The Glory of Divine Love

“The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” — John i. 14.

To be full of grace and truth was indeed a glory. It was the meeting of two things which in the souls of men are antagonistic to one another. There are souls which easily bestow grace, which find it not hard to forgive, but they have often a dim perception of the majesty of that truth which has been violated. There are souls which have a clear perception of the majesty of truth and a deep sense of the sin that swerves from it, but they are often inexorable in their justice and unable to pardon; they have more truth than grace.

Here there is a perfect blending of extremes — fulness of grace united to fulness of truth. There is a forgiveness which is valueless because there is no sense of wrong; there is a sense of wrong which is forbidding because there is no power of forgiveness. Here perfect forgiveness is joined with perfect perception. The glory of Christ’s love is that it comes not from darkness but from light; He forgave the sinner because He bore the sin. Never was His forgiveness so complete as when He bore His fullest witness to the awful truth. When did He cry, “Father, forgive them: they know not what they do “? Was it when He began to think lightly of a violated law? Nay, it was when the violated law was pressing upon His soul, and the reproach of sin was breaking His heart. His love was born of His pity, and His pity was born of His purity. He felt that we had already lost what He called our souls. He saw us blind in a world of light, deaf in a world of music, cold in a world of warmth, heartless in a world of love, dead in a world of life, and He lifted up His eyes and cried: “Father, I am clouded in their darkness, give them light; I am wounded in their sorrow, give them joy; I am pierced in their coldness, give them warmth; I am crucified in their death, give them life eternal.” 0 Son of Man, that was Thine hour of glory. There, as in tints of blended rainbow, met colours that before had been disjoined — righteousness and peace, justice and forgiveness, penalty and pardon, the sentence of death and the message of life. Heaven and earth met together, judgment and mercy embraced each other in the fulness of Thy glory. The hour of sin’s condemnation was the hour of a world’s redemption. Grace and truth stood side by side.