By David Clayton
This article is the first part of a transcript of a taped message. The second part will follow in the next issue of Open Face.
Many sincere Christians often ask themselves the question,
“why is it that I am trying so hard to be a Christian, yet seem to be
failing so often?” Is there really, as the Old Testament prophet cried,
“no balm in Gilead?” Is there really no way that I can live the life
that I dream of, and ache for? The life that I think that God wants me
to live? Is there really no way? Must it be that as long as we live in
this flesh, we can never live a sinless life?
Some years ago with this thought heavy
in my mind I turned to St. John chapter fourteen and found two verses
that made an impact on my mind. They were verses 21 and 23. In verse 23
Jesus said, “If a man loves me, he will keep my words, and my father
will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.”
Notice, that Jesus does not say, “if a man loves me, I am asking Him to
keep my words.” He is not giving a commandment. Here He is stating a
fact. That same statement of fact is made in one of the songs we sing.
“I love thee, I love thee
and that thou dost know,
but how much I love thee,
my actions will show.”
In other words, the degree of our love for
Jesus is manifested by the degree of our obedience. Think of a man who
cannot stop smoking, and drinking. He is addicted to these bad habits.
All his life he tries to stop smoking but he cannot stop. Then he meets
the girl of his dreams and finds that she can’t stand the smell of
cigarette smoke. Why does he now find the strength that he could never
find all his life, to stop smoking immediately? He found the power of
love.
Jesus is saying, “the degree of your obedience is the
measure of the kind of love that you have for me. If you love me you
will keep my words.” God is saying to me, “if you can’t obey me, it is
because you don’t love me.”
A Special Privilege
In verse 21 the Lord gives us a great promise. He says,
“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth
me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father …” (John 14:21).
Now we know that God loves everybody, so
what did Jesus mean when He said, “if you love me and keep my
commandments, my Father will love you.” What does He mean, “will love?”
Didn’t God love me before? Certainly Jesus is trying to tell us
something here. He continued by saying, “and I will love him, and will
manifest myself to him.” The question that came to me as I read that
verse is, “what did Jesus mean by saying, will love him?
The
meaning of His words is explained in that last line where He says, ”
…will manifest myself to him.” To manifest yourself means to show or
reveal yourself. In our homes we have needs and we pray about them but
what happens? No answer! God cannot manifest himself in our homes. We
have needs and we pray, and it seems as if the heavens are brass. Like
God has closed glory against us. There is no answer to our prayers. We
are in our homes and the gun man is passing around the district, and we
are in fear, like everybody else. We don’t have the manifestation of
God’s presence in our homes. We don’t sense or feel or experience the
love of God. Why? Because we have not kept His commandments, and have
not loved Him or kept His words. Therefore He cannot reveal himself the
way He wants to. He says, “look here! there is a promise that I give to
you. A wonderful, great and true promise.” He says, “There are some
people who are going to have the experience that I live in their homes.
This is the promise for those who obey me because they love me.”
The next verse has a similar promise. It says, “if a man loves me, he
will keep my words and my father will love him.” Again He says, “and we
will come unto him and make our abode with him.” To make your abode
means to live there, isn’t that right? is our home the dwelling place of
God? does He live there? When I move through my house night or day, do I
sense an invisible presence? Is He so near to me that I dare not speak a
wrong word? God says, “I will give you this privilege that I will come
and live in your home. That’s what I will do for you if you love me and
keep my words.” What a privilege! What He is talking about is the
revelation of His presence. The sense of a personality with you. The
sense of protection, of comfort, surety and safety. The sense of one who
hears and answers your prayers.
The people who have this kind
of experience, are not the people who kneel down at night to pray and
fall asleep or have their minds racing all over, from here to Timbuktu
who can’t concentrate on God. Those are not the kind of people we are
talking about. We are talking about people who know God so real and
close, that when they pray, they know they are in the presence of the
living One.
The reason for our sleepiness and lethargy is only because the sense of the Lord’s presence is not that strong upon us.
The Greatest Commandment
Anyway these two verses set me on a little exploration. The whole Bible
is about this great question: how much do we love God? The greatest
commandment says,
“…thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,and with all
thy strength…(Mark 12:30)”
This is the greatest and first commandment.
God knows that this is the secret. When you truly love, then everything
in your whole life falls into place. So we have to ask ourselves the
question, “why don’t I love the Lord the way I should?” There is a
reason. Is it because God is not worthy of love? Your reason says “He is
worthy,” but your heart does not respond. If your reason knows that God
is worthy of love, why is it that your heart does not respond with the
kind of love that He deserves? There is a difference between what your
reason says and what your heart knows. Your reason says “He is lovable.”
