It is possible, perhaps probable, that this phrase, “the love of God,” may also include our love to God. At any rate, in several passages it is almost impossible to make a rigid distinction between the two ideas (cf. Rom. v. 5). The one is the source of the other, and “we love Him because He first loved us.” Love from God begets love to God, and when once the soul has entered into God’s love as its goal and home, love at once begins to be the spring, the strength, the sustenance, and the satisfaction of its life.
“Into the patience of Christ.” The Authorised Version has somewhat misread this verse by translating it “into the patient waiting for Christ,” which would need another expression in the Greek. It really refers to active, persistent, steady endurance rather than to patient waiting. It refers to present patience, not to a future prospect. The patience of Christ must mean the active endurance which is like His, the endurance of which He is the pattern. How marvellously He “endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself”! How striking is the statement that “He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem”! Whether in suffering or in service, our Lord “endured as seeing Him who is invisible”; and having endured to the end, He became our Saviour.
But “the patience of Christ” is also the endurance which comes from Him. He is not only our pattern, but also our power, since He enables us to endure with a like endurance to His own. As the Apostle says elsewhere: “I have power for all things in Him who is empowering me.” To have a pattern without the power to realise it, to have our Lord’s example without His efficacy and energy, would be of little practical use except to discourage and to mock us; but He who sets the standard supplies the strength, and our hearts are thus enabled to enter into and abide in the endurance of Christ.
The need of patient endurance is obvious. Those early Christians of Thessalonica were soon put to the test. A few days and their new-born experiences were severely proved. Persecution, ostracism, suffering, and, it may be, death put a real strain upon their Christian profession; yet they endured, and the Apostle’s prayer was answered; for we know with what joy he received tidings of their endurance and continuance (ch. i. 4). The same endurance is needed to-day, though the circumstances are very different. Sin is still powerful, and trials, suffering, sorrow and death are found on every hand. Many things would tempt us from our allegiance and continuance. Like the Psalmist, we see the wicked prospering, and we are ready to burst out with the faithless cry: “I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.” Or we have been toiling in the vineyard for long without seeing any fruit, and like the prophet, we are tempted to cry: “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought.” Then we hear the voice of the Apostle reminding us of “the love of God” and “the patience of Christ.”
The secret of patience is love. If only we live in the love of God we shall thereby find the grace of patience. The union of love and patience was exemplified in our Lord’s earthly life. He kept His Father’s commandments and abode in His love, and if only we will continue in His love we shall thereby be enabled to keep His commandments, and endure as He endured.
2. The Guide.
“The Lord direct your hearts.” We need direction. Sin has blinded us, and kept us from knowing the way home into the love of God, and into the endurance of Christ. Still more, sin has biassed our hearts, and kept us from going along the way. Thus we need nothing short of a Divine direction. If the Lord does not make straight our way home we never shall arrive there.
How does our Lord direct our hearts? First, by constant and ever-increasing experience of His love. “God is love,” and as it is of the essence of love to communicate itself, God is ever revealing to our hearts and bestowing upon them His own Divine love. Along the straight pathway He guides the soul into deeper and fuller experience of His unchanging, unerring, and unending love.
He also guides by bestowing upon us an ever-fuller experience of the power of Christ. Patient endurance is not learned all at once, and the Lord leads us as we are able to bear His disclosures and His discipline. Every lesson of testing brings with it a fresh experience of grace, and every call to endure carries with it the assurance of sufficient strength and power.
The means used for our direction, as we have already seen, are three in number, but the truth is so important that it needs renewed emphasis. The Lord directs us by His Word. Its examples, its counsels, its promises, its warnings, it anticipations, its incentives all come with force and blessing upon the heart, impelling it to go the right way home. He also directs us by His Holy Spirit dwelling within us. The Divine Spirit possesses and purifies our thoughts, cleanses and clarifies our motives, freshens and fertilises our soul, sanctifies and sensitises our conscience, guides and guards our will; and thus “every virtue we possess, and every victory won, and every thought of holiness” are the work of the Holy Spirit of God in guiding and directing our hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.