WHAT sort of a love is this love of God? I knew a mother who said one day to her willful daughter, “Go to your bedroom and tell God all about your naughtiness, and don’t come down again until He has forgiven you.” I need not say that she was not a wise mother. After a few minutes’ silence, the little lady, in very pert fashion, returned to the drawing room. “Well,” said the mother, “did you tell God what a naughty girl you have been?” “Yes, I did,” came the reply, “and He said, ‘O, Miss E―, don’t mention it.’” Does the child’s fancy provoke a smile? It saddened me, for behind it, I saw that a false impression had been made upon her mind as to God and His character. To her, as to thousands of people who are grown up, and consider themselves intelligent, God is an indulgent easygoing Being, to whom sin is a minor affair, that nobody should trouble about at all, unless, of course, it becomes a menace to society―then give the sinner short shrift. God’s love in their view is a pallid, palliating, polite sort of thing, as vague and invertebrate as they suppose His justice to be, so that it does not matter whether they please Him or not, He does not care, and if He does it does not matter; it will be all the same in the end.
The love of God is not like that; it is not the love of a weak and indulgent parent; it is a holy love, there is a force and energy and vigor about it that can only be found in God. His love transcends our highest thoughts, it baffles all illustration, but it reaches out to all men, and the meanest and most unintelligent may receive it, and the blessing of it. It is a love that hates sin, and yet has set itself to rescue men from its power and its penalty, and to do this righteously, in the only way in which it can be done, and at its own cost.
God must be against sin, for sin is rebellion, against Himself; it would climb up to His throne, and cast Him from it if it could and crown the devil in His place; it has ruined God’s fair creature man, for it has blinded his eyes to His goodness, and poisoned the very springs of his being; it has carried the multitudes who have died into death and the grave; it has forged the chains that bind souls in everlasting darkness; out of its foul womb have come forth sorrow, and crying, and pain, and death; it is the mother of weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. How could God tolerate sin as though it did not matter? And men are sinners, and willingly so, for all have sinned, and in this there is no difference.
God has come forth in Christ to woo the sinner and win him, and yet He must deal with his sins in uncompromising justice, and so we find that our great text is inseparably bound to the words that precede it, and those words are about THE CROSS OF CHRIST. There would have been no Cross if God had not loved the world, and His love could not have been effective for the world without the Cross.
Let us have, then, the words that precede our text, for they are essential to its meaning: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” A great sacrifice was called for, and it must be holy and of infinite value. A Son of Man must stand up as the Substitute and Representative of men; but He must be sinless. He must be one who did no sin, in whom was no sin, and who knew no sin. He must be holy, harmless and undefiled, or death and inexorable justice would claim Him as they had claimed all others. He must be one over whom death had no rights, and yet able to give His life a ransom for others, and He must be “lifted up,” that upon Him the righteous condemnation of sinners might fall. He must make expiation for sins to deliver men from sin’s penalty, from Satan’s bondage, the fear of death and everlasting perdition; and that God’s eternal justice might remain unchallenged, and His throne retain its inflexible integrity. Where could this Son of Man be found? God has found Him, and given Him for the salvation of men, for the Son of Man who was lifted up at Calvary is God’s only begotten Son.
There never was a more tragic and more poignant story penned than that of David and Absalom. That wayward son of an indulgent father had slain his brother, and fled the country, for he knew well that if his father acted in justice, as a king should act, he must die for his crime, even though in his case there were extenuating circumstances. And David’s heart yearned for his son, and at last he sanctioned his return and kissed him. The father and the king were in conflict in the one person, and the king was beaten; a weak love triumphed over stern justice, and brought disaster on a kingdom. That son was soon in open revolt against the father from whose nerveless hand the scepter had fallen, and nothing would satisfy him but his father’s life, and his father’s throne; rebellion would be king. He failed, as sin must also finally fail in its revolt against God and His throne, but when the news was brought to the aged father that that godless son of his hung dead from the branches of an oak tree in the wood, the sorrow of it broke his heart, and to his chamber over the gate he went, sorely weeping, and saying, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” Ah, yes, now he realized the only way; if he could himself have borne the penalty of his son’s crime! If only he could have done that, but he could not, for he himself was a murderer, his own life was forfeited, and that by his own sentence; he could not have paid the price for his guilty son. But what David could not do for Absalom, God has done for us, and He commends His love to us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And this was the only way in which we could be righteously free from sin’s penalty.
“Inscribed upon the Cross we see
In shining letters, ‘God is love.’”
At that Cross of Christ mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed each other; through the Cross God can be a just God and a Saviour. The Cross of Christ is the measure and the pledge of God’s love, and at the same time it is the revelation of His holiness. God is love and God is light. How great is the splendor of the Cross, the light of it drives out the darkness from every heart that believes. And nothing else can do that.
“O the Cross of Christ is wondrous;
There I learn God’s heart to me,
‘Mid the silent deepening darkness
God is light, I also see.
Holy claims of justice finding
Full expression in the scene.
Light and love alike are telling
What you woes and sufferings mean.”