But your heart does not know it. Why? Because your heart does not know
the things God has done for you.
A Reason For Love
1 John 4 :19 says, “we love him because He first loved us.” Love begets
love. It is true that we ought to love Him because He first loved us,
but did He really love us first? We say, “He loved us, and He sent His
only begotten son to die for our sins,” but that has become such a
cliché, so much a part of our tradition, our culture, that I don’t think
there are many of us including myself, who have really understood what
it means that God gave His only begotten Son, to die in our place.
I want to challenge you with a statement from Ellen White. It says,
All the paternal love which has come down from generation to generation
through the channel of human hearts, all the springs of tenderness
which have opened in the souls of men, are but as a tiny rill to the
boundless ocean when compared with the infinite, exhaustless love of
God. Tongue cannot utter it; pen cannot portray it. You may meditate
upon it every day of your life; you may search the Scriptures diligently
in order to understand it; you may summon every power and capability
that God has given you, in the endeavor to comprehend the love and
compassion of the heavenly Father; and yet there is an infinity beyond.
You may study that love for ages; yet you can never fully comprehend the
length and the breadth, the depth and the height, of the love of God in
giving His Son to die for the world. Eternity itself can never fully
reveal it. Yet as we study the Bible and meditate upon the life of
Christ and the plan of redemption, these great themes will open to our
understanding more and more. (Testimonies For The Church, Vol. 5, p.
740)
When you compare the ocean with those
billions of gallons of water to a little brook, maybe as thick as my
hand just trickling down the hillside, that’s what all the human love
from Adam to the end of time is like. All the human love put together is
like that little stream compared to the ocean when matched against the
love of God. I can see the theory of that in my mind, but I have not
fully appreciated it.
There is a particular subject that I am
going to study for billions of years, and yet I can never learn all
about it. That subject is God’s love for me. I really cannot grasp that.
I really can’t understand it. The fact that Christ died on a cross for
me, I mean that commonplace thing that we talk about all the time, is
there really so much depth in it? What a wonderful project this gives
us! If that is going to be our study for eternity, then we should start
digging on that subject right now. We should start on a project that is
worth while, because every endeavor of man in this life will come to an
end somewhere. Sometimes you come to a place where man knows no more,
but the depth of God’s love can never be exhausted. Not only is that
depth there, but we have a Father who is willing to open it up to our
understanding. It is the whole purpose for which we were created. To
know what that love is. I learned the words of a song some time ago, and
I just want to share them with you.
Oh the bitter pain and sorrow,
that the time could ever be
when I proudly said to Jesus,
“all of self and none of thee.
Yet he found me, I beheld him
bleeding on the accursed tree;
and my wistful heart said faintly,
“some of self and some of thee.”
Day by day his tender mercy
healing helpful full and free,
brought me lower while I whispered,
“less of self and more of thee.”
Higher than the highest heavens
deeper than the deepest sea
Lord thy love at last has conquered,
none of self and all of thee.
That’s what the knowledge of the love
of God will do for us. That’s the transformation it will bring, taking
us from all of self to none of self; taking us from none of God to all
of God. That’s what God wants to do and there is only one thing that can
accomplish it. It is the knowledge of the love of God.
John 3:16
John 3:16 is a well known verse. It gives the essence of the message of
the entire Bible in a few lines. It is a text that is so precious that
it has been translated into eleven hundred languages. The Bible society,
Gideons International, has included it at the beginning of every New
Testament which they publish, in twenty six different languages.
“God so loved the world.” The first thing I see in that verse, is an
explanation of the degree of God’s love. Now you know when you talk
about degree, you are talking about the extent. This is high, this is
higher, this is still higher. In using the word SO in that verse, God is
trying to show us the degree of His love. To what extent He loves the
world. He so loved the world, that He gave. The second thing I notice,
is that true love is not content to sit quietly by. True love cannot be
idle. God’s love was of such a nature, that He had to do something. He
gave. But what did He give? He gave His only-begotten Son. Let’s
meditate on that for a little while.
I realize that the people
who believe in the Trinity are doing a great disservice to God’s love.
They are doing a dishonor to God. God did not give a speech, He did not
give a mountain of treasure He did not give worlds or galaxies. What
would it take for God to give these things? It would take the breath of
His mouth. All it takes for God to create a world, is the breath of His
mouth. What does it take for Him to create a mountain of gold? His word.
