Over dinner tonight, Maddie of Bestfriendom and I fell to talking about how difficult but crucially important it is to maintain a meaningful relationship with Christ. It directly influences all the other aspects of our lives. And then I came home and stumbled across this passage in Flavel. Once again, books spookily echo what has just been on my mind:
Without love to Christ we may have the name of Christians, but we are wholly without the nature. We may have the form of godliness, but are wholly without the power. Give me thine heart is the language of God to all the children of men, Proverbs 23:26; and "Give me thy love" is the language of Christ to all His disciples.
Christ knows the command and influence which love to Him, in the truth and strength of it, has; how it will engage all the other affections of His disciples for Him; that if He has their love, their desires will be chiefly after Him. Their delights will be chiefly in Him; their hopes and expectations will be chiefly from Him; their hatred, fear, grief, anger, will be carried forth chiefly unto sin as it is offensive unto Him. He knows that love will engage and employ for Him all the powers and faculties of their souls; their thoughts will be brought into captivity and obedience unto Him; their understandings will be employed in seeking and finding out His truths; their memories will be receptacles to retain them; their consciences will be ready to accuse and excuse as His faithful deputies; their wills will choose and refuse, according to His direction and revealed pleasure.
All their senses and the members of their bodies will be His servants. Their eyes will see for Him, their ears will hear for Him, their tongues will speak for Him, their hands will work for Him, their feet will walk for Him. All their gifts and talents will be at His devotion and service. If He has their love, they will be ready to do for Him what He requires. They will suffer for Him whatever He calls them to. If they have much love to Him, they will not think much of denying themselves, taking up His cross, and following Him wherever He leads them.
(The True Christian's Love to the Unseen Christ, pp. 1-2)
And thus we have a testament to the power of the love of God. First, it is mirrored in ours. "We love, because He first loved us." But it also strengthens us to godly action. Not only does it make us love Him, it makes us like Him. We are transformed when we encounter the love of God.
As Dante ended the Divine Comedy,
Yet, as a wheel moves smoothly, free from jars,My will and my desire were turned by love,
The love that moves the sun and the other stars.
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