“If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be scorned.” — Song of Solomon 8:7.
That is a general truth, applying to all forms of real love; you cannot purchase love. If it is true love, it will not run on rails of gold. Many a marriage would have been a very happy one if there had been a tenth as much love as there was wealth. Sometimes, love will come in at the cottage door, and make the home bright and blest, when it refuses to recline on the downy pillows of the palace. Men may give all the substance of their house, and form a marriage bond- the bond may be there, but not that which will make it sweet to wear. “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be scorned.”
Who, for instance, could purchase a mother’s love? She loves her own child specially because it is her own; she watches over it with sedulous care, she denies her eyes the necessary sleep at night if her babe be sick, and she would be ready to part with her own life sooner than it should die. Bring her another person’s child, and endow her with wealth to induce her to love it; and you shall find that it is not in her power to transfer her affection to the son or daughter of a stranger. Her own child is exceedingly precious to her, and another infant, that to an unprejudiced eye might be thought to be a far more lovely babe, shall receive tenderness from her, for the woman is compassionate; but it can never receive the love that belongs to her own offspring.
Take, again, even the love of friends; I only instance that just to show how true our text is in relation to all forms of love. Damon loved Pythias; the two friends were so bound together that their names became household words, and their conduct towards one another grew into a proverb. Yet Damon never purchased the heart of Pythias neither did Pythias think to pay a yearly stipend for the love of Damon. The introduction of the question of cost would have spoiled it all; the very thought of anything mercenary, anything like payment on the one side or receipt upon the other, would have been a death-blow to their friendship. No; if a man should give all the substance of his house even for human love, for the common love that exists between man and man, it would utterly be scorned.
Rest assured that this is pre-eminently true when we get into higher regions, when we come to think of the love of Jesus, and when we think of that love which springs up in the human breast towards Jesus when the Spirit of God has renewed the heart, and shed abroad the love of God within the soul. Neither Christ’s love to us nor our love to him can be purchased; neither of those could be bartered for gold, or rubies, or diamonds, or the most precious crystal. If a man should offer to give all the substance of his house for either of these forms of love, it would utterly be scorned.
I. We will begin at the highest manifestation of love, and commune together upon it. So let me say, first, that THE LOVE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS ALTOGETHER UNPURCHASABLE.
This fact will be clear to us if we give it a moment’s careful thought. Indeed, so clear is it that I scarcely like to multiply words upon it, and I do so only that you may dive the deeper into this glorious truth. It must be quite impossible to purchase the love of Christ, because ‘it is inconceivable that he ever could be mercenary’. It would be profane, surely, it would amount to blasphemy, and a very high degree of it, to suppose that the love of his heart could be bought with gold, or silver, or earthly stores. No, if he loves, it must be all free, like his own royal self.
If he condescends to cast his eyes so far downward as to view the creatures of an hour, and to set his love upon them so that his delights are with the sons of men, it is not possible that he could gain anything from them. No, were we angels, we could not think that he could love us because of some service we could render, or some price we could pay to him. The bare idea runs cross and counter to all we know of Jesus; it is a flat contradiction of all our beliefs and all our knowledge concerning him.
He loves us because he pities us, but not because there is a fee when he comes to us as the great Physician. He instructs us because he grieves over our ignorance, and because he knows the sorrow of it, and would have us learn of him; but his instructions are not given in order that we may each one bring our school pence to him. He labors, it is true; but none shall say that he labors for hire; though if he asked all worlds for his hire, he might well claim them for such labors as those which he has performed.
The feats attributed to Hercules are nothing compared with the wonders wrought by Christ. He has cleansed stables far more filthy than the Augean, and slain monsters far more terrible than the hydra-headed demons of the ancient fables. True, “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied;” there was a joy that was set before him, for which he endured the cross, despising the shame; yet the love that lay at the bottom of it all was love ‘unbought’, and love ‘unsought’, and love in which not so much as a single atom of any thing like selfishness could ever be discovered. The pure stream of his love leaps like the crystal stream, and there is no sediment that can be found in it; it is altogether unmixed love to us.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
