2 Corinthians 5:14 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Constraineth’ translates the Greek term which means something like ‘squeezes us’, ‘presses us from both sides’. And the English word ‘constrains’ means just that: presses us to do something. Admittedly, it is often used today in the opposite sense: restrains us from doing something, but strictly speaking the primary meaning of the word is to be pressed or urged to do something, to be so hemmed in by circumstances that you cannot do anything else. The love of Christ, says the apostle Paul, presses us, impels us, urges us, in all that we do.So here is the great force or energy that enables him to maintain his relentless, his constant zeal: Christ’s love for him, the inexplicable love of Christ for Paul, the persecutor. He is speaking of Christ’s love to us, not ours to him; the verses show that quite clearly. That Christ should love Paul and love him to the extent of coming into this world to suffer and to die for his sins as well as the sins of the millions of others who down through the history of time would trust in him is what affects him. Paul says to us in effect, when we think of the sacrificial love of Christ, inextinguishable love of Christ, if we really grasp it, then it pressures us, it impels us to serve him and to do his bidding.What is it that Christ loved in us when we were still unregenerate, unforgiven, unsaved sinners? It was not because he loved us as we were or our deeds or our ways. How then could he love us with such great affection? It was a love of pity, a love of compassion. Surely he loved us for what he would do with us ultimately, how he would change us, especially in the last day when he will finally purify us and take us to his heavenly home. ‘If one dies for all, then were all dead.’ We weigh this, we judge this. Of course we were dead in sin, but it is not referring to that; it is referring to how we died with him on Calvary’s cross. `If Christ died for all – he is talking about all his people, not all the world – then what conclusion do we draw? That all his people died at Calvary. I will not die in the sense of being condemned to everlasting hell because I have already died: I died at Calvary. There I was punished with eternal death, damnation and punishment from the Lord. I died at Calvary because Christ died for me so that I do not have to face the horror of death as he did: so that I could live. So the apostle says, ‘What motivation we have to serve Christ in the light of that!’