We hear of a judgment of charity when men walk morally, attend to their relative duties, avoid debt, frequent their church or chapel, read the scriptures a little, and say their prayers night and morning. It is counted uncharitable to doubt that they are Christians, still more to be concerned for them as guilty and lost in the sight of God.
How different is the judgment of Christian love as asserted in these verses! “For the love of the Christ constraineth us, having judged thus that one died for all, therefore all were dead; and he died for all, that those that live should no longer live to themselves but to him that died for them and was raised.”
Christian love is not the mere expression of human feeling and superficial circumstances. It is based on the truth of God, and, in order to arrive at this, brings in and applies to the case Christ and His death. There man was proved God's enemy; for He sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. But man would not allow the thought that he was morally dead, dead in offenses and sins, the Jew as truly as the Gentile. The Jew had been warned of it more distinctly and directly than the Gentile (Psa. 32 as in Isa. and in Zech. 12). But for the most it was in vain. “Ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life,” said the blessed Savior grieved at their unbelief. And the Gentile joined the Jew in the worst they could do to One who could and would have given life eternal to all that looked to Him for it. Rarely did they unite; but they did unite to slay the Lord of glory who emptied Himself of the honor proper to His deity, and humbled Himself as man to death, even death of the cross.
Thus He proved His love, as they their hatred, to the uttermost. For only thus could sin be divinely judged, God vindicated, and the sinner cleared. Good and evil met in the cross. Infinite goodness provided the lamb for the sacrifice. Hatred without cause rejected and denied Him who went about doing good, and healing all that were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him. Satan instigated all, but to his own destruction in the issue. The righteous One God made sin for us who had nothing else but sin, and forsook Him that He might never forsake us who believe on Christ and have in Him life that can never die. Wherefore God highly exalted Him and granted Christ a name which is above every name, that in the power of that name every knee should bow of heavenly and earthly and infernal [ones], and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
This will be the glorious purpose of God to be fulfilled in His day, But what is the present result for those who now believe? It is the contrast with all dead, though One, Christ, died for all. Its aim is that they which live should no longer live to themselves but to Him who for them died and was raised. For the God who sent Him in love takes His part in raising Him up and giving Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God. And His joy is not only in glorifying Him who in that death of the cross was glorified even as to sin, no less than in justifying us who otherwise were lost forever. But now we are not only slaves pardoned with a divine salvation, but we live to Him who for us died and was raised.
The true judgment of love is that all were dead. But One died for all. This alone does not meet the desperate case, unless we believe on Him. Then we live in Him, instead of being only dead in Adam and in ourselves too. And as we judge that some live in Him as believers, constrained by His love and having His life, we apprehend our new privilege and bounden duty—to live not to ourselves but to Him whose death and resurrection have brought us into such a new relationship of blessedness.
It is a paltry idea of Christianity to regard it as mere pardon, and perhaps only a partial measure, with the need of a fresh dole from day to day. Nor is it only to receive remission in the fullness of which Heb. 10 speaks, where the worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins. Here in 2 Cor. 5 it is the constraining love of the Christ, and the positive blessing of risen life in Him. And we judge not in the vague hope, miscalled “charity,” about every baptized soul, but in the faith of His death to deliver us from our evil, and of His risen life to live of His good, even to Him whose grace wrought for us when dead in sins, that we might live to Him and not to ourselves.
Any other judgment of charity is a lie and a fraud. All turns on receiving Christ out of God's love and His own, and through His word that it may be of faith, and thus according to grace. For no flesh shall glory but to ruin. Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord. And this knits us to the Savior. We hear His voice, not a stranger's, and follow Him who alone is entitled and alone worthy. He is the way, the truth, and the life.