But there is greater Love than the Love which we behold in His blessed Life on earth. The greater Love is manifested when He laid down His life. He came into the world to die, to be the propitiation for our sins. He came to take our place on the cross. He came to drink the cup of wrath in our stead and suffer the awful penalty of our sins.
“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
God in Love gave thus His Son, and He gave Himself in Love. From shame to shame, from suffering to suffering, from pain to pain and agony to agony that Love went on to plunge into the deepest sorrow, to reach at last the place where His loving lips had to cry “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”
“To death of shame Thy love did reach,
God’s holy judgment then to bear;
Ah, Lord, what human tongue can teach
Or tell the love that brought Thee there.”
Ah! what human tongue can teach or tell the Love that brought Thee there! It passeth knowledge. But with loving, praising hearts, in worship and adoration we can look up to that cross on which the Prince of Glory died and say with Paul, “He loved me, He gave Himself for me.” And again we join with the innumerable hosts of His own redeemed in the Glory song. “Unto Him that loveth us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and hath made us Kings and priests unto God and His Father, to Him be Glory and dominion forever. Amen.” And beloved reader, that Love which knew you and us all before we ever existed, that Love which came from Glory for you, that Love which went into the jaws of death, endured the cross and despised the shame, that Love which gave so willingly, gave as we can never give, that Love is still the same. It changes not. His Love knows no fluctuations. That perfect Love cannot grow cold or indifferent. We all had our first love; when first we saw Him with the eyes of faith, how our hearts were enraptured. How soon that Love began to grow cold and decreased instead of increased. Then our walk and service became affected for thus it must ever be when the heart is not responding to His Love and not in living, loving touch with Himself. Oh! the weeks and months and years of our Christian experience spent without the full enjoyment of His Love and Presence. But has this changed His Love? Has our unfaithfulness, our waywardness, our failure and backsliding affected His Love? No. He is the same loving Lord, the same loving Christ who has borne us and yearned over us, who has prayed for us and kept us. Whenever we turn to Him with broken hearts, confessing our sins, when in shame we hide our faces and tell Him all our failures, we find Him still the same loving Lord as He was when His loving eyes rested upon Peter. Oh! how He must love us! How He must love us, with that Love which passeth knowledge. What treasures that Love contains! Exhaustless it is ever flowing full and free towards His own.
How it must grieve Him to see us so indifferent, neither hot nor cold. How it must grieve Him that we enjoy this Love so little that we permit that Love so little to serve us and give Him so little opportunity to manifest His mighty Love towards us. Alas! We even mistrust that Love. When suffering and loss overtake us, when instead of prosperity adversity is our lot, we doubt that Love. Fears and anxieties are nothing less than an impeachment of the Love, which passeth knowledge. His Love will never fail. He will see us safe home. Let the forces of the enemy roar, let trials and troubles come, His Love will keep us. His Love is our eternal portion.
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 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.”