So He had spoken on that last journey. "Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you; but whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister, and whosoever shall be first among you shall be servant of all, for verily the Son of Man came"—(again the title of the Messiah in Glory)—"not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and to give His life a ransom for many."[#]
[#] S. Mark x, 42-45.
So, too, St. John records His saying that in precisely this way he would win His royalty—"I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."[#] The Cross was foreseen by the Lord to be what, as we look back, we know that it has been—the throne of His glory and His power; and the capacity to realise it as such is for St. Paul the touchstone of character, the test of election—"We preach a Messiah on a Cross—to Jews a scandal and to Gentiles an absurdity, but to the very people who are called, whether Jews or Greeks, a Messiah who is God's power and God's wisdom."[#]
[#] S. John xii, 32.
[#] 1 Cor. i, 23, 24.
Here then is the mode of God's power, and we know that it can be no other; for if God is truly King, He must be King of our hearts and wills, and not only of our conduct. There is only one way to win men's hearts and wills, that is by showing love; and there is only one way to show love, and that is by sacrifice, by doing or suffering what, apart from our love, we should not choose to do or suffer. Sacrifice is the Divine activity; Calvary is the mode of the Divine omnipotence. It is the actual Divine method and the ideal human method.
As we come to consider how far it has become also the actual human method, we are confronted at the outset by the sheer impossibility of our applying this method, just because we have not in ourselves the necessary love.
Our perfection, we are told, is to consist in just that quality which shows the Father's perfection, namely, that He is kind to the unthankful and evil, and makes His sun to rise on the evil and good and sends His rain on the just and on the unjust; and we are to be perfect in the way that He is perfect.[#]
[#] S. Matthew v, 43-48.
But until we reach that perfection we cannot imitate His action; for a man's act is not what He intends; nor is it the mere motion of his body; but it is the whole train of circumstances that he initiates. Christ in His perfect purity may stand before the woman taken in her sin and say, "Neither do I condemn thee," because there is no possibility that she will interpret His mercy as condonation of the sin; but if we said it, people would so interpret it, and usually quite rightly so.