THE FAITHFUL LOVE OF THE CHRIST
Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us. - 1 John 3:16
The love of Jesus Christ is a love which is faithful to the obligations of its own past. Having loved, He loves. Because He had been a certain thing, therefore He is and He shall be that same. That is an argument that implies Divinity. About nothing human can we say. Because it has been, therefore it shall be. Alas! about much that is human we have to say the converse, Because it has been, therefore it will cease to be. And though, blessed be God! they are few and they are poor who have had no experience in their lives of human hearts whose love in the past has been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot with the same absolute confidence say about one another, even about the dearest, "Having loved, he loves." But we can about this Christ. There is no exhaustion in that great stream that pours out from His heart; no diminution in its flow.
The terror, the agony, the shame, the mysterious burden of a world’s sins were to be laid upon Him. All these elements are submerged, as it were, and become less conspicuous than the one thought of leaving behind all the limitations and the humiliations and the compelled association with evil which, like a burning brand laid upon a tender skin, was an hourly and momentary agony to Him, and soaring above them all, unto His own calm home, His habitation from eternity with the Father, as He had been before the world was. How strange this blending of shrinking and of eagerness, of sorrow and of joy, of human trembling consciousness of impending death and of triumphant consciousness of the approach of the hour when the Son of man, even in His bitterest agony and deepest humiliation, should, paradoxically, be glorified, and should leave the world to go unto the Father!
They tell us that the central light of our system, that great sun itself, pouring out its rays exhausts its warmth; and were it not continually replenished must gradually, and even though continually replenished, will one day cease to flame, and be a dead, cold mass of ashes. But this central Light, this heart of Christ, which is the Sun of the World, shall endure like the sun; and after the sun is cold, His love shall last for ever. He pours it out, and there is none the less to give. There is no bankruptcy in His expenditure, no exhaustion in His effort, no diminution in His stores. "Thy mercy endureth for ever"; "Thou hast loved, therefore Thou wilt love," is a syllogism for time and for eternity on which we may build and rest secure.