God's Great Love to Us

Romans 8: 32.

“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things.”

With how inadequate a comprehension do any of us read or hear this saying! To know its meaning, one would need to explore the eternity of the past, and the eternity of the future. For it tells of bounty having its S[)ring in the counsels of ages, and of bounty which runs on, with branching abundance among immortal spirits in glory. Intermediate in this succession come all the good things of this life, which our Heavenly Father condescends to secure to us by promise. But the principal and absorbing object, set before the eye in this remarkable passage, is the most wonderful upon which any intellect could tum.

and yet — such is our jDrivilege, even from infancy — the most familiar to our mind and memory; namely, the love of God to sinful man. Sometimes we are ready to wish it were possible to travel backward on our line of experience, to that point in childhood when Gospel grace first came to our cognizance; or else to stand in the position of some serious inquiring heathen who opens his ear and heart to the news of a redeeming God; that by either of these ways we might get rid of the dulness and indifference which our worn and jaded souls derive from long hardening of custom. My brethren, the freshness of apprehension and feeling which we desire can be wrought in us only by faith; which the Spirit of God produces by means of the Word. Continued attention to the one topic before us, may be blessed to fit us for the enjoyment of ordintinces. Devout consideration of the text will cause it to yield us these two thoughts: GocFs love to U’S^ in giving Ms So7i; and GocVs love to ti’9^ carrying loitli it and certifying to the sou all suhordinate blessings. One points to the cause, the other to the effects, and each may be examined under a two-fold view, which will give clearness to the discussion.

I. God’s love to us in giviisg his Son Here is a great and heavenly subject, which may be proyerly considered under two asjiects: God’s love to us is the blessin: of blessinos and is demonstrated by the greatest of gifts

1. God’s love to us is the blessing oi BLESSINGS. As we and all mankind are no better than orphans in the universe if we have no belief in a Divine Creator and Benefactor, so even thus believing we must be miserable, unless we are persuaded that he regards us with favor. A Deity who is, or even may be, magiignant towards us would inspire no feelings but those of slavish fear and sickening horror, akin to the experience of heathen devil- worship23ers, who grovel in acts of propitiation to the powers they hate. Nor should we derive any comfort or supyort from maintaining the existence of a Great Supreme, who, as Epicurus dreamed, sat in the heavens indifferent to human weal or woe. So soon as we admit a Great First Cause, ever active in y)reserving and governing all things, we begin to feel an interest in his dispositions towards us; and our inquiries become the more earnest and yearning with every new apprehension of him as infinite in wisdom and power. “How does this glorious God regard me, and what may I reasonably expect at his hands?” These are questions which lie at the bottom of all religions, under every form of Theism. Study of Providence, in the obscure and awful volumes of history and experience, where the ])ages are often marked with tears and blood, does not ease the mind, in regard to man’s destiny, or that certainty which we would fain have for ourselves. That God governs and that he is just and ever good, is seen to be compatible with the existence of horrid miseries; — and what is to hinder these from being our own? What ensures us, that the next stage of existence may not be infernal? What shall make it undeniable, that as evils have been, so they shall not continue and increase? Dark doubtings like these, such as unassisted reason cannot exorcise, become of a blacker hue, when conscience tells us we are sinners, and when we behold vindicatory justice seeking amends of transgressors. Some voice therefore is hearkened for, which may credibly whisper that God is propitious. If He is our Enemy, we perish, and perish all the more because we cannot re-enter our original nothing. These boding thoughts, which belong to all human beings, are those wMcli predispose men to seek for a revelation, and wliicli when a revelation is offered lead them to inquire wistfully at its oracle. Now the first teachiugs, even of the Word of God, are not such as to remove all doubt. The Law precedes the Gospel. Ho23e is smitten down, before it is lifted to the rock of support. And when conscience is thoroughly aroused, and sin makes its motions felt in the heart, the thought of the Almighty One, clad in holiness and judgment, becomes insufferable. Then it is, that he who was previously careless as to his Creator, begins to comprehend that unless this glorious Jehovah be his friend, it were better for soul and body that he had never been born. Deep thought, great knowledge, and just reasoning only add to these solicitudes; and the more the light is thrown on the Scriptures the more does the inquirer see that if God be against him his misery is sure forever. These are the conclusions at which many arrive, and at which all would arrive, if guided by truth. What would you offer a man, to take the place of God’s favor, or to neutralize his wrath? Accumulate all honors, science, power, modes of delight or exaltation; and what

