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SPIRIT OF LOVE FOR BOTH GOD AND MAN
If the spirit that is at work among a people operates as a spirit of love to God and man, it is a sure sign that it is the Spirit of God.
The apostle insist on this sign from verse 6 to the end of the chapter: “Beloved, let us love on another; for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God: he that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love… .” Here it is evident that the apostle is still comparing those tow sorts of people that are influenced by the opposite kinds of spirits; and he mentioned love as a mark by which we may know who has the true spirit. This is especially evident from verses 12 and 13: “If we love on another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us: hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.”
In these verses love is spoken of as if it were that in which the very nature of the Holy Spirit consisted; or as if divine love dwelling in us, and the Spirit of God dwelling in us, were the same thing. It is the same in the last two verses of the previous chapter, and verse 16 of this chapter. Therefore this last mark which the apostle gives of the true Spirit he seems to speak of as the most eminent; and so insists much more largely upon it than upon all the rest; and speaks expressly of both love to God and love to men – of love to men in verses 7, 11, and 12; and of love to God in verses 17, 18, and 19; and of both together in the last two verses; and of love to men as arising from love to God, in these last two verses.
Therefore, when the spirit that is at work amongst the people tends this way, and brings many of them to high and exalting thoughts of the Divine Being, and his glorious perfections; and works in them an admiring, delightful sense of the excellence of Jesus Christ; representing him as the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely; and makes him precious to the soul, winning and drawing the heart with those motives and incitements to love, of which the apostle speaks in that passage of Scripture we are upon, namely the wonderful, free love of God in giving his only-begotten Son to die for us, and the wonderful love of Christ to us, who had no love to him, but were his enemies – this must be the Spirit of God. “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, That we might live through him. Herein is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (verses 9–10). “And we have known, and believed, the love that God hath to us” (verse 16). “We love him because he first loved us” (verse 19).
The spirit that excites people to love on these motives, and makes the attributes of God as revealed in the gospel, and manifested in Christ, delightful objects of contemplation; and makes the soul long after God and Christ – after their presence and communion, acquaintance with them, and conformity to them – and to live so as to please and honor them – the spirit that quells contentions among men, and gives a spirit of peace and good will, excites to acts of outward kindness, and earnest desires of the salvation of souls – and causes a delight in those that appears as the children of God, and followers of Christ; I say, when a spirit operates in this way among a people, there is the highest kind of evidence of the influence of a true and divine spirit.
Counterfeit love
Indeed there is a counterfeit love, That often appears among those who are led by a spirit of delusion. There is commonly in the wildest enthusiasts a kind of union and affection arising from self-love, occasioned by their agreeing in those things in which they greatly differ from all others, and from which they are objects of the ridicule of all the rest of mankind. This naturally will cause them so much the more to prize those peculiarities that make them the objects of others” contempt. Thus the ancient Gnostics, and the wild fanatics that appeared at the beginning of the reformation, boasted of their great love to one another; one sect of them, in particular, calling themselves the family of love. But this is quite another thing than that Christian love I have just described: it is only the working of a natural self-love, and no true benevolence, any more than the union and friendship which may be among a company of pirates that are at war with all the rest of the world. There is enough said in this passage about the nature of a truly Christian love, thoroughly to distinguish it from all such counterfeits. It is love that arises from apprehension of the wonderful riches of the free grace and sovereignty of God’s love to us, in Christ Jesus; being attended with a sense of our own utter unworthiness, as in ourselves the enemies and haters of God and Christ, and with a renunciation of all our own excellence and righteousness. See verses 9–11 and 19.
The Christian virtue of humility
The surest character of true divine supernatural love – distinguishing it from counterfeits that arise from a natural self-love – is that the Christian virtue of humility shine sin it; That which above all other renounces, abases, and annihilates what we term self. Christian love, or true charity, is a humble love. “Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked” (1 Cor. 13:4–5). When therefore we see love in people attended with a sense of their own littleness, vileness, weakness, and utter insufficiency; and so with self-diffidence, self-emptiness, self-renunciation, and poverty of spirit; these are the manifest tokens of the Spirit of God. He that thus dwells in love, dwells in God, and God in him. What the apostle speaks of as a great evidence of the true Spirit, is God’s love or Christ’s love: “his love is perfected in us” (verse 12). What kind of love that is, we may see best in what appeared in Christ’s example. The love that appeared in that Lamb of God was not only a love to friends, but to enemies, and a love attended with a meek and humble spirit. “Learn of me,” he says, “for I am meek and lowly in heart.”
Love and humility are two of the most contrary things in the world to the spirit of the devil, for the character of that evil spirit, above all things, consists in pride and malice.
