Verse 5
The Heart's Home and Guide.
I. The home of the heart. "The Lord direct you into the love of God and the patience of Christ." The Apostle gathers up the whole sum of his desires for his friends, and presents to us the whole aim of our efforts for ourselves, in these two things: a steadfast love to God, and a calm endurance of evil, and persistence in duty, unaffected by suffering or by pain. If we have these two, we shall not be far from being what God wishes to see us. Now the Apostle's thought here of "leading us into" these two, seems to suggest the metaphor of a great home with two chambers in it, of which the inner was entered from the outer. The first room is "the love of God," and the second is "the patience of Christ." It comes to the same thing, whether we speak of the heart as dwelling in love, or of love as dwelling in the heart. The metaphor varies; the substance of the thought is the same; and that thought is, that the heart should be the sphere and subject of a steadfast, habitual, all-pleasing love, which issues in unbroken calmness of endurance, and persistence of service, in the face of evil. Passive and active patience is the direct fruit of love to God. The one chamber opens into the other. For they whose hearts dwell in the sweet sanctities of the love of God, will ever be those who say, with a calm smile, as they put out their hand to the bitterest draught, "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?"
II. Notice the Guide of the heart to its home. "The Lord direct you." We have here a distinct address to Jesus Christ as Divine, and the Hearer of prayer. The Apostle evidently expects a present personal influence from Christ to be exerted upon men's hearts. All those movements in our hearts, so often neglected, so often resisted, by which we are compelled to a holier life, to a deeper love, to a more unworldly consecration, all these, rightly understood, are Christ's directions. He leads us, though often we do not not know the hand that guides; and every Christian may be sure of this and he is sinful if he does not live up to the height of his privileges that the ancient promises are more than fulfilled in his experience, and that he has a present Christ, an indwelling Christ, who will be his Shepherd, and lead him by green pastures and still waters sometimes, and through valleys of darkness and rough defiles sometimes, but always with the purpose of bringing him nearer and nearer to the full possession of the love of God and the patience of Christ.
III. Notice the heart's yielding to its Guide. If this was Paul's prayer for his converts, it should be our aim for ourselves. Christ is ready to direct our hearts, if we will let Him. All depends on our yielding to that sweet direction, loving as that of a mother's hand on her child's shoulder.
A. Maclaren, Paul's Prayers, p. 25.
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