The Love of God in Christ

Beloved,

What a wonderful morning.  There is a verse that says,

The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Joh 12:21  

Sir, we would see Jesus.  It means we want to meet him, talk with him, get to know him.  There are so many sermons that tell us facts and figures as if Christianity is a formula to apprehend, but true preaching leads us to see Jesus.

That is why I am so excited about today's sermon.  As was the previous, this was written by Rev. Charles Moinet. It is plainly obvious that this was a highly educated man, so don't lose in his rhetoric the important message that he imparts.  Follow him through, his message is gold: The Love of God in Christ.

Blessings,

~Al

THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST

 

"The love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - ROM. 8:39.

 

 

THERE are certain truths about God which, according to Scripture itself, we may and ought to learn from the works of His hands. From these, for instance, we may justly infer His wisdom and power. The traces of both are so obvious they cannot fail to impress us. His goodness also, we are told, may be seen in the rains and fruitful seasons which fill the hearts of men with food and gladness. And Jesus Himself appeals to the impartiality of the arrangements of nature as an evidence even of the divine love. But how ever satisfactory the argument may be, so far as the power and wisdom of God are concerned, it is quite another matter when we go beyond these. For if there is much in the world suggestive of His more gracious attributes, there is also much that calls them in question. And when our Lord speaks of the indiscriminate distribution of rain and sunshine as showing His Father's favor towards sinners, we feel that as a proof the fact itself is not conclusive, and was not meant to be so, though we recognize it as an illustration of what we are assured of on other grounds. And what are the other grounds? In the case of the disciples to whom He spoke, as to all the faithful Israel, the love of God was something which had revealed itself in their whole past history - in His choosing them to be His peculiar people, and to occupy a position of unequalled privilege and honor. But a still further revelation of that love was yet to come, was even then unfolding itself before their eyes, though they could not clearly understand it till the last stage in its development was reached. That revelation was in Jesus Christ. In Him, and in Him alone, it was to become perfectly unambiguous, and to divest itself of what ever had previously impaired its fulness.

For it is only in a person the love of God can attain its final and most effective manifestation. Arrangements made for our benefit, a providence that disposes of events so as to make them minister to our welfare, even were it accompanied by nothing of a contrary character, could not fully satisfy the craving of our hearts. For love is discriminating and personal. It not only seeks our profit or advantage; it seeks ourselves. And to do this clearly and unmistakably it must express itself not through a system or even through a history, however consistently and benevolently administered, but through a person. Hence the love of God is in Christ. It took up its abode in one who wore our nature and was made like ourselves, that it might translate itself into language which we can understand, and into actions which come within the scope of our experience.

But one may be inclined to ask - Does the love of Christ as we know it in the Gospels justify this description? Does it warrant such a sublime identification, and coincide with all that we conceive God's love ought to be? To which we might answer that we have no conception of God's love at all, independently of what Christ has taught us, and that we must go to the evangelists to learn what it is. But we may answer also that there is no love conceivable by us which can transcend the love we see in Jesus Christ; that He was not only the first to teach us what it is, but that humanity has never reached the standard revealed in Him.

Looking, then, at this love, what do we find it to be? What are its most prominent and striking characteristics?

I. First, we find that the love of Christ was a universal love, including all, even the most unworthy, in its embrace. It was not arrested by the prejudices of His time, nor did it even acknowledge their presence. It was not obsequious[1] to the Pharisees, and cold or suspicious to the publicans. None of the numerous parties which then were struggling for ascendency in Judæa established the slightest preference to His regard. None could allege that by His partiality for others He displayed a proportionate indifference to them. Even that deep and almost impassable gulf between Gentile and Jew closed up before Him. If He kept Himself to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, it was not that His love for the others was less; it was only that the time of its manifestation was not yet come. There was, as it were, a temporary confinement of its waters that they might overflow the world afterwards in fuller flood, and submerge the old divisions, till in Him there should be neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. In short, He dealt with men as such, irrespective of their social or ecclesiastical differences. These were external and accidental, and what He wished to reach lay underneath them. Not that He ignored moral distinctions, or that His love was of such a kind as to obliterate by its mere effusiveness[2] the boundaries between good and evil. This is often the kind of love that is erroneously ascribed to God - a love that is so generous and uncontrolled it does not stop to consider human frailty and sin, but lavishes its fulness upon all men alike. Such a love, however, would be a contradiction in terms and ruinous in its results, destroying character to procure for itself unlimited self-indulgence. And such was not the love which we see in Jesus Christ. In Him it placed itself at the disposal of every man without being deterred even by his sin. Indeed, the greater the sin the more earnestly it strove for a hearing. But its purpose was always the same—to save us from what it knew to be our deadliest foe, and to win us to the cause of holiness and truth. And it never despaired even of the most abandoned, or allowed him to go on to destruction because it was impotent to help him. Acknowledging no limitations, it counted no man beyond its pale. Though rejected and insulted, it was none the less ready to bless, for the insult and rejection were part of the sin from which it came at all costs to redeem us. It is the same love still; the same in its fulness and freeness after we have despised it a thousand times, as if we had welcomed it at once. And it never wearies or grudges to expend its resources. So long as we are under the power of our sin, and believe its interests to be identical with our own, it endeavors to rouse and awaken us from our delusion. To this it directs the truth of Scripture and the discipline of life. It works upon conscience, and stimulates our whole moral nature to convince us that sin is a traitorous and alien power, and to set us against it. Then, when it has exposed its true character, and loosened us from its embrace, it discovers itself in the plenitude of its grace. All its wealth of succor it brings to our side. It encourages by the promise of forgiveness, by the assurance of cleansing, by the pledge of a strength that shall work in us to widen our separation from evil till at last it is rendered complete.

