Constraining Love

“The love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor 5:14, KJV).

Today we witness a baptism, an act quite familiar to most of us — so familiar, in fact, that it may be difficult to recall the wonder and awe with which we ourselves submitted to it. Why do we do this?

The Scriptures give several answers. We are baptized:

  • Because it is commanded (Matt 28:19,20);
  • Because, being no longer ignorant of the call of Christ, we now know what is required of us (Acts 17:30,31);
  • Because rejection brings punishment (John 12:48); and
  • Because baptism represents the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 6:1-4).
  • But, most of all (and lest we forget), we should be baptized because of one paramount fact: Christ loves us!

“The love of Christ constrains us” — …not just his power, not just his holiness, and certainly not just our fear of him. But Christ’s love for us is the motivating force that brings us to the water. Christ’s love, and God’s love:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave his only-begotten Son” (John 3:16, KJV), and

“…delivered him up for us all” (Rom 8:32, KJV).

Such a love frightens us with its intensity. It is the fervor of emotion that is, somewhat imperfectly, demonstrated by a father’s love for his child — a pitying, sympathetic, compassionate love that knows no limits and makes no conditions

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;” (Psa 103:13).

“The love of Christ constrains us.” The Greek word “sunecho” is a combination of two roots: “syn” (with) and “echo” (hold, keep — with connotations of firmness and protection). Christ’s love “compels” (NIV) us, and “controls” (NET) us, but these translations imply that he are held and kept and moved along perhaps against our will. Love does not do this against our will. Christ’s love holds us and keeps us and protects us, with the firm hand of a father or an older brother, walking with us every step of the way — reminding us along the way that we are sheltered and cherished. Love does all this.

We are not so much forced or shoved as we are drawn and helped and supported, by an appeal to our inmost selves, the better “angels” of our natures. Whatever we do for God and His Son (as if we could truly do anything for them!) must be done out of love. No other motive can, in the final assessment, have any meaning.

Our love must reciprocate that of the Father who first loved us. Our devotion must echo Christ’s devotion. Christ’s love constrains us…

“…because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor 5:14b,15).

We hear, so often, do we not, that baptism is a “death”? And death sounds so painful, so fearful, so final — as, in fact, it can be! But this baptismal “death”, with all it implies, is not an end; it is a beginning. It is a joyful, loving, grateful response: ‘I give up my old life freely, because my new life in Christ — even with the trials and hardships that may come — will be so much better.’

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

Our obedience in baptism, then, cannot be just an intellectual agreement to certain facts and principles. But it must be, finally and foremost, the emotional commitment of our whole beings to the revelation of God’s amazing love through Christ. If life were a hand of poker, we’d take a look at the cards that God has dealt us through His Son, and we’d take every chip we have, and everything else we could lay our hands on, and we would go “all in”. We would want everything to be riding on this one hand we are holding, because we would see that it could not be beaten!

However, the Almighty God, who spans the heavens with His hands, does not need our money and our possessions. They all belonged to Him before we ever staked our puny, temporary claim to them! And the Creator of the universe needs no temple of wood or stone made with our hands — how presumptuous can we be! The cattle on a thousand hills are His already; we could not “give” them to Him, no matter how hard we try.

One thing, and one thing only, remains ours exclusively, the “treasure” that can never be His until we offer it to Him, in rapturous response to the miracle of His love made flesh to die for us. Listen, He is asking now:

“My son, my daughter — my child,” He calls, “give me your heart!” (Prov 23:26).