| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 6 |
Page 5 |
Love is the great central law of this kingdom. Christ taught his disciples that they must love each other as he had loved them. They must love not merely the good and the lovable, but the evil and the unlovely as well. The love must be like God’s, and he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. St. John, who learned the lesson on the Master’s bosom, into whose life the kingdom came with marvelous power, transforming him into the very gentleness of Christ, taught that “if we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us… If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.”
We have come under the rule and sway of the kingdom of God only in so far as we have unlovingness. This love must not be a sentiment merely; it must rule the life, revealing itself in all graces of character, and leading to lowliest service — love always serves. When the disciples once were disputing among themselves as to who was greatest in the kingdom of God, Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst of them, and said to them that they must become like this little child if they would even enter the kingdom. He referred to the absence of ambition, the simplicity and guilelessness, humility and lowliness of heart, in a child. True greatness is unconscious of itself. It is not puffed up with a sense of its own importance. It is lowly and simple-hearted. On another occasion, when a like question was being considered, and the disciples asked Jesus who was greatest in the kingdom, he said the greatest was he who served most deeply and unselfishly. The world’s idea of greatness is exemption from service; but he is the best Christian who serves others the most humbly and the most helpfully. In Christ himself the kingdom of God had perfect development, and he said of himself, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” The kingdom of God has come in us just in the measure in which we love and serve.
“Meek Jesus! To my soul thy Spirit leading,
teach me to live like thee in lowly love;
With humblest service all thy saints befriending,
Until I serve before thy throne above.”
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