^ Ideas and ideals do not manifest the love of God to men ^-only what God has done shows that.^
3. If we would know God and love Him, we must find Him in Christ, in that Perfect Man — so strong and yet so gentle, so true, yet so tender — who moves before us in the Gospels. Is it difficult to love Him ? It is not difficult to admire and praise Him. There is hardly a man in Christendom who does not do that. Even those who reject His claim to be one with the Father, even those who hold the Gospel to be but a late and imperfect tradition overlaid with many incredible fables, even those whose keen eyes detect flaws in His character and teaching — even these admit that no man ever lived or spake like Him, that He is beyond all rivalry, the wisest and best of the sons of men. It is easy, then, to admire and praise Christ ; but to love Him is not so easy ; for that takes faith.
\ " God so loved the world " — not merely so much, but in such a fashion — " that " — that what ? Many people would leap at once from the tirst to the last clause of the verse, aud regard eternal life for all and sundry as the only adequate expression of
' Life of Principal Rainy, ii. 137.
ROMANS VIII. sS, 39 147
the universal love of God. Not so does Christ speak. Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and desire for every man He inserts two conditions, one on God's part, one on man's God's love reaches its end, namely, the bestowal of eternal life, by means of a Divine act and a human response. " God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever- lasting life." So all the universal love of God for you and me and for all our brethren is " in Christ Jesus our Lord," and faith in Him unites us to it by bonds which no foe can break, no shock of change can snap, no time can rot, no distance can stretch to breaking.^
4. As we look at the love of God in Christ what do we find to • be its most striking characteristics ?
(1) It was a universal love, including all, even the most u unworthy, in its embrace. It was not arrested by the prejudices
of His time, nor did it even acknowledge their presence. It was not obsequious to the Pharisees, and cold or suspicious to the publicans. None of the numerous parties which were then struggling for ascendancy in Judea established the slightest preference to His regard. None could allege that by His partiality for others He displayed a proportionate indifference to them. Even that deep and almost impassable gulf between Gentile and Jew closed up before Him. In Him love placed itself at the disposal of every man without being deterred even by his sin. Indeed, the greater the sin the more earnestly it strove for a hearing. But its purpose was always the same — to save us from what it knew to be our deadliest foe, and to win us to the cause of holiness and truth. And it never despaired even of the most abandoned, or allowed him to go on to destruction because it was impotent to help him.
(2) Another characteristic of the love of God in Christ is that / it issued in tlie most perfect act of self-sacrifice. It is often said that love sets no limits to itself, and this is true. It is the complete negation of selfishness. When it works it imposes no restraints upon its efforts, for their cessation would mean its own cessation also. When it forgives it forgives till seventy times seven, and then starts a^'resh. When it suffers there is no point at which it stops and refuses to go further, for that would be to acknowledge
1 A. Maclaren.
148 AN INSEPARABLE LOVE
its own exhaustion. Now, in Christ Jesus we see this love as it never had been seen on earth before. In Him it shrank from no labour or humiliation. It carried Him from the cradle to the cross without ever pausing or hesitating on the way. He left nothing undone which might accomplish its purpose, and when the supreme act of obedience was demanded He did not shrink. " The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ? " Among His last words was a prayer for His murderers : " Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." So "he loved us and gave himself for us." " God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
(3) Another characteristic of the love of God in Christ is that it invests us with all it has. It not only spares nothing in effect- ing our salvation from sin, but it enriches us with its whole possession. It is too frequently conceived as having exhausted itself in the great act of atonement, so that no surplus survives for further use, or as though it had then completed its work and remains henceforth in a state of quiescence. But Christ gave Himself for us that He might be able to give Himself to us — always the last ambition of love, short of which it never rests. Hence He prayed for His disciples : that the love wherewith His Father loved Him might be in them, and He in them. And St. Paul prays that our knowledge of the love of Christ may lead to our being " filled with all the fulness of God."