Rom 5:8 . How greatly is this utmost love of man surpassed by the love of God. He commends, or rather makes good, presents in its true and unmistakable character (for , cf. Rom 3:5 , 2Co 6:4 ; 2Co 7:11 ; Gal 2:18 ), His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, etc. is an emphatic His: His, not as opposed to Christ’s (as some have strangely taken it), but as opposed to anything that we can point to as love among men: His spontaneous and characteristic love. : they are no longer such, but justified, and it is on this the next step in the argument depends.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Romans

WHAT PROVES GOD’S LOVE

Rom 5:8 .

We have seen in previous sermons on the preceding context that the Apostle has been tracing various lines of sequence, all of which converge upon Christian hope. The last of these pointed to the fact that the love of God, poured into a heart like oil into a lamp, brightened that flame; and having thus mentioned the great Christian revelation of God as love, Paul at once passes to emphasise the historical fact on which the conviction of that love rests, and goes on to say that ‘the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us, for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.’ Then there rises before him the thought of how transcendent and unparalleled a love is that which pours its whole preciousness on unworthy and unresponsive hearts. He thinks to himself-’We are all ungodly; without strength-yet, He died for us. Would any man do that? No! for,’ says he, ‘it will be a hard thing to find any one ready to die for a righteous man-a man rigidly just and upright, and because rigidly just, a trifle hard, and therefore not likely to touch a heart to sacrifice; and even for a good man, in whom austere righteousness has been softened and made attractive, and become graciousness and beneficence, well! it is just within the limits of possibility that somebody might be found even to die for a man that had laid such a strong hand upon his affections. But God commendeth His love in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.’ Now, when Paul says ‘commend,’ he uses a very significant word which is employed in two ways in the New Testament. It sometimes means to establish, or to prove, or to make certain. But ‘prove’ is a cold word, and the expression also means to recommend, to set forth in such a way as to appeal to the heart, and God does both in that great act. He establishes the fact, and He, as it were, sweeps it into a man’s heart, on the bosom of that full tide of self-sacrifice.

So there are two or three points that arise from these words, on which I desire to dwell now-to lay them upon our hearts, and not only upon our understandings. For it is a poor thing to prove the love of God, and we need that not only shall we be sure of it, but that we shall be softened by it. So now let me ask you to look with me, first, at this question-

I. What Paul thought Jesus Christ died for.

‘Died for us.’ Now that expression plainly implies two things: first, that Christ died of His own accord, and being impelled by a great motive, beneficence; and, second, that that voluntary death, somehow or other, is for our behoof and advantage. The word in the original, ‘for,’ does not define in what way that death ministers to our advantage, but it does assert that for those Roman Christians who had never seen Jesus Christ, and by consequence for you and me nineteen centuries off the Cross, there is benefit in the fact of that death. Now, suppose we quote an incident in the story of missionary martyrdom. There was a young lady, whom some of us knew and loved, in a Chinese mission station, who, with the rest of the missionary band, was flying. Her life was safe. She looked back, and saw a Chinese boy that her heart twined round, in danger. She returned to save him; they laid hold of her and flung her into the burning house, and her charred remains have never been found. That was a death for another, but ‘Jesus died for us’ in a deeper sense than that. Take another case. A man sets himself to some great cause, not his own, and he sees that in order to bless humanity, either by the proclamation of some truth, or by the origination of some great movement, or in some other way, if he is to carry out his purpose, he must give his life. He does so, and dies a martyr. What he aimed at could only be done by the sacrifice of his life. The death was a means to his end, and he died for his fellows. That is not the depth of the sense in which Paul meant that Jesus Christ died for us. It was not that He was true to His message, and, like many another martyr, died. There is only one way, as it seems to me, in which any beneficial relation can be established between the Death of Christ and us, and it is that when He died He died for us, because ‘He bare our sins in His own body on the tree.’

Dear brethren, I dare say some of you do not take that view, but I know not how justice can be done to the plain words of Scripture unless this is the point of view from which we look at the Cross of Calvary-that there the Lamb of Sacrifice was bearing, and bearing away, the sins of the whole world. I know that Christian men who unite in the belief that Christ’s death was a sacrifice and an atonement diverge from one another in their interpretations of the way in which that came to be a fact, and I believe, for my part, that the divergent interpretations are like the divergent beams of light that fall upon men who stand round the same great luminary, and that all of them take their origin in, and are part of the manifestation of, the one transcendent fact, which passes all understanding, and gathers into itself all the diverse conceptions of it which are formed by limited minds. He died for us because, in His death, our sins are taken away and we are restored to the divine favour.

I know that Jesus Christ is said to have made far less of that aspect of His work in the Gospels than His disciples have done in the Epistles, and that we are told that, if we go back to Jesus, we shall not find the doctrine which for some of us is the first form in which the Gospel finds its way into the hearts of men. I admit that the fully-developed teaching followed the fact, as was necessarily the case. I do not admit that Jesus Christ ‘spake nothing concerning Himself’ as the sacrifice for the world’s sins. For I hear from His lips-not to dwell upon other sayings which I could quote-I hear from His lips, ‘The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister’-that is only half His purpose-’and to give His life a ransom instead of the many.’ You cannot strike the atoning aspect of His death out of that expression by any fair handling of the words.

And what does the Lord’s Supper mean? Why did Jesus Christ select that one point of His life as the point to be remembered? Why did He institute the double memorial, the body parted from the blood being a sign of a violent death? I know of no explanation that makes that Lord’s Supper an intelligible rite except the explanation which says that He came, to live indeed, and in that life to be a sacrifice, but to make the sacrifice complete by Himself bearing the consequences of transgression, and making atonement for the sins of the world.

Brethren, that is the only aspect of Christ’s death which makes it of any consequence to us. Strip it of that, and what does it matter to me that He died, any more than it matters to me that any philanthropist, any great teacher, any hero or martyr or saint, should have died? As it seems to me, nothing. Christ’s death is surrounded by tenderly pathetic and beautiful accompaniments. As a story it moves the hearts of men, and ‘purges them, by pity and by terror.’ But the death of many a hero of tragedy does all that. And if you want to have the Cross of Christ held upright in its place as the Throne of Christ and the attractive power for the whole world, you must not tamper with that great truth, but say, ‘He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.’

Now, there is a second question that I wish to ask, and that is-

II. How does Christ’s death ‘commend’ God’s love?

That is a strange expression, if you will think about it, that ‘ God commendeth His love towards us in that Christ died.’ If you take the interpretation of Christ’s death of which I have already been speaking, one could have understood the Apostle if he had said, ‘Christ commendeth His love towards us in that Christ died.’ But where is the force of the fact of a man’s death to prove God’s love? Do you not see that underlying that swift sentence of the Apostle there is a presupposition, which he takes for granted? It is so obvious that I do not need to dwell upon it to vindicate his change of persons, viz. that ‘God was in Christ,’ in such fashion as that whatsoever Christ did was the revelation of God. You cannot suppose, at least I cannot see how you can, that there is any force of proof in the words of my text, unless you come up to the full belief, ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’

Suppose some great martyr who dies for his fellows. Well, all honour to him, and the race will come to his tomb for a while, and bring their wreaths and their sorrow. But what bearing has his death upon our knowledge of God’s love towards us? None whatever, or at most a very indirect and shadowy one. We have to dig deeper down than that. ‘God commends His love . . . in that Christ died.’ ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ And we have the right and the obligation to argue back from all that is manifest in the tender Christ to the heart of God, and say, not only, ‘God so loved the world that He’ sent His Son, but to see that the love that was in Christ is the manifestation of the love of God Himself.

