THE love of God! The love of God manifest in deed! The love of God for the unlovely and unloving! The love of God, in order that the unlovely might become lovable; that the unloving might love! Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God, the climax of love unselfish, the crisis of the universe, the destruction of death by dying! "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
IT was no love of mere impulse that was manifest at the Crucifixion. It was not the love of an age or a dispensation. In ancient times God had said: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." It was not the love of Jesus which at the cross spoke the loudest; it was the love of God the Father "in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," that was manifest on Golgotha's hill. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son." Neither did the Son die because so compelled; He "gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works." But when Christ walked the earth and died upon the cross, He revealed not Himself; "The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works."
WHEN, in the beginning the eternal Son of God laid down His high prerogatives, and took upon Himself the form of a servant, the crucifixion was in the gift, angel tho He first became. He was "the Lamb of God" "slain from the foundation of the world." When He there gave Himself, He gave Himself to be all that lay between the giving and the crucifixion: the Chief Minister among all the angelic host, bearing continually the accusations of the adversary, and answering them with, "Jehovah rebuke thee;" the Babe in Bethlehem, the Child, the Boy, the Young Carpenter at Nazareth; the Tempted One in the wilderness, meeting the cumulated craft and deceptive power of the ages of sin; the Minister in word and deed to the poor and needy; despised and rejected of men, even His own; the agony of Gethsemane; the climax of the Crucifixion,—all speaking in tones, clear, penetrating, all-persuading to every responsive heart, in the broad universe, God loves you; see how much God loves you.
IN this love was involved all the patient suffering of the hatred of demons, and men the agents of demons. In it was involved the nail-piercing fastening to the cross, the awful disgrace of being adjudged guilty of the highest crime, yet absolutely innocent; the mocking by the base mob, and the elders and priests of His own people; the sorrow of the mother, and the disappointment of His disciples; the awful darkness that shut from His longing soul the Father's face; the awful despair to be felt by the sinner at last, and the closing scene, the loss of consciousness—death. Yet from it all He shrank not. "Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God." From that He swerved not; humanity might plead as in Gethsemane's garden, "Let this cup pass," but love prays triumphantly over all, "Nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt."
O SOUL, sinful tho you may be, does not this love appeal to you? It was for you. It was poured out that you might drink. He died that you might not die. He took upon Himself sin for your sake, that sin might not crush you into oblivion with its intolerable burden. You live even now because of that sacrifice. Long ago, the earth would have been rolling on a dark and void and hopeless, disintegrating4wreck, if the love of God had not been poured out in unstinted measure in healing streams to make even physical life possible to the sinner. He prolongs the life you live, that His goodness may lead to repentance of sin, and that you may lay hold of eternal life in Him. He has purchased all that man forfeited by sin. The earth is His, and He made it; sin alienating it, He bought it with His life. Therefore every blessing is a blood-bought blessing. The very sunlight by which you thrive, which ripens the corn and the fruit on which you live, which glows in your grate, which looks down on your deeds of darkness, is a blood-bought blessing. The very air you breathe, by which you blaspheme His name, is blood-bought. The streamlet sings its song of joy; the birds warble forth His praise; the grass and flowers look up to Him, and exhale their fragrance on the air, but you, with reasoning powers, with some sense of justice and right, refuse to render to Christ the Lord what belongs to Him! More than all else, He wants you. "Son, give Me thy heart." Come just as you are. Let His love break your heart. Let Him take you, all unworthy as you know yourself to be, and make you "to the praise of the glory of His grace."
FELLOW pilgrim, how does the cross appeal to you? Are you weary? Do you see only the nail-pierced hands, the thorn-crown wounded brow, and read in them your own sufferings? Or do you see in the cross the all-comprehending love of God to you, a pledge of all you need forever? That is what He wants you to see. Listen: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?"—Nay more, He has given us all things in Him; "for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full." Know that when you accepted Him "in everything ye were enriched in Him, in all utterance and knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you; so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." "For I am persuaded," declares one who was called to suffer for His sake, "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
"When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride."
