“Many Waters Cannot Quench Love.”

“Many Waters Cannot Quench Love.”

The person who possesses the love of Christ in his heart is untiring and invincible. All of the world’s cold winds and all of the world’s lukewarm, religious winds cannot dampen the fire and warmth that dwells in a heart that is filled with the love of Christ.

However, one drop of water is sufficient to quench the “love” that most of God’s children possess. A single offense is enough. One word that this or that person has said is enough. Even if this or that person does not greet one, that is enough. Alas! Alas! What wretchedness!

Most people are as it says so significantly in the prophet Hosea, chapter 6, verse 4: “O Ephraim, what shall I do with you? O Judah, what shall I do with you? For your love is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew it goes away.” In truth, it does not take much before it vanishes. We must differentiate between human love and godly love!

A single drop of water is sufficient to extinguish human love. However, Mjøsa, Randsfjorden, Tyrifjorden1, and any other lake full of insults, unrighteousness, unreasonableness, and all the waters of tribulation cannot quench love!!!

It has been claimed that it does not pay to attempt to extinguish great fires with water. When the heat is intense, water evaporates, and the oxygen that is added by the water feeds the fire so that it burns even hotter!!!!

At any rate, even if that it is not the case, it is still like that in spiritual matters, when it concerns the fire of love. It will not be quenched, even if you emptied Lake Mjøsa and many other lakes over it. On the contrary! Then it would burn even hotter! The flames of love are like flames of fire! Song of Sol. 8:6.

When Christ becomes great to a soul, everything else immediately becomes small, it becomes tiny, it becomes like nothing or even less than nothing. As it is written, “But indeed I also count all things loss . . . .” Phil. 3:8. In other words, less than nothing—minus.

From this we clearly understand that most people have either left their first love or they never possessed it. To people who are deeply in love with each other, everything else in this world is merely a trifle. They are totally removed from everything else so that they neither hear nor see. For the sake of love they even give up thrones, princely honors, home, honor, and anything else. And all this is out of love for a sinful person with a huge self-will!

Then how must the person be who is in love with—who is espoused to—Christ??? 2 Cor. 11:2; Jer. 2:2; Hos. 2:19-20. Espoused to Him, the most beautiful and glorious of all, to Him who is perfect in goodness? One of the prophets asks: Who is blind and deaf like My servant? Isa. 42:19. What does such a person care about all the glory of this world or about all the adversities, tribulations, and unreasonableness of this world?! To a loving heart, all this has the effect of water off a duck’s back.

He remains unaffected, unmoved by all that water. The water does not make a deep or lasting impression. It makes absolutely no impression. The duck is just as dry.

Love keeps no account of evil!!! Why not? Because all the wrongs and foolish things that people do to each other make no impression on him. Why not? Because they weigh so unspeakably little in the scales. Why is that? Because Christ and His love weigh so unspeakably much in the scales. All values are relative. Compared to the love of Christ everything else becomes like dust.

Why can’t people bear each other, accept each other, forgive each other, and put up with one another? Why are there divorces, divisions, and factions? Because people do not possess the love of Christ.

Almost everyone walks around with a notebook of evil in their heart. In it they have written all the bad things that everyone has said about them and has done to them, besides all the things they think others have wronged them with, plus everything that others suspected about them down through all the years, even from their childhood. They have an account for every person with whom they have had dealings: one volume for their childhood home, one for their spouse, etc., etc.

On the day of trial, they usually take out such a terrible document, such a black book. It was this awful notebook that brought Job’s wife to the point of speaking like one of the foolish women. When she saw Job’s great trials she was absolutely certain—on the strength of her notes—that he had not been blameless. This agreed nicely with her notes from years before. But it did not agree with the notes in God’s books! There it was written that Job was blameless and upright, despite the fact that He who was responsible for these books has eyes like flames of fire! However, these eyes are pure and converse with a loving heart!

I respectfully permit myself—contrary to all the principles of bookkeeping—to recommend to all owners of the above-mentioned notebooks to conduct a thorough search of their hearts in order to find and throw them all out: take them to the burn pile, as Luther did with the Pope’s bull of excommunication.

When the love of Christ—or Christ Himself—fills the heart, it is not just that He becomes number one, but that there are no other “numbers.” Everything else remains outside because of a lack of space.

When Christ soon returns, He will fetch men and women who have this attitude.