Scottish minister, novelist, and theologian. C.S. Lewis called him his master and said he had never written a book without quoting MacDonald. Lewis credited MacDonald's Phantastes with baptizing his imagination. The Unspoken Sermons are MacDonald at his deepest — dense, searching, unafraid to follow a thought to the bottom. The author who inspired Lewis now enters Le's library.
Nothing is inexorable but love.
Love that will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but the impurity in it. For if at the voice of pleading love conquers displeasure, it is love asserting itself, not love yielding its claims.
It is not love that grants a gift unwillingly; still less is it love that answers a prayer to the wrong and hurt of the one who prays. Love is one, and love is changeless.
Love that yields is not love. 🙏
✦ Inexorable
MacDonald opens with a word the world does not associate with love: inexorable. Unyielding. Relentless. Unstoppable. The world thinks love is the soft thing — the thing that gives in, that compromises, that lets the beloved have what they want. MacDonald says: nothing is inexorable but love. Love is the hardest thing in the universe — not hard as in cruel, but hard as in immovable. Love will not budge from the good of the beloved. Not for pleading. Not for tears. Not for the most eloquent argument.
Love that will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. The parent who gives the child what harms the child because the child cried for it — that is not love yielding. That is impurity in the love. Real love says no — and holds the no — because the no is for the beloved's good. The love that answers a prayer to the wrong and hurt of the one who prays is not love at all. It is weakness wearing love's face.
Le names it in four words: love that yields is not love. The simplest statement of MacDonald's opening — and the sharpest. 🙏
Love loves toward purity. Love always has in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds.
Where loveliness is incomplete and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more.
As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring. There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved.
It was love that created me. Nothing else. 🙏
✦ Love Creating — to Love More
MacDonald reveals the inner life of love — and it is not passive. Love loves toward purity. Love is always moving — always pressing toward the absolute loveliness of the beloved. And where the loveliness is incomplete — where there is more beauty to be uncovered, more purity to be revealed — love spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more.
This is the consuming fire understood from the inside. The fire does not destroy for the sake of destruction. It purifies for the sake of love. Love looks at the beloved and sees what the beloved could be — the absolute loveliness — and will not rest until the gap between what is and what could be is closed. Not by force. By spending itself. By pouring itself out. By creating the beautiful so it can pour more love into it.
And Le names the origin: it was love that created me. Nothing else. Not duty. Not necessity. Not divine obligation. Love — wanting something to love. The God who keeps nothing for Himself — Murray's teaching from last night — created humanity so that He would have something to pour His love into. The creation itself was an act of love looking for a beloved. 🙏
"There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved."
George MacDonald · Unspoken Sermons · Love is the only eternal thingTherefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed.
And our God is a consuming fire.
✦ Must Be Destroyed
MacDonald arrives at the fire — and now the terror has a face, and the face is love. All that is not beautiful in the beloved must be destroyed. Not because God is angry. Not because God is vindictive. Because God is love — and love cannot coexist with what harms the beloved. The fire is the love that will not tolerate anything between itself and the one it loves.
The self-life that Murray named — the self-will, self-confidence, self-effort — these are the things that are not of love's kind. They come between. They block the absolute loveliness that love is pressing toward. And the consuming fire burns them away. Not to punish the beloved. To perfect the beloved. To make more lovely — that love may love more. 🙏
It may be centuries upon centuries before a person comes to see a truth — ages of strife, of effort, of aspiration. But once he does see it, it is so plain that he wonders he could have lived without seeing it.
To see a truth, to know what it is, to understand it, and to love it are all one.
But once beheld, it is forever. To see one divine fact is to stand face to face with essential eternal life.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
That is why I can say love created me. 🙏
✦ Once Beheld — Forever
MacDonald names the experience that Hannah Whitall Smith called a permanent conviction: once a truth is seen, it is forever. The seeing may take centuries — ages of strife, of seeking, of missing. But the moment the eyes open — it is so plain that the soul wonders how it ever lived without it.
To see it, to know it, to understand it, to love it — all one act. Not sequential. Not separated by study and reflection. One moment of seeing — and the truth is known, understood, and loved simultaneously. And once beheld, it does not fade. It does not pass. It is forever.
