2 Corinthians 5:14-15, “For the love of Christ compels us, because we have judged that one died for all, therefore all have died, and He died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who for their sakes died and was raised.”
We might see Paul’s logical in these verses connections in a new light by re-casting them as:
“We have judged that one died for all, therefore all have died; and He died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sakes died and was raised. Because of this, the love of Christ compels us.”
When written this way, its easier to see that the “love of Christ” which Paul has in mind is the love that Christ has shown, especially in His substitutionary death (to be even more closely considered in 5:21). Yes, the love of Christ that compels Paul and his partners in ministry is the love that became sin for sinful humanity and died “for all” in such a way that now it is as if all have already died in Him. But notice that His love is not simply to bear the sin and punishment and death “for all,” and so loose them from the damning sting of death. No, more than that, His love is to die on behalf of all so that those who live (that is, who live as ones who have passed from death into life by virtue of Christ’s substitutionary death on their behalf), so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sakes died and was raised.
Christ’s love is not simply that He dies for His people, it is that He dies for His people so that they might live to/for Him. His love for us is to make us His own, it is to gather us to Himself, it is to conform us to His own image so that His joys might be our joys, His hates our hates, His ways our ways, His life our own life. That central tenant of discipleship—dying that we might live, losing our lives that we might find them, being crucified with Christ—is not an arbitrary law that God has established it is the gift of His love to us. To die to ourselves so that we might live for and in and even as Christ, that is the gift of divine love.
Christ’s love does not inflate our ego, it does not glorify our natural self, it does not say to us in our sin “you’re perfect just the way you are.” Rather Christ’s love slays us—in Himself—so that we might truly, deeply, fully, meaningfully live for—which is really to say “in fellowship with”—Him. [[However, we ought also to note that, from this place of union with Christ, God’s love (which sees us “eschatologically,” that is to say, which sees us as we truly and ultimately are) does say to us, “you are perfect.”]]
And the recognition of this love—both its magnitude (the death of the Son of God), and its achievement (death to our old selves so that life might be live wholly to God in Christ)—compels, constrains, controls Paul’s actions. All that he does is done in obedience to and as an expression of this love.
This love constrains Paul to become an “ambassador of God,” that is, one through whom Christ Himself appeals to the wayward to be reconciled to God…..The way is open, the feast is prepared, the table is set….and Paul is one who goes “into the highways and byways” and pleads with all he sees there to enter the banquet hall, to come to the wedding supper, to delight themselves in good food. He does this because he longs to be with Christ and so desires to live as Christ in this world (v.7-9); he does this in the fear of the Lord, knowing that every action of his life will be weighed and measured in the last day (v.10-11); and he does this as one demolished, reformed, and internally directed by the reconciling love of God in Christ that is poured out for the whole world at the cross (v.14-15).
May God give us mercy and grace to know what being constrained by the love looks like for each of us in the individual contexts in which He has placed us….
