GREAT BIBLE SAINTS: ENRAPTURED LOVERS OF GOD

“But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice… let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee” (PSALM 5:11)

Perhaps the most serious charge that can be brought against modern Christians is that we are not sufficiently in love with Christ—love that may rise to a degree of adoration almost beyond the power of the heart to endure!

 

Neither the word “adoration” nor any of its forms is found in our familiar King James Bible, but the idea is there in full bloom. The great Bible saints were, above all, enraptured lovers of God. The psalms celebrate the love which David (and a few others) felt for the person of God. Paul confessed that love for Christ carried him beyond himself and made him do extravagant things which to a mind untouched with the delights of such love might seem irrational.

 

In our Christian circles today, it is rare when we find anyone aglow with personal love for Christ. I trust it is not uncharitable to say that a great deal of praise in conservative circles is perfunctory and forced, where it is not downright insincere!

 

There can be nothing more terrible or more wonderful than to be stricken with love for Christ so deeply that the whole being goes out in a pained adoration of His person, an adoration that disturbs and disconcerts while it purges and satisfies and relaxes the deep inner heart.

 

This love as a kind of moral fragrance is ever detected upon the garments of the saints—and the list of fragrant saints is long. This radiant love for Christ is to my mind the one sure proof of membership in the church universal!

 

 

  1. W. Tozer