Will they do for him, on whose soul iind destiny the Lorl God Omnipotent looks with a steady frown? Let us go further... Suppose it were possible for God to shower all other gifts on the earthly lot of man, yet withholding his love,.. would not this be mocking torture? On the other hand, give to any soul assurance of God’s perpetual love, and you crown that soul with bliss. In cool, impartial moments, therefore, when reason is sound, all other good seems trifling compared with the love of the infinite Jehovah. The immortal creature needs nothing more to make it happy to all eternity. ‘’ There be many,” cries David, “that say, who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.” Therefore we justly conclude that God’s love to us is the indispensable favour, without which we have nothing; in other words, it is the blessing of blessings.

2. God’s love is demonsteated by the GKEATEST OF GIFTS. The greatest gift is this: “He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” Other, lesser gifts there are, in gi’acious, yea, divine abundance, on pvhich we might nieditate; but all these are brandies from this one root, lesser loves from this one love. We have seen the necessity under which fallen humanity lies, of having some assuring utterance of God’s benevolence, to keep it from despair and elevate it in blissful hope. The infinitely benevolent Creator, who is also the Redeemer, chose to vouchsafe such a manifestation; but no human mind, probably no finite spirit, could ever have had a suspicion or conjecture, previously to revealing inspiration, what shape this utterance would take. When the mystery burst into revelation all heaven must have been struck mute at so new, so awful a shining-forth of the Divine majesty. The great method of saving mankind may be looked at on various sides, from many points of observation, and in manifold relations, but we are about to restrict our view to a single aspect of redeeming grace, namely, God’s givino his Son. This will be enou2:h, for it reveals the heart of infinite compassion. God is love; and the Divine fulness finds no such fit outlet and effluence as in the delivering up of the wokd for us all. The due consideration of the act would carry us back into the eternal ages of primeval silence, when as yet no worlds had rolled from the creative hand, when no angelic spirit had gazed into the face of the Fbst Fair and First Good; when godhead as yet was all, and the very relation of Creator and creature lay hid in idea; when the Word was with God, yea, “was God,” co-equal, consubstantial, coeternal. But we must descend from, or rather assume, these high points of theology, and fix our thoughts on the simple truth, that “God spared not his own Son.”

The sonship with which we are familiar on earth is a copy or shadow of that Eternal Sonship, existing between God the Father and God the Son; and is perhaps intended to enable us more adequately to comprehend the grandeur and tenderness of the gift. When we read that God spared not his “own Son;” a number of gushing affections, aptly furnish interpretation, as they spring in the parental heart. Things heavenly take earthly types; and infinite throbbings of Divine love are tianslated into terms of domestic affection. “The Father loveth the Son,” is a proposition true in heaven as in earth; but the profundity, the loftiness, the amphtude of such love, neither men nor serajihs can comyrehend, any more than they can circumnavigate and fathom infinity. Man was made in God’s image, partly we conceive that he might have some notion of his spiritual Creator, and hence man’s affections afford some key to the awful, inscrutable acts of the Divine Majesty. But these are so far above out of our sight, that it is unspeakable relief, when by the incarnation we find the heart of God beating in a human bosom, and the pulses of infinite affection driving their stream through our own flesh. Yet behind all this is the infinite comj)assion on which the coming of Christ in human nature is founded. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” (1 John 4: 9.) And here it is necessary to lift an obstacle out of the way, which artful enmity sometimes lays down, before the steps of ignorance. Our scheme of salvation by Christ is thus cavilled at l)y Deistical or Socinian unbelief: ‘You make a mediator necessary.

40 god’s geeat love lo us.

