I WAS struck by the following passage from the writings of an honored servant of Christ long since gone to his rest. It touches a point of great importance in the minds of many at the present day when there is, as we know, a growing tendency to minimize the claims of divine righteousness by magnifying (may I say) unduly and out of balance the blessed fact of divine love: ―
“No thoughts of God’s love are to be allowed which would interfere with the demands of His righteousness. The love is without measure, that is true; but it is not a mere emotion. It is that which, at an unutterable cost, provided redemption for the guilty; and if we think of love without believing the provision that it made for the claims and exactions of righteousness, we are dealing with a mere sentiment of our own mind, and not with the revelation of God. And poor are the best conceptions of man’s religion—something different indeed from the moral grandeur and perfections of the gospel of Christ, where God is just while He justifies the sinner, where we learn that He has brought back His banished ones, and received His prodigals, all the while upholding the full glories of His throne of righteousness, and providing in and from Himself an answer to all its demands. The cross of Christ is the secret and center of all this.”
These words―weighty and well balanced-deserve full attention. That God’s love is an emotion, deep and infinite, is gloriously true; but it is not a mere emotion. It is His nature, but along with nature there is character, and there we find holiness as infinite as the love―an abhorrence of sin as absolute as the compassion that finds its delight in blessing the sinner. Love by itself, however deep its volitions, could never justify the sinner. It might long and yearn for his deliverance, but it is powerless so long as the claims of righteousness stand in the way.
Darius, the king, spite of all his love for Daniel, his majesty, his royal power and authority, was unable to deliver him from the lions’ den until the law of the Medes and Persians, which had decreed his being cast into the den, had been fulfilled. That law had to be satisfied first; its claims were paramount. Not till then could the monarch gratify his desires for Daniel.
But once those claims were met, then the barrier was removed, and love and compassion might flow unrestrained.
The illustration is, so far, good. Now, the throne of God has been outraged by sin. Its claims must first be met. What can love do? Is it powerless? Can it only lament the fate of the sinner as Darius lamented that of Daniel?
Far otherwise. The love of God, unable by itself to deliver the sinner, could yet supply the means of deliverance. This it has done. That love was not inactive; it exhibited its resources in the gift of the Deliverer. The cross of Christ is the secret. God loved and gave His Son. That was the provision. Then in the death of the Son of God the claims of the throne were met. Justice was satisfied, and now, in Christ risen, “God is just, and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus.”
Leave out the cross of Christ, His atoning death, and you lose the secret. All must be dark. But that cross makes all plain.
“The Holy One, who knew no sin,
God made Him sin for us;
The Saviour died our souls to win
Upon the shameful cross.”
J. W. S.