God didn’t give these things. What God gave was His only begotten Son.
Now think on that. There is nothing in all eternity, there is nothing in
all infinity that God could have given, that was more valuable to Him
than that son. Meditate on that and know that it is true.
“The
Eternal Father, the unchangeable one, gave his only begotten Son, tore
from his bosom Him who was made in the express image of his person, and
sent him down to earth to reveal how greatly he loved mankind. (Advent
Review and Sabbath Herald – July 9, 1895)
If God wanted to
show me His love, what could He have done? Some of us might have
appreciated a mountain of gold more, some of us would rather we were
millionaires, than that Christ died for us. Isn’t that a dreadful thing,
but what does it take for God to make me a millionaire? A snap of His
fingers; a word spoken and I could be materially richer than any other
being in the universe. If God speaks a word, what does that cost Him?
Nothing. But there was one Being in the universe who was one with the
Father. From the days of eternity, He was the only person whom God could
talk to as a Counterpart.
If God talks to me like a friend, I
wouldn’t even understand what is going on in his great mind. Mind
cannot meet mind on that level. Where God and I are concerned, it is a
genius speaking with a worm. True, He speaks in the worm’s language.
Glory and praise and thanks. But how much intellectual harmony can He
achieve with a worm?
God had one Being in the universe who was
one with the Father; He could understand the mind of God. God could
discuss things with Him, think with Him and feel with Him. He knew
exactly what the Father could feel, and that was the One that God had to
give up. When I say give up, I mean He had to lose Him for thirty-three
terrible years. In those thirty-three years, He had to watch Him in the
slime pit, as if He had thrown Him into a hog pen and had to stand
there watching Him covered with the filth of it; had to watch Him
suffer, battered, bruised, scorned and despised by the beings He had
gone to save, and yet God could not deliverHim. Couldn’t do for Him what
His heart yearned to do. He had to let Him suffer, and watch helplessly
as His Son died. God weighed that against me and I came out on top.
Such a Gift For Whom?
When God weighed the suffering of His Son against David Clayton, the
love for David Clayton came out on top. He put both things in the
balance and He weighed them, and David Clayton came out on top. I was
more precious than the sufferings of His Son, and the Bible holds that
up to us as the measure of God’s love. The Bible says, “He loves you so
much, that He gave this for you.” It asks us to contemplate that love.
Romans 5:8 says,
“God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Let us look at this word commendeth.
“Commend” as used here, means “to demonstrate, to show.” It is the
greatest, the most complete statement of His love for us, that in our
worst, most unacceptable, degraded, repulsive state, He gave the
greatest gift, hurt himself the most, deprived himself of the thing most
precious to Him, because of the degree of His love for us.
Now I want you to think of what that is saying. It was the greatest for
the worst. Search through the universe from corner to corner, from the
milky way galaxy to the other three hundred million galaxies somewhere
out there. Billions and billions of worlds without end that go on
forever. Search through it, and you will never find anything as vile and
corrupt as a sinner. There is nothing in all of God’s creation that is
worse, more degraded, more fit to be destroyed, more worthy of eternal
damnation than a sinner. You may not believe that that is your true
state, or that is what you deserve, but I want to tell you this, sin
raised up a wall between us and God that was impenetrable and dark. We
might have searched through eternity and never found a way through that
wall. There was no way, and on the other side of this wall was us. That
was what we were when the Bible says, “while we were yet sinners Christ
died for us.” It is showing us that at the moment, when we were the
worst thing possible, God gave the greatest gift that could ever have
been given.
When I say the greatest gift, I don’t mean the
greatest gift of this period of time, nor the greatest gift that God
could have given. I mean the greatest gift that any being any where in
any time, in any place, could ever have thought of giving. That was what
God gave. When I think of it I ask myself, “what am I that I could be
the object of such a love?” This reminds me of a song that was sung by
Skeeter Davis. It says, “Who am I that a king should bleed and die for?”
I don’t have an answer to that question, I just know it happened. I
know it is true, because God did it for me, and when He did it, It is
not because I was worth a single cent, It was just because He loved me.
True Sons
1 John 3:1, says:
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”
Again, we are being invited to examine the
love of God, and we are asked to look at the kind and the degree of that
love. What kind of love is it? A kind of love that gives us the
privilege of being identified as the sons of God.
