“Wherefore I also, after
I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease
not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers” (Eph.
1:15,16). This is a very important word in judging of our love. We are all apt
to form a circle, even among the saints of God, to have those whom we prefer,
those who suit us best, whose thoughts, feelings, habits, are more or less the
same as our own, or, at least, are no great trial to us. But this is not love
to the saints. There is more love to ourselves in it than love to them.

    The flesh likes what is
agreeable to us, what does not cause us pain, what is, perhaps, a gratification
to the amiabilities of nature. All that may exist where there is really no
exercise of the new nature, no mighty power of the Spirit of God working in our
hearts. We have always to test our souls and ask how we stand in this. Is the
prominent motive and object of our hearts the Lord Jesus? Is it with Him and
for Him that we think of and feel toward all the saints?

    I fully admit that love
toward the saints cannot, and ought not, to take the same shape toward all. It
must be in the energy and intelligence of the Spirit, varied according to the
call upon love. While one ought to love even a person who is under discipline,
it would be a very great mistake to suppose that your love must be shown in the
same way as if he were not. You do not cease to love him; indeed you never are
in a position and spirit to exercise discipline with the Lord where there is
not love. There may be righteous hatred of the sin, but real love to the
person. It would be better to wait upon God if it be not so in our hearts, till
we can take it up in the spirit of divine grace. There must be, of course, a
dealing in righteousness; but even in dealing with one’s child there ought not
to be such a thing as chastening it in a passion. Anything that merely arises out
of a sudden impulse is not a feeling that glorifies God about evil. Therefore,
in cases of discipline there ought to be self-judgment, and great patience too,
unless it be something so flagrant that to hesitate about it would be culpable
weakness, or want of decision and jealousy for God; for there are some sins so
offensive to God and to man that they ought, if we are sensitive to His
holiness, to be met with grave energy on the very spot. God would have the
arena of the sin to be the scene of its judgment according to His will.

    But in ordinary cases the
same love would wait, and let time be given for the fault to be owned and
repented of. In nine cases out of ten, mistakes arise from precipitancy,
because we are apt to be jealous for our own reputation. O how little have we
realized that we are crucified and dead with Christ! If love unto all the
saints were working in our hearts, there would be less haste.

    (From Lectures on
Ephesians.)