And if you know your sin and feel the hatefulness of its tyranny, then the love of God which is in Christ Jesus offers itself to you. It has brought you to this that you may be disposed to receive it in its fulness, and allow it to perfect the work of your deliverance. There is no reason to distrust it, for it can accomplish everything you need; and there is nothing to justify the fear of disappointment, for it will not fail to effect everything for you. If anything in your past disinclines you to put it to the proof, or any pressure of temptation seems to place you at a disadvantage before it, this is only because you stand between it and your need, and darken it with your own shadow. To every one without exception the love of God which is in Christ Jesus comes, making absolutely no difference in the fulness of its offer, promising just as much to those who have done the most in its despite as to those who have done the least, withholding nothing from the worst which it holds out to the best; for it knows we are all exposed essentially to the same peril, and it would fain bring us all to the same safety and blessedness.

II. A second characteristic of the love of Christ is that it issued in the most perfect act of self-sacrifice. It is often said that love sets no limits to itself, and this is true. It is the complete negation of selfishness. When it works, it imposes no restraints upon its efforts, for their cessation would mean its own cessation also. When it forgives, it forgives till seventy times seven, and then starts afresh. When it suffers, there is no point at which it stops and refuses to go further, for that would be to acknowledge its own exhaustion. Love is a child of the infinite and eternal. Into its every act and expression it carries the quality of its birth, and lifts them beyond the reach of measurement and the trammels[3] of definition. But while this is true of love in itself, it is never so found in us. For it does not occupy the supreme place in our nature, still less is it coextensive with that nature itself. It coexists with selfish instincts which "grossly hem it in," and which at times are so strong it falls into abeyance and becomes paralyzed. Even when it rallies at some divine touch and puts forth its strength, it is arrested or enfeebled by the pleadings of an indolent and self-indulgent temper. And let its achievements be what they may, they always fall short of what they might have been. "When we would do good, evil is present with us." But if we can conceive love without anything to counteract it, and relieved of whatever might embarrass its action — love coincident with the personality in which it resides — then we should conceive it also as without limitation. And such is the love of God, and therefore also it follows that God is love. Now, in Christ Jesus we see this love equally unfettered, and as it never had been seen on earth before. In Him it shrank from no labor or humiliation. It carried Him from the cradle to the cross without ever pausing or hesitating on the way. He left nothing undone which might accomplish its purpose, and when the supreme act of obedience was demanded He did not shrink. "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it? " Among His last words was a prayer for His murderers: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." So "He loved us, and gave Himself for us." "God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Beyond this love could not go. There was nothing Christ had which He did not give, nothing He was which He withheld. And if the freeness of His love encourages us to come that we may prove its resources, His sacrifice assures us that these will be sufficient. If your sin seems to have exceeded the very possibility of forgiveness, Christ's death calls you to another conclusion. For there you see love carrying everything to the cross, the whole fulness of divine power, wisdom, and worth, and expending it in the act of expiation. How this was effected you may not understand, but as to the fact itself there can be no doubt. The guilt of your sin cannot be too much for God, so that when He gives itself wholly to its removal it still survives to condemn and destroy you. Then God would not be God, and your sin would be greater than He. And conscience protests against such a verdict of despair. If it condemns the wrong, it implicitly asserts the superiority of the right. And the gospel assures us that right has stirred up its strength to make its superiority good, and to secure for all who will receive them the fruits of its victory. "In Christ we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sin" -of sin as such in all its possible developments. God has given Himself for us, and nothing that He can do will be left undone to secure the certainty and completeness of our redemption.

