The Constraint of Love
Elijah Cadman was born in England in 1843. He was the youngest of five children and his father died when he was three years old. Six-year-old Elijah was small for his age, and he began to work as a chimney sweep. He continued that job until he was 13. Already, at age 6, Cadman was often drunk, and by the time he was 17 he “fought like a devil and drank like a fish.”
When he was 21, Cadman became a Christian after listening to a street preacher. After his conversion, he spent his spare time as a Methodist lay preacher. Because he was illiterate, Cadman hired a boy to read the Bible to him and he memorized large sections of it. He was 22 years old when his young wife taught him to read and write.
In 1876, he sold his house and chimney-sweep business and took his wife and children to London, where he joined William Booth’s, The Christian Mission, the forerunner of today’s Salvation Army. In 1876 Cadman was appointed to the East London Christian Mission Station, where he visited the slums during the day and preached in the streets at night.
Elijah Cadman didn’t put his confidence in himself but in God. And as a result, he became one of the great preachers in the early days of the Salvation Army. Cadman’s own words were, “Come and hear Elijah Cadman, the sober chimney sweep as he gives an account of his own drinkin’ experience. Come and hear him! Come and hear him!” God was able to use the witness of this man to bring many others from self-centeredness and sin into a life of freedom, because of his transformed life.
But what about you? Has God transformed your life and given you a desire to see others transformed through your testimony?
In our continuing study of Second Corinthians, we’ve come to chapter five, and verses eleven to sixteen. I’ve titled our study “The Constraint of Love.” Please listen carefully to the Word of God, Second Corinthians 5:11 to 16.
Paul’s teaching illuminates the several WAYS in which “The Constraint of Love” transforms our lives and our ministry to others.
I chose the title, “The Constraint of Love” because it comes right out of our text. But let me clarify the idea that’s conveyed by the word, constraint. We normally think of a constraint as being a restriction, or maybe an act that is compelled by force. But the word, as Paul used it, is the idea that the love of Christ literally holds us together. William Mounce puts it this way, “the love of Christ controls us.” So, keep that understanding in mind as we move through our text.
The First WAY (the love of Christ constrains us) is,
It Transforms our Motives
Have you ever had someone question your motives for doing something? There have been times in my life when people have questioned my motives for the choices I made. Some of them said very hurtful things about me, things that weren’t true. One of the reasons they did that was because they didn’t have all the facts. They made assumptions that led to wrong conclusions!
There were people in the church at Corinth who questioned Paul’s sincerity in preaching the Gospel. In fact...
