The analogy seems to suggest to us, strange as it may be, and remote
from the cold and abstract ideas of the divine nature which it is
thought to be philosophical to cherish, that something corresponding
to the pain and loss that shadowed the patriarch's heart flitted
across the divine mind when the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour
of the world. Not merely to give, but to give up, is the highest
crown and glory of love, as we know it. And who shall venture to say
that we so fully apprehend the divine nature as to be warranted in
declaring that some analogy to that is impossible for Him? Our
language is, 'I will not offer unto God that which doth cost me
nothing.' Let us bow in silence before the dim intimation that seems
to flicker out of the words of my text, that so He says to us, 'I
will not offer unto you that which doth cost Me nothing.' 'He
_spared_ not His own Son'; withheld Him not from us.
But passing from that which, I dare say, many of you may suppose to
be fanciful and unwarranted, let us come upon the surer ground of the
other words of my text. And notice how the reality of the surrender
is emphasised by the closeness of the bond which, in the mysterious
eternity, knits together the Father and the Son. As with Abraham, so
in this lofty example, of which Abraham and Isaac were but as dim,
wavering reflections in water, the Son is His own Son. It seems to me
impossible, upon any fair interpretation of the words before us, to
refrain from giving to that epithet here its very highest and most
mysterious sense. It cannot be any mere equivalent for Messiah, it
cannot merely mean a man who was like God in purity of nature and in
closeness of communion. For the force of the analogy and the emphasis
of that word which is even more emphatic in the Greek than in the
English 'His _own_ Son,' point to a community of nature, to a
uniqueness and singleness of relation, to a closeness of intimacy, to
which no other is a parallel. And so we have to estimate the measure
of the surrender by the tenderness and awfulness of the bond. 'Having
one Son, His well-beloved, He sent Him.'
Notice, again, how the greatness of the surrender is made more
emphatic by the contemplation of it in its double negative and
positive aspect, in the two successive clauses. 'He spared not His
Son, but delivered Him up,' an absolute, positive giving of Him over
to the humiliation of the life and to the mystery of the death.
And notice how the tenderness and the beneficence that were the sole
motive of the surrender are lifted into light in the last words, 'for
us all.' The single, sole reason that bowed, if I may so say, the
divine purpose, and determined the mysterious act, was a pure desire
for our blessing. No definition is given as to the manner in which
that surrender wrought for our good. The Apostle does not need to
dwell upon that. His purpose is to emphasise the entire
unselfishness, the utter simplicity of the motive which moved the
divine will. One great throb of love to the whole of humanity led to
that transcendent surrender, before which we can only bow and say,
'Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.'
And now, notice how this mysterious act is grasped by the Apostle
here as what I may call the illuminating fact as to the whole divine
nature. From it, and from it alone, there falls a blaze of light on
the deepest things in God. We are accustomed to speak of Christ's
perfect life of unselfishness, and His death of pure beneficence, as
being the great manifestation to us all that in His heart there is an
infinite fountain of love to us. We are, further, accustomed to speak
of Christ's mission and death as being the revelation to us of the
love of God as well as of the Man Christ Jesus, because we believe
that 'God was in Christ reconciling the world,' and that He has so
manifested and revealed the very nature of divinity to us, in His
life and in His person, that, as He Himself says, 'He that hath seen
Me hath seen the Father.' And every conclusion that we draw as to the
love of Christ is, _ipso facto_, a conclusion as to the love of God.
But my text looks at the matter from rather a different point of view,
and bids us see, in Christ's mission and sacrifice, the great
demonstration of the love of God, not only because 'God was in
Christ,' but because the Father's will, conceived of as distinct
from, and yet harmonious with, the will of the Son, gives Him up for
us. And we have to say, not only that we see the love of God in the
love of Christ, but 'God so loved the world that He sent His only
begotten Son' that we might have life through Him.
