Again, Christ taught us that His death was _the crowning revelation of
the love of God for man._ And it is well to remind ourselves of our need
of such a revelation. We speak sometimes as though the love of God was a
self-evident truth altogether independent of the facts of New Testament
history. "God is love"--of course, we say; this at least we are sure of,
whatever becomes of the history. But this jaunty assurance will not bear
looking into. The truth is that, apart from Christ, we have no certainty
of the love of God. A man may cry aloud in our ears, "God is love, God
is love"; but if he have no more to say than that, the most emphatic
reiteration will avail us nothing. But if he can say, "God is love, and
He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son"; if, that is
to say, he can point us to the Divine love made manifest in life, then
he is proclaiming a gospel indeed. But let us not deceive ourselves and
imagine that we can have Christ's gospel apart from Christ.
Now, according to the teaching of the Gospels, all Christ's life--all He
was and said and did--is a revelation of the love of God. But the crown
of the revelation was given in His death. It is the Cross which was, in
a special and peculiar sense, as Christ Himself declared,[21] the glory
both of the Father and the Son. And the apostles, with a unanimity which
can only be explained as the result of His own teaching, always
associate God's love with Christ's death in a way in which they never
associate God's love with Christ's life. "God," says St. Paul,
"commendeth His own love toward us, in that ... Christ died for us."
Christ's death, then, we say, establishes the love of God. But how does
this come to pass? How does the death of one prove the love of another?
If--to use a very simple illustration--I am in danger of drowning, and
another man, at the cost of his own life, saves mine, his act
undoubtedly proves his own love; but how does it prove anything
concerning God's love? If the apostle had said, "_Christ_ commendeth His
own love towards us, in that He died for us," we could have understood
him; but how, I ask again, does Christ's death prove _God's_ love? The
question is answerable, as indeed the whole of the New Testament is
intelligible, only on the assumption of the Trinitarian doctrine of
Christ. If Christ were indeed the Son of God, standing to God in such a
relation that what He did was likewise the doing of God the Father, we
can understand the apostle's meaning. On any other hypothesis his
language is a riddle of which the key has been lost. A further question
still remains to be answered. I said just now that if St. Paul had
written, "_Christ_ commendeth His own love towards us, in that He died
for us," we could have understood Him. But here, also, something is
implicit which requires to be made explicit. How does Christ in His
death prove His love for us? Obviously, only in one way: by bearing
responsibilities which must otherwise have fallen upon us. There must
be, as Dr. Denney rightly argues, some rational relation between our
necessities and what Christ has done before we can speak of His act as a
proof of His love. If, to borrow the same writer's illustration, a man
lose his own life in saving me from drowning, this is love to the
uttermost; but if, when I was in no peril, he had thrown himself into
the water and got drowned "to prove his love for me," the deed and its
explanation would be alike unintelligible. We must take care when we
speak of the death of Christ that we do not make it equally meaningless.
How Christ Himself thought of it as related to the necessities of sinful
men, the next and last division of this chapter will, I hope, make
plain.