the Third Week after Easter
Click here to join the effort!
Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
THE DIVINE REDEEMER
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Sort, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life. - John 3:16
Christ’s death proves God’s love, because Christ is Divine. How else do you account for that extraordinary shifting of the persons in these words of Paul, " God commendeth His own love to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us "? God proves His love because Christ died? How so? God proved His love because Socrates died? God proved His love because some self-sacrificing doctor went into a hospital, and died in curing others? God proved His love because some man sprang into the sea and rescued a drowning woman, at the cost of his own life? Would such talk hold? Then I want to know how it comes that Paul ventures to say that God proved His love because Jesus Christ died?
Unless we believe that Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of the Father, whom the Father sent, and who willingly came for us men and for our redemption; unless we believe that in Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; unless we believe that, as He Himself said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father "; unless we believe that His death was the act, the consequence, and the revelation of the love of God, who dwelt in Him as in none other of the sons of men, I, for one, venture to think that Paul is talking nonsense, and that his argument is not worth a straw. You must come to the full-toned belief which, as I think, permeates and binds together every page of the New Testament - God so loved the world, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins; that Son who in the beginning was with God, and was God. And then a flood of light is poured on the words of Paul, and we can adoringly bow the head and say " Amen! God hath to my understanding, and to my heart, proved and commended His love, in that Christ died for us! "
The death on the Cross was on our behalf, therefore it was the spontaneous outgush of an infinite love. It was for us, in that it brought an infinite benefit. And so it was a token and a manifestation of the love of God such as nothing else could be.
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