These various phases of the love of Christ as manifesting the divine
love, may not be capable of perfect harmonising in our thoughts, but
they do blend into one, and by reason of them all, 'God commendeth
His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us.' We have to think not only of Abraham who gave up, but of the
unresisting, innocent Isaac, bearing on his shoulders the wood for
the burnt offering, as the Christ bore the Cross on His, and
suffering himself to be bound upon the pile, not only by the cords
that tied his limbs, but by the cords of obedience and submission,
and in both we have to bow before the Apocalypse of divine love.
II. So, secondly, look at the power of this divine surrender to bring
with it all other gifts.
'How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' The
Apostle's triumphant question requires for its affirmative answer
only the belief in the unchangeableness of the Divine heart, and the
uniformity of the Divine purpose. And if these be recognised, their
conclusion inevitably follows. 'With Him He will freely give us all
things.'
It is so, because the greater gift implies the less. We do not expect
that a man who hands over a million of pounds to another, to help
him, will stick at a farthing afterwards. If you give a diamond you
may well give a box to keep it in. In God's gift the lesser will
follow the lead of the greater; and whatsoever a man can want, it is
a smaller thing for Him to bestow, than was the gift of His Son.
There is a beautiful contrast between the manners of giving the two
sets of gifts implied in words of the original, perhaps scarcely
capable of being reproduced in any translation. The expression that
is rendered 'freely give,' implies that there is a grace and a
pleasantness in the act of bestowal. God gave in Christ, what we may
reverently say it was something like pain to give. Will He not give
the lesser, whatever they may be, which it is the joy of His heart to
communicate? The greater implies the less.
Farther, this one great gift draws all other gifts after it, because
the purpose of the greater gift cannot be attained without the
bestowment of the lesser. He does not begin to build being unable to
finish; He does not miscalculate His resources, nor stultify Himself
by commencing upon a large scale, and having to stop short before the
purpose with which He began is accomplished. Men build great palaces,
and are bankrupt before the roof is put on. God lays His plans with
the knowledge of His powers, and having first of all bestowed this
large gift, is not going to have it bestowed in vain for want of some
smaller ones to follow it up. Christ puts the same argument to us,
beginning only at the other end of the process. Paul says, 'God has
laid the foundation in Christ.' Do you think He will stop before the
headstone is put on? Christ said, 'It is your Father's good pleasure
to give you the Kingdom.' Do you think He will not give you bread and
water on the road to it? Will He send out His soldiers half-equipped;
will it be found when they are on their march that they have been
started with a defective commissariat, and with insufficient
trenching tools? Shall the children of the King, on the road to their
thrones, be left to scramble along anyhow, in want of what they need
to get there? That is not God's way of doing. He that hath begun a
good work will also perfect the same, and when He gave to you and me
His Son, He bound Himself to give us every subsidiary and secondary
blessing which was needed to make that Son's work complete in each of
us.
Again, this great blessing draws after it, by necessary consequence,
all other lesser and secondary gifts, inasmuch as, in every real
sense, everything is included and possessed in the Christ when we
receive Him. 'With Him,' says Paul, as if that gift once laid
in a man's heart actually enclosed within it, and had for its
indispensable accompaniment the possession of every smaller thing
that a man can need, Jesus Christ is, as it were, a great Cornucopia,
a horn of abundance, out of which will pour, with magic affluence,
all manner of supplies according as we require. This fountain flows
with milk, wine, and water, as men need. Everything is given us when
Christ is given to us, because Christ is the Heir of all things, and
we possess all things in Him; as some poor village maiden married to
a prince in disguise, who, on the morrow of her wedding finds that
she is lady of broad lands, and mistress of a kingdom. 'He that
spared not His own Son,' not only 'with Him will give,' but in Him
has 'given us all things.'
And so, brethren, just as that great gift is the illuminating fact in
reference to the divine heart, so is it the interpreting fact in
reference to the divine dealings. Only when we keep firm hold of
Christ as the gift of God, and the Explainer of all that God does,
can we face the darkness, the perplexities, the torturing questions
that from the beginning have harassed men's minds as they looked upon
the mysteries of human misery. If we recognise that God has given us
His Son, then all things become, if not plain, at least lighted with
some gleam from that great gift; and we feel that the surrender of
Christ is the constraining fact which shapes after its own likeness,
and for its own purpose, all the rest of God's dealings with men.
