III. What kind of love does Christ's death declare to us as existing
in God?
A love that is turned away by no sin--that is the thing that strikes
the Apostle here, as I have already pointed out. The utmost reach of
human affection might be that a man would die for the good--he would
scarcely die for the righteous. But God sends His Son, and comes
Himself in His Son, and His Son died for the ungodly and the sinner.
That death reveals a love which is its own origin and motive. We love
because we discern, or fancy we do, something lovable in the object.
God loves under the impulse, so to speak, of His own welling-up
heart.
And yet it is a love which, though not turned away by any sin, is
witnessed by that death to be rigidly righteous. It is no mere
flaccid, flabby laxity of a loose-girt affection, no mere foolish
indulgence like that whereby earthly parents spoil their children.
God's love is not lazy good-nature, as a great many of us think it to
be and so drag it in the mud, but it is rigidly righteous, and
therefore Christ died. That Death witnesses that it is a love which
shrinks from no sacrifices. This Isaac was not 'spared.' God gave up
His Son. Love has its very speech in surrender, and God's love speaks
as ours does. It is a love which, turned away by no sin, and yet
rigidly righteous and shrinking from no sacrifices, embraces all ages
and lands. 'God commendeth'--not 'commended.' The majestic present
tense suggests that time and space are nothing to the swift and
all-filling rays of that great Light. That love is 'towards us,' you
and me and all our fellows. The Death is an historical fact,
occurring in one short hour. The Cross is an eternal power, raying
out light and love over all humanity and through all ages.
God lays siege to all hearts in that great sacrifice. Do you believe
that Jesus Christ died for _your_ sins 'according to the Scriptures'?
Do you see there the assurance of a love which will lift you up above
all the cross-currents of earthly life, and the mysteries of
providence, into the clear ether where the sunshine is unobscured?
And above all, do you fling back the reverberating ray from the
mirror of your own heart that directs again towards heaven
the beam of love which heaven has shot down upon you? 'Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins.' Is it true of us that we love
God because He first loved us?