3. Other possible solutions might be offered. Of all the solutions, however, that might have occurred to us none such as this would ever have suggested itself. Not the boldest amon ej- us, not the most daring speculator, would have been presumptuous enough to suggest that God Himself should divest Himself of His Divine glory, should clothe Himself in human form, and give Himself up to take the place of guilty man, and to bear the burden of human sin ; that God in His own Person as man, Himself at once human and Divine, should undergo the terrible penalty that sin deserved; that He, weighted with the over- whelming load of human guilt, should hang upon a felon's tree, should submit to have His heart crushed and broken by that terrible burden ; that He should die in agony, in order that He might demonstrate to all mankind, wherever the story of His passion went, what that so great love of God to man actually is, that love wherewith God loves the world and every man that He has made in it.
3i6 GOD'S OWN LOVE
i. Christ died for us.
1. The first thing, then, to know is that Christ died for us. It is not that He lived and died. It is that He died. We have not got within sight of the secret of Jesus, nor come near tapping the sources of His power, if we confine ourselves to His words and His teaching, or even to the lower acts of His gentle life. We must go to the Cross. It would have been much that He should have spoken with certitude and with sweetness else unparalleled of the love of God. But words, however eloquent, however true, are not enough for the soul to rest its weight upon. We must have deeds, and these are all summed up in " Christ died for us."
For ofttimes Love must grieve; For us content and willing to be sad, It left the halls wherein they made it glad, And came to us that grieved it; oft below It hides its face because it will not show
The stain upon it. Now I feel its clear Full shining eyes upon me, and I know
Soon I shall meet the kiss without the tear ! x
2. It is the death of Christ. God proves His love because Christ died. How so ? God proved His love because Socrates died ? God proved His love because some self-sacrificing doctor went into a hospital and died in curing others ? God proved His love because some man sprang into the sea and rescued a drowning woman at the cost of his own life ? Would such talk hold ? Then how comes it that Paul ventures to say that God proved His love, because Jesus Christ died ?
(1) It is the death of the Son of God. Where is the force of the fact of a man's death to prove God's love ? Underlying that swift sentence of the Apostle there is a presupposition, which he takes for granted. "God was in Christ," in such fashion that whatsoever Christ did was the revelation of God. There is no force of proof in the words of the text unless we come to the full belief, " God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."
T[ Some great martyr dies for his fellows. Well, all honour to him, and the race will come to his tomb for a while, and bring their wreaths and their sorrow. But what bearing has his death
1 Dora Greenwell.
ROMANS v. 8 317
upon our knowledge of God's love towards us ? None whatever, or at most a very indirect and shadowy one. We have to dig deeper down than that. "God commends his love ... in that Christ died." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." And we have the right and the obligation to argue back from all that is manifest in the tender Christ to the heart of God, and say, not only, God so loved the world that he sent His Son, but to see that the love that was in Christ is the manifestation of the love of God Himself.
(2) It is the death of the Son of God for us. That " for us " implies two things : one the voluntary act of God in Christ in giving Himself up to the death, the other the beneficial effect of that death. It was on our behalf, therefore it was the spontaneous outgush of an infinite love. It was for us, in that it brought an infinite benefit. And so it was a token and a manifestation of the love of God such as nothing else could be.
\ During the great American civil war the Northern States had to resort to conscription to fill up the ranks thinned by carnage. There was a man drawn for the army who had a wife and children who were wholly dependent upon him ; so you may suppose when the lot fell on him to go forth and fight his country's battles there was great lamentation in his family ; his wife was almost broken-hearted, and his children were weeping in sore distress. Shortly after this, however, a young man who had been a friend of his for many years, hearing that he had been drawn, came to see him, and of his own accord offered himself as a substitute. " I have made arrangements," said he, " about my business, and I am going to the war in your place, to be your substitute. I have neither wife nor child, and if I die I shall leave no helpless friends behind me to struggle on in a weary world without comfort or support." Expostulation was vain, he could not be turned from his purpose, his friend had to yield, and you may imagine the gratitude of wife and children thus suddenly relieved from a terrible danger. Months passed on, months of conflict and carnage, the noblest and best of a great nation were pitted against each other, and the fearful struggle drenched the soil of the clis- United States with the blood of their valiant citizens. It was a terrible time, and over North and South alike there hung a cloud of gloom, and on every heart there lay a dread sense of uncertainty and apprehension. Day by day through all this weary period, as soon as the mails came in, that father, living in his own peaceful home, used to snatch up the newspaper, tear it open, and eagerly run his eye down the list