That gift makes anything believable, reasonable, possible, rather
than that He should spare not His own Son, and then should
counterwork His own act by sending the world anything but good.
III. And now, lastly, take one or two practical issues
from these thoughts, in reference to our own belief and conduct.
First, I would say, Let us correct our estimates of the relative
importance of the two sets of gifts. On the one side stands the
solitary Christ; on the other side are massed all delights of sense,
all blessings of time, all the things that the vulgar estimation of
men unanimously recognises to be good. These are only makeweights.
They are all lumped together into an 'also.' They are but the golden
dust that may be filed off from the great ingot and solid block. They
are but the outward tokens of His far deeper and true preciousness.
They are secondary; He is the primary. What an inversion of our
notions of good! Do _you_ degrade all the world's wealth,
pleasantness, ease, prosperity, into an 'also?' Are you content to
put it in the secondary place, as a result, if it please Him, of
Christ? Do you live as if you did? Which do you hunger for most?
Which do you labour for hardest? 'Seek ye first the Kingdom and the
King, and all 'these things shall be added unto you.'
Let these thoughts teach us that sorrow too is one of the gifts of
the Christ. The words of my text, at first sight, might seem to be
simply a promise of abundant earthly good. But look what lies close
beside them, and is even part of the same triumphant burst. 'Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or
peril, or sword?' These are some of the 'all things' which Paul
expected that God would give him and his brethren. And looking upon
all, he says, 'They all work together for good'; and in them all we
may be more than conquerors. It would be a poor, shabby issue of such
a great gift as that of which we have been speaking, if it were only
to be followed by the sweetnesses and prosperity and wealth of this
world. But here is the point that we have to keep hold of--inasmuch
as He gives us all things, let us take all the things that come to us
as being as distinctly the gifts of His love, as is the gift of
Christ Himself. A wise physician, to an ignorant onlooker, might seem
to be acting in contradictory fashions when in the one moment he
slashes into a limb, with a sharp, gleaming knife, and in the next
sedulously binds the wounds, and closes the arteries, but the purpose
of both acts is one.
The diurnal revolution of the earth brings the joyful sunrise and the
pathetic sunset. The same annual revolution whirls us through the
balmy summer days and the biting winter ones. God's purpose is one.
His methods vary. The road goes straight to its goal; but it
sometimes runs in tunnels dank and dark and stifling, and sometimes
by sunny glades and through green pastures. God's purpose is always
love, brother. His withdrawals are gifts, and sorrow is not the least
of the benefits which come to us through the Man of Sorrows.
So again, let these thoughts teach us to live by a very quiet and
peaceful faith. We find it a great deal easier to trust God for
Heaven than for earth--for the distant blessings than for the near
ones. Many a man will venture his soul into God's hands, who would
hesitate to venture to-morrow's food there. Why? Is it not because we
do not really trust Him for the greater that we find it so hard to
trust Him for the less? Is it not because we want the less more
really than we want the greater, that we can put ourselves off with
faith for the one, and want something more solid to grasp for the
other? Live in the calm confidence that God gives all things; and
gives us for to-morrow as for eternity; for earth as for heaven.
And, last of all, make you quite sure that you have taken _the_
great gift of God. He gives it to all the world, but they only have
it who accept it by faith. Have you, my brother? I look out upon the
lives of the mass of professing Christians; and this question weighs
on my heart, judging by conduct--have they really got Christ for
their own? 'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not
bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?' Look how you
are all fighting and scrambling, and sweating and fretting, to get
hold of the goods of this present life, and here is a gift gleaming
before you all the while that you will not condescend to take. Like a
man standing in a market-place offering sovereigns for nothing, which
nobody accepts because they think the offer is too good to be true,
so God complains and wails: I have stretched out My hands all the
day, laden with gifts, and no man regarded.
'It is only heaven may be had for the asking;
It is only God that is given away.'
He gives His Son. Take Him by humble faith in His sacrifice and
Spirit; take Him, and with Him He freely gives you all things.