God or man to desire. His atonement fully satisfied Divine justice: his righteousness is fully adequate to our necessities: and now that he has again resumed his life, and has all power committed to him in heaven and in earth, he will complete the work he has begun ; and God shall, to all eternity, be glorified in him. In the very prospect of this, when Noah offered up a sacrifice that only shadowed it forth, " God smelled a savour of restu:" and much more, when the Lord Jesus Christ offered up himself the true Sacrifice, was the Father well pleased with it! so true is that declaration of St. Paul, that " Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God of a sweet-smelling savour x."]
We see, then, from hence,
1. How to commend ourselves to the Father's love —
[If " the Father loved his own Son because of his volun- tary services," he will love us also on the same account. Some would be ready to cry out against this, as a legal sentiment : but I affirm that it is truly evangelical. Hear our blessed Lord's assertions to this effect : " He that hath my command- ments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me : and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father ; and I will love him,
and will manifest myself to him If a man will love me,
he will keep my words : and my Father ivill love him ; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with himy." True, God has given us commandments : but it is not as servants, but as sons, that we are to obey them ; delighting to do his will, even as our Saviour himself did. We are " to esteem all his commandments concerning all things to be right ; and to abhor every false way2." It is this readiness, this delight in God's commandments, that constitutes the very summit of evangelical obedience : and in proportion as we abound in it, we hesitate not to say, that God will love us, both in this world and in the world to come. According as with self- denying zeal and diligence we improve our talents for him, he will exalt and magnify us to all eternity a.]
2. What love we owe to the Son of the Father, the
Lord Jesus Christ —
[Did the Father, who could receive no benefit from his Son's work, love him because he laid down his life for us? What, then, should we do, whose happiness, both in time and in
eternity, results from that alone? St. Paul says, " If
any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema MaranathaV And who, amongst us, will hesitate to add his
» Gen. viii. 21. x Eph. v. 2. y John xiv. 21, 23.
z Ps. cxix. 128. a Matt. xxv. 20, 21. h 1 Cor. xvi. 22.