The former clearly has to do with the love of God toward the world, in the gospel to men; that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. He, as God, has shown this openly, and this is the proof and measure of His love to men, whether any one believes or not; but we who have received it can say it was "manifested " toward us. In Rom. 3:22Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. (Romans 3:2)2 The righteousness of God is manifested or openly shown unto all, and upon all who believe. The cross is the clear attestation that God is righteous, as here the gift of His Son is of His love.
In speaking to the world, we would not say "us," but we should dwell upon the same fact that God's love is shown in sending His Son that life might be through Him. And this so far transcends all man's thoughts of love as to dwell in its own solitary magnitude and supremacy; for men are apt, in an ignorant way, to say God is love, and then make it to be manifested in creation or providence, or giving them prosperity, or in His forbearance to punish them, or that He ever will, in this last making His love allow evil and minister to sin. But no; in this is His love shown, giving. His Son. We have known and believed this love, and have taken that gift on its own ground, the utter failure and death of ourselves. We have learned that the first man had not the life that God would have, was not the eternal life, but the second Man was, and we have life in Him.
But now comes another thing: Is this all that He has done, simply given us life? There is more, for this life is in His Son; it is Son-life, a new style of life, altogether its own. See the manner of it! We are sons, children rather, for this is relationship, while son may be a title only. Certain things are true in Him, the Son, and in us. We are the same persons who in chapter 4 are saying, "in this was shown the love of God, in sending His Son;" but now it is not so much the fact of love and its first action, as the depth, the riches, the quality of it. We have been going to school to love, and being instructed in its wondrous reach and compass, though it is boundless, for it is God Himself.
I find a man exercised about not loving God, feeling that he ought to do so in order to get His favor, and I tell him that the love is all on the other side, that God loved us, and gave His Son that we might have life, another life, a life that will love too. Well, he believes, and rejoicing that he has eternal life, exclaims, " Oh, what love!" It is rather delight in the fact of it coming to him, a lost sinner and an enemy, and probably he is no farther in his thought than that God commended His love toward him, in that while he was yet a sinner Christ died for him. But now I tell him what he is, as so loved; that God predestinated him as a child, and that he is a child of God, having the nature of Christ, His own Son, and as He is to God; that he is an heir really of God, to share all the things of Christ forever; that he has been taken into favor in the Beloved, to be forever treated, here and in the glory above, as He is treated, because he really is 'like Him, and one with Him, that his place now is heaven, having been raised and seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; and, in the sense of this that God is not only his Savior-a Savior-God-but his Father, he will exclaim, " What a love!" not simply "what love," meaning the character; for what is done with us as saved is to bring us where we are for all the ages to show out the kind of love God hath bestowed upon us, not only love, but the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus.
In Romans we have first God setting forth Christ, a mercy-seat, by whom we are justified freely through His grace-His love commended towards us; then we have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given unto us, and this makes us very knowing in regard to tribulation and all that meets us while we are waiting for the glory in which we rejoice. And then we joy in God, for we have learned more of Him, and that is higher than knowing that He loved us enough to save us. Indeed, in that fifth chapter there is a very beautiful and natural process of reasoning, on the ground of having been brought into a place of favor wherein we stand, in knowing that we are saved; and the happy soul says, having been saved when I was an enemy, by love, none of these things are against me, none of them are the judgment of God on an enemy, but rather a little tuition for me, the way in which I learn, by His love being shed abroad in the heart; that my heart grasps it in every way and faculty, so that I know tribulation is for rue, and not against me, and works certain results, so that I rejoice in it; and thus the "much more" comes in. Thus the soul reasons, from what it has got hold of; but it does this by the Holy Ghost.
In Gal. 4 we get the son-place instead of the servant's, the son-spirit, the Spirit that was in His Son, instead of the servant's spirit, and the Son's hope as an heir of God, instead of the servant's hope, which is only his wages, if lie earns them; and then we are set down to an altogether new lesson, with the little "allegory," of the two sons of Abraham as our text.
