3i8 GOD'S OWN LOVE
of the wounded and killed; day by day he scanned the fatal column with hope and fear, lest haply he should see there the name of his faithful friend. Months passed on, and the war became more and more terrible, and tragic incidents were multiplied, hundreds and thousands of brave fellows were being hurried into eternity, but still his friend was spared. One day, however, on opening the paper, and glancing as usual over that sad column, the first thing that met his eye was the name of his substitute amongst the slain. He hurried to the field of battle. There, amidst the slaughtered men, he found the body that he sought. Sorrow- fully and tenderly, with a brother's love, and with more than a brother's gratitude, he lifted that corpse from the gory plain, and bore it in his own arms off the battlefield, and brought it with him back to his own home, there laid it in his own family tomb, and in that cemetery at this day you will find over the young soldier's grave the simple but touching epitaph, " He died for me!"1
(3) But there is one thing more — it is the death of the Son of God instead of us. "Died for us" — that expression plainly implies two things: first, that Christ died of His own accord, being impelled by a great motive, love; and second, that that voluntary death, somehow or other, is for our behoof and advantage. The word in the original, " for," does not define in what way that death ministers to our advantage. But it does assert that for those Eoman Christians who had never seen Jesus Christ, and by consequence for you and me, there is benefit in the fact of that death. Now, suppose we quote an incident in the story of missionary martyrdom. There was a young lady, whom some of us knew and loved, in a Chinese mission station, who, with the rest of the missionary band, was fleeing. Her life was safe. She looked back, and saw a Chinese boy whom her heart twined round, in danger. She returned to save him. They laid hold of her and flung her into the burning house, and her charred remains have never been found. That was a death for another, but " Jesus died for us " in a deeper sense than that. Take another case. A man sets himself to some great cause, not his own, and he sees that in order to bless humanity, either by the proclamation of some truth, or by the origination of some great movement, or in some other way, if he is to carry out his purpose, he must give his
1 Canon Hay Aitken.
ROMANS v. 8 319
life. He does so, and dies a martyr. What he aimed at could only be done by the sacrifice of his life. The death was a means to his end, and he died for his fellows. That is not the depth of the sense in which Paul meant that Jesus Christ died for us. It was not that He was true to His message, and, like many another martyr, died. There is only one way in which any beneficial relation can be established between the Death of Christ and us, and it is that when He died He died for us, because " he bare our sins in his own body on the tree." x
ii. The Commendation.
What is the nature of the proof or commendation ? What does the death of Christ for us make known to us of God's own love?
1. The Fact of it. God is jealous for our true happiness. We read it on the Cross. He seeks to save us from pains and penalties which we have justly deserved, and to secure us joys and comforts to which we had no claim ; and in order to compass these ends He has made the most stupendous sacrifice that it was possible for Him to make. How can His will be opposed to our happiness when He has used such means to secure it ? how can He desire to rob us of anything worth having when He has brought so much within our reach ? The old Greek idea of an envious God, who must needs regard with jealous eye any unusual amount of human happiness — an idea by no means confined to ancient Greece — is incompatible with, and is contradicted by, the revelation made on the Cross of Calvary.
2. The Depth of it. Not only do we learn the fact of God's love toward us by considering the ends for which He was content to let the Saviour die, which are rendered explicable only by the existence of such a love, but we are also able to form some con- ception at least of the intensity of that love. So far as it can be measured, the Cross of Christ is the measure of the love of God. One of the vastest words is that little word "so" in the third chapter of St. John. Let down the plummet into that word as deep as you can, there is still a depth below it ; but if we seek to
1 A. Maclaren.
320 GOD'S OWN LOVE
form some idea of that depth, we are referred to Calvary as God's answer to our inquiries.