A Baptism of Love
Author: Michael Gott
In Scotland many generations ago was a hot hearted evangelist named David Matheson. Year after year he was consumed with a love for people who did not know Christ. The fiery Matheson once said, “Never for many minutes was the thought of the conversion of souls out of my view. I have served the Lord for two and twenty years. I have sought to win souls. It has been my passion.”
The greatest evangelist have been soul winners, and the greatest of them constantly longed for and prayed for conversions. This same spirit should be the characteristic found in the heart of every single person called an evangelist.
This passion is a God implanted characteristic which returns new every morning. A true evangelist yearns to see Christ become real in the lives of others. There is a sense in which this is a supernatural love that longs for and yearns for the conversion of people to Christ. It is an extraordinary hunger, a passion, and a desire at the very heart of a person’s calling into evangelism. It is part and parcel of the gift itself. It is the Holy Spirit that implants into some people this amazing yearning for souls, this holy longing to see people brought to Christ. It could be simply called “a Spirit given passion” or “a baptism of love.”
Some people experience this temporarily, like in times of revival as the Lord literally creates a unique desire in people for other people to come to know Christ. But the evangelist truly selected and equipped by God constantly lives with this hunger for souls. It is a particular feature of his mind-set, and it is the very foundation on which his personality is constructed. It is so extraordinary, it cannot be rationally explained nor should it be.
So we find this rather strange term often used by many evangelists. When they speak of their awareness of a calling upon their lives, they often refer to the significance of “a baptism of love.”
For example, one of the great figures in evangelism was Charles Finney. Finney testified:
“The Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression; like a wave of electricity, going through and through. In deed it seemed to come in waves of liquid love . . .”
He further tried to describe it but was frustrated in his attempt, “. . . no words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart . . . I was so filled with love that I could not sleep.”
This is not different in nature from the experience of Moody. The evangelist spoke of being overwhelmed with supernatural love. He testified, “I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand . . .”
Again, without comparing notes or parroting another, Evan Roberts as a young evangelist reported a similar experience. It was said, “. . . the Holy Ghost came and melted His whole being by a revelation of the love of God at Calvary.”
Paul said, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).
The point of emphasis is this; for most evangelists it was an overwhelming revelation of Calvary’s love that laid them silent and prostrate before the Lord and marked them forever as passionate evangelists.
This passion for God is transmitted into love for souls. So it is not a worked up emotion. It is a Spirit given reality and an ongoing yearning supernaturally put within a person by the Holy Spirit.
It may be called the irresistible power of the Holy Spirit’s love or God’s infinite love that overwhelms a person. Whatever it is called and whenever it comes, it is supernatural without question.
This dynamic love for people expressing itself in passionate seeking to win the unsaved is sometimes seen as an almost fanatical pursuit. Such people cannot rest content without seeing people come to Christ. In the background one almost hears the strains of the song “Love That Will Not Let Me Go” or hears Paul’s words resounding, “Christ’s love constrains us” (II Corinthians 5:14). That word translated “constrains” is powerful. One paraphrase of the verse goes, “love leaves us no choice.”
We are forced to ask, can anything be more powerful than the revelation of God’s great and glorious love? Can anything be so unforgettable when seen fully controlling a person’s life?
Howell Harris became of one Wales’ most influential and powerful evangelists. While seeking God’s face within a month after his conversion to Christ, he, like the others, had an unforgettable experience. He said, “Suddenly I felt my heart melting within me like wax before a fire, and love to God for my Savior. I felt not only love and peace, but a longing to die and to be with Christ . . .”
Now of special note, listen to the heartbeat of this later confession of the flaming Welch evangelist: “Were it not for the love I tasted, I should have given up; I never could have gone against the current. Love fell in showers on my soul, so that I could scarcely contain myself” (from the book Howell Harris and the Dawn of Revival). Especially of value to any evangelist is the admission by Harris that without this “baptism of love” most likely he would have not continued as an evangelist. Harris said, “I could have never gone on . . .”
Studying the testimonies of a large cross section of evangelists, I do not often find them admitting to seeking God for great gifts of the Spirit. Rather, I find them seeking His face with no other agenda or even requests but to know Him more intimately. But what happened as a result was a very overwhelming, very powerful experience of the releasing of motivating love that captured their hearts forever.
It is, I believe, incorrect and reckless to speak of this experience as a second work of grace, as if it were something totally unknown before. But whatever it was for each of them, it was expressed as a powerful, overwhelming love—the powerful force of love that continued to sustain through their entire ministries. All these evangelists would agree, it was an anointing of “a baptism of love,” but it was a very real partaking of a greater dimension of God’s love for people than they had known previously.
Here I do not allow myself to try to theologically argue about the matter. It would only detract. I can only say what I observe and have experienced: a powerful flow of the Spirit of compassion with a fresh sense of the depth of God’s love for people, apparently not sensed in such a dimension by others involved in other kinds of Christian work.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones strongly maintained to the very end of his life that he believed the “crucial experienced” claimed by Howell Harris literally “turned him into a flaming evangelist.” What is more like God than to have His servant love the world of people that He loves with radical and redemptive love that the world cannot imitate? This is, love that is unexplainable because it is a love for the unworthy and undeserving. This love will be at times costly and yet convincing. It will be unforgettable to a person without God. This expression of Jesus’ love alive and boldly seeking the salvation of others makes an indelible impression.
When some tried to explain the extraordinary life of evangelist David Brainerd, the conclusion—it was the overwhelming love for souls that literally compelled him to pray on, to weep on, and to preach on until those Native American pagans had come to Christ. This love killed him, but it gave life to them. Brainerd was baptized with selfless love.
John Henry Jowett referred to it almost as an exclusive privilege of intimacy. He wrote, “Are we in this succession? . . . to be . . . in this sacrificial succession, our sympathy must be a passion, our intercession must be groaning, our beneficence must be a sacrifice, and our service must be martyrdom.” Often, we speak of “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). Do we not understand that it may in fact shorten one’s life or even lead to an actual martyr’s death?
God’s love in control of our lives causes one to get wounded, often experiencing deep scars. But it is stubborn love because it does not give up or let up, but rather it drives us on as it did Brainerd and others to the very laying down of one’s life. The book of John has a rare and powerful expression; it is “the full extent of his love” (John 13:1). The “full extent of his love” was the willingness of Christ to die loving those who crucified Him. The “full extent of his love” in us is a constant willingness to pay any price to win those for whom He died.
When Audubon, the celebrated ornithologist, wrote a paper on the habits of wild pigeons for the Natural History Society, he revealed the true secret of his great success. He was completely absorbed in one thing—birds alone had charm for him. In fact, he wrote in his diary, “So absorbed was my whole soul and spirit in the work that I felt as if I were in the woods . . . among the pigeons, and my ears were filled with the sound of their rustling wings.” And likewise, our love and passion for souls should so dominate us as to make us completely absorbed in this one task. Roy Lessin wonderfully expressed it, “What a privilege we have been given by God to be able to spend our lives giving His love away.”
Never underestimate the irresistible power of a display of the love of Jesus dominating a personality. It burns hot at the very heart of an authentic evangelist of Jesus Christ, for one of the characteristics common in the most effective evangelists is the very beautiful and very awesome unleashing of God’s love and Christ’s compassion running right through their ministries top to bottom, start to finish.
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