The Galatians wanted to be sons after the pattern of Ishmael, free as to his father, but bond as to his mother. Beginning in the Spirit, they would still hold on to the flesh to be perfected; justified as sinners apart from the law, but under it, as a rule of life, when saved. But no, He says, your sonship is the Isaac sonship, wholly free. And not only this, but the very name declares the character of it. Isaac means " laughter," and the promise of him and his coming filled the house with joy and the heart with laughter. This exceeds all, surely, to be told not only that I am a son, but that my coming in has filled the Father's heart with joy, and filled the house too with music and dancing, which it was necessary that the whole household should take part in. I am to know that I have made God happy. Behold what manner of love this is!
The great matter then, in the " bestowed " love, is that we have found the Father, and we have seen what He has done in the free and untrammeled love of His own heart. And then we have sat down in His presence completely at rest, more than satisfied, as David in 2 Sam. 7. Blessed man! what could he do now? He was surpassed in such an astounding way, in the very thing he had in his heart-to build a house for God. God would build for him And most certainly He was the greater builder. " Is this the manner of man?" What more could David say?
In that fathomless story in Luke 15 we have the Father in the beginning of the account, but no true sonship. We might say there were no sons at all, for the true sonship is on the ground that neither recognized " Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." The younger would have his portion away from the father, and the oldest would have made merry with his friends, also without the father, and both think of the servant place the former returning to take it, the latter making his service the ground on which he should have had his kid But the house for the true sons is built around the feast and the robe and ring and shoes, and the kiss!
Oh, that kiss of the Father! Christ Jesus came.- down to bring that, the welcome to the son's relationship. We do not kiss our servants. A servant will! be where he is called for the time, outside the house, it may be, as the one here who was spoken to by thy older son. He is a servant all the time, out or in, at work or rest, nothing but a servant, and he abideth. not in the house forever. But the son does. I apprehend that the older son is no more a son in character and relationship than the younger, who went afar off, and had to be brought back. The son of 1 John 3 is the brought in one, whose former relationship: brought no higher thought than "make me one of thy hired servants." The older one was there. He, was in the place of Ishmael, the one " cast out" with the bondwoman; the former, who " would not go in.'s But we know the Father. We are sons by calling, and our joy is complete and our liberty limitless. We-are one with His Son-are in Him.
We may well cultivate acquaintance with God's. manners; He has had to suffer ours, our legal, way—ward, fleshly manners. To get into society above us and study and be affected by their manners is culture among men, and we may well study the style of a love that brought out a Father, in all the infinite fullness. of that relationship, in its own free action, and made, us real children, just the ones that He has held in His. counsels and heart from before the foundation of the -world. Holding that purpose and that relationship through all the ages, now, at the end of the ages, to accomplish it, how shall we not let His heart have its own comfort and rest and exultation, and let Him be, in the absolute fruition of His purposes, " the happy God? "
As sinners we behold love in God openly shown in giving His Son; as saints we learn of the affluence of that love in its own depth and character bestowed upon us, for now it can rest on us, while before it was only shown to us.
But let us not get the thought that these various things we learn of it and what it has done indicate any attainment on our part as to the love. We may and do learn more of it from day to day, but we had it all, and all it brings, the moment we believed, just as a person is as rich the moment I put into his hand the deed to an estate as after he has moved upon it and found out and developed its resources. It may have mines of gold, silver, and precious stones, rich coal and iron fields, broad forests of the most valuable trees, and a soil in other points that is fruitful to the utmost degree, and have a mansion and buildings fitted to the amazing profusion of everything; but it was his, all at once, the moment he took the parchment from my hand. So we are only finding out the manner of His love, as we discover more and more the matter of the blessing that He has given us.
I would only add that we are always treated by Him as in the son-place. In the two conditions wherein we might be tempted to doubt our place,-when under discipline, and when we sin-He takes special pains to remind us of it. In Heb. 12, there is chastening; and that I may not be deceived into saying, "If I am His, why all this? " He tells me that it is my Father's hand that uses the rod, and that " He scourges every son whom He receives." In John 2:11And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: (John 2:1), if I sin-the very time when I might say, " Ah, I am not a Christian, after all! " He says I have an Advocate with the Father, not "God." He emphasizes the relationship just where I most need the assurance of it. Who but a father can discipline, or would care for the moral condition of one? Is it not perfect?
And indeed we may say it must be boundless to suit God, to be the revelation of Himself, that which he would set His hand to as peculiarly His, and finish in a way commensurate and becoming. T.