So there stands the Cross, the revelation to us, not only of a Brother’s sacrifice, but of a Father’s love; and that because Jesus Christ is the revelation of God as being the ‘eradiation of His glory, and the express image of His person.’ Friends! light does pour out from that Cross, whatever view men take of it. But the omnipotent beam, the all-illuminating radiance, the transforming light, the heat that melts, are all dependent on our looking at it-I do not only say, as Paul looked at it, nor do I even say as Christ looked at it, but as the deep necessities of humanity require that the world should look at it, as the altar whereon is laid the sacrifice for our sins, the very Son of God Himself. To me the great truths of the Incarnation and the Atonement of Jesus Christ are not points in a mere speculative theology; they are the pulsating vital centre of religion. And every man needs them in his own experience.

I was going to have said a word or two here-but it is not necessary-about the need that the love of God should be irrefragably established, by some plain and undeniable and conspicuous fact. I need not dwell upon the ambiguous oracles which-

‘Nature, red in tooth and claw,

With rapine’

gives forth, nor on how the facts of human life, our own sorrows, and the world’s miseries, the tears that swathe the earth, as it rolls on its orbit, like a misty atmosphere, war against the creed that God is love. I need not remind you, either, of how deep, in our own hearts, when the conscience begins to speak its not ambiguous oracles, there does rise the conviction that there is much in us which it is impossible should be the object of God’s love. Nor need I remind you how all these difficulties in believing in a God who is love, based on the contradictory aspects of nature, and the mysteries of providence, and the whisperings of our own consciousness, are proved to have been insuperable by the history of the world, where we find mythologies and religions of all types and gods of every sort, but nowhere in all the pantheon a God who is Love.

Only let me press upon you that that conviction of the love of God, which is found now far beyond the limits of Christian faith, and amongst many of us who, in the name of that conviction itself, reject Christianity, because of its sterner aspects, is historically the child of the evangelical doctrine of the Incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And if it still subsists, as I know it does, especially in this generation, amongst many men who reject what seems to me to be the very kernel of Christianity-subsists like the stream cut off from its source, but still running, that only shows that men hold many convictions the origin of which they do not know. God is love. You will not permanently sustain that belief against the pressure of outward mysteries and inward sorrows, unless you grasp the other conviction that Christ died for our sins. The two are inseparable.

And now lastly-

III. What kind of love does Christ’s death declare to us as existing in God?

A love that is turned away by no sin-that is the thing that strikes the Apostle here, as I have already pointed out. The utmost reach of human affection might be that a man would die for the good-he would scarcely die for the righteous. But God sends His Son, and comes Himself in His Son, and His Son died for the ungodly and the sinner. That death reveals a love which is its own origin and motive. We love because we discern, or fancy we do, something lovable in the object. God loves under the impulse, so to speak, of His own welling-up heart.

And yet it is a love which, though not turned away by any sin, is witnessed by that death to be rigidly righteous. It is no mere flaccid, flabby laxity of a loose-girt affection, no mere foolish indulgence like that whereby earthly parents spoil their children. God’s love is not lazy good-nature, as a great many of us think it to be and so drag it in the mud, but it is rigidly righteous, and therefore Christ died. That Death witnesses that it is a love which shrinks from no sacrifices. This Isaac was not ‘spared.’ God gave up His Son. Love has its very speech in surrender, and God’s love speaks as ours does. It is a love which, turned away by no sin, and yet rigidly righteous and shrinking from no sacrifices, embraces all ages and lands. ‘God commendeth’-not ‘commended.’ The majestic present tense suggests that time and space are nothing to the swift and all-filling rays of that great Light. That love is ‘towards us,’ you and me and all our fellows. The Death is an historical fact, occurring in one short hour. The Cross is an eternal power, raying out light and love over all humanity and through all ages.

God lays siege to all hearts in that great sacrifice. Do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins ‘according to the Scriptures’ ? Do you see there the assurance of a love which will lift you up above all the cross-currents of earthly life, and the mysteries of providence, into the clear ether where the sunshine is unobscured? And above all, do you fling back the reverberating ray from the mirror of your own heart that directs again towards heaven the beam of love which heaven has shot down upon you? ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’ Is it true of us that we love God because He first loved us?

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

commendeth. See Rom 3:5. In this verse the subject of the sentence comes last, and reads “commendeth His own love toward us God”, giving the Figure of speech Hyperbaton (App-6), for emphasis.

toward. Greek. eis. App-104.

in that = because.

sinners. Greek. hamartolos. Compare App-128.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

8.] But (as distinguished from human examples) He (i.e. God. The omission of , which critical principles render necessary, is in keeping with the perfectly general way in which the contrast is put, merely with , not . The subject is supplied from Rom 5:5) gives proof of (establishes (reff.);-not commends) His own love (own, as distinguished from that of men in Rom 5:7) towards us, in that while we were yet (as opposed to in the next verse) sinners (= = [Rom 5:6], and opposed to and , Rom 5:7) Christ died for us.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Rom 5:8. ) commends; a most elegant expression. Persons are usually [commended] recommended to us, who were previously unknown to us or were aliens [strangers]. Comp. He descended into the midst [He stooped down to interpose between us and Himself] () Heb 6:17.-, but) This comparison presupposes that Gods love toward Christ, is as great as Gods love toward Himself. Therefore the Son is equal to God.-, sinners) We were not only not good, but not even righteous.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Rom 5:8

Rom 5:8

But God commendeth his own love towards us,-God goes far beyond all that man would do or conceive and commends his love to us as deeper, stronger, and purer than human hearts can know.

in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.-Jesus Christ died on the cross for man while man was returning evil for good. This showed a love that is so infinitely superior to all human love that they are placed in contrast. We must cultivate the same spirit or feeling that will cause us to help those in need-to support, to lift those who are enemies of God and of us. We are, like God, to bless our enemies, to do good to them that revile and persecute us, and pray for them that despitefully use and abuse us. The same thought is expressed in the following words: Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashioned as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Php 2:5-11). Christ had the mind to humiliate himself, to take the human body and its infirmities, that he might lift man up to save his spiritual and immortal state and to partake of his glory. This was the mind that was in Christ Jesus, this was the kind of love that God possessed. The Holy Spirit came to shed the same love, the same spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice in the heart of man. This is the love of God that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The man who has the Spirit of God in his heart will find pleasure and joy in sacrificing all temporal favors and fleshly blessings to benefit and save man as God through Christ did.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Gods Own Love

But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.Rom 5:8.

1. Why does the Cross of Jesus Christ win our devotion? What is the attraction by which it draws us and holds us to Him? It is because of the supreme expression which it gives to the love of God. While we were yet sinners, provoking only the Divine displeasure, God places beyond all doubt, commends, i.e. proves, the depth and the strength of His love towards us by persevering in His purpose to compass our salvation even to the sacrifice of His dear Son.

2. So love is the starting-point. Faith requires a starting-point from which to pursue its course, a fundamental idea on which to build, an underlying ultimate cause, in which, as in Calvarys rock, to plant the Cross. Deny this to faith, and faith in Jesus Christ and Him crucified becomes a vague and fitful conception, floating about a cross which is rather a figure of speech than a fixed and unalterable reality. The soul hungers to find that starting-point. It cannot take Jesus Christ and Him crucified as an incident, an afterthought, an heroic rescue devised in an emergency. It feels instinctively that the Cross must be the result of some deeper cause. It demands to be led to that deeper cause, that it may make it the starting-point of thought. Such a starting-point is provided in the formula: The Atonement not the cause of Gods Love, but Love the cause of the Atonement.