And if it is not the guilt of sin that troubles you so much as the sad wreck and confusion it has wrought within you, Christ's sacrifice is a pledge that this also shall not be unredressed. Against all difficulties from within or from without that stand in the way of our salvation that sacrifice is a perpetual guarantee. It assures us that God Himself will have used the very last of His resources before He will allow us to fail. For to this end He has devoted Himself without reserve. And if you need such constant care and teaching, such cleansing and strength, such renewed restoration and forgiveness, you are ashamed of the incessant and unreasonable demands which you make upon Christ's patience, you may rest assured His love will prove equal to the strain. So long as His wisdom can enlighten you, or His Spirit quicken you, or anything He has can be of service to you, you shall not want. God never grudges us anything we need. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, will He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

III. Another characteristic of the love of Christ is that it invests us with all it has. It not only spares nothing in effecting our salvation from sin, but it enriches us with its whole possession. It is too frequently conceived as having exhausted itself in the great act of atonement, so that no surplus survives for further use, or as though it had then completed its work and remains henceforth in a state of quiescence[4]. But Christ gave Himself for us that He might be able to give Himself to us-always the last ambition of love, short of which it never rests. Hence, He prayed for His disciples, "that the love wherewith His Father loved Him might be in them, and He in them." And St. Paul also prays that our knowledge of the love of Christ may lead to our "being filled with all the fulness of God." The doctrine of the mystical union involves the same truth. As all that is in the vine communicates itself to the branches, as the head exists for the sake of the body, so Christ shares with His members all His mediatorial fulness. And this is to reach its consummation in a perfected and glorified fellowship. "To him that overcometh He will give to sit down with Him in His throne;" "They shall behold His glory, and be with Him, where He is." St. Paul even grasps this as a present reality, which faith apprehends and glories in: "God, who is rich in mercy, quickened us together with Christ, and raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

What can be conceived to be a more perfect love than this? -a love that embraces all, even the most unworthy; that gives itself for all, and that without reserve, and that never rests till it brings everyone who receives it to the full enjoyment of all it has. Such a love had never entered into the heart of men to conceive. It is a revelation, and it passes knowledge. No one can experience all it can do, or grasp all it is ready to bestow. It opens possibilities that cannot be exhausted, an altitude of blessing that cannot be surpassed. And if it should seem to us that, however great and wonderful this love may be, it is still beyond our reach, a divine perfection that may be adored, but wanting a definite point of contact and means of communication with ourselves, let us remember that it is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It was not there for a time, and now has ceased to be, but it is there still. Wherever He is there it is also. And there is no place where He is not. Having all power and being above all things, love is that which in the last analysis governs and disposes the history of the world. Behind its varied and conflicting phenomena this is the force which is steadily, and will prove itself eventually to be decisively, at work. Meanwhile its efforts are resented and resisted. They are driven back and forced into circuitous routes by the blind and headstrong willfulness of men. But they are never entirely baffled or overcome. Its methods may change, the ways by which it approaches and seeks fulfilment may vary from time to time so as scarcely to be recognizable as channels of one and the same purpose; but it ever presses on, and no opposition or temporary defeat arrests its continuous resistless movement towards the point when at last it shall vindicate itself. So it is in the more limited sphere of our individual lives. The great message which Christianity has brought us, is that we are not the prey of destiny or the sport of caprice[5]. The power or providence which rules us is not a power external to ourselves, which operates independently of the humanity of which we form a part. It is a power which has entered into that humanity and abides there; a power which has assumed its responsibilities and atoned for its sin, whose exercise is, so to speak, conditioned by its interests, and contemplates its highest good. God and man are no longer mutually exclusive, apart and separate from each other. They can no longer be arrayed in complete antagonism. In Christ God has identified Himself with us. He has laid hold of our race. He has established a reconciliation which is to be carried out and made complete at all points. And for this His love is always at work with us, and with all men. In sorrow and joy, in prosperity and adversity, amid the changes and revolutions of life, its object is one and the same. Whatever comes love sends it. Whatever is taken away love withdraws it. Through defeat and disappointment, through hope deferred and the heart made sick, love is still at work, struggling to cleanse our vision and lift us up to a perception of its purpose. Above and around us, lurking for an entrance at every avenue, and testing every approach to our heart, is the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. "Behold," He cries, "I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open unto Me, I will come in." And when you have once let Him in, and begun to receive of His goodly store, He will never cease to unfold its treasures, until, in spite of every failure to trust and understand Him, He makes you, by His constant and uninterrupted grace, as rich as Himself, and retains nothing which He has to bestow— "filling you with all the fulness of God."

