Of course we cannot speak of motives in the divine mind as in ours; they
imply a previous state of indecision and an act of choice, from which
comes the slow emerging of a resolve like that of the moon from the sea.
A given end being considered by us desirable, we then cast about for
means to secure it, which again implies limitation of power. Still we
can speak of God's motives, if only we understand, as this epistle puts
it so profoundly, that His 'is an eternal purpose which He purposed in
Himself,' which never began to be formed, and was not formed by reason
of anything external.
With that caution Paul would have us think that God's chiefest purpose
in all the wondrous facts which make up the Gospel is the setting forth
of Himself, and that the chiefest part of Himself, which He desires that
all men should come to know, is the glory of His grace. Of course very
many and various reasons for these acts may be alleged, but this is the
deepest of them all. It has often been misunderstood and made into a
very hard and horrible doctrine, which really means little else than
all-mighty selfishness, but it is really a most blessed one; it is the
proclamation in tenderest, most heart-melting fashion of the truth that
God is Love, and therefore delights in imparting that which is His
creatures' life and blessedness; it bids us think that He, too, amidst
the blessedness of His infinite Being, knows the joy of communicating
which makes so large a part of the blessedness of our finite selves, and
that He, too, is capable of being touched and gladdened by the joy of
expression. As an artist in his noblest work paints or chisels simply
for love of pouring out his soul, so, but in infinitely loftier fashion,
the great Artist delights to manifest Himself, and in manifesting to
communicate somewhat of Himself. Creation is divine self-revelation, and
we might say, with all reverence, that God acts as birds sing, and
fountains leap, and stars shine.
But our text leads us still farther into mysteries of glory, when it
defines what it is in God that he most desires to set forth. It is the
'exceeding riches of Grace,' in which wonderful expression we note the
Apostle's passionate accumulation of epithets which he yet feels to be
altogether inadequate to his theme. It would carry us too far to attempt
to bring out the whole wealth contained in these words which glide so
easily over unthinking lips, but we may lovingly dwell for a few moments
upon them. Grace, in Paul's language, means love lavished upon the
undeserving and sinful, a love which is not drawn forth by the
perception of any excellence in its objects, but wells up and out like a
fountain, by reason of the impulse in its subject, and which in itself
contains and bestows all good and blessing. There may be, as this very
letter shows, other aspects of the divine nature which God is glad that
man should know. His power and His wisdom have their noblest
illustration in the work of Jesus, and are less conspicuously manifested
in all His work; but His grace is shrined in Christ alone, and from Him
flows forth into a thirsty world. That love, 'unmerited and free,' holds
in solution power, wisdom and all the other physical or metaphysical
perfections belonging to God with all their energies. It is the elixir
in which they are all contained, the molten splendour into which have
been dissolved gold and jewels and all precious things. When we look at
Christ, we see the divinest thing in God, and that is His grace. The
Christ who shows us and certifies to us the grace of God must surely be
more than man. Men look at Him and see it; He shows us that grace
because He was full of grace and truth.
But Paul is here not propounding theological dogmas, but pouring out a
heart full of personal experience, and so adds yet other words to
express what he himself has found in the Divine Grace, and speaks of its
riches. He has learned fully to trust its fulness, and in his own daily
life has had the witness of its inexhaustible abundance, which remains
the same after all its gifts. It 'operates unspent.' That continually
self-communicating love pours out in no narrower stream to its last
recipient than to its first. All 'eat and are filled,' and after they
are satisfied, twelve baskets full of fragments are taken up. These
riches are exceeding; they surpass all human conception, all parallel,
all human needs; they are properly transcendent.
This, then, is what God would have us know of Himself. So His love is at
once the motive of His great message to us in Jesus Christ, and is the
whole contents of the message, like some fountain, the force of whose
pellucid waters cleanses the earth, and rushes into the sunshine, being
at once the reason for the flow and that which flows. God reveals
because He loves, and His love is that which He reveals.