The Atonement is the expression on earth of a love that filled Gods heart from the beginning. The Atonement is Gods self-giving to save us from the holy wrath under which our sins have brought us. The love of the holy God is the starting-point from which to think ones way up to Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Begin there, with the knowledge that God is love. Be sure that a holy God loves you. Be sure that because He is holy, His wrath, the indignant, sorrowful wrath of holy love, is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Be sure that that tremendous love has expressed itself in sacrificial suffering to save you from that tremendous wrath. Take these thoughts, put them together, and realise two facts: the nature of sin, the Person of Christ. Realize the nature of sin; it is a scorn of the Atonement, a contempt of Gods supreme declaration of love, a delivering over of ones self to wrath, the wrath which is, because God is holy. Realize the Person of Christ. Behold in Him the Holy God whose wrath is revealed against sin, suffering in the flesh for love, to save from that wrath. Realize the Godhead of Christ. Grasp the sense in which Christ declares the Unity of Godhead when He says: I and my Father are one; and realizing the Unity of the Godhead, bow before the Cross as before a throne.1 [Note: C. C. Hall.]

Perhaps we do not yet know what the word to love means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach it. At moments we might believe it to be a recollection, furtive but excessively keen, of the great primitive unity.2 [Note: Maurice Maeterlinck.]

I

Gods own Love

God commends or proves His own love. It is a love which, like all that belongs to that timeless, self-determining Being, has its reason and its roots in Himself alone. We love because we discern the object to be lovable. God loves by the very necessity of His nature. Like some artesian well that needs no pumps or machinery to draw up the sparkling waters to flash in the sunlight, there gushes up from the depths of His own heart the love which pours over every creature that He has made. He loves because He is God.

Like life, love is of many kinds. There is a love that ennobles and casts a radiance upon life. There is a love that drags the lover down into the mouth of hell. There is a love that many waters cannot quench. There is a love that is disguised lust. What kind of love is Gods own love?

1. It is a righteous love. Some of the saddest tragedies in human life spring from the moral weakness of the deepest love. Love is the mother of all tenderness, and tenderness shrinks instinctively from what is stern or rigorous. So love often becomes a minister of ruin. How many a mother, who would have laid down her life for her son, she loved him so, has only helped him down the road to ruin by the immoral weakness of her love. How many a father, to spare the bitter agony of punishing his child, has let his child grow up unchastened. Such love as that is fatal. Sooner or later it tarnishes the thought of fatherhood in the childs eyes. For in his view of fatherhood the child can find no place now for earnest hatred of the wrong, and passionate devotion to the right; and so the image that, full of moral beauty, should have inspired him through all lifes journey, is robbed of its ennobling power by its unrighteous weakness. And if out of the page of history you wipe the atoning death on Calvary, you carry that tragedy of weakness into the very heavens. Blot out the Cross, and I, a child of heaven, can never be uplifted and inspired by the thought of the Divine Fatherhood again. Yes, I have sinned, and know it. I deserve chastisement and death; I know it. And shall my Father never whisper a word of punishment? and never breathe His horror at my fall? And will He love me, and be kind to me right through it all without a word of warning? I tell you, the moment I could believe that, the glory of the Divine Fatherhood is tarnished for me, Gods perfect law of goodness and awful hatred of the wrong are dimmed; and all the impulse and enthusiasm these Divine passions bring sink out of my life for ever. But when I turn to Calvary, and to that awful death, I see a love as righteous as it is wonderful.1 [Note: G. H. Morrison.]

Love grows out of holiness, and holiness in its turn flows out of love, and they cannot exist apart. A father loves; and just in proportion to his love is his pain when the children of his love do wrong; no other pain can be like that pain; no disappointed affection, no separation to distant lands, no loss by death, can cut the soul with the same wound as the wrong-doing of one on whom the heart is set. A father who sees a loved child dishonour all his love, a sister who sees the brother whom she admires disgracing the picture of him that her mind had drawn, the mother who watches with agony the son of her affections cast himself away on profligate pleasures, is thrilled with a part whose bitterness stands quite alone. Such pains as these are the measure of that wrath with which God, our Father, tells us that He regards our sins. But in spite of wrath He is still our Father, and still He draws us by the cords of an infinite love back to Himself again.1 [Note: F. Temple.]

I cannot tell you the delight that I have found in thinking of Gods love to man as a disapproving love. Man confounds love and approbation, or love and interestedness. Thus a man loves those whom he thinks well of, or who are necessary to his happiness. But Gods love acknowledges and demands nothing either amiable or serviceable in its objects. The love of my God is not diminished by His disapprobation of me. There is something remarkable in Christs substitution for Barabbas in a way more especial than for any other individual, that he might be an example of those for whom He died.2 [Note: Letters of Thomas Erskine, i. 153.]

2. It is a self-sacrificing love. It is a love that thought no sacrifice too great. The surest test of love is sacrifice. We measure love as we should measure her twin-brother life, by loss, and not by gain, not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. Look at the mother with her child. She sacrifices ease and sleep, and she would sacrifice life, too, for her little one, she loves her baby so. Think of the patriot and his country. He counts it joy to drain his dearest veins, he loves his land so well. Recall the scholar at his books. Amusements, intercourse, and sleep, he almost spurns them. His love for learning is so deep he hardly counts them loss. Yes, in the willingness to sacrifice all that is dearest lies the measure of noblest love. Turn now to Calvary, turn to the Cross, and by the sight of the crucified Redeemer there, begin to learn the greatness of Gods love.

God is holy. He is without sin. He cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, but He can sympathize with sinners. With all the vicarious passion of undying love, He enters into our experience, shares our woe and sorrow, our despair and remorse; and tastes our sin. Just as one suffers for and with his child in trouble, so does God with His children. Thus we find ourselves in the Godhead. Thus a great love bridges the chasm between Gods holiness and mans guilt. Love spreads its white wings and flies across the abyss. That flight neither tires nor frightens love. Indeed love effaces the chasm.

Recently in New York City a babys life was saved through the transfusion of blood from the body of the father into that of his child. The operation was one of the most remarkable of its kind and has excited the keen interest of many outside the medical profession. Because of the delicate and dangerous character of the operation, it was impossible to use either ansthetics or a connecting tube uniting the body of father and child. When the operation began the child was in a dying condition, and before the operation was finished, to ordinary appearances, it was dead. The fathers arm was opened from the wrist to the elbow and a vein lifted out. An opening was then made in the childs leg and the blood-vessels of parent and offspring stitched together. An attending surgeon said to the father, Does it hurt? With a face livid with pain he said, It hurts like hell, but if I can save the baby, what of it? At last everything was ready for the red tide from the fathers heart to enter the apparently lifeless little body lying across his slashed arm; and the instant the blood rushed into the childs body it revived. What had been practically a dead body was quickened.1 [Note: J. I. Vance, Tendency, 73.]

3. It is a love for sinners. It is here that, wide as the poles, Gods love stands separate from all the love of men. God commendeth his love to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God longs to love me into something lovable. But not for anything lovable in me did He love me first. While I was yet a sinner He loved me. While I hated Him He loved me. While I was fighting against Him, in the rebellious years, He loved me. If we love Him, it is because He first loved us. Such causeless love is wonderful, passing the love of women.2 [Note: G. H. Morrison.]

