“Strong Love Feels Its Own Fires”: A Meditation from John Beart

Our Puritan and Reformed forebears rightly understood that one of the greatest joys of the Christian life should be found spread before us at the communion table. In the Lord’s Supper, we are given a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb, a veritable banquet of assurance and communion with the bridegroom. Desiring others to know this joy experientially, many ministers left behind a legacy of communion meditations designed to focus the mind and rouse the heart to lay hold of Christ as the bread is broken and the wine poured. One such minister was John Beart, a pastor of congregations consecutively in Ipswich and Bury, England, at the dawn of the eighteenth century. In his Divine Breathings: or, Spiritual Meditation Suited to the Occasion of Breaking Bread, or Communicating in the Lord’s Supper, we find those delicacies with which he had fed his “little Flock” in order to stir them up to the exercises of the soul at the Lord’s Table. It was his hope that the work might be of some broader use, finding “acceptance among those, who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, who have known his dying Love, and do often solemnize the memory of his death in his Supper.”

Too often we find our physical frame to be present at the Lord’s Table while our mind and heart are absent and cold. Let this morsel whet your appetite for such meditations that will inflame your heart with love for Christ. Consider how you might better approach that close communion with Christ so that His passionate love meets with a warm reply.

That Christ so loved us as to give his life for us, this is the quintessence, the glory, the excellency, and highest attainment of love. Love exceedingly delights in laying forth itself in acting, in doing and suffering for its object. It loves to express itself, and strongly desires to be taken notice of by its object. It rejoiceth in greatest difficulties for the pleasure of being observed by the person beloved, to win a return of love. For love is not satisfy’d merely with loving; but the thing it aims at is, to be loved again. Nothing makes an agreeable harmony with love but love. Christ loved us first, and contrived how he might shew it, what he might do to make us believe it. For this he pitched upon the most astonishing methods. He would be humbled, abased, obedient to death, he would suffer and die in our stead to shew he loved us. In all this he had a design both to save us, and to gain our love. And what is heaven itself but eternal mutual love?

In the mean time, let us come with love inflamed to him, kindled by his love to us. Let it shame us of our weak and feeble love, when the love of Christ is strong and ardent. Surely our Lord Jesus Christ intended by this ordinance to increase his children’s love. And let our desire and aim be, to get such a sight of his love, that we may love him who first loved us. Good Lord! that it should be once a question with thy children, whether we do in truth love Thee! Strong love feels its own fires and soon determines the question: Lord, Thou that knowest all things; knowest that I love thee. John 21:17; Canticles 8:6-7.

The Idolatrous Love of Your Own Image

Idolatry is a prominent biblical way of describing the heart of man’s sin as the substitution of another god and master in the place of our Creator. It is a concept which encompasses both the failure to properly worship Jehovah alone and the sinful worship of the idol, involving both dereliction of duty and transgression of prohibition. The idolater not only fails to properly worship his rightful Lord, but also adds insult to injury by offering worship to another. Conversion is described as a turning “from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:9), a reversal of idolatrous practice. In this way, the language of idolatry highlights the impossibility of moral and religious neutrality; there is no middle ground between service to the Lord and sin (Matt. 12:30).

Idolatry is the very immediate subject matter of the First Commandment and is the end of that covetousness prohibited by the Tenth Commandment (Matt. 6:24; Col. 3:5). We should not be surprised to discover the presence of this cardinal sin lurking amidst a great array of transgressions of God’s law. The Apostle Paul exposes one such incident in the following passage from his epistle to the Romans:

“²² Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, ²³ And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. ²⁴ Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: ²⁵ Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
²⁶ For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: ²⁷ And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”
(Romans 1:22-27)

Many have rightly noted here that we find the sin of homosexual lust identified as a form of self-idolatry. There is an exchange which takes place as the image of a creature takes center stage where the glorious Creator should stand. In willfully rejecting the clear testimony of God even in the fabric of nature itself, those who pursue homosexual lusts find themselves substituting another object as the focal point of worship and service. That creaturely image which is adored in homosexual lust is a mirror of the sinner, a reflective self-love worthy of Narcissus. Whereas the natural order of marital relations draws a person out of oneself to serve another who does not look like, think like, or feel like they do, the perverse imitation of such relations in homosexual lust is a comfortable sort of love, an easy affection. Although it is true that many differences may yet distinguish two persons of the same sex, yet in the attempt to enter into the deepest of human intimacies they embrace only that with which they are already familiar from birth. If love “seeketh not her own” (1 Cor. 13:5), then it is the height of folly to herald that as “love” which represents the most literal and base form of self-seeking, a pursuit of the closest approximation of one’s own image as the object of love.

It is perhaps at this point that some readers are more than ready to condemn such repugnant sin as it is seen in others. However, the same idolatrous self-love raises its ugly head in other forms. In a very similar manner, there are some men who find themselves drawn to love those whose skin color, physical appearance, language, place of birth, mannerisms, and other features are the closest mirror images of themselves. A hatred is nurtured for those who are most “other,” foreign and unfamiliar. The bounds of “race” and “kin” determine what is reverenced and where service is offered. Beyond affecting the most intimate of relations, this is the kind of sin which causes a man to ask, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:29).

