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istence. Then love fulfilled in word and deed will give us assurance. As I said yesterday, we must never forget that love is not a sentiment, but a fact. It is not the sentiment of love that casts out the sentiment of fear; it is the fact of love that casts' out the fact of fear. Love in word and deed will give us an assurance of our fellowship with God in daily walk, and an assur ance hereafter that will cast out every fear. And so we close. But once again let me say that we must ponder the facts and forces of life as here depict ed. Nothing short o f this is God’s purpose, nothing short o f this is our privilege, nothing short of this is our possibility, nothing short of this is God’s command, nothing short of this is. our capability. God’s order is al ways this: Fact, faith, feeling, force, —those four; and they must never be altered. We have the facts on which we rest true faith, and they produce the feeling, the emotion, the experi ence, and then they are translated into force and become factors of blessing to others. Thus God’s grace will flow through us in blessing to others. O friends, and especially brethren in the ministry, I would beg of you to look at this epistle again and again for yourself and for your flocks. Chris tian workers, ponder it as giving to us, in some respects, the highest, tru est conception o f the Christian life; and then, as we realize it for ourselves, putting ourselves at God’s disposal, we shall become channels of blessing, and out of us shall flow rivers of living water. Here is a description o f the Christian worker:— (Concluded on Page .362)
parts. That is the trouble; so' many lives are inconsistent in one point, and that spoils almost everything else which is consistent. Let us pray with all our hearts for consistent lives ex pressed in every faculty of our being. 7. I come to my last possibility, which I think is the highest in the New Testament. I speak under correction. I am very chary o f superlatives, be cause I have heard it said that one or another text was the most important in the New Testament, and as I have compared it with others, I have some times begun to wonder which is really the superlative. But here is the phrase, you can look at it for your selves: “ Love made perfect .” It oc curs four times in this epistle, and I believe it is the highest possibility of our life here and now. Look at 2 :5, “ He that keepeth God’s Word, in him is God’s love made perfect.” In 4:12, you have the love of the brethren, and in that love of the brethren God’s love' will be made perfect. So that loving our brother is a test and sign of this oneness with God. In 4:17 boldness in the day of judgment is associated with love made perfect. In 4:18 you have fearlessness. Fear is incompat ible with love made perfect. Fearless ness will always be the outcome of love that is thus realizing its com pleteness. Of course, there is no question here of sinlessness, because the word “ perfect,” in the New Testa ment, never refers to the absence of sin—it always points to the face of ripeness, maturity, realizing the end, step by step, o f our existence. And love made perfect emphasizes the ma- . turity of the Christian life at its high est point, as contrasted with the ele mentary principles of the believer’s ex
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