God is gracious and merciful, as the Scriptures show. He loves even real sinners. Yea, to the blind, hard world, which lieth in the wicked one, He has sent as a Saviour His own Son. I could not have done that, and yet I am a real sinner myself.3 [Note: Luther.]

A prominent Sunday-school worker, who was accustomed, in former years, to visit Sunday-schools, and to address the little ones there, sometimes startled the little folks in the primary department, and even their teachers, by his unlooked-for questions and statements. What kind of children does God love? he would ask. Good children, Good children, would come back the answer from the confident little ones in every part of the room. Doesnt God love any children but good children? the visitor would ask. No, sir, would be the hearty response. Then the visitor would startle or shock the little ones, and sometimes their teacher, by saying plainly and deliberately: I think that God loves bad children very dearly. At this, some of the surprised little ones would draw up their mouths, and perhaps exclaim, Oh! Others would simply stare in bewilderment. Perhaps the teacher would have a look of wonder or regret, and wait for the next disclosure of ignorance or error on the speakers part. Did I say that God loved to have little children bad? was the visitors next question. No, sir, would come back from some of the startled little ones in a tone of relief. No, I didnt say that God loves to have children bad. God loves to have children good. He wants them to be very good,as good as they can be. But when they are bad children God still loves them. God is very loving, and He keeps on loving little ones who dont even love Him at all. That would be a new idea to many of those little ones. And there is nothing that a child is quicker to catch, or gladder to receive, than a bright, new idea at any time. The average child would take in the thought suggested quicker and more willingly than the average teacher. Then the visitor would make the thought plainer to the pupils by an illustration. Does your mother love you? he would ask. Almost every child would promptly answer, Yes, sir, to that question. Were you ever a bad child? was the next home thrust. Yes, sir, would come back faintly from some. Did your mother stop loving you then? Did you have to feel that there was no loving mother to go back to, because you were a bad child? The child heart recoiled from that thought, knowing the mother heart too well to admit it. Then was the time to press the precious truth that God loves bad children more than the lovingest father or the lovingest mother in the world loves a child; that, even when the father and mother forsake a needy child, the Lord will take up that child tenderly. That Sunday-school worker found, in his wide field of observation, how common and how deep-seated is the idea that a childs acceptance with God is rather because of the childs lovableness than because of Gods lovingness. Nor is this fearful error to be found merely, or chiefly, among primary-class pupils and their teachers.1 [Note: H. C. Trumbull, Our Misunderstood Bible, 164.]

A poor ignorant woman had been ill-used by her husband, a worthless wretch. She had had to work hard for a precarious livelihood because he refused to work at all. Life was so hard and dark for her that she night have been excused for hating and scorning the man who had made it so. This was Calvary over again, you see; and this child of God was being crucified. The day came when the husband was sentenced to penal servitude for a crime against society. One day the person who tells the story met this woman helping a broken-down man along the street towards her home. It was the released convict, and he looked the brute he was. Her explanation of her action was, You see, sir, Jim has no one but me now.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]

An English clergyman was once preaching to a congregation of young people. During the discourse he narrated the story of a Russian nobleman who, with his wife and child, was driving through a forest. Soon they became aware by the frantic way in which the horses struggled and strained at the traces, as they sped along at a furious pace, that the animals feared some calamity. As the frightened steeds tore through a ravine and up a high hill, those in the carriage looked back fearfully, and across the white fields of snow on the hill they had left, they saw a black moving mass, and knew that a pack of ferocious wolves was following them. Every nerve was strained to reach the village, still a few miles distant; but the wolves drew nearer and nearer, and at last the coachman cut away the traces and set two of the leaders free, just as the wolves were approaching. The hungry pack turned its attention from the carriage to the unfortunate horses thus set free. They were speedily torn in pieces, and then, with their appetites whetted, the wolves continued their pursuit in full cry after the carriage, now some distance ahead. The coachman again felt the wolves approaching, but he could not sacrifice the two remaining horses. So he nobly volunteered to sacrifice himself, and imploring his master to take his place on the box as the only hope of saving his wife and daughter, the devoted servant descended and stood in the middle of the road, revolver in hand, attempting vainly, as he well knew, to bar the progress of the pack. The carriage dashed into the village. The nobleman sallied forth at once with a crowd of armed villagers in quest of the noble-hearted servant, whose voluntary sacrifice had saved three precious lives; but after beating back the wolves they found, as they had feared, that he had paid the price of his life for his devotion. Now, said the clergyman, pointedly addressing his hearers, was that mans devotion equal to the love of the Lord Jesus Christ? A young girl in the audience, carried away with rapt interest in the story, answered clearly, No, sir. Why not? said the preacher. Because, replied the young girl, that man died for his friends, but the Lord Jesus died for His enemies.1 [Note: L. A. Banks.]

II

We need to have Gods own Love commended to us

1. God commendeth his own lovethat is true and beautiful, but that is not all that the Apostle means. We commend persons and things when we speak of them with praise and confidence. If that were the meaning of the text it would represent the death of Christ as setting forth, in a manner to win our hearts, the greatness, the excellence, the transcendency, of Gods love. But there is more than that in the words. The expression here employed strictly means to set two things side by side, and it has two meanings in the New Testament, both derived from that original signification. It sometimes means to set two persons side by side, in the way of introducing and recommending the one to the other. It sometimes means to set two things side by side, in the way of confirming or proving the one by the other. It is used in the latter sense here. God not merely commends, but proves, His love by Christs death.

But proves is a cold word. It is addressed to the head. Commends is a warmer word. It is addressed to the heart. It is not enough to establish the fact that God loves. Arguments may be wrought in frost as well as in fire. But it is the heart that must be reachedthrough the head, indeed; but it is a small thing to be orthodox believers in a doctrine. Christ must be not only the answer to our doubts, but the Sovereign of our affections. Do we look on the death of Christ as a death for our sin? In the strength of the revelation that it makes of the love of God, do we front the perplexities, the miseries of the world, and the ravelled skeins of Providence with calm, happy faces? Andmost important of alldo we meet that love with an answering love?2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

2. There are some attributes of God that need no proof. Some features of the Divine character are so universally conspicuous as to be self-evidencing. Think, for example, of Gods power. If we believe in God at all we need no argument to convince us of His power. The mighty forces that engirdle us all cry aloud of that. The chambers of the deep, the chariot of the sun, are stamped with it. The devastating march of the winters storm, and, none the less, the timely calling of all the summers beauty out of the bare earththese things, and a thousand other things like these, teach us the power of God. We would not need the Cross if all that had to be proved was the Divine omnipotence. Or take the wisdom of God. Is any argument needed to assure us in general of that? Day unto day uttereth speech of it, and night unto night showeth forth its glory. Our bodies, so fearfully and so wonderfully made; our senses, linking us so strangely to the world without; our thought, so swift, so incomprehensible; and all the constancy of nature, and all the harmony of part with part, and all the obedience of the starry worlds, and all the perfections of the wayside weeds,these things, and a multitude of things like these, speak to the thinking mind of the wisdom of the God with whom we have to do. That wisdom needs no formal proof. It is self-evidencing. We would not need the Cross if all that had to be proved was the wisdom of God.

