I HAVE often heard mothers say to their children, “If you be good, and love God, God will love you; but if you do not love God, and are naughty, God will not love you.” I have heard this said by parents, who, professing to be Christians, should know better. Scripture nowhere tells us, that if we love God, He will love us. Scripture, on the contrary, declares, that God’s love to us is the cause of our love to God. “We love Him,” writes John, “because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:1919We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19).) The declaration of God’s glorious good news to sinners thus reads: “God is love. 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. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:8-108He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9In 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. 10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:8‑10).) How inconceivably beautiful and tender is this! All the work which Jesus wrought on the earth, and “finished” at Calvary, where He shed His blood, was the work of God, and a manifestation of His love to sinners. The love, solicitude, and compassion of Jesus, were the compassion, solicitude, and love of God, towards the ungodly. Each petition presented by Jesus to His Father, while He was on the earth, met with a full response in the bosom of God, who “so loved the world, that He gave His wily begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:16, 1716For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:16‑17).) Jesus appears as the manifester of the Father. Jesus was sent by God, that God might be known in, through, and by Jesus. All that Jesus did and was, as the substitute for sinners, was the fulfillment of the Father’s good pleasure. God was working through the Son. Many turn from God the Father, as though a perpetual frown rested on His face, and seek for rest and repose only in the Son. This is wrong. It is dishonoring to God the Father, subversive to the Christian’s own peace of mind, and a misrepresentation of Christ’s mission in the world: for Jesus came to reveal the Father―to make known the great love of the Father’s heart; Jesus came, not that He might cause God to love us, but as the great proof and pledge that God did love us. God is eternally unchangeable. “God is love.”
The gift of Jesus fully reveals the blessed fact, that “God is love.” The Cross manifests God’s name and nature. There God’s love to the whole world God’s benevolence to the human race―God’s pure, perfect, holy, infinite kindness to sinners, is most clearly manifested. There the infinite hatred of God to sin, and infinite love of God to sinners, are fully exhibited. There God is seen to be a just God, and a merciful Saviour. There sin was punished, and “put away,” that sinners, even “to the uttermost,” might be saved. There God’s “will” is made known. “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” God is now in Jesus made known to us, as possessing a longing and yearning desire to receive each and every man into His favor. The Lamb provided and sent forth by God, has so taken away the sin of the world, that every sinner now coming unto God by Jesus, may receive pardon of sins, and everlasting life. “As I live,” saith the Jehovah-God, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” The “way” of “the wicked” is death; but “the way” of God, Jesus Christ, is “everlasting life.” The will of the Divine heart is to embrace with strong yearning love every returning penitent. God commands sinners everywhere to return to Him, from whom they have wandered. The Cross of Jesus reveals the ability and willingness of God, in consistency with the ends of justice, to save all who return. The “atonement” of Jesus is blessedly sufficient and efficient to save all who will avail themselves of it. The “precious blood of Christ” is sufficient and efficient to wash away guilt of the deepest dye, and to remove corruption of the darkest stain. The redemption price paid down by the Son of God is amply sufficient for all who will use it. This is the glad tidings proclaimed to guilty men as rebels; and the authoritative command of God’s sovereignty summons every rebel, at his peril, to return to his allegiance. The sinner obeys that summons the moment be hearkens to the trumpet’s gospel call, and accepts Jesus as the free gift of God’s melting love. Faith receives and rests upon Jesus alone for salvation as He is “freely” proclaimed in the gospel, and commits the soul, and the soul’s interests for eternity to Him.
Dear reader, do not imagine that you must make yourself good―that you must love God, and then He will love you. “Make yourself good!” Easier far can the leopard change his spots, and the Ethiopian his skin, than the sinner alter himself. “Must you first love God?’ You cannot love God, and your inability to do so is both your guilt and your ruin. You must believe in the love of God toward you, as dis played in the gift of Jesus, before the “enmity” of your heart can be changed. We can never repent of sin until we see sin in the light of God’s love. The great, the grand, the central truth of the gospel is, “God is love,” and the Cross is the fullest revelation of that fact. Then we can see the relation of God’s love to us al sinners: for there we behold “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world;” then we see Jesus so taking away sin, that it does no exclude us from God’s love. The gospel tells us, that sinners as we are, God loves us. That He “so” loves us, that He has given Jesus, His only begotten Son, to die, that “whosoever” believes in Him should never perish, but have eternal life. The gospel says not, that if we believe, then God will love us: it declares that God loves us just as we are. It says not, God will give Jesus to sinners, if they will receive Him; that would be impossible if He were not already given; but it declares that God has given Jesus to die for sinners, and calls upon them to receive God’s gift. All who by faith receive the Lord Jesus, receive all they need in Him. Is Christ Jesus, believers find an atonement for their sins, a righteousness for their justification pardon, and everlasting life.
Here is the sinner’s gospel—the glad tidings suited for the sinner. God loves you, He has given Jesus to die for you, He has given all things in Jesus for you, He is well pleased and satisfied with His Son’s finished work; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. T. W. M.