THE LOVE OF CHRIST

A Teaching by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome

There is a love that does not merely warm the heart but seizes the will. There is a love that does not merely inspire emotion but compels direction. It is the love of Christ — and according to the apostle Paul, this love constrains us. It presses upon us. It leaves us no alternative but to live differently, to value differently, to spend ourselves differently than the world around us does. Until this love takes hold of a person’s spirit, Christianity remains a religious activity. When it does take hold, everything changes.

THE LOVE THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

2 Corinthians 5:14–15  “For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.”

When Paul speaks of “the love of Christ” here, he is not speaking of Christ’s love for us — though that too is boundless. He is speaking of our love for Christ, the love awakened in us by what He has done. And what has He done? He died for all. And if He died for all, then in the mind of God, all died. This is spiritual logic of the highest order. If Jesus died in your place, on your behalf, bearing the full penalty for your sins, then in the reckoning of heaven, you died. You paid. The debt is settled. Not because the payment was extracted from you, but because One who stood for you bore it entirely.

Consider the simplest analogy: if you owed a man a sum of money and a friend went to that man and paid every penny on your behalf, that payment would be credited to your account. You owe nothing. The debt is not merely delayed or reduced — it is gone. This is what Jesus did for humanity. He paid for everyone. And if you were crucified with Him in the mind of God — nailed to that cross in Him — then why should you live any longer in the old life? You paid. The old life has been put to death. The logical consequence, Paul says, is that those who now live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

THE WORLD’S GREATEST PROBLEM

The greatest problem in the world is not governments or poverty or disease or terrorism. The greatest problem in the world is selfishness — the deep, pervasive, consuming craze to live unto yourself, to make your own comfort, safety, and advancement the centre of existence. Selfishness is the spirit of the world. It is what drives men to oppress others, to betray trust, to hoard while others starve, to destroy what they cannot possess. And the gospel of Jesus Christ, received into the spirit, is the only cure for it. The love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, dislodges selfishness from its throne and installs a new motivation: to live for Him who died for us.

This is why a person who has genuinely been born again and filled with the Holy Spirit becomes incomprehensible to those around them. They begin making choices that the world cannot account for by any reasonable calculation of self-interest. They give when it costs them. They go when it is inconvenient. They speak when it is dangerous. They stay when it would be safer to leave. They are governed by a different love, a different priority, a different sense of what matters.

PAUL — A MAN CONSTRAINED BY LOVE

No figure in the New Testament illustrates this constraining love more powerfully than the apostle Paul. On one occasion, addressing the elders of the church at Ephesus — men he had poured himself into for years, men he knew he would never see again — he gave an account of his ministry and his motivation:

Acts 20:19–24  “Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews: and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.”

None of these things move me. What a declaration. He is being told, city after city, by the witness of the Holy Spirit, that chains and suffering await him in Jerusalem. And his response is not to calculate an exit strategy. His response is to declare that his life is not dear to him — that the finishing of his course, the completion of his ministry, the testimony of the gospel, matters more than his own safety. This is what it looks like when the love of Christ has fully taken hold.

And in Acts chapter 21, the intensity of that call increases. A prophet named Agabus came down from Judaea and, in a vivid prophetic act, bound his own hands and feet with Paul’s belt and declared:

Acts 21:11–14  “Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. And when we heard these things, both we, and they of that place, besought him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”

What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? There is no self-pity here, no wavering, no quiet surrender to the pleading of friends. Paul was not a reckless man. He was not dismissing the prophecy. He simply knew that the love of Christ had set a course for him that no amount of weeping could or should alter. He was ready to be bound. He was ready to die. For the name of the Lord Jesus.

PAUL’S RECKONING — COUNTING ALL THINGS LOSS

How did a man arrive at this place? Not overnight, and not without a reckoning. Paul describes that reckoning in his letter to the Philippians with a clarity that still stops the reader in their tracks:

Philippians 3:7–11  “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ: and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

Everything that once represented achievement, status, and security — his impeccable lineage, his education under Gamaliel, his zeal as a Pharisee, his standing among his peers — Paul counted it all loss. Not merely less valuable, but loss. Dung. Not because those things were inherently evil, but because compared to the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, they were worthless. He traded everything he had for something that no loss could touch: to know Christ, to be found in Him, to experience the power of His resurrection and even the fellowship of His sufferings.

This is the progression of the love of Christ in a soul. It begins with the recognition of what Christ has done. It deepens into a consuming desire to know Him more fully. And it culminates in a life that has been so thoroughly reoriented around Christ that nothing the world can offer or withhold holds significant power over it.

THE QUESTION FOR EVERY BELIEVER

The love of Christ is not a feeling that comes and goes. It is a settled orientation of the will, a deliberate and daily reckoning. And it asks a searching question of every believer: what actually dictates your actions? What governs your decisions? What do you do when the gospel becomes costly — when it estranges you from family, when it threatens your comfort, when it requires you to speak when silence would be safer, to give when holding on would be easier, to go when staying would be more convenient?

The love of Christ will not let the true believer settle for a Christianity of cool and calm. There is a burning in the heart that does not allow for it. Paul said it: none of these things move me. He was not indifferent to pain or unmoved by the tears of his friends. He felt every one of them. But he had a cause. He had a course to finish. He had a Lord who had died for him, and that love left him no room to live for himself any longer.

The most miserable life a human being can live is a life without a cause, a life without a reason, a life lived only for oneself. There is a reason for your life. There is a course marked out for you. And when the love of Christ constrains you — when it seizes your will and sets your direction — that reason becomes the most alive thing in you.

The love of Christ constraineth us. Not merely encourages, not merely inspires — constrains. It presses upon us from every side until the only possible response is to live no longer unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us and rose again. This is the gospel received at its deepest level. This is Christianity not as a religion but as a life — the very life of God in a human being, set free to love as He loved, to give as He gave, and to go wherever He leads.