"The Cost of Having Loved You"

The socialist has a passion for souls, 

• but as a saint my passion for souls is not for man’s sake primarily, 
• but for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
• This is the source of all evangelical missionary enterprise. 

The appeal is not to be put on the ground 

• that the lost are perishing without the knowledge of God; 
• that appeal awakens a willful devotion which dissipates the energies of the life. 

But let me take back my hearer and myself to the Garden of Gethsemane, 

• to the still midnight in the quiet wood, 
• to the pale moon’s passionless gleam on each tree, 
• and then in imagination again picture all prostrate on the ground, 
• our King, Redeemer, God, 
• Whose bloody sweat, like heavy dew, stains the sod, 

...and let the Holy Spirit ring through me and my hearer’s heart, 

• “This is the cost of having loved you.”

And let me take my hearer and my own heart back to Calvary, 

• to that “historic pole” of Time and Eternity, 
• the Cross of Christ, 

...and then let the passion and power of the Holy Ghost 

• so seize hold of heart and brain and imagination 
• that the sacrifice is bound with cords unto the horns of the altar 
• and the life is entirely at the disposal of God.

It is one thing to behold the haggard, starved, sin-stained, brokenhearted faces of men, 

• but that is not sufficient for Christian missionary enterprise. 
• At the back of these faces must ever be seen the “Face marred more than any man’s,” 
• until the passion of the whole world’s anguish that forced its way through His heart, 
• may force its way through both our hearts too, 

...until we are His for ever, 

• having drunk the cup of communion with His cross 
• that shall identify us body, soul and spirit as Christ’s.

Adapted Excerpt from

The Place of Help

Oswald Chambers