The Love of Christ.

The love of Christ! Who can set it forth? It is a love that passeth knowledge, and yet we are to know it. Yesterday it was expressed on the cross, to-day it is expressed in glory. Told out in death, it abides in life continuous and unchanging.

Behold its devotedness in what He gave as well as in what He gave up.

Rich in glory, angel and archangel esteeming it an honour to do His bidding, co-equal with the Father, supreme and glorious, He willingly, voluntarily, left all His wealth behind and came a homeless stranger into the world of His own creation, became poor in order to enrich us. Nor did His love stop there. The most valued and precious thing to a man is his life; all that he has he will part with to retain it. But Jesus gave up His life! The Son of God loved and gave Himself! Here is love indeed! Pen fails to describe it, tongue to utter it, mind to conceive it, yet how blessedly true and real it is.

Pause – say to yourself – the SON OF GOD loved me. Me! A worthless being like me. Ah! here is the wonder of it: there was not a single thing in me to draw out His love, and yet He has loved me with a love so devoted that He emptied Himself to enrich me, and died to possess me.

It was this love that so won and captivated Paul’s heart, so completely enthralled him, that, bowed in adoration at His feet, he lived by the faith of the Son of God; his whole soul was bound by the chains of love to a living Saviour, but he never forgot that the living One died for him. He speaks as though there were not another sinner in the world, so absorbed was he with this precious fact.

This personal intimacy we greatly need to cultivate. Let us lay our heads on the bosom of Jesus and say, “ I am the disciple whom Jesus loves.” This is not presumption; it is true humility. Peter thought of his love to Christ, John rested in Christ’s love to him. Our love is not worth speaking of. If we love Him at all, it is because He first loved us.

If you would have your soul enthralled, bowed in adoration at the feet of the Son of God, and overwhelmed with the greatness of this love, turn your thoughts to Calvary, gaze upon that holy Sufferer on the central cross, contemplate the utter desolation of that blessed One as He cried out of the thick darkness, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Linger there, whilst in spirit you travel back to Gethemane, where the dread anticipation of Golgotha caused that bloody sweat of soul agony. Now return to the place of a skull, where the most solemn transaction in time or eternity took place. There God – the thrice holy God – His Son Jesus, when He, the sinless One, having voluntarily taken our guilt, bore the full weight of the judgment due to it.

Linger there till your whole soul is absorbed, overpowered with the immensity of the fact that the SON OF GOD loved and gave HIMSELF for me.

Like a spring tide the love of Christ rose to its full height at the cross, but the height to which it rose will never ebb, it is a tidal wave as full to-day as ever. It is eternal and unchanging; the cross expressed His love in its fullness, and His love abides, for having loved His own which were in the world, He loves with an unchanging love to the end.

We may change, forget Him, turn away, fail to response to His affection, so that He may be compelled to reproach us with having left our first love, but He never leaves His first love, that knows no change, no variation; it is the one affection which is unalterable. It may suffer – and suffer long – but it will be kind; it may have to rebuke its object, but it earnestly remembers him still. It craves the early freshness of reciprocal love and recalls the kindness of youth when in the first blush of salvation we gave Him the full strength of our newborn affection, for in Him there is no variableness; His love is unaffected by our neglect, though deeply feeling that neglect.

The one sure and certain thing upon which our souls can confidently rest is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the same eternal Lover of or sols, who died for us yesterday on the cross, and lives for us to-day in glory. To what shall we compare His love? It is a sun which is always shining, and ocean ever full, a fountain ever springing. Let us bask in the sunshine, delight in its ocean fullness, drink in its living water. It is a mighty river, bearing on its broad bosom our tiny vessels to our eternal home; it is a mine of wealth, richly rewarding the one who seeks its treasures.

Nor is it only in death we learn His love. Jesus who died is alive again. He sits enthroned in glory, seraphim and cherubim, angels and archangel, bowing in homage at His feet, they reverence Him, the Man Christ Jesus, for all the fulness of the God head dwells in Him bodily. They own Him Jehovah’s equal, glorified again with the Father, as before all worlds, and to Him they rightfully accord divine honours.