Thus I have spoken particularly about the various marks the apostle gives us of a work of the true Spirit. There are some of these things which the devil would not do if he could: thus he would not awaken the conscience, and make people aware of their miserable state because of sin, and aware of their great need of a Savior; and he would not confirm people in the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, and the Savior of sinners, or raise people’s value and esteem of him: he would not beget in men’s minds an opinion of the necessity, usefulness, and truth of the Holy Scriptures, or incline them to make much use of them; nor would he show people the truth in things that concern their souls’ interest; to he is he wanted to. He cannot give those things he does not himself have: these things are as contrary as possible to his nature. And therefore when there is an extraordinary influence or operation appearing on the minds of a people, if these things are found in it, we are safe in determining that it is the work of God, whatever other circumstances it may be attended with, whatever instruments are used, whatever methods are taken to promote it; whatever means a sovereign God, whose judgements are a great deep, employs to carry it on; and whatever motion there may be of the animal spirits, whatever effects may be wrought on men’s bodies.
These marks that the apostle have given us are sufficient to stand alone, and support themselves. They plainly show the finger of God, and are sufficient to outweigh a thousand such little objections as many make from oddities, irregularities, errors in conduct, and the delusions and scandals of some who claim to believe.
But some people may raise as an objection to the sufficiency of the marks what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:13–14: “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ; and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.”
False prophets, false apostles
To this, I answer that this can be no objection against the sufficiency of these marks to distinguish the true from the false spirit, in those false apostles and prophets in whom the devil was transformed into an angel of light, because it is principally with a view to them that the apostle gives these marks; as appears by the words of the text, “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God”. This is the reason he gives – because many false prophets are gone out into the world: “There are many gone out into the world who are the ministers of the devil, who transform themselves into the prophets of God, in whom the spirit of the devil is transformed into an angel of light; therefore try the spirits by these rules that I shall give you, That you may be able to distinguish the true spirit from the false, under such a crafty disguise.” Those false prophets the apostle John speaks of are doubtless the same sort of men as those false apostles and deceitful workers that the apostle Paul speaks of, in whom the devil was transformed into an angel of light; and therefore we may be sure that these marks are especially adapted to distinguish between the true Spirit, and the devil transformed into an angel of light, because they are given especially for that end; That is the apostle’s declared purpose and design, to give marks by which the true Spirit may be distinguished from that sort of counterfeits.
And if we look over what is said about these false prophets, and false apostles (as there is much said about them in the New Testament), and take notice in what manner the devil was transformed into an angel of light in them, we shall not find anything that in the least injures the sufficiency of these marks to distinguish the true Spirit from such counterfeits. The devil transformed himself into an angel of light, as there was in them a show and great boast of extraordinary knowledge in divine things (Col. 2:8; 1 Tim. 1:6–7 and 6:3–5; 2 Tim. 2:14–18; Titus 1:10, 16). Hence their followers called themselves Gnostics, from their great pretended knowledge: and the devil in them mimicked the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, in visions, prophecies, miracles, etc. Hence they are called false apostles, and false prophets (Matt. 24:24). Again, there was a false show of, and lying pretensions to, great holiness and devotion in words (Rom. 16:17–18; Eph. 4:14). Hence they are called deceitful workers, and wells and clouds without water (2 Cor. 11:13; 2 Pet. 2:17; Jude 12). There was also in them a show of extraordinary piety and righteousness in their superstitious worship ). But how do such things as these in the least injure those things that have been mentioned as the distinguishing evidences of the true Spirit? Besides such vain shows which may be from the devil, there are common influences of the Spirit, which are often mistaken for saving grace; but these are out of the question, because though they are not saving, they are still the work of the true Spirit.
Jonathan Edwards
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[The eighteenth-century Evangelical Revival] did more to transfigure the moral character of the general populace, than any other movement British history can record.
J. Wesley Bready
All great revivals have been preceded and carried out by persevering, prevailing knee-work in the closet.
Samuel Logan Brengle
Lord, revive your church and begin with me.
Chinese Christian
A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God.
Charles G. Finney
A revival may be expected whenever Christians are found willing to make the sacrifices necessary to carry it on. They must be willing to sacrifice their feelings, their business, their time, to help forward the work.
Charles G. Finney
Revival is a clean-cut breakthrough of the Spirit, a sweep of Holy Ghost power, bending the hearts of hardened sinners as the wheat before the wind, breaking up the fountains of the great deep, sweeping the whole range of the emotions, as the master hand moves across the harp strings, from the tears and cries of the penitent to the holy laughter and triumphant joy of the cleansed.
Norman Grubb
If our goal is revival, we will be quite unbalanced when it comes. If our goal is God, we will be able to walk with Him calmly and steadfastly through years of waiting and through the joys and victories of a season of refreshing. Christ crucified and risen is not only the Door, and the Way, but the End also. It is our personal relationship to Him which counts more than anything else. Oh, the need for men and women who know their God! The Church of Christ will only arise militant, triumphant, an “exceeding great army,” when individuals get rightly related to God.
Nancy B. Morris
From the Day of Pentecost until now, there has not been any one great spiritual awakening in any land which has not begun in a union of prayer though only among two or three, and no such outward or upward movement has continued after such prayer meetings have declined.
A.T. Pierson
Kneel down and with a piece of chalk draw a complete circle all around you – and pray to God to send a revival on everything inside the circle. Stay there until he answers, and you will have revival.
Gypsy Smith, when asked how to have a revival