Here is an idolatry of which many who claim orthodoxy must needs repent. You must hear the probing questions of our Lord Jesus Christ, “. . . if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?” (Matt. 5:47). Perhaps you congratulate yourself that you are not like the homosexual. If you find yourself recoiling at the sight of a multi-colored family, if the sound of many varied accents and tongues around one fellowship meal dismays you, then you share in that same iniquitous adoration of your own image; you are a miserly self-lover who scoffs to spare charity upon the alien and the stranger because you do not see yourself in them.

In this present passing age, our Lord has given us curbs and helps to redirect the bent of our idolatrous self-loving hearts. In the oft confusing muddle of Christian marriage, a man and his wife are brought to give of themselves and beyond themselves as they each embrace a different display of the Lord’s handiwork than that which they are. In that wondrous body which is the Christian church, the most unlikely and strange of friendships are brought into being as the closest of communions. The families of this age do not endure, but Christ’s brothers and sisters remain so forevermore. The bonds of blood will be broken, but the bonds of Christ’s blood are eternal.

Christian friend, as we will forever be conformed to the perfect image of God in Jesus Christ, heaven entails a limitless pursuit and love of that which we are not. It is in light of this great labor of eternity to come that we must order and conduct our lives. All of our neighbor-love must ultimately be itself derived from our God-love, as the Great Commandment encompasses the second like unto it. We are to be constantly loving, constantly giving of ourselves to those who are not like us precisely because such self-giving so fully reveals a heart which is not bent inward. A man indwelt by the Spirit of God will find that the overriding principle of discrimination for his love is no longer skin nor accent, but the presence of that same Spirit in the other. “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10). Let us find our tables, our businesses, and even our families open to those who are not like us in any way, except that we share the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Who can Forgive Sins but God Only? (Part 1)

If you have been a Christian for some time, you are no doubt familiar with the account of Christ’s healing of a man “sick of the palsy” (a paralytic). This pitiable soul is brought to Christ by four kind friends, lowered through a roof that he might overcome the crowds and encounter the Lord. Brought before Christ, we read of the following exchange:

⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
⁶ But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts,
⁷ Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?
⁸ And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts?
⁹ Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?
¹⁰ But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,)
¹¹ I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.
¹² And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.
(Mark 2:5-12)

There’s a rhetorical question asked in the hearts of the scribes which actually hits upon a matter of important truth: who can forgive sins but God only? Rephrased as a statement, the scribes are quite aware that God alone is able to forgive sins. They’re starting out with good doctrine, even though their application of it will be soul-damning.

There are two primary reasons to recognize the sole ability of God to forgive sins. First, we see in this passage that Christ as God is able to see into the hearts and minds of all men. He is that same Lord “which knowest the hearts of all men” (Acts 1:24) and is alone able ultimately to distinguish true faith and contrition from the outward show of so many hypocrites (cf. Prov. 15:11).  He alone may possess the knowledge requisite to the forgiveness of sins.

Secondly, Christ as God alone has the authority to forgive sins (v. 10, “power,” ἐξουσίαν). All sin is sin because it is committed as an act of rebellion and treason against God Most High. With David, we must recognize, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight” (Ps. 51:4). While we surely must see that the first four commandments involve offenses committed directly against God, how often do we meditate upon the offense of all sin as it represents an assault upon our Lord’s honor? To rebel against lawful authorities is to rebel against the authority of the Lord who ordains them (Rom. 13:1). To unlawfully slay a man represents an assault on the image of God, fallen and marred though that image may be (Gen. 9:6). Covetousness is idolatry (Col. 3:5). One could go on, but the point seems clear enough. The heinousness of sin derives from the offended party, God Almighty.

It is thus as debtors to Jehovah that we must judge any such claim to forgive sins. In this, the scribes were fundamentally correct. Even one who serves as a mediator alone has no inherent authority to pronounce absolution. Imagine the scene in a civil court if mediators began to take it upon themselves to forgive debts apart from the consent of creditors. Mayhem would ensue quickly. Likewise, someone must be more than a mediator alone to solemnly pronounce, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” Here is what the scribes failed to see in their partial apprehension of God’s truth. More than yet another mere mortal priest or prophet, the Anointed One is Jehovah himself suddenly coming to his temple (Mal. 3:1). In his capacity as the God-Man, Jesus is not only able to reconcile us to God but also to directly give us the word of absolution in divine speech.

Here we might simply pause and meditate upon this wondrous gift. The immortal, invisible God put on mortality so that mortals such as we are might put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:53) and he brings this glorious word of salvation to his people personally! The salvation which he has brought is not concealed behind a veil and heard of only in rumor. Here is a prophet greater than Moses (Heb. 3:3), one who does not merely speak for God but as God!

Friend, consider this day what a grace it is to hear from the lips of God himself that your sins are forgiven. This is the sure and steadfast promise which no other savior may offer. In the person of what other Mediator may we also find both parties to be reconciled? In Jesus Christ, “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps. 85:10). Dear reader, this is the most sure of absolutions, the most steadfast of promises. There is no higher authority than our Lord, no greater standard of justice, no remaining accuser who may stand. He has blotted out all that was written in the book of the law “that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (Col. 2:14) and has written our names with indelible ink in the book of life. Here is no temporary reprieve, here is no second-hand pardon. The offer of grace comes directly to you and the testimony of pardon will sound with personal immediacy to the souls of the forgiven:

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
(Isa. 1:18)

(Stay tuned for part 2 on Rome’s usurpation of Christ’s divine prerogative)