'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'--1 John iv. 10.
This is the second of a pair of twin verses which deal with
substantially the same subject under two slightly different aspects. The
thought common to both is that Christ's mission is the great revelation
of God's love. But in the preceding verse the point on which stress is
laid is the manifestation of that love, and in our text the point mainly
brought out is its essential nature. In the former we read, 'In this was
_manifested_ the love of God,' and in the present verse we read, 'Herein
_is_ love.' In the former verse John fixes on three things as setting
forth the greatness of that manifestation--viz., that the Christ is the
only begotten Son, that the manifestation is for the world, and that its
end is the bestowment of everlasting love. In my text the points which
are fixed on are that that Love in its nature is self-kindled--'not that
we loved God, but that He loved us'--and that it lays hold of, and casts
out of the way that which, unremoved, would be a barrier between God and
us--viz., our sin: 'He hath sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
sins.'
Now it is interesting to notice that these twin verses, like a double
star which reflects the light of a central sun, draw their brightness
from the great word of the Master, 'God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.' Do you not hear the echo of His
voice in the three expressions in the verse before the text--'only
begotten' 'world' 'live'? Here is one more of the innumerable links
which bind together in indissoluble union the Gospel and the Epistle.
So, then, the great thought suggested by the words before us is just
this, that in the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have the
great revelation of the love of God.
I. Now there are three questions that suggest themselves to me, and the
first is this, What, then, does Christ's mission say about God's love?
I do not need to dwell on the previous question whether, apart from that
mission, there is any solid revelation of the fact that there is love in
Heaven, or whether we are left, apart from it, to gropings and
probabilities. I need not refer you to the ambiguous oracles of nature
or to the equally ambiguous oracles of life. I need not, I suppose, do
more than just remind you that even the men whose faith grasps the
thought of the love of God most intensely, know what it is to be brought
to a stand before some of the dreadful problems which the facts of
humanity and the facts of nature press upon us, nor need I remind you
how, as we see around us to-day, in the drift of our English literature
and that of other nations, when men turn their backs upon the Cross,
they look upon a landscape all swathed in mists, and on which darkness
is steadily settling. The reason why the men of this generation, some
of them very superficially, and for the sake of being 'in the swim' and
some of them despairingly and with bleeding hearts, are turning
themselves to a reasoned pessimism, is because they will not see what
shines out from the Cross, that God is love.
Nor need I do more than remind you, in a word, of the fact that, go
where we will through this world, and consult all the conceptions that
men have made to themselves of gods many and lords many, whilst we find
the deification of power, and of vice, and of fragmentary goodnesses, of
hopes and fears, of longings, of regrets, we find nowhere a god of whom
the characteristic is love. And amidst that Pantheon of deities, some of
them savage, some of them lustful, some of them embodiments of all
vices, some of them indifferent and neutral, some of them radiant and
fair, none reveals this secret, that the centre of the universe is a
heart. So we have to turn away from hopes, from probability dashed with
many a doubt, and find something that has more solid substance in it, if
it is to be enough to bear up the man that grasps it and to yield before
no tempests. For all that Bishop Butler says, probabilities are _not_
the guide of life, in its deepest and noblest aspects. They may be the
guide of practice, but for the anchorage of the soul we want no shifting
sand-bank, but that to which we may make fast and be sure that, whatever
shifts, it remains immovable. You can no more clothe the soul in
'perhapses' than a man can make garments out of a spider's web. Religion
consists of the things of which we are sure, and not of the things which
are probable. 'Peradventure' is not the word on which a man can rest the
weight of a crushed, or an agonising, or a sinking soul; he must have
'Verily! verily!' and then he is at rest.
How do we know what a man is? By seeing what a man does. How do we know
what God is? By knowing what God does. So John does not argue with
logic, either frosty or fiery, but he simply opens his mouth, and in
calm, pellucid utterances sets forth the truths and leaves them to work.
He says to us, 'I do not relegate you to your intuitions; I do not argue
with you; I simply say, Look at Him; look, and see that God is love.'
What, then, does the mission of Christ say to us about the love of God?
It says, first, that it is a love independent of, and earlier than,
ours. We love, as a rule, because we recognise in the object to which
our heart goes out something that draws it, something that is loveable.