3. But that God is a God of love has to be proved to men. For

(1) Man does not naturally believe it. As a matter of fact, he is indisposed to believe it, he is disposed to doubt it. The great object of the great enemy of souls is to induce scepticism on this point, and not so much intellectual scepticism, as a practical habit of unbelief in it. Men, as a matter of fact, are disposed to listen to the malignant aspersions of God which are whispered into their ears by the great foe of God and man, and to take an altogether false and misleading view of the Divine character. A certain latent suspicion of God is at the root of human sin: a considerable number of persons do not think of Gods love towards them at all; and some of those who do think of it cannot bring themselves to believe that His love is a personal affection and is directed towards specific objects, that God regards each of us severally, just as though there were not another intelligent creature in the world for Him to regard.

Comparative mythology has taught a great many lessons, and amongst others this, that, apart from the direct or indirect influences of Christianity, there is no creed to be found in which the belief in a God of love, and in the love of God, is unfalteringly proclaimed, to say nothing of being set as the very climax of the whole revelation. If this were the place, one could pass in review mens thoughts about God, and ask you to look at all that assemblage of beings before whom mankind has bowed down. What would you find? Gods cruel, gods careless, gods capricious, gods lustful, gods mighty, gods mysterious, gods pitying (with a contempt mingled with the pity) their sorrows and follies, but in all the pantheons there is not a loving god.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

(2) It is not self-evident in Nature. There are things in nature which make it hard to believe in the love of God. One is the tremendous struggle for existence that is ceaselessly waged among all living things. Man fights with man, and beast with beast; bird fights with bird, and fish with fish. To the seeing eye the world is all a battlefield, and every living creature in it is in arms, and fighting for its life. The watchword of nature is not peace, but war. The calmest summer evening, to him who knows old natures story, is only calm as the battlefield is calm where multitudes lie dead. Under that outward peace, which often, like a mantle, seems to enwrap the world, by night and day, on sea and land, the bloodiest of wars is being waged, creature, merciless and venomous, preying upon creature. For right to live, for room to grow, for food to eat, in grim and fearful silence the awful war goes on.

There may be some rarer spirits who, like Browning, can reason from the presence of power in Nature to the presence of love.

In youth I looked to these very skies,

And probing their immensities,

I found God there, his visible power;

Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense

Of the power, an equal evidence

That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.

For the loving worm within its clod,

Were diviner than a loveless god

Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.2 [Note: J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 25.]

(3) The experiences of life do not prove it. There are the problems of human pain and sorrow and bereavement. Is it not very hard to reconcile these darker shadows with the light of heavenly love? What is the meaning of the suffering that seemed to fall so causelessly on her you loved? Can God be love, and never move a finger to ease your little child when he is screaming day and night in fearful agony? When in the sudden tornado a whole city is swept away; when from your arms your dearest joy is torn away; when those who would not harm a living creature are bowed for years under intolerable pain, and when the wicked and the coarse seem to get all they wish, who has not cried, Can God be love if He permits all this? How can God say He loves me, and yet deal with me as I could never have the heart to deal with one I loved? We have only to look into our own lives and to look round upon the awful sights that fill the world to make the robustest faith in the goodness and love of God stagger, unless it can stay itself against the upright stem of the Cross of Christ. Sentimentalists may talk, but the grim fact of human suffering, of wretched, helpless lives, rises up to say that there is no evidence broad and deep and solid enough, outside Christianity, to make it absolutely certain that God is love.

The things which to-day are our seeming friends, become to-morrow our real foes. The brook which this morning supplies us with the water of life and charms our ear by its babble, may to-morrow become a raging flood, and bring desolation to our fields and ruin to our homes. The sun in whose brightness and warmth we bask to-day, may in a short time scorch our fields, dry up our fountains, and thus become our destroyer. The clouds which spread such delicious coolness over our cities and plains and inspire us with new energy, may suddenly gather and blacken, and by their thunder and lightning lay us low with terror or blast our existence. Who in face of all this shall trust that

God was love indeed

And love Creations final law

Tho Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriekd against his creed?

In all ages men have had the feelings so beautifully expressed by Tennyson:

The Gods are hard to reconcile:

Tis hard to settle order once again.

There is confusion worse than death,

Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,

Long labour unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars

And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

(4) The conscience, when it is awake, protests against such a notion as this, that God is a God of love. For every one who honestly takes stock of himself, and conceives of God in any measure aright, must feel that the fact of sin has come in to disturb all the relations between God and man. And when once a man comes to say, I feel that I am a sinful man, and that God is a righteous God; how can I expect that His love will distil in blessings upon my head? there is only one answerWhile we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Whence has the world her magic power?

Why deem we death a foe?

Recoil from weary lifes best hour,

And covet longer woe?

The cause is ConscienceConscience oft

Her tale of guilt renews:

Her voice is terrible though soft,

And dread of Death ensues.1 [Note: Cowper.]

III

God commends His own Love to us in that, while we were yet Sinners, Christ died for us

1. There are only two ways in which the human mind can get the assurance that love is not merely its own ideal, but in very deed the ultimate law and final goal of the world. The one way is that it should attain to such perfect insight into the course of the worlds history as to convince itself that, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, everything is really working together for good. The other way is that it should be inspired with a confidence in the Creator and Ruler of the world strong enough to enable it to feel sure that all must come right in the end, however dark and dense the clouds may be which now encompass Him and conceal His waysin a word, the way of faith, which sings:

Still will we trust, though earth seem dark and dreary,

And the heart faint beneath His chastening rod;

Though rough and steep our pathway, worn and weary,

Still will we trust in God.

These are the only two ways open to us: the way of exact knowledge and the way of faith.

2. Now there appears to be at first a ready answer to the inquiry, How shall man be taught that God loves him? It will naturally suggest itself to our mind to reply, God has only to reveal Himself to us, He has only to appear in some form that we can apprehend, He has only to speak to us as God in terms that we can understand, leaving us no longer in any degree of uncertainty about His relations with us, but directly asserting this fact in a distinctly supernatural manner, and then we shall be persuaded readily enough of the truth. But here we are first brought face to face with the difficulty that, in order to make such a revelation of Himself, God would first of all have to contravene the fundamental principles of His government on earth. From that time forth we should be walking by sight, no longer by faith; and in ordering things thus He would also, so far as we can judge of the circumstances of the case, be withdrawing from us that splendid purpose, that grand design, in the fulfilment of which the human race is to reach its true destiny and receive its crown.

3. Other possible solutions might be offered. Of all the solutions, however, that might have occurred to us none such as this would ever have suggested itself. Not the boldest among us, not the most daring speculator, would have been presumptuous enough to suggest that God Himself should divest Himself of His Divine glory, should clothe Himself in human form, and give Himself up to take the place of guilty man, and to bear the burden of human sin; that God in His own Person as man, Himself at once human and Divine, should undergo the terrible penalty that sin deserved; that He, weighted with the overwhelming load of human guilt, should hang upon a felons tree, should submit to have His heart crushed and broken by that terrible burden; that He should die in agony, in order that He might demonstrate to all mankind, wherever the story of His passion went, what that so great love of God to man actually is, that love wherewith God loves the world and every man that He has made in it.

i. Christ died for us

1. The first thing, then, to know is that Christ died for us. It is not that He lived and died. It is that He died. We have not got within sight of the secret of Jesus, nor come near tapping the sources of His power, if we confine ourselves to His words and His teaching, or even to the lower acts of His gentle life. We must go to the Cross. It would have been much that He should have spoken with certitude and with sweetness else unparalleled of the love of God. But words, however eloquent, however true, are not enough for the soul to rest its weight upon. We must have deeds, and these are all summed up in Christ died for us.

