as eating flesh or drinking wine, in which any one of us may without offence differ from his brethren. But it is a poor faith that dwells upon questions of this nature, and makes its religion of them. The essentials of faith, as we saw them delineated in chapter iv. 1–6, are things that unite and not distinguish us.
As faith grows and deepens, it makes new channels in which love may flow. “We are bound to thank God always for you,” writes St Paul to the Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 3), “for that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the love of each one of you all toward one another multiplieth.” This is the sound and true growth of faith. Where an intenser faith makes men disputatious and exclusive; where it fails to breed meekness and courtesy, we cannot but suspect its quality. Such faith may be sincere; but it is mixed with a lamentable ignorance, and a resistance to the Holy Spirit that is likely to end in grave offence. “Contending earnestly for the faith” does not mean contending angrily, with the weapons of satire and censoriousness. It is well to remember that we are not the judges of our brethren. There are many questions raised and discussed amongst us, which we may safely leave to the judgement of the last day. It is too easy to fill the air with matters of contention, and to excite a sore and suspicious temper destructive of peace, and in which nothing but fault-finding will flourish. If we must contend, we may surely debate quietly on secondary matters, while we are one in Christ. If we have not love with faith, our faith is worthless (1 Cor. xiii. 2).
Deep beneath the peace that dwells in the Church and the love that fills each believer’s heart, is the eternal fountain of grace. “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ,” says the apostle. Grace is theirs already; and they desire nothing so much as its increase. Their love to Christ is the fruit of the grace of God that is with them. This wish includes all good wishes; it surpasses both our deservings and desires. All that God prepared for us in His eternal counsels, and that Christ purchased by His redeeming love, all of good that our nature can receive now and for ever, is embraced in this one word: Grace be with you.
“With all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul says; for it is to lovers of Christ that God gives the continuance of His grace. If our love to Christ fails, grace leaves us. God cannot look with favour upon the man who has no love to His Son Jesus Christ. In giving his blessing to the Corinthians, St Paul was compelled to write with his own hand: “If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema.” The blessing involves the anathema. God’s love is not a love of indifference, an indiscriminate, immoral affection. It is a love of choice and predilection—“If any man love me,” said Jesus, “my Father will love him.” Is not the condition reasonable,—and the inference inevitable? The Father cannot grant His grace to those who have seen and hated Him in His Son and image. By that hatred they refuse His grace, and cast it from them.
On the other hand, a sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ opens the heart to all the rich and purifying influences of Divine grace. The sinful woman, stained with false and foul love, who washed the Saviour’s feet with her tears, attained in that act to a height of purity undreamed of by the virtuous Pharisee. This new and holy flame burns out impure passion from the soul: it kindles lofty thoughts; it makes crooked natures straight, and timid and weak natures brave and strong. “To them that love God, we know, all things work together for good.” To them that love Christ, all things contribute blessing; all conditions and events of life become means of grace. If we love Christ, we shall love His people,—the Church, the bride of Christ from whom He will never be parted in our thoughts. If we love Christ, we shall love the work He has laid upon us, and the word He has taught us, and the sacramental pledges He has given us in remembrance of Him and assurance of His coming. If we love Him, we shall “keep His commandments,” and He will keep His promise to send us the “other Helper, to be with us for ever, even the Spirit of truth.” The gift of the Holy Spirit is the all-sufficiency of grace.[185] Here is the innermost sanctuary of our religion, the fountain and beginning of the soul’s eternal life,—in the love which joins it to the Lord in one spirit.
In incorruption is the last and sealing word of this letter, which we have been so long studying together. It “stands as the crown and climax of this glorious epistle” (Alford). Like so many other words of the epistle, at first sight its interpretation is not clear. The apostle has used the term in several other passages, as synonymous with immortality[186] and denoting the state of the blessed after the resurrection, when they will stand before God complete in body and in spirit, with all that is mortal in them swallowed up of life—“raised in incorruption.” But there is nothing in this context to lead up to the idea of personal, bodily immortality. Those who construe the apostle’s words in this sense, place a comma before the final clause and treat it as a qualification of the main predicate of the sentence: “Grace be with all them that love our Lord,—grace [culminating] in incorruption”—or in other words, “grace crowned with glory!” But it must be admitted that this is somewhat strained.
The rendering of our ordinary version, “in sincerity” (in the Revised rendering, “uncorruptness”), gives an ethical sense to the word that is scarcely borne out by usage. It is a different, though kindred expression that St Paul employs to express “uncorruptness” in Titus ii. 7.[187]
It appears to us that the term “incorruption,” in its ordinary significance, applies fitly to the believer’s love for the Lord, when the word is read in accordance with the symbolism of the epistle. This love is the life of the body of Christ. In it lies the Church’s immortality. The gates of death prevail not against her, rooted and grounded as she is in love to the risen and immortal Christ. “May that love be maintained,” the apostle says, “in its deathless power. Let it be an unspoilt and unwasting love.”