Communion With God, by H. Hoeksema, SALE EXTENDED TO JUNE 30!

This is an extract from chapter 42 of Communion With God titled Put on Love, by Herman Hoeksema, pages 327-329, published by the RFPA. Hoeksema discusses Colossians 3:14: “And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.”

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Put on, therefore...

Holy and beloved, elect of God, above all put on love.

How strange an exhortation. How apparently paradoxical an admonition. How utterly impossible it appears to heed it.

For how shall we put on love? Can a man put on love as he puts on a garment? If he should attempt it, would it not result in that awful caricature of true love that is “put on” indeed? Is not love exactly, above all things, that which can never be put on?

Yet this is not the word of Paul, not the admonition of mere man, but the word of God that cannot lie, exhorting, warning, admonishing, drawing, and leading the holy and beloved in the way of life, of the love-life of God. It behooves us, then, just to be silent, to repress every opinion of the flesh, of mere man within us, that we may truly hear the word of God and do it. Put on, therefore, elect of God, holy and beloved, above all love!

In that spiritual attitude we hear and understand.

For, first, this word of God does not address the natural man, dead in sin and misery, whose carnal mind is all enmity against God and whom to admonish to put on the love of God would be quite absurd and impossible, but it addresses the elect of God, the holy and beloved. This signifies that they were chosen unto love. Such is God’s purpose with them. He chose them in order that they might be holy and unblameable before him in love. And this purpose of God was realized in them when he revealed his love to them, when he spread it abroad in their hearts, when he caused them to taste that he loved them eternally in the Beloved, and when he caused his own love to himself to vibrate in their hearts that they might also love him and love one another.

Second, this love of God was not poured out in their hearts as one pours water into a dead and earthen vessel that is utterly passive and in no way affected by the contents it receives; but as conscious and rational and willing children of God they tasted this love of God. They became co-workers of God, his imitators. God’s eternal purpose of love became their purpose by his grace. They will to love God and to walk before him unblameably in love, to manifest themselves in the light of love, that he may be glorified. And this manifestation of the love of God that is in their hearts, this walking in love in the midst of the world, in every relationship of life, is the putting on of love.

Put on, therefore!

Yes, put it on as a garment, but as a garment that is but the outward manifestation of the love of God that was realized in your hearts. Put it on in the word of your mouth, in the look of your eye, in the work of your hand, in the direction of your foot. Put it on in your thinking and willing, in your every desire, and in the expression of them all in your whole life, individually, in the midst of the brethren, in the midst of the world.

Through the power of his marvelous grace, let his love dominate all the manifestation of your life as a co-worker with God.

Unto that end fight the good fight. For you are still in the world, and in the world you still have the operations of sin and death in your members, while you have but a small beginning of the new obedience. These operations of sin in your members are of the old hatred and enmity against God. And they have their strong allies in the powers and temptations of this world and its prince. You have put them off in principle; put them off, therefore, constantly.

You have put on the new man of love.

Put on, therefore, through the grace of God within, and by this word of God calling you, love.

Love above all!

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Here We Stand: Commemorating the 500th Anniversary
of the Reformation

On June 15, 501 years ago (1520), Pope Leo X issued the papal bull through which Martin Luther was threatened with excommunication unless he recanted within 60 days.

Here We Stand: Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation contains six articles that explain the theological, ecclesiastical, and practical importance of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century. Find out why Christians faithful to the Scripture, all around the world, still cry: "Here We Stand!"

 

Also available in ebook format!