For ofttimes Love must grieve;

For us content and willing to be sad,

It left the halls wherein they made it glad,

And came to us that grieved it; oft below

It hides its face because it will not show

The stain upon it. Now I feel its clear

Full shining eyes upon me, and I know

Soon I shall meet the kiss without the tear!1 [Note: Dora Greenwell.]

2. It is the death of Christ. 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 how comes it that Paul ventures to say that God proved His love, because Jesus Christ died?

(1) It is the death of the Son of God. Where is the force of the fact of a mans death to prove Gods love? Underlying that swift sentence of the Apostle there is a presupposition, which he takes for granted. God was in Christ, in such fashion that whatsoever Christ did was the revelation of God. There is no force of proof in the words of the text unless we come to the full belief, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

Some great martyr dies for his fellows. Well, all honour to him, and the race will come to his tomb for a while, and bring their wreaths and their sorrow. But what bearing has his death upon our knowledge of Gods love towards us? None whatever, or at most a very indirect and shadowy one. We have to dig deeper down than that. God commends his love in that Christ died. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. And we have the right and the obligation to argue back from all that is manifest in the tender Christ to the heart of God, and say, not only, God so loved the world that he sent His Son, but to see that the love that was in Christ is the manifestation of the love of God Himself.

(2) It is the death of the Son of God for us. That for us implies two things: one the voluntary act of God in Christ in giving Himself up to the death, the other the beneficial effect of that death. It 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.

During the great American civil war the Northern States had to resort to conscription to fill up the ranks thinned by carnage. There was a man drawn for the army who had a wife and children who were wholly dependent upon him; so you may suppose when the lot fell on him to go forth and fight his countrys battles there was great lamentation in his family; his wife was almost broken-hearted, and his children were weeping in sore distress. Shortly after this, however, a young man who had been a friend of his for many years, hearing that he had been drawn, came to see him, and of his own accord offered himself as a substitute. I have made arrangements, said he, about my business, and I am going to the war in your place, to be your substitute. I have neither wife nor child, and if I die I shall leave no helpless friends behind me to struggle on in a weary world without comfort or support. Expostulation was vain, he could not be turned from his purpose, his friend had to yield, and you may imagine the gratitude of wife and children thus suddenly relieved from a terrible danger. Months passed on, months of conflict and carnage, the noblest and best of a great nation were pitted against each other, and the fearful struggle drenched the soil of the dis-United States with the blood of their valiant citizens. It was a terrible time, and over North and South alike there hung a cloud of gloom, and on every heart there lay a dread sense of uncertainty and apprehension. Day by day through all this weary period, as soon as the mails came in, that father, living in his own peaceful home, used to snatch up the newspaper, tear it open, and eagerly run his eye down the list of the wounded and killed; day by day he scanned the fatal column with hope and fear, lest haply he should see there the name of his faithful friend. Months passed on, and the war became more and more terrible, and tragic incidents were multiplied, hundreds and thousands of brave fellows were being hurried into eternity, but still his friend was spared. One day, however, on opening the paper, and glancing as usual over that sad column, the first thing that met his eye was the name of his substitute amongst the slain. He hurried to the field of battle. There, amidst the slaughtered men, he found the body that he sought. Sorrowfully and tenderly, with a brothers love, and with more than a brothers gratitude, he lifted that corpse from the gory plain, and bore it in his own arms off the battlefield, and brought it with him back to his own home, there laid it in his own family tomb, and in that cemetery at this day you will find over the young soldiers grave the simple but touching epitaph, He died for me!1 [Note: Canon Hay Aitken.]

(3) But there is one thing moreit is the death of the Son of God instead of us. Died for usthat expression plainly implies two things: first, that Christ died of His own accord, being impelled by a great motive, love; and second, that that voluntary death, somehow or other, is for our behoof and advantage. The word in the original, for, does not define in what way that death ministers to our advantage. But it does assert that for those Roman Christians who had never seen Jesus Christ, and by consequence for you and me, there is benefit in the fact of that death. Now, suppose we quote an incident in the story of missionary martyrdom. There was a young lady, whom some of us knew and loved, in a Chinese mission station, who, with the rest of the missionary band, was fleeing. Her life was safe. She looked back, and saw a Chinese boy whom her heart twined round, in danger. She returned to save him. They laid hold of her and flung her into the burning house, and her charred remains have never been found. That was a death for another, but Jesus died for us in a deeper sense than that. Take another case. A man sets himself to some great cause, not his own, and he sees that in order to bless humanity, either by the proclamation of some truth, or by the origination of some great movement, or in some other way, if he is to carry out his purpose, he must give his life. He does so, and dies a martyr. What he aimed at could only be done by the sacrifice of his life. The death was a means to his end, and he died for his fellows. That is not the depth of the sense in which Paul meant that Jesus Christ died for us. It was not that He was true to His message, and, like many another martyr, died. There is only one way in which any beneficial relation can be established between the Death of Christ and us, and it is that when He died He died for us, because he bare our sins in his own body on the tree.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

ii. The Commendation

What is the nature of the proof or commendation? What does the death of Christ for us make known to us of Gods own love?

1. The Fact of it. God is jealous for our true happiness. We read it on the Cross. He seeks to save us from pains and penalties which we have justly deserved, and to secure us joys and comforts to which we had no claim; and in order to compass these ends He has made the most stupendous sacrifice that it was possible for Him to make. How can His will be opposed to our happiness when He has used such means to secure it? how can He desire to rob us of anything worth having when He has brought so much within our reach? The old Greek idea of an envious God, who must needs regard with jealous eye any unusual amount of human happinessan idea by no means confined to ancient Greeceis incompatible with, and is contradicted by, the revelation made on the Cross of Calvary.

2. The Depth of it. Not only do we learn the fact of Gods love toward us by considering the ends for which He was content to let the Saviour die, which are rendered explicable only by the existence of such a love, but we are also able to form some conception at least of the intensity of that love. So far as it can be measured, the Cross of Christ is the measure of the love of God. One of the vastest words is that little word so in the third chapter of St. John. Let down the plummet into that word as deep as you can, there is still a depth below it; but if we seek to form some idea of that depth, we are referred to Calvary as Gods answer to our inquiries.

3. The Fulness of it. If, when we were ungodly and unrighteous, helpless subjects and slaves of our sins, God so loved us as, altogether of Himself, for the praise of the glory of His own grace, apart from any merit or answer or anticipation of love on our partnay, while we were yet enemies to Himif then and thus God so loved us as, at such a price and cost, to provide for us so great a salvation; if upon the ground of the salvation thus provided, and our acceptance of it with a faith answering to His grace, He receives us into a state or status of complete filial relationship with Himself and takes no account of anything within us save our need and our will to be saved,if all this is so, can or will He fail us in what remains, the task and attainment of our actual salvation? The distinction is kept up between our salvation in faith and our salvation in fact, and the argument is that if God so gave Christ objectively to our faith He may be trusted to give Him subjectively in our lives. Whether objectively, however, to our faith or subjectively in our lives, Christ is always one and the same thingour own divine holiness, righteousness, life. We do not believe in Him at all if we do not believe in Him as all these, not only for us, but in us.

Like a cradle rocking, rocking,

Silent, peaceful, to and fro,

Like a mothers sweet looks dropping

On the little face below,

Hangs the green earth, swinging, turning

Jarless, noiseless, safe and slow;

Falls the light of Gods face bending

Down, and watching us below.

