/ % The phrase which the Apostle employs is remarkable — " love the Father hath given to us." Not the love the Father hath felt, or manifested toward us, but the love He hath given to us. It reminds us of another remarkable passage in the Gospel of this same Apostle. " God so loved the world that he gave — He gave — his only begotten Son." As John began writing this sentence, " Behold what manner of love," it would seem that the lOve gathered shape and form before his mind, embodied itself in i/ihe form of the incarnate Son. It refused to remain an abstract conception, a mere principle. It took shape, it became the
* D. Smith, Man's Need of God, 139.
I JOHN III. I 269
incarnate love, — God's imspeakable gift to man. And so John finished his sentence thus, " the Father liatli given to us." And then there was another thought that would suggest the word "give." There was another way in which the Divine love was embodied before the eye of John. John saw that love embodied in the distinction, the honour, the glory conferred on those that believe in Jesus Christ. He saw the Divine love in the love-gift, the glorious bounty of God towards those who believe in Jesus Christ. And so John declares that the believer's title to power and honour is God's love-gift, the gift of His free love. You cannot go behind that love for an explanation. It is the gift of God's free elective love.^
u 3. The love of God finds its type and shadow in the love of parents for their children. There is no love that we understand so well as a parent's love. It is the first love we know, and every day of our early years gave us fresh and sweet illustrations of it. There is no love so pure, so disinterested, so unselfish. The ^ affections of friendship and wedded life are strong, tender, passionate, and fervent, but in them there is always a more or less selfish joy. We get as much as we give. The parent's love for a little child looks for no return. It is unlimited, uncalculating ^ grace. It is given freely before there can be the least thought or ability to reciprocate it. It is given to helplessness, feebleness, ignorance, incapacity. It is an immense delight in that which has nothing to commend itself. It is an unbounded joy in that which by ordinary reason should evoke only pity. It is a holy sentiment which sets at nought literal fact and common sense. There is no logic in it. It has no apparent cause. It is inexplicable. It is one of the great mysteries of life. We should not believe it possible if we had never seen it ; yet it is everywhere, and it is everywhere a symbol of the Divine, a proof of the Divine. The love of the Almighty for us is wonderful. It is well-nigh incredible. '^ But there it is ! " Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God."
^ I have a formidable book in my library which contains an elaborate treatise on Divine love. It is wonderfully clever. It soars through all the heights of metaphysics, and dives through all the deeps of mysticism ; but though you are pursuing Divine love all the way you seem to lose it more and more in thick clouds of ' J. Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii. 328,
270 THE LOVE THAT CONFERS SONSHIP
words, and at last give it up in despair. It is a wonderful relief then to come upon such words as these (you have not to wear the brain to tatters in comprehending them) : " Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God." God's greatness we cannot grasp, God's wisdom is unsearchable, but God's love is something that any heart can hold and any mind picture. It is higher than the heavens and deeper than all seas, yet it is so homely and so human and so near that to realize it you have but to take some dear child of your own upon your knees, and express in tender kisses what you are to that child and what the child is to you.^
II.
The Design of the Father's Love.
1. God bestows His love in order that He may call us children. The Scriptures seem to run on two lines in their teaching about the Divine Fatherhood. In the Epistles it is always the followers of Christ who are called sons of God — sons and daughters of the Almighty — they only. But in the wider language of the Master the Fatherhood of God is as universal as humanity ; every man, woman, and child received from those sacred lips his title-deed to a Divine sonship ; every human mouth was commissioned to say " Our Father." The larger thought and the narrower thought are equally beautiful and equally true. We are all His children by right; there is something of His image in all. There are possibilities of large Divine growth in all, and there is a place for all in His almighty heart of love. But only they who know it and rejoice in it are children in actuality and possession. Only those to whom it is an inspiration, an incentive to obedience, a source of immeasurable hope, a furnace kindling love, are sons indeed. The rest are children in possibility, but outcasts in fact. They have a great inheritance, but they are ignorant of it or despise it. They walk through life as orphans, though a Father's love is ever stooping at their feet. It is only as we believe it that the wealth and dignity of it become ours. " Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God."