But He whose name is 'I am that I am' has all the reasons of His actions
within Himself, and just as He
'Sits on no precarious throne,
Nor borrows leave to be,'
nor is dependent on any creature for existence, so He is His own motive,
He is His own reason. Within that sacred circle of the Infinite Nature
lie all the energies which bring that Infinite Nature into action; and
like some clear fountain, more sparkling than crystal, there wells up
for ever, from the depths of the Divine Nature, the love which is
Himself. He loves, not because we love Him, but because He is God. The
very sun itself, as some astronomers believe, owes its radiant
brightness and ever-communicated warmth to the impact on, and reception
into, it of myriads of meteors and of matter drawn from the surrounding
system. So when the fuel fails, that fire will go out, and the sun will
shrivel into a black ball. But this central Sun of the universe has all
His light within Himself, and the rays that pour out from Him owe their
being and their motion to nothing but the force of that central fire,
from which they rush with healing on their wings.
If, then, God's love is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it
is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether
we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness
need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we
grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of
that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on
dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one its rays breed
corruption and in the other draw out beauty. That great love wraps us
all, is older than our sins, and is not deflected by them. So that is
the first thing that Christ's mission tells us about God's love.
The second is--it speaks to us of a love which gives its best. John
says, 'God _sent_ His Son,' and that word reposes, like the rest of the
passage, on many words of Christ's--such as, for instance, when He
speaks of Himself as 'sanctified and sent into the world,' and many
another saying. But remember how, in the foundation passage to which I
have already referred, and of which we have some reflection in the words
before us, there is a tenderer expression--not merely 'sent,' but
'gave.' Paul strengthens the word when he says, 'gave _up_ for us all.'
It is not for us to speculate about these deep things, but I would
remind you of what I dare say I have had occasion often to point out,
that Paul seems to intend to suggest to us a mysterious parallel, when
he further says, 'He that _spared_ not His own Son, but freely gave Him
up to death for us all.' For that emphatic word 'spared' is a distinct
allusion to, and quotation of, the story of Abraham's sacrifice of
Isaac: 'Seeing thou hast not _withheld_ from Me thine only son.' And so,
mysterious as it is, we may venture to say that He not only sent, but He
gave, and not only gave, but gave up. His love, like ours, delights to
lavish its most precious gifts on its objects.
Now there arises from this consideration a thought which I only mention,
and it is this. Christian teaching about Christ's work has often, both
by its friends and its foes, been so presented as to lead to the
conception that it was the work of Christ which made God love men. The
enemies of evangelical truth are never tired of talking in that sense;
and some of its unwise friends have given reason for the caricature. But
the true Christian teaching is, 'God so loved ... that He gave.' The
love is the cause of the mission, and not the mission that which evokes
the love. So let us be sure that, not because Christ died does God love
us sinful creatures, but that, because God loves us, Christ died for us.
The third thing which the mission of Christ teaches us about the love of
God is that it is a love which takes note of and overcomes man's sin. I
have said, as plainly as I can, that I reject the travesty of
Christianity which implies that it was Christ's mission which originated
God's love to men. But a love that does not in the slightest degree care
whether its object is good or bad--what sort of a love do you call that?
What do you name it when a father shows it to his children? Moral
indifference; culpable and weak and fatal. And is it anything nobler, if
you transfer it to God, and say that it is all the same to Him whether a
man is living the life of a hog, and forgetting all that is high and
noble, or whether he is pressing with all his strength towards light
and truth and goodness? Surely, surely they who, in the name of their
reverence for the supreme love of God, cover over the fact of His
righteousness, are mutilating and killing the very attribute that they
are trying to exalt. A love that cares nothing for the moral character
of its object is not love, but hate; it is not kindness, but cruelty.
Take away the background because it is so black, and you lower the
brilliancy of whiteness of that which stands in front of it. There is
such a property in God as is fittingly described by that tremendous word
'wrath.' God cannot, being what He is, treat sin as if it were no sin;
and therefore we read, 'He sent His son to be the _propitiation_ for our
sins.' The black dam, which we build up between ourselves and the river
of the water of life, is to be swept away; and it is the death of Jesus
Christ which makes it possible for the highest gift of God's love to
pour over the ruined and partially removed barrier and to flood a man's
soul. Brethren, no God that is worthy the name can give Himself to a
sinful soul. No sinful soul that has not the habit, the guilt, the
penalty of its sins swept away, is capable of receiving the life, which
is the highest gift of the love. So our twin texts divide what I may
call the process of redemption between them; and whilst the one says,
'He sent His Son that we should have life through Him,' the other tells
us of how the sins which bar the entrance of that life into our hearts,
as our own consciences tell us they do, can be removed. There must first
be the propitiation for our sins, and then that mighty love reaches its
purpose and attains its end, and can give us the life of God to be the
life of our souls. So much for my first and principle question.
