To love Jesus is to long to be with Him. To
love Jesus is to think about Him. To love Jesus is to obey Him, to obey
Him readily and implicitly, not feebly and reluctantly. The certainty of
heaven is assured when we keep Jesus in the center of our hearts, in the
center of our lives. He is to be the author of impulse and desire, of
effort and action. "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name
of the Lord Jesus." Will you get to heaven? What is Jesus to you? Does He
charm you? Does He draw you heavenward? Is it to be with Him that you seek
heaven? Is He the fairest flower in all its garden? Is He the rarest and
most precious of all its jewels? Is He sweeter than all its songs? Does He
beget the longings for its blissful abodes? Does the desire to see and be
with Him stir the profoundest ambition of your soul? Jesus and heaven are
bound up together.
To love Him with an untold passionate devotion
is heaven begun, heaven continued, and heaven ended. Paul says: "I am now
ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me that day: and not to me only, but
unto all them that love his appearing."
The crown is not only
personal to him, but universal, only limited "unto all them that love his
appearing." Here it is not simply love for Jesus personally, but love for
the great fact which is to culminate in the great glory of Jesus. To "love
his appearing" there is the absolute necessity for loving His Person. The
loving His coming is the test of loving His Person. We love the fact
because we love the Person. We are not charged to love any theory or
opinion about the manner of His coming, or the time, but the fact. Let Him
come when He will, how He will, and for what purpose He will. We love his
coming because we love Him. "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus," and bring
Thy heaven with Thee.
