“Why is it that the true Church of Christ is doing so little, comparatively speaking, toward getting the gospel to the unreached tribes in the dark and needy areas of the earth? Is it not because we lack the compulsion of divine love? This is the one essential, underlying motive that must be present in the Christian’s heart and in the Church in order to accomplish the evangelization of the world.”

We need a new compulsion of divine love. There is no greater power in all the world than the power of love. Love will drive people and enable them to do what nothing else can cause or compel them to do. The Bible well declares, “Love is strong as death” (Song of Sol. 8:6). Death is one power that is universally recognized as superseding all human power. We are well aware that man has no power in his hands as strong as the power of death, and we know that human power cannot defeat death. With all our knowledge of medical science and with all we have learned about human existence and the human body, we are still helpless before the power of death.

Why is it that the true Church of Christ is doing so little, comparatively speaking, toward getting the gospel to the unreached tribes in the dark and needy areas of the earth? Is it not because we lack the compulsion of divine love? This is the one essential underlying motive that must be present in the Christian’s heart and in the Church in order to accomplish the evangelization of the world.

By Love Compelled

Rather than generalizing about love, we must be specific. Therefore I wish to specify just how it is that love compels us, as Christians, to go to the ends of the earth with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

By Love Compelled, a book written by Marshall Broomhall and published in 1936 by the China Inland Mission, tells the story of that great missionary society now known as the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. It chronicles the lives of the men and women who went to China in the early days and who suffered so many things and sacrificed so much, because they were “by love compelled.” Because of the compulsion of love, no suffering was too intense, and no sacrifice was too great for those pioneers. They gladly suffered and sacrificed in order to proclaim the message of Christ to those needy people—because they were compelled by the divine love of God.

There are at least three ways in which love compels us to become involved in missions. First of all, the realization and contemplation of Christ’s love to us becomes a mighty compulsion to make His salvation known to others and to seek to bring them to Him. Isaac Watts, the famed 18th-century poet, wrote:

When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small:

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

This was the experience of a man who contemplated the love of Christ to him and who came to realize how great that love was. He said that even if he owned the whole world, that would be insufficient payment to Christ for His redeeming love. Note his words: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Certainly all who contemplate and truly comprehend the greatness of Christ’s love to us must be compelled to echo his words. Such amazing, divine love does indeed demand body and soul and all that we are and possess.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He lay down His life on Calvary’s cross for us; He left the ivory palaces of heaven and came into this world of woe. He became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; He bore our sins in His own body; and He suffered all the shame and agony of Calvary in order to make atonement for our sins. He did all of this because He loved us so much. That is the only explanation there is. Our finite minds cannot understand how Christ would do this for us except for the fact that He loved us with such great love. When we fully realize the depth of that love, we cast ourselves before His feet in utter and complete surrender and say, “Lord, here is my life, here are my treasures, here are my ambitions, here are my plans, here is my all. I surrender everything to Your will. What will You have me to do?”

Love for Christ

Another facet of this matter concerning the compulsion of divine love is that our love for Him, if it is genuine, will become a compelling force in us to seek the lost and to plead with them to be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Our love for Christ will be a compulsion within us, causing us to obey His commandments and to preach His gospel throughout the world. He said so Himself. “If you love me, obey my commandments” (John 14:15). Jesus did not give very many commandments to His Church, but one commandment which He did give was to preach His gospel to all the world.

The Holy Spirit adds further testimony to this in other portions of the Scriptures. In 1 John we find a statement very similar to the one made by Jesus Himself: “By this we know that we are the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (5:2-3).

If I really love my God, and if I really adore my Savior as I profess to, there will be within me a driving force leading me to do all within my power to obey and fulfill His commandments. These commandments, according to John, are not burdensome. No commandment is ever burdensome when love is involved. If you are forced to obey someone you do not love, obedience becomes a very hard and grievous task. People who really love Jesus don’t think of the “burden” of foreign missions or about the “sacrifice” involved. They are “by love compelled,” and love takes the burden and the grief out of the task.

To know Jesus Christ is to love Him; to love Him is to serve Him; and to serve Him is to make His gospel known to needy men everywhere. How can a person who truly loves the Savior be indifferent to a lost world? How can a person who truly loves Christ be indifferent to His command to evangelize the world?

His Love in Us

The third fact to be emphasized is that Christ’s love in us—His own divine love imparted to us and implanted in us—gives us a burden for the souls of men and impels us to go to them with the message of salvation.

Remember that the Apostle Paul, who, because the love of Christ for his own people consumed him, said, “I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren” (Rom. 9:3). He also said, “I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart” (v. 2). This man was constantly burdened for his own people and testified, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved” (10:1). This was not merely a natural love in the heart of a normal man; it was the divine love of God implanted in the heart of a spiritual man. Paul wrote; “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us” (5:5). Love is indeed the very first evidence of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22,23), and any person who is filled with the Spirit is filled with the love of God. The two experiences must and always go together.

David Brainerd, who was one of the earliest men to carry the gospel to the primitive Indians of North America, was found one morning on his knees in his wigwam in sub-zero weather. But perspiration was dripping off his face, as he cried out to God for the souls of the Indians he had learned to love and sought to win for Christ. He was compelled by love in his own heart, put there by the Holy Spirit. It was said of Hudson Taylor, “The sun never rose on China without finding Taylor on his knees.” Doing what? Crying out to God for the souls of the people in that great land. Such actions were not natural; they were due to the love of God implanted in the soul of a man of God.

This is exactly what it takes to make a missionary. Human love alone cannot do it. The contemplation of Christ’s love to us may not itself be sufficient. Our love for Him may fall short. But God’s own love, implanted within our hearts by the Holy Ghost, is sufficient to drive us anywhere to proclaim the gospel of Christ to men.

It was Christ’s love that moved Him to come into this world and to go to the cross to provide salvation for sinful man. And it must be His love in us that moves us to take up that cross and bear it to the ends of the earth for His name.

(Reprinted from God’s Plan Man’s Need Our Mission by G. Christian Weiss, 1971.)