THE MEASURE OF GOD'S LOVE.
THE depths of God's love finite man can never fathom. Its heights he can never climb. Its exceeding length and breadth he can never measure. It is a great bottomless, shoreless sea, rolling its infinite life-tide ever outward to the needy and helpless and hopeless. It is manifest in all God's works—in the shining sun, the refreshing rain, in the sparkling dew, in the great leafy trees, the green grass, the fragrant flowers, the rolling, flowing rivers, the majestic, but ever-restless sea, the mighty mountains—in all the common things of life. His love is revealed in all His bountiful providences, and in the glorious revelation of His Holy Word. But the one great evidence of His love, the one Great Gift which includes in itself all others, is the gift of His only-begotten Son. While we can never in eternity fully comprehend or appreciate His love, we can by considering Him see it more clearly than elsewhere. Then, Who was He?—The only begotten of God, the one divine Son, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the Upholder of all things by the Word of His power, the "Fellow" of the Almighty, the One in the perfect form of God. He, before the foundation of the world, "gave Himself," gave Himself in the very beginning, for the good of all His creatures. Even before sin entered, His great life of love flowed out to all His creatures. And when sin entered and abounded, love through grace much more abounded; for a field was entered which demanded more of its manifestation. For it was only in manifestation, not in augmented power, that the love of God and His Son was manifest upon the cross. God was just as truly love in the beginning as He was when Christ died on Calvary. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love;" "I am the Lord, I change not," are His words to His children. God's purpose in Christ Jesus was a perfect one in the beginning. What followed in the humiliation of His Son were but steps in the eternal purpose and revealings of that love adapted to the understanding and apprehension of the sin-blinded minds of His creatures. Note the successive steps as revealed by the apostle:— "Who being originally in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, becoming in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross." Phil. 2:6-8, R. V., margin. The first thing was the unselfishly divine purpose of emptying Himself, which included all the sacrifice for the redemption of the lost, the fruitage of infinite love. The first step was the taking of the form of a bond-servant, with no will but His Master's, to serve and not to rule. We behold Him thus as an angel with the angels. He was Michael the Archangel, chief only because He was the chief servant of God, the most devoted of all. He partook of their nature, and His angelic ministry may be traced from the time that sin entered throughout the record of the Old Testament. The second step in the manifestation of the purpose was becoming in the likeness of men, those whom sin had made lower than the angels. He took the human form to retain it forever. He will never be in outward form what He was in the beginning. He gave up all the ineffable glory of the God-likeness for man's sake. He lived for man, suffered for man, died for man; and will ever bear the prints of the scars, forever glorified, which sin made. The sacrifice was eternal. The next and last step—for no lower could be taken—was that of the nothingness of death, from which His righteous character only saved Him. From the highest He came down to the very lowest. From the Throne of the Universe He became subject to the cruellest of all tyrants—death. He did it all, suffered it all, sacrificed it all, that He might lift7up to everlasting peace, glory, and immortality every human victim of sin. The grave could not hold Him, because He was righteous. It can hold no one upon whom His righteousness rests. Such love ought to lead each and every soul to let Christ's mind possess them, and so reap the fruits of His infinite love.