The Love That Fights Against Evil
By W. A. S.
SATAN strikes at the very heart of the plan of salvation when he attempts to substitute for the love of God his counterfeit of sentimentalism and false sympathy with evil. This counterfeit is sweeping over the world to-day, in Christendom and heathendom, with a philosophy that considers it uncharitable to discriminate sharply between good and evil. It substitutes the so-called broad platform of service for humanity for the service of God, which alone can help humanity. The love that is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit is no species of mere refined sentimentalism. It is a positive, discriminating, keen-edged force. It is tenderness, but not softness. It is gentleness, but strength. Under its influence the character develops as the lily for purity and gentleness, but as the very cedar of Lebanon for gnarled and hardy strength to withstand all the opposing winds that blow. This we see in the life of Jesus. Kind and gentle, he was, yet firm and unswerving for righteousness. Evil and pretense and deception never met so keen an edge as that which was wielded by the Saviour, whose heart was breaking for the love wherewith he loved men. In the day of God nothing will be so terrible to the lost as that loving face of the Saviour. They will cry to the rocks and the mountains to hide them from that face, from which shines undimmed the love of God for man. There is nothing in the universe so intensely aggressive as the love of God. The love that poured itself out for the lost will fight for the sinner against all the powers of darkness. There is courage in this truth for every tried soul. The Lord turns to the fiercest of animals when to find a figure by which to hint at the strength of the love that fights in the sinner’s behalf against evil. “For thus hath the Lord spoken unto me, Like as the lion and the young lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for Mount Zion, and for the hill thereof. As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem.” Isa. 31: 4, 5. As the hungry lion, tasting blood, fiercely clings to his prey, so the Lord by the strength of his love for his children, having tasted the joy of redeeming them, will guard them from evil influences. As the timid mother-bird would interpose her own life between her brood and a wild animal, the instinct of motherhood strengthening her to fight against any odds, so God’s love, so gentle and so sweet, has been the motive power for conflict with the forces of evil ever since the original rebellion in heaven. There was war in heaven because love could not compromise with evil, and Satan and his deceived followers were cast down. There is nothing so finely discriminating as love. No eye is so quick to detect danger for the little one as the mother’s. The loving heart stands jealously on guard to save from wrong. It is the very opposite of love that lets down the barriers for evil to prey upon the flock. The true shepherd fights against the wolf, not because he hates the wolf, but because he loves the sheep. The shepherd who merely hated the wolf would very quickly flee and leave the sheep to be torn and mangled, when his own life or interests were threatened. Not so the true shepherd. His love for the flock detects danger where the hireling sees nothing. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, seductive errors clothed in the phrases or garments of light, are abroad in the world to-day. Now, more than at any time since the serpent persuaded man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we need to have the genuine love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, so that we may know how to meet and reject without hesitation the deceptive mingling of good and evil that would snare our souls. This love saved the angels of heaven who did not rebel. They saw most mysterious6workings that they could not understand. On the supposition that Satan was telling the truth, something seemed to be wrong with the divine administration. It was loyalty born of the love of God that helped the greater number to penetrate the deception, and to see that he was working only to exalt self while professing loyalty to the best interests of heaven. This love understood the cruel charge against God and Christ involved in the suggestion that the angels were asked to submit to arbitrary power and possible slavery. At the same time the counterfeit of love, a false sympathy on the part of those under his control, strengthened Satan in his warfare against God, and enabled him to maintain the false issues raised to cover his plan of rebellion, until the leaven of sin had worked ruin in the hearts of a third of the angels. From that day to this, love has been fighting uncompromisingly against sin, while Satan’s gospel of a counterfeit love has sought to stupefy the faculties of discernment until they can no longer distinguish between good and evil. The loving heart is surer guide in time of crisis than the clever head, and love is not a passive principle. This love of God we must hold in our hearts by the submission of every power of the being to his control. Then shall we be prepared to wrestle with the strong for the souls for whom Christ died. It will give definiteness to the aim and strength to the arm. The Christian soldier must know the order of battle, and the difference between the enemy’s standard and his own. The trumpet must be given a certain sound. The secret of it all is in the love of Jesus that can teach a little child to love righteousness and hate iniquity, even as Jesus did. And it will make men like little children with God, but hardy soldiers of the cross in meeting the brunt of the final clash of arms in the great controversy. This is the love that will make the weakest as David, and David as the angel of the Lord, in meeting the subtle working of Satan as he now comes to deceive if possible the very elect. W. A. S.