IV. And, lastly, it follows from all this that the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord is a love which clings inseparably to its object. Whoever gives himself wholly to another with a perfect knowledge and understanding of what he is, can have no conceivable reason for finally renouncing him. Nothing in his own nature can urge him to do so, for this is precluded by the very fact of his self-surrender; and nothing in the person for whom that surrender has been made, for that has been already considered and overcome. So it is with the love of Christ. If it had stopped at any point short of a complete sacrifice of Himself, then it might, so to speak, have retraced its steps. It would not have been irretrievably committed. But Christ has committed Himself. He is pledged to go the whole length which our complete salvation requires. So that there can be nothing in Him which at any moment can move Him to let us go. He has left Himself no place of repentance. He cannot deny Himself.

And if there is nothing in the love of Christ that can move Him to loosen His hold upon us, no inward defect that some unlooked-for strain may develop, neither is there anything in the dangers that may threaten us that can ultimately snatch us from His grasp. It is such a supposition that St. Paul considers for a moment in the closing verses of the chapter before us, and considers only triumphantly to reject. With eager and elated vision he surveys the whole range and sphere of possible peril, and declares he can find nothing to shake his confidence. For wherever he looks there also the love of Christ has looked before him, and anticipated his search. Life contains no temptation that can stagger it, death no solvent that can dissipate its power. In all the wide realm of things to come nothing can emerge that will be mightier. Neither angels nor principalities will be able to contest it. Covering and providing for every contingency, arise from what quarter it may, be it the offspring of violence or of seductive cunning, stands the ever-watchful and all-sufficient love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord — the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.

And if you say, But what if my own grasp should slacken, and at some critical moment I should be swept from its embrace?—the answer is that St. Paul does not here acknowledge such a possibility, if possibility it be. In the glow and rapture of his thought, in the triumphant march and progress of his argument, it does not even suggest itself. For it is not our love to Christ he is thinking of, nor anything we can do for ourselves. All such considerations sink out of sight in presence of the grace that brings salvation and the magnitude of its gifts. Besides, it is not upon anything in us our safety depends, either in its first, its intermediate, or its ultimate stages. As for our forgiveness we are entirely dependent on the sacrifice of Christ, so for everything that comes after forgiveness we are to be equally dependent on the further provision which His love has made. Upon it our safety, our progress, our victory, hangs. Upon it the whole burden and responsibility of our redemption rests. And on what more secure or immovable foundation could it possibly be laid? Give yourself to it, and it will not let you go. Trust it, and it will never abandon you. In Christ it abides, waiting to spring out and welcome you whenever you come to Him. And if the great want and craving of our life is for love, as it surely is, a love that shall never change or desert us, a love that we may count upon at all times and always find equal to our demands, that shall still be ours in the hour of death and the day of judgment and for evermore, that love is here. We can never be at a loss, never hopeless or helpless when it environs us. And though you may long ago have dismissed the thought of being other than you are, and sadly reconciled yourself to a darkened and joyless life, yet the love of Christ bids you arise and trust and rejoice. For it sets before us the open door of possibilities still waiting to be realized. It still reveals fadeless ideals of beauty, and walks of lowly but tranquil and most blessed service. For the weary it has rest, and a strange, surprising sweetness for the most embittered. The heavy-hearted it thrills with its touch till they forget their labor and their sorrow. And the soul that bears its secret and incommunicable burden of pain, the pain of one that has loved and lost, that has been lifted up as on the wings of gladness only to be cast down into the dull and leaden disappointment that sees no relief, will hail at last the bridegroom of its thought; a love that will never lose nor yet be lost. For "nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

 

From: --The "Good Cheer" of Jesus Christ, Rev. Charles Moinet, 1893

 

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[1] attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery.

[2] a friendly open trait of a talkative person; enthusiasm exhibited with little restraint.

[3] A shackle used to teach a horse to amble. Something that restricts activity, expression, or progress; a restraint.

 

[4] The state or quality of being inactive; rest; repose; inactivity; the state of a thing without motion or agitation: as, the quiescence of a volcano.

[5] An impulsive change of mind.