I have seen
people on this earth who have received the privilege of being called by
another name. There are some Jamaicans who consider it the highest
privilege to be called by the name “American.” They will do anything to
get a green card, or get American citizenship. They consider it the
highest privilege to get another name. Some people who have been grown
as orphans, consider it a high privilege when they have been adopted
into a family, and receive the family name.
John says, we are
to consider the kind of privilege God has given us in that He has given
us the right to be called the sons of God.
Now you have often
seen the case where somebody has the right to call himself by a name,
but in actual fact, even though he calls himself by that name, nothing
can really make him forget that he is not a part of that family. He does
not have the blood, and sometimes there are little signs that make him
know that he is not quite accepted as a member of the family. Take the
Bible when you have the time, and look through it. Write down all the
things a son has the right to. Then I want you to see if God has not
given us every one of those things.
God has given us an
inheritance. What does the Bible say about inheritance? It says that we
are joint heirs with Christ. Christ is the son of God. If we are joint
heirs with Christ, what is the Bible saying? It is saying that what is
His, is also yours. “You are my son,” God says. “I do not just give you
the name, but I also give you the privilege, the right of a son.” That’s
the love God has for me.
God gives us the right to a name. In
Isaiah 56, He gives us a place and a name better than sons and
daughters. In Revelation, He says He will write upon us His own new
name. He gives us an inheritance, He gives us the right to a father’s
care. doesn’t a son deserve that? Psalm 103 says: “As a father pitieth
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” He says in Isaiah
49:15, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have
compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not
forget thee.” He gives us the right to have the same nature. A son has
the blood of his father in his veins. We have the spirit, the very life
of our Father. Where are we short of being true sons?
Let me
tell you something, my sonship to God is true in the fullest possible
way. I am not merely called a son of God, I am truly a son of God. Even
more so than in an earthly father-son relationship. I have an earthly
father. He gave me of his life, but today I am separated from him
physically. I am a different being, but when my Father in heaven makes
me His son, what am I? He does not just give me something and leave me.
He links Himself to me, so that His mind is my mind, His life is my life
in a continuing relationship that is not broken or cut. It is closer
than a physical father-son relationship.
God has truly,
without pretense, without deception or exaggeration, exalted us to the
state of sons. Sometimes when a man says “you are my son,” he is only
pretending. Sometimes he is just using a phrase, and only exaggerating a
bit. He only means you can live in my home. He is talking out of two
sides of his mouth and he is not quite straight. But God does not use
pretense, or deception, or exaggeration. When He says “you are my son,”
He means I am His son.
When I realized this, I had to hold my
head up. I am the son of the Almighty. I am somebody. I am worth
something. I had to hold my head high and behave like royalty, to
glorify Him in all my ways, because of that wonderful name by which I am
called, because I am His son. I have no other identity. He did not just
call me His son, but He made me His son. That is the greatness of the
love He has for me.
From The Gutter To Glory
In our natural state we were the Pariahs. In India, a Pariah is the
lowest class of being. One who is scorned, despised and avoided by the
rest of society. We were the Pariahs of the universe, the most
despicable objects in all creation. That is what we were. There was
nothing in humanity that was good. We were fit for destruction. The
least deserving of all creatures. Ungrateful and unlovely, but oh so
pitiable to the heart of infinite love and in such unspeakably great
need. These conditions called forth from our Father’s heart the greatest
expression of love. Upon us, He bestowed the greatest gift of heaven,
the greatest gift of all the universe. He exalted us to a privilege
greater than that of any other created being. There is no other creature
in all the universe that has called forth such an expression of love.
Have you thought about that? No angel or being in the universe ever
called forth such a demonstration of love as we have called forth from
God. He has shown to us, a love that He never had the opportunity to
show to anybody else, and He did it when we were at our lowest, and
worst. Never ever should we question God’s love for us.
The
other creatures in the universe have heard of the love of God, and they
have seen the love of God in His workings. They have seen the love of
God in the trees, in the stars, in rivers and in the hills, but I have
felt the love of God in my experience. I have seen rags, and now I know
riches. I have known the gutter, and now I know glory. I have
experienced something that they will never experience, unless they have
been in my place. I will know the love of God as nobody will ever know
it, or ever could. God’s purpose for us, is that in the ages to come, He
might show the exceeding riches of his glory in His kindness towards us
through Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:7). Yet we do not know that love. That is
why we keep despising Him and disobeying Him so much. We need to study
that love, and we need to make it the object of research and careful
study every day of our lives, until we are so filled with it, that we
can truly echo the words of that song, “none of self and all of Thee.”
