Did compass me, while I this vale was in:
Yea, snares, and pits, and traps, and nets did lie
My path about, that worthless silly I
Might have been catch'd, entangled, and cast down.
But since I live, let Jesus wear the Crown.
The text is an ascription of praise unto Him whose love is — I. An Unceasing Love — " who loveth us." 11. An Emancipating Love — "who loosed us from our
sins." III. An Enfranchising Love — "who made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father."
I.
The Love that is Ever with Us.
"Unto him that loveth us."
So the true text reads. Some copyist, who was thinking more of grammar than of Christian experience, thought it must be a mistake, and altered it to " loved." Or perhaps St. John himself first wrote " loved " and then bethought him : " Why should I say ' loved ' when He loves us still ? " At any rate, this is the conviction of the Early Church : the Jesus whom they had known not only loved them while He was their Companion on the earth, but loves them still, shares therefore in that further quality of the Godhead of which St. John writes elsewhere : " God is Love," and gives to that quality just what each man requires to find in it — personal direction towards himself. Thus Jesus is the link between the universal God and the individual soul. What without Him would be incred- ible, not only becomes credible, but is actually realized through Him. God loves me : I know it by referring myself to the histori- cal Jesus : and when that is so, He has for me the value of God.
1. Love begins ivith God. — That is where our hopes are born. That is the background in which we find the warrant for all
REVELATION i. 5, 6 5
our confidence and all our faith. God loves us. All effective reasoning concerning human redemption must begin here. God loves ! The beginning is not to be found in us, in our inclinations and gropings and resolvings and prayers. These are essential but secondary. The primary element is the inclination of God. Omnia exeunt in mysterium, says Sir Thomas Browne ; all things issue in mystery. But also all things issue from mystery; by which we mean not the incomprehensible, but the all- comprehending ; not the unintelligible , but the self-sufficing and self-explaining; not the blackness of darkness, but the blaze of truth with excess of light.
We cannot get behind Divine love as a cause. In Deuter- onomy (vi. 7) Israel is told that Jehovah loved His people — because He loved them. The Christian hymn says the same thing. " He hath loved, He hath loved us, we cannot tell why ; He hath loved, He hath loved us because He would love." The Jews were chosen, not because of their numbers, not because of their warlike virtues, not because of their " religious instincts " or amenability to religious teaching, but because God loved them. A Syrian ready to perish was their father, but God made of them a nation to whom all the world has been, and still is, indebted. That does not mean that Divine love is irrational, arbitrary, capricious ; but it does mean that for personal beings love is a primary fact, a source, a fountain, an ultimate explanation, beyond which it is well not to strive to pass — especially the unworthy, the wayward, and the evil ; all they can do is to sing —
Who for me vouchsafed to die. Loves me still — I know not why !
^ The fire which warms the hearthstone is not original ; it is derivative, and refers us back to the sun. The candle with which we search for the lost piece of silver is not original and origin- ating ; it is borrowed flame from the great altar-fires of the sun. Earth's broken lights, a candle here, a lamp there, a fire yonder, all index backwards, and point us to the great originating centre of solar light and heat. The lamps and candles and fires that burn in human life, everything that is bright and genial and aspiring, have reference backward to some creative and beneficent source. " We love, because he first loveth us." " He first loveth ! " That is the primary quantity, and every kindly feeling that warms the
6 REDEEMING LOVE
heart, every pure hope that illumines the mind, were begotten of that most gracious source.^
2. This love never leaves us. — The past tense expresses a blessed truth, but " loveth " includes all — past, present, and future ; it is a timeless word, bringing with it fresh breezes from across the ocean of eternity. It is not a single act that is here indicated, but a state abiding. For this " loveth " is the timeless present of that Divine nature, of which we cannot properly say either that it was or that it will be, but only that it for ever is ; and the outgoings of His love are like the outgoings of that Divine energy of which we cannot properly say that it did or that it will do, but only that it ever does. His love, if one may use such a phrase, is lifted above all tenses, and transcends even the bounds of grammar. He did love. He does dove. He will love. All three forms of speech must be combined in setting forth the ever present, because time- less and eternal, love of the Incarnate Word.