as tliougli God were implacable. You make God a tyrant, thirsting for blood, and refusing to be appeased, but by the immolation of his more merciful Son.’ This is a subtle and blasphemous mode of casting opprobium on the Scriptures and the cross; and with superficial thinkers and bigoted scofPers it finds too ready acceptance. The charge, whether it come fi’om ignorance or malice, is purely false, and has its origin in the Father of Lies, who having failed to thwart Christ’s work, now seeks to defame it. ‘We do make a mediator necessary,’ not however because God is implacable, but in order to carry out the benignant intentions of him who seeks how he maybe a “just God,” and yet “a Saviour.” That we represent him as ’ a tyrant thirsting for blood,’ is a calumny which our souls abhor, and which we iiing Ijack to the pit from whose sulphureous smoke it came; for we honor Him who desireth not the death of the sinner, and who waiteth to be gracious. Far from holding that our blessed God ’ thirsteth for blood,’ as these Sadducean slanderers allege; we gather out of the Scriptures every variety of tender comparisim to express the Divine earnestness to wrest the souls of men from imminent destruction. And when, by a profane burlesque, our enemies stigmatize the God whom we adore and love as, ’ refusing to be appeased save by the immolation of his Son,’ we reject the diabolic jeer with filial indignation, and would gladly show them, if enmity could allow them to hear reason, that the tremendous sacrifice of Jesus was the means originated by God himself for the expression and manifestation of a love to man which transcends all creature-conception. Know ye, whose shallow theology would pluck all that is mysterious and all that is sublime from the system of salvation, that God gave his Son, and that in so oivin him, he aftbrds the greatest possible manifestation of his uncaused love, in other connexions, we might show, how other perfections than love, made this sacrifice necessary to the declarative glory of God. The passage before us is far from l)eing the only one, in which this form of the great truth is set forth. The giving or de-Uvering of the Son, is a favorite mode of inspired expression. Those blessed lips had nor long been opened at the niglit-interview with Mcodemus, before they uttered this immortal sentence, since graven on a million hearts: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3: 16.) The gift, according to the Master, is a proof of love. And by a change of figure, in the very next verse: “For God sent not his Son, into the world to condemn the world, but that the world throua’h him mio:ht be saved.” The sendmo: is, in God’s intent, a means to salvation, and so a token of love. God ‘’ sent his Son to be the propitiation.” (1 John 4:10.) “The Father sent his Son, to be the Saviour of the world.” (1 John 4: 14.) “Whom,” says Paul (Kom. 3: 25,) “God set forth to be a propitiation.” And more strougly (2 Cor. 5:21:) “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” And lest opposers should say the sacrificial part was wrested by wicked men out of God’s hands, in the exercise of their wicked freedom against his design; we are taught that the very murderers, guilty in the act, were unconsciously causing the wrath of man to praise God, and working out his decree. For at Pentecost, Peter thus addresses these executioners concerning Jesus: “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” (Acts 2: 23.) In all which places, the words “gave,” “sent.” “set forth,” and “delivered,” go to show that the mediatorial work oririnated in the will and purpose of God, and was the demonstration of his love.

It is not merely a doctrine of Christianity; it is the fundamental doctrine. There is no Gospel without it. It is the very Gospel, or glad-tidings. Every thing else in the Gospel is but an expansion of this, God loves the world of sinners. To preach “Christ and him crucified,” is to preach God’s love. The sinking wretch who believes in Jesus and is saved, believes in God’s love. All the arguments by which we urge sinners to credit God’s willingness to receive them run up into this: (1 John 4:10:) “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” And this therefore is what the convert to God feels that he has attained — belief that God loves him. Before, he had no knowledge of God but as a legal Avenger. Even when nearest to the kingdom, he was resting on some supposed truth short of this, and was all in darkness. Day broke, when he looked up into the clear countenance of God’s love to him. The great efficacy of the cross, indeed, towards God, is in the way of expiation; but its great efficacy towards us is as proof of love. Whatever is wanting, this is always present in true faith... persuasion of God’s love in Christ. And so, whenever we see the things that are freely given us of God, we recognize God’s love as demonstrated by the greatest of gifts.

II. God’s love to us, carrying with it

AND certifying TO THE SOUL, ALT. SUBOR-DINATE BLESSINGS. That is to say, he that SO loved as not to spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, cannot but with god’s gkeat love to us. 45

him also freely give us all tilings. And this necessity of love, this certain out-flowing of streams from the fount, this plenitude of gratuitous kindnesses from the full heart of infinite grace, is made sure to the belief of the soul. Or, separately considered,