And as feeble babes that suffer,

Toss and cry, and will not rest,

Are the ones the tender mother

Holds the closest, loves the best;

So when we are weak and wretched,

By our sins weighed down, distressed,

Then it is that Gods great patience

Holds us closest, loves us best.

O great heart of God! whose loving

Cannot hindered be nor crossed;

Will not weary, will not even

In our death itself be lost

Love divine! of such great loving

Only mothers know the cost

Cost of love which, all love passing,

Gave a Son to save the lost.1 [Note: Saxe Holm, in Sunday School Times, xxxv. 20, p. 318.]

4. The Duration of it. The proof is one of perpetual validity. The Bible does not say, God commended; it does not say, God has commended; it uses the perpetual present and says, God commendeth. There are some proofs for the being and attributes of God that serve their purpose and then pass away. There are arguments that appeal to us in childhood, but lose their power in our maturer years. And there are proofs that may convince one generation, and yet be of little value to the next; not a few evidences, such as that from design, which were very helpful to the believers of an older school, are well-nigh worthless to their thinking sons, imbued with the teaching of the present day. But there is one argument that stands unshaken through every age and every generation. It is the triumphant argument of the Cross of Christ. Knowledge may widen, thought may deepen, theories may come and go, yet in the very centre, unshaken and unshakable, stands Calvary, the lasting commendation of the love of God. To all the sorrowing and to all the doubting, to all the bitter and to all the eager, to every youthful heart, noble and generous, to every weary heart, burdened and dark, to-day, and here, as nineteen hundred years ago to all like hearts in Rome, God commendeth his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.2 [Note: G. H. Morrison.]

iii. Something Personal

However clear our views upon this subject, we shall not feel the full force of these considerations until we turn from the race to the individual, from mankind to ourselves in particular, and contemplate each for himself the love of God, as exhibited on the Cross of Christ, as if that love had had no other object. He loved me, and gave Himself for me. It is quite true that Gods love is as wide as the world, for God so loved the world; but it is equally true that it is as narrow as the individual. Wide enough to comprehend all, it is also sufficiently concentrated to apprehend each with its own merciful arrest, laying a strong hand upon our heart, and changing the whole course of our lives with its own mighty power.

Lifeour common lifewith its discipline of experience, will surely teach us how little, comparatively, upon reason, and how largely, comparatively, upon the heart, depend the issues of living. The most precious things we possess, the highest relationships in which we stand to one anotherare they not, one and all of them, bound up with love, which thinks not in the syllogisms of reason, but rather by the tender intuitions of the heart. We do not prove, says Pascal, that we ought to be loved, by arranging in order the reasons for love. The way of the heart is different from that of the mind, which is by statement and proof.

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of a whole world dies

With the setting sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

A German student, who had strayed far into doubt and sin, went one day in a fit of desperate levity to see the aged pastor who had been in years past his spiritual guide. My son, said the saint of God, tell me your sins, that I may show you how to be delivered from them. Immediately the young man began to recite a shameful list of wrongdoings, and again and again, with passionate emphasis for each sin, pronounced the words: But I dont care for that. The other listened patiently the he had done, and then quietly asked him to comply with a simple request. To-night, he said, and every night when you retire to rest, kneel down and say this: O Lord Jesus Christ, Thou hast died upon the Cross for me, that my sins may be forgiven;but I dont care for that, and come back at the end of a week and tell me your sins again. Consent was lightly given, and for three nights the words were said. The fourth saw a penitent, white and trembling, at the old mans door, asking for admission. I cant say it, and I do care, was his faltering confession. The appeal of the Cross had reached his heart.1 [Note: F. B. Macnutt.]

O healing Face, unto all men most kind,

Teach me to find Thee, lest I wander blind,

For as the river seeks the sea, and as its rest the rain,

So seeks my face for Thee, so pleads my prayer the pain

That pleads through Thee:

Behold and see,

Is there a sorrow that has no part in Me?2 [Note: Laurence Housman.]

Gods own Love

Literature

Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Gods Everlasting Yea, 99.

Arnold (T.), Sermons, iv. 182.

Bright (W.), The Law of Faith, 170.

Campbell (R. J.), Thursday Mornings at the City Temple, 174.

Du Bose (W. P.), The Gospel according to Saint Paul, 141.

Finney (C. G.), Sermons on Gospel Themes, 204, 307.

Hall (C. C.), The Gospel of the Divine Sacrifice, 1.

Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, i. 101.

Knox-Little (W. J.), Manchester Sermons, 148.

Maclaren (A.), Triumphant Certainties, 275.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans, 95.

Macnutt (F. B.), The Riches of Christ, 234.

Schleiermacher (F. E.), Selected Sermons, 372.

Simon (D. W.), Twice Born, 94.

Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 278.

Temple (F.), Sermons, i. 264.

Trumbull (H. C.), Our Misunderstood Bible, 164.

Christian World Pulpit, iv. 424 (Beecher); vii. 339 (Hubbard); xv. 280 (Solomon); xxxv. 10 (MHardy); lix. 212 (Morrison).

Homiletic Review, lix. 72 (MLane).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

commendeth: Rom 5:20, Rom 3:5, Joh 15:13, Eph 1:6-8, Eph 2:7, 1Ti 1:16

in that: Isa 53:6, 1Pe 3:18, 1Jo 3:16, 1Jo 4:9, 1Jo 4:10

Reciprocal: Gen 22:2 – Take Gen 22:12 – seeing Jdg 9:17 – adventured his life Son 2:4 – his banner Son 3:10 – the midst Isa 42:16 – and not Eze 16:8 – thy time Zec 9:17 – how great is his goodness Mat 7:11 – how Luk 6:35 – love Luk 7:37 – which Luk 18:13 – a sinner Joh 3:16 – God Rom 5:6 – Christ Rom 8:30 – he justified Rom 8:39 – love 2Co 6:4 – approving 2Co 8:9 – the grace Gal 2:16 – but Eph 2:4 – his Eph 2:5 – dead 2Th 2:16 – which 1Ti 1:15 – that Heb 2:9 – by Heb 9:15 – for 1Pe 4:18 – the sinner

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE DEPTH OF GODS LOVE

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Rom 5:8

It is a remarkable feature in the sorrows of Jesus, that His love maintained such a wonderful equanimity. How very few are the affections which we know of, that have continued the same! How few friendships do any of us carry all along the little journey of life! It is an easy thing to go on, and be kind, when we are happy! Every man can be amiable, when all outward things conspire to bless him. But to feel very exhausted, and to be kind then! To be poor, to be in pain, to be insulted, to be wronged, to feel very miserableand still to maintain an equipoise: to let the stream flow calmly thenthat is the difficulty!

Now here is the marvel of the love of Christ.

I. Its simple endurance of things conspiring to disturb it.He passed through every diversity of irritating circumstanceand yet there is not a moment in which we can discover a want of affection. Not an unkind word; not a vexed look to a single individual; not a frown; never a change upon His countenance. He never reproaches a disciple; He never upbraids anybody. All is instructive and holy. His reproofs draw milder, as He draws nearer and nearer the close of His earthly life. Each anguish only draws out more sweetness. He pursues His path of high love without one single deviation. Affliction is always cheerfully borne. Love is never on the wane. O what a series! death is the climax. And herein God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Is not that exactly the Saviour that you want?