II. Now I have to ask, secondly, how comes it that Christ's mission says
anything about God's love?
That question is a very plain one, and I should like to press the answer
to it very emphatically. Take any other of the great names of the
world's history of poet, thinker, philosopher, moralist, practical
benefactor; is it possible to apply such a thought as this to
them--except with a hundred explanations and limitations--that they,
however radiant, however wise, however beneficent, however fruitful
their influence, make men sure that God loves them? The thing is
ridiculous, unless you are using language in a very fantastic and
artificial fashion.
Christ's mission reveals God's love, because Christ is the Son of God.
If it is true, as Jesus said, that 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father,' then I can say, 'In Thy tenderness, in Thy patience, in Thy
attracting of the publican and the harlot, in Thy sympathy with all the
erring and the sorrowful, and, most of all, in Thy agony and passion, in
Thy cross and death, I see the glory of God which is the love of God.'
Brother, if you break that link, which binds the man Christ Jesus with
the ever-living and the ever-loving God, I know not how you can draw
from the record of His life and death a confidence, which nothing can
shake, in the love of the Father.
Then there is another point. Christ's mission speaks to us about God's
love, if--and I was going to say _only_ if--we regard it as His mission
to be the propitiation for our sins. Strike out the death as the
sacrifice for the world's sin, and what you have left is a maimed
something, which may be, and I thankfully recognise often is, very
strengthening, very helpful, very calming, very ennobling, even to men
who do not sympathise with the view of that work which I am now setting
forth, but which is all that to them, very largely, because of the
unconscious influence of the truths which they have cast away. It seems
to me that those who, in the name of the highest paternal love of God,
reject the thought of Christ's sacrificial death, are kicking away the
ladder by which they have climbed, and are better than their creeds, and
happily illogical. It is the Cross that reveals the love, and it is the
Cross as the means of propitiation that pours the light of that blessed
conviction into men's hearts.
III. My last question is this: what does Christ's mission say about
God's love to me?
We know what it ought to say. It ought to carry, as on the crest of a
great wave, the conviction of that divine love into our hearts, to be
fruitful there. It ought to sweep out, as on the crest of a great wave,
our sins and evils. It ought to do this; does it? On some of us I fear
it produces no effect at all. Some of you, dear friends, look at that
light with lack-lustre eyes, or, rather, with blind eyes, that are dark
as midnight in the blaze of noonday. The voice comes from the Cross,
sweet as that of harpers harping with their harps, and mighty as the
voice of many waters, and you hear nothing. Some of us it slightly moves
now and then, and there an end.
Brethren, you have to turn the world-wide generality into a personal
possession. You have to say, 'He loved _me_, and gave Himself for _me_.'
It is of no use to believe in a universal Saviour; do you trust in your
particular Saviour? It is of no use to have the most orthodox and clear
conceptions of the relation between the Cross of Christ and the
revelation to men of the love of God; have you made that revelation the
means of bringing into your own personal life the conviction that Jesus
Christ is _your_ Saviour, the propitiation for _your_ sins, the Giver to
_you_ of life eternal? It is faith that does that. Note that, in the
great foundation passage to which I have made frequent reference, there
are two conditions put in between the beginning and the end. Some of us
are disposed to say, 'God so loved the world that every man might have
eternal life.' That is not what Christ said, 'God so loved the world
that'--and here follows the first condition--'He _gave His Son_
that'--and here follows the second--'he that _believeth on Him_ should
not perish, but have everlasting life.' God has done what it is needful
for Him to do. His part of the conditions has been fulfilled. Fulfil
yours--'He that believeth on Him.' And if you can say, not He is the
propitiation for our sin, but for _my_ sin, then you will live and move
and have your being in a heaven of love, and will love Him back again
with an echo and reflection of His own, and nothing shall be able to
separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.