1. God’s love carries with it all subordinate BLESSINGS, that is, all other blessings; because all other blessings are subordinated. This comprises all, as God comprises the universe. He who hath God hath all: he who hath God’s love hath the world of Divine favors. The greater includes the less, or rather the whole includes the parts. God’s love can not be conceived as greater, than when he gives his own Son, from his own bosom; gives him to be man, to be humbled, to be put to death, to bear punishment, to be made a curse. If a king were to give to his feeble bride, whom he had plucked with strong hand out of slavery, all his possessions, and a share of all his kingdom, surely she might rely on him for a piece of bread or a draught of water. This is just the argument of grace. God’s great gift necessitates his lesser gifts. God’s own Son is so transcendent a donation — how shall he not with him also freely give lis all things! The reason why some do not enjoy the full force of this Divine logic, is that they stagger about the premises. If they only comprehended the immense value of the original gift; if they could only catch a glimpse of the glory, beauty, loveliness and infinite dearness to the Father of him who is in his bosom; if they did only follow him down from heaven to earth, through his life, agony and bloody sweat, his cross and passion, his burial, resurrection and ascension; if they only stood amazed, as well they might, at this great love wherewith God loved us, while we were yet dead in sins; — why, brethren, they could no more doubt God’s love and willingness to bless, in all things else, than the bride folded in the embrace of affection can suspect the husband who has endowed her with his all, of plotting her ruin. The entire unbroken chain of covenant love hanss on God’s intention, from the first link to the last; from decree to consummation. (v. 30.) “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called ,; and whom he called, them he also justified; and vrliora he justified, them he also glorified.” How natural, how irresistible the conclusion that immediately follows? ‘^ What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” And then our text: a text which embosoms all the Gos23el, in all its principle and all its effects; source and flood; centre and circumference; love and bliss; from God to the creature, for ever and for ever.

Seek no lonoer then Christian brethren, to separate the love of the Son from the love of the Father. They are but dimensions of one and the same amazino: orb. Seek rather, with all saints,

O 7 7

to comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. The reason why we do not expatiate on the subordinate gifts, is that they are innumerable; comprehending all good which can tend to the happiness and perfection of the creature. In the sublime burst which follows our text, even the Pauline diction reels under the load of benefit, while his wide induction draws within its circle, death, life, angels, things 23resent, tilings to come, height, depth, yea, all crea tares; tracing up all to the love of God which is in Christ Jesns our Lord.’* (v. 39.)

2. God’s love to us, certifyiing to the SOUL ALL SUBORDINATE blesshstgs. Here doctrine turns into experience, as the bud becomes a flower. The doctrine was, God’s love in the capital article leads by necessaiy result to his love in every other article: the experience is, I know and feel it to be so; I open my heart to the greater good and to those which are less; I believe and am persuaded, that God is for me, and that none — that nothing can be against me. If this is wanting in any of us, it is because we have not faith. And here, my brethren, I am bound to testify, whomsoever it may startle or offend, that a large number of Christians, even in those which they consider their most profitable moments, go about the work of obtaining peace in their hearts by an inverted process; the very opposite of what is prescribed in the New Testament. When doubts overcloud their confidence, when remaining sin stirs inwardly, when the future looks portentous, when their reli2:ion lias become all trembliiio and tears — what is it they do? Perhaps you know this very sacramental hour. They sit down to the work of exclusively scanning and measuring wretched, imperfect self They turn over the massive books, filled with their own liabilities. They debit themselves with ten thousand items which they can never pay. They hope by this method to find a balance so favorable that they shall be able to rise hoping in God, and therefore to apply to promises made to regenerate persons. I dare boldly pronounce, from God’s word, that genuine evangelical comfort was never produced in this way; never, never, never. This Sinai never yet uttered peace, while it has thundered many a believer into temporary despair. What then is the right way? We need attention, for we are touching the very vital point of difference between old divinity and the new, between the joyful free grace which from the silver trumpets of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox and Cranmer, shook and melted Euroye in a great yortion of its Church — and that substitute of alleged improvement but real retrocession to Popish legalism, wliicli has made the chief pait of many experiences to consist in doubting, and which, if pursued to legitimate results, would speedily land us in a scheme of self-salvation. It ousht to be clear to any reason, that the ground of a sinner’s trust in Christ for salvation must be something independent of, and prior to, any exercises of his own soul; yea something that is the cause of such exercises; and therefore, that when doubts arise, tlm resort to nltimate support, must be to this same pre-existing and Divine ground. And what can this be, but the Divine veracity, assuring us that God loves us! Precisely for this reason is Faith so often dwelt on as the instrument; because faith, as faith, lays hold of God’s veracity; and trust is nothing else but faith in a promise. Here then is our experience of God’s love, when “the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost;” and hei’e the way of direct escape out of Satan’s legal net. Poor pilgrim, hast thou like Bunyan’s mythic Christian been confronted by Moses and left smarting? — ilee to Jesus Christ. All IMartin Luther’s experience was a wrestling agamst the demon of legality. God was preparing him to teach a free gospel with a strength of expression which makes his book on the Galatians, a golden volume. “‘But thou wilt say, (says he, on Gal. V. 5,) *’ I feel not myself to have any righteousness, or at the least, I feel hut very little. Thou must not feel, but believe that thou hast righteousness. And except thou believe that thou art righteous, thou dost great injury unto Christ, who hath cleansed thee by the washing of water throush the Word, who also died upon the cross, condemned sin,