Have those glories so absorbed Him that He forgets “His own” passing through the sorrows of the world? Ask the disciple who once leaned on His bosom, but is now the companion of transgressors in the rock-girt and wave-tossed isle of Patmos. Is he disconsolate, overwhelmed, unhappy? No! Why? He is solaced by the love of Christ; he can say, “That love has made me a priest to His God and Father, and my glad heart says, 'To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever!' (rev. 1.6). I am still the disciple whom Jesus loves, persecution has not separated me from His love.”

Ask Paul and Silas as they lie stock-bound and with lacerated backs in the inner prison at Philippi, “Does Christ still love you?” They will answer, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” That love enables them to make the prison ring again with His praises.

Perhaps some backslider says, “I have forfeited His love because of unfaithfulness on my part.” Ask Peter if his defection changed Christ's affection. He will answer “No. My failure made me wretched, miserable, unhappy; but He very graciously washed my feet, probed me to the bottom, then restored to me the joy I had lost, and, wonder of wonders! When I could not trust myself, He entrusted me with the dearest object of His heart, the lambs and sheep of His flock. Was ever love like His!”

Nor is this love alone one of pity and compassion to us individually.

Travel back again to Golgotha, behold that holy Sufferer. Why does He die? Why does He not by an act of power deliver Himself? Listen! Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. That redeemed company, whom He has set His love upon, He gave up His life to possess; and you – fellow believer – are part of that church for which He died; one of those for whom He poured our His life's blood.

Why?

Because you are indispensable to His happiness, He has set His heart upon you, and has counted no cost to dear to purchase you.

You are to Him the rose of Sharon; you are part of the pearl of great price for which He sold all that He had. Herein is expressed His love for His bride. Contemplate it, dwell upon it; He loves you with the ardent affection of a bridegroom as well as with the pitying love of a Saviour.

A David, a John Baptist, will be as much indebted to the redeeming work of Christ as a Christian; but never forget that you are loved with a love to which they were strangers. Their part will be to rejoice as friends at the marriage of the Lamb; yours to be the happy bride, the eternal object of a love set forth by the marriage tie. For the church Christ slept the deep sleep of death like Adam, and toiled like Jacob in His twice seven years (lovely picture of Christ's past and present service). He purchased and redeemed her like Boaz, lifted her out of her distance and degradation like the Ethiopian wife of Moses, and will soon seat her on His throne to share His Gentile supremacy and universal monarchy, like the brides of Solomon and Joseph.

She will share the throne of His glory during the millennial day of display, and, better still, will engage His affection during ages unending.

Behold the church descending when the eternal day has commenced, adorned as a bride for her husband, as fully loved as when He cleansed and sanctified her, presented her without spot or blemish, all glorious at first. Loved to the end without an end. What Rebekah was to Isaac the church is to Christ; she will be His comfort and joy, the loved one given Him of the Father for His own satisfaction, His eternal delight in the paradise if God.

No wonder Paul stopped in the middle of the heights and depths of the revelations of the epistle to Ephesus, amazed at the greatness of that wonderful love, and with bowed knees desired that the saints of God might know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

Let us join in that prayer, for which of us can say I have measured the immeasurable, I have plumbed-lined the bottom of that ocean? Rather let us say, “Grant that we may know, day by day, more of that love which will be our eternal delight and unending joy.”

This is a love which stoops in priestly grace and timely help to the necessities of our wilderness journey, and in restoring grace if we have departed from the right path; for Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us and save us through everything – to the very end.

This is a love which has set us nearer to the Father's heart, gives us a more intimate place in the Son's affections than the brightest angel.

This is a love which brought the Son of the Highest into the place of the lowest, that vacated a throne for a cross, travelled from the heights of glory to the depths of Calvary – for you - for me. Was there ever love like this?