II. Another difficulty which we always find, is a just and proportioning love.Either it is so largely spread out that it wants individuality and warmth, or else it is so concentrated and bound up with a few that it is deficient in breadth and catholicity. We cannot admire too much, in the love of Jesus Christ, the beautiful unionblending the general interest with particular tenderness. The whole world is in His heart. He was carrying the burden of thousands of thousands, and tens of thousands of thousandsthe conversion of the whole earth was in His prayer. He sent His thoughts down from His disciples to their converts, and their converts again from generation to generation, to the end of time. He grasped the universal kindom of God. Nevertheless, His heart was so disengaged for any one who wanted it, as if He lived and bled only for that one. Again I ask you, is it not just what we want?

III. In the midst of the vastnesses of the Saviours universal empire, He could remember such an atom as I am!But the love that I feel so sweet to me, am I sure that will be bestowed upon the one I wish Him to love? Could He go forth to every member of my familyto all I desire to save? Yesto me and all. To all and me. And every principle I am acquainted with justifies me in arguing, if a suffering Saviour did this, what will a glorified one do? On the eve of His agony, He stooped to wash His disciples feet. I feel confident, while the spirit of the Saviour is glorified, the act will be better. He could stoop from the height of His dignity, at any moment, to wash the vilest sinner white.

Illustration

This verse is a direct assertion of the deity of Jesus Christ. For it does not mean the Father commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But that Christ commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, He died for us. The line of the argument absolutely requires this. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, He died for us. It is plain that He Who loves is He Who diesotherwise there is no argument at all, if one loves and another dies. Therefore the God in the first clause is the Christ in the second clause of the sentence; and the passage exactly agrees with another, 1Jn 3:16 : Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us. And we are glad that our minds should thus meet a certain resting-place upon the Godhead of the Crucified One.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

5:8

Rom 5:8. God and Christ went beyond all these conditions and showed their love for us while we were sin-ners–neither righteous nor good–by having Christ to die for our sins.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Rom 5:8. But God commendeth, or, doth establish (comp. chap. Rom 3:5). Probably both meanings are included; the proof is of such a character as to render the love conspicuous, and thus to commend it. The word has an emphatic position in the original. The present tense is used, because the atoning death of Christ is the fact which remains the most striking manifestation of the love of God.

His own love; possibly in contrast with the love of men, but certainly suggesting it was Gods love (of benevolence) which led to the Atonement.

Toward us. To be joined with love, and referring, as does the whole section, to Christians.

While we were yet sinners. So in character, and so before God, who had not yet justified us.

Christ died for us. (Comp. Rom 5:6.) His death was the ground of our justification; Gods love provided this ground, while we were yet sinners.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Observe here, How the scripture distinctly represents the love of God in giving Christ to die for us, as well as Christ’s love in dying for us: God commended his love; declared expressed and made manifest his love to us: Christ’s death is often represented in scripture, as an instance of the great love of the Father towards us; because his wisdom did contrive this way of our redemption; and he has graciously accepted of his Son’s sufferings in our stead. Verily, the giving heaven itself, with all its joys and glory, is not so full and perfect a demonstration of the love of God, as the giving of his Son to die for us; especially if we consider one endearing circumstance of this love of God which he commended towards us; namely, That it warmed the heart of God from all eternity, and was never interrupted in that vast duration.

Our salvation by Christ is the product of God’s eternal counsel, Act 2:23 that is, the fruit of his everlasting love; before the world began, we were in the eyes, yea, in and upon the heart of God.

In a word, well might the apostle say, That God commended his love towards us, forasmuch as, in common esteem, he expressed greater love to us, than to Christ himself: For God, in giving him to die for us, declared to us, that our salvation was more-dear to him, than the life of his own Son. God repented that he made man, but never that he gave his Son to redeem man.

Learn hence, That the death of Christ for sinners, is an evident demonstaration of the love of God the Father, and of the Lord Jesus Christ: God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Vv. 8. The , but, indicates this contrast. What man hardly does for what is most worthy of admiration and love, God has done for that which merited only His indignation and abhorrence. On the verb , see on Rom 3:5; here it is the act whereby God establishes beyond question the reality of His love. The apostle says : His own love, or the love that is peculiar to Him. The expression contrasts God’s manner of loving with ours. God cannot look above Him to devote Himself, as we may, to a being of more worth than Himself. His love turns to that which is beneath Him (Isa 57:15), and takes even the character of sacrifice in behalf of that which is altogether unworthy of Him. , in that, is here the fact by which God has proved His peculiar way of loving.

In the word , sinner, the termination signifies abundance. It was by this term the Jews habitually designated the Gentiles, Gal 2:15. The , yet, implies this idea: that there was not yet in humanity the least progress toward the good which would have been fitted to merit for it such a love; it was yet plunged in evil (Eph 2:1-7).

The words: Christ died for us, in such a context, imply the close relation of essence which unites Christ and God, in the judgment of the apostle. With man sacrificing himself, Paul compares God sacrificing Christ. This parallel has no meaning except as the sacrifice of Christ is to God the sacrifice of Himself. Otherwise the sacrifice of God would be inferior to that of man, whereas it must be infinitely exalted above it.

Finally, it should be observed how Paul places the subject , God, at the end of the principal proposition, to bring it beside the word , sinners, and so brings out the contrast between our defilement and the delicate sensibility of divine holiness.

In Rom 5:6-8 the minor premiss of the syllogism has been explained: God loved us when wicked, loved us as we ourselves do not love what is most excellent. Here properly the major should stand: Now, when one has done the most for his enemies, he does not refuse the least to his friends. But Paul passes directly to the conclusion, introducing into it at the same time the idea of the major. Reuss says, in passing from Rom 5:8-9 : Finally, hope is also founded on a third consideration. The apostle does not compose in so loose a style.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

8. And God commendeth his love toward us because we being yet sinners, Christ died for us. A good man, in the primary sense, is one who never sinned. Hence in this original sense it applies to Christ only. In case of the rich young man who called Him good master, and to whom He responded, Why callest thou me good? for there is none good but one, and that is God, many persons erroneously think that our Savior refused to be called good, referring to this passage as an argument against the possibility of entire sanctification in this life. They utterly misapprehend the whole matter. Our Savior did not refuse to be called good, but simply turned the young mans appellation, calling him good master, into a confession of His divinity: You call me good, and such I am. Now as there is none good but God, do you not see that you have recognized my divinity, calling me God? While in this primary sense no fallen beings are good, yet there is a gracious possibility for us all to be righteous and holy, from the fact that a righteous man is simply a pardoned sinner, and a holy man a purified sinner. The case was an extreme one. If a good man were on the earth, such would be his glory and majesty that some one might die for him, while it is scarcely Probable that any one would die for a righteous man, i. e., a pardoned sinner; but Jesus even died not only for people utterly destitute of any resources or commendation, but even His enemies.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

5:8 But God {h} commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet {i} sinners, Christ died for us.

(h) He commends his love toward us, so that in the midst of our afflictions we may know assuredly that he will be present with us.

(i) While sin reigned in us.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The third term used to describe those for whom Christ died is "sinners" ("wicked"; cf. Rom 3:23), neither righteous nor good. Paul here was contrasting the worth of the life laid down, Jesus Christ’s, and the unworthiness of those who benefit from His sacrifice. Whereas people may look at one another as meriting love because they are righteous or good, God views them as sinners. Nevertheless God loves them. His provision of His own Son as our Savior demonstrated the depth of His love (Joh 3:16).

The preposition in the clause "Christ died for (huper) us" stresses the substitute character of His sacrifice. It also highlights the fact that God in His love for us provided that sacrifice for our welfare.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)