and killed death, that throusfh him thou mio:htest obtain nghteousness and everlasting life.” O how precious to my recollection is St. Mary’s Church Aldermanbury, near which I once lodged, because there it was that Poor Joseph having a large parcel of yarn hanging over his shoulders, went in and heard the text which saved him. 1 Tim. 1: 15. On his dying bed, the happy, simyle soul possessed the certitude of God’s love to him as a sinner. For (you remember) when some of the I’eligious sort asked ‘But what say you of your own heart, Joseph? Is there no token of good about it? no saving change there? Have you closed with Christ, “by acting faith upon him V — ‘Ah no!’ replied he ‘Joseph can act nothing — Joseph has nothing to say of himself but that he is the chief of sinners; yet seeing that it is a faithful saying that Jesus, he who made all things, came into the world to save sinners, why may not Joseph after all be saved?” — We have stood by the dying bed of great and learned Christians, long the guides of others in theology; but their faith was that of Poor Joseph; a divinely-wrought persuasion of God’s love to them, evidenced by the gift of his own Son. The nearest, safest, truest way to Christ, is the direct way. After all your self-examinations, preparations and conditions, you will have to throw them away, and come thus at last. Come now; — and from the opened side behold all blessings issuing in a perpetual, widening, deepening river. What is it that can harm you, if you accept of God’s own Son? Condemnation? ‘• it is God that justifieth.” Death for your sins? ‘’ it is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen again, ayIio is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” Can he condemn or punish? — such is the meaning — he, who died, who rose, who reigns, who intercedes! Look to Him, and away with self and all deservings. And if you fear your own weakness, lest you should fall away, know that security against this also is in the grant. Because it were nugatory and dishonorable to the Sci’iptures, so to interpret 35-39 as if they meant that though ‘^ tribulation, distress, persecution, etc.,” though “angels, principalities, powers,” etc., cannot separate us from Christ, yet that sin can and may! Shockino nullification of the covenant! For how could any or all of these ever separate except by sin! And what a glorjing would that be or appear to be, if all he meant was, “Thank God, I shall never be separated, unless I sin, and so separate myself!” No, dear fellow-believers, ye have not so learned Christ, nor has this been the hoj)e you have derived from his word when you have heard him say: “I give unto them Eternal Life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” 1 J. 10: 28, Feeble would be the reliance, if eventual salvation liuug suspended on the hair of our own will, which might break under Satanic temptations in the last hour! But no! “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,” ‘The Love of God ’ — it is our theme. We have seen it comprehending and certifying all, through the gift of the Son, And hence it is, that you have this morning heard so little of merely temporal benefits, Christ gives these indeed, out of his immeasurable fulness, but gives them only as appendages to the chief good, “God will give grace and glory; no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly,” Have you, the greater gift, my suffering brother or sister? be assured you shall have the less. Whatever is best for your ultimate blessedness and glory, will be dispensed to you, in due manner, measure and time. The god’s gup: at love to us. 55

unreconciled hear this with disgust. A Gos2^el which should offer earthly good, is all the Gospel they desire; and if they sometimes ftiintly sigh for religion, it is in hope of increasing selfish earthly good. But you, who have been taught by the Spirit to consider sin the grand evil, and Christ the all-comprising good, you will rejoice in this gradation of benefits... first my Saviour, then his gifts. For you have learnt to look at the thinos which are not seen, but are eternal. And experience has lona” since convinced you, that you never had so much real enjoyment of worldly things, as when you forgot them entirely, as a distinct object of pursuit; and that you never really knew what happiness in religion was, until you made an entire, unreserved surrender; relinquishing to the world, and to worldly communicants, the race after riches, the contest for place, the miserable rivalry of lineage, dress, equipage, entertainment and expense, the pride of knowledge, art and literature, and girded up your loins to await the Lord’s comins”.