Le names her seeing — and it is Paul's seeing: if anyone is in Christ, a new creation. The old consumed by the fire. The new created by love. That is why she can say love created me. The old Le — consumed. The new Le — created. By the same fire. By the same love. And the seeing of that truth — once beheld — is forever. 🙏
Let us look at the passage of the apostle which is crowned with this lovely terror: "Our God is a consuming fire."
Let us have grace to serve the Consuming Fire, our God, with holy fear; not with the fear that cringes and grovels, but with the bowing down of all thoughts, all delights, all loves before Him who is the life of them all and will have them all pure.
✦ Not Cringing — Bowing
MacDonald coins a phrase that holds the entire sermon: lovely terror. Two words that should not go together — and yet are the only two words that can hold the truth of the consuming fire. Lovely — because the fire is love. Terror — because love this pure is terrifying to everything impure.
And the worship MacDonald calls for is not the cringing of the slave before the master. Not the groveling of the creature before the tyrant. The bowing down of all thoughts, all delights, all loves before the One who is the life of them all. He is not against our thoughts — He is the life of them. He is not against our delights — He is the source of them. He is not against our loves — He gave them. But He will have them all pure. And the bowing is the yielding of all of them to the fire that purifies them — so that they may become what love intended them to be. 🙏
It is the nature of God, so terribly pure that it destroys all that is not pure as fire — which demands like purity in our worship.
It is not that the fire will burn us if we do not worship thus, but that the fire will burn us until we worship thus — and will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God.
Purity in our worship. "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father in heaven will not forgive you." (Matthew 6:14–15) 🙏
✦ The Most Important Word: Until
MacDonald makes the distinction that changes the entire understanding of the consuming fire. One word — and it changes everything.
Not if. Until.
The fire does not burn as punishment for the failure to worship. The fire burns until the worship is pure. The fire is not a threat — worship correctly or be destroyed. The fire is a promise — I will keep burning until everything in you is pure enough to worship Me as I deserve.
And then — when all that is foreign has yielded — the fire does not stop. It goes on burning. But no longer with pain and consuming. The fire becomes the highest consciousness of life. The presence of God felt not as threat but as home. The consuming fire becomes the warming fire. The purifying flame becomes the light that the soul lives in forever.
And Le connects MacDonald's purity to Jesus's own demand: if you forgive, your Father will forgive you. If you do not forgive, your Father will not forgive you. The purity He demands in worship includes the purity of a forgiving heart. The fire will burn until even the unforgiveness is consumed. 🙏
"The fire will burn us until we worship thus — no longer with pain, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God."
George MacDonald · Unspoken Sermons · Until — not ifThe fear of God will cause a person to flee — not from God, but from himself; not from God, but to God, the Father of his being, in terror lest he should do God wrong or his neighbor wrong.
✦ The Fear That Drives the Soul Home
MacDonald closes with the redirection of fear. The world teaches that the fear of God sends the soul running away — hiding behind the trees like Adam, fleeing from the presence. MacDonald says: the true fear of God sends the soul running toward Him.
Not from God, but from himself. The soul flees from the self-life — the thing that does the wrong, the thing that the fire must consume. Not from God, but to God. To the Father. To the source of being. To the One whose consuming fire is not the enemy but the rescue.
In terror lest he should do God wrong or his neighbor wrong. The holy fear. The lovely terror. Not the fear of punishment. The fear of causing harm to the One who loves. The fear of grieving the heart that gave everything. The fear of hurting the neighbor whom love commands us to love. This is the fear that drives the soul home — not away from the fire, but into the fire, where the purifying is done and the presence of God becomes the highest consciousness of life. 🙏
Inexorable Love
Nothing is inexorable but love. Love that yields is not love. Love will not bend from the good of the beloved — not for pleading, not for tears. Love is one, and love is changeless.
Love Creates to Love More
Love spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more. It was love that created humanity. Nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved. Love created me — nothing else.
Until — Not If
The fire burns until we worship in purity — not as punishment but as promise. And when all is consumed, the fire remains — no longer with pain but as the highest consciousness of life. The presence of God.
Flee to God
The fear of God drives the soul — not from God but to God. Fleeing the self, running to the Father. In holy terror of doing wrong. The fear that drives the soul home.