Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins
Herein is love
I.
The infinite spring of love. Our text has two words upon which I would place an emphasis “not” and “but.” The first is “not.” “Herein is love, not”--“not that we loved God.” Very naturally many conclude that this means “not that we loved God first.” That is not exactly the truth taught here, but still it is a weighty truth, and is mentioned in 1Jn_4:19 in express words--“We love Him because He first loved us.” We inscribe a negative in black capital letters upon the idea that man’s love can ever be prior to the love of God. That is quite out of the question. “Not that we loved God.” Take a second sense--that is, not that any man did love God at all by nature, whether first or second. The unregenerate heart is, as to love, a broken cistern which can hold no water. We come nearer to John’s meaning when we look at this negative as applying to those who do love God. “Not that we loved God” that is, that our love to God, even when it does exist, and even when it influences our lives, is not worthy to be mentioned as a fountain of supply for love. What poor love ours is at its very best when compared with the love wherewith God loves us! Let me use another figure. If we had to enlighten the world, a child might point us to a bright mirror reflecting the sun, and he might cry, “Herein is light!” You and I would say, “Poor child, that is but borrowed brightness; the light is not there, but yonder, in the sun: the love of saints is nothing more than the reflection of the love of God.” We have love, but God is love. Let us contrast our love to God with His love to us. We do love God, and we may well do so, since He is infinitely lovable. When the mind is once enlightened it sees everything that is lovable about God. He is so good, so gracious, so perfect that He commands our admiring affection. In us there is by nature nothing to attract the affection of a holy God, but quite the reverse; and yet He loved us. Herein, indeed, is love! When we love God it is an honour to us; it exalts a man to be allowed to love a Being so glorious. He that loves God does in the most effectual manner love himself. We are filled with riches when we abound in love to God; it is our wealth, our health, our might, and our delight. It is our duty to love God; we are bound to do it. As His creatures we ought to love our Creator; as preserved by His care we are under obligation to love Him for His goodness: we owe Him so much that our utmost love is a mere acknowledgment of our debt. But God loved us to whom He owed nothing at all; for whatever might have been the claims of a creature upon his Creator, we had forfeited them all by our rebellion. Let us turn to the “but.” “But that He loved us.” I should like you to meditate on each one of these words--“He loved us.” Three words, but what weight of meaning! “He,” who is infinitely holy and cannot endure iniquity--“He loved us”; “He,” whose glory is the astonishment of the greatest of intelligent beings--“He loved us.” Now ring that second silver bell: “He loved us.” He saw our race ruined in the fall, and He could not bear that man should be destroyed. He saw that sin had brought men into wretchedness and misery, and would destroy them forever; and He would not have it so. He loved them with the love of pity, with the love of sweet and strong benevolence. Would a man want any other heaven than to know for certain that he enjoyed the love of God? Note the third word. “He loved us”--“us”--the most insignificant of beings. Observe that the previous verse speaks of us as being dead in sin. He was wroth with us as a Judge, but yet He loved us: He was determined to punish, and yet resolved to save.
II. The marvellous outflow of that love. Consider every word: “He sent His Son.” God “sent.” Love caused that mission. Oh, the wonder of this, that God should not wait till rebellious men had sent to His throne for terms of reconciliation, but should commence negotiations himself! Moreover, God sent such a One: He “sent His Son.” Yes, “He spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all.” He knew what would come of that sending of Him, and yet He sent Him. Note further, not only the grandeur of the Ambassador, but the tenderness of the relationship existing between Him and the offended God. “He sent His Son”‘ The previous verse says, “His only-begotten Son.” Christ’s death was in fact God in human form suffering for human sin; God incarnate bleeding because of our transgressions. Are we not now carried away with the streams of love? Go a step further. “God sent His Son to be a propitiation,” that is, to be not only a reconciler, but the reconciliation. His sacrifice of Himself was the atonement through which mercy is rendered possible in consistency with justice.
III. The consequent outflow of love from us. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” Our love then to one another is simply God’s love to us, flowing into us, and flowing out again. If you and I desire to love our fellow Christians and to love the fallen race of man, we must be joined on to the aqueduct which conducts love from this eternal source, or else we shall soon fail in love. Observe, then, that as the love of God is the source of all true love in us, so a sense of that love stimulates us. Whenever you feel that you love God you overflow with love to all God’s people; I am sure you do. Your love will respect the same persons as God’s love does, and for the same reasons. God loves men; so will you; God loves them when there is no good in them, and you will love them in the same way. Our love ought to follow the love of God in one point, namely, in always seeking to produce reconciliation. It was to this end that God sent His Son. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The perfect love
God is love. But if we say that, do we not say that God is good with a fresh form of goodness, which is not justice, nor truthfulness, nor purity, bounty, nor mercy, though without them it cannot exist? And is not that fresh goodness, which we have not defined yet, the very kind of goodness which we prize most in human beings? And what is that? What--save self-sacrifice? For what is the love worth which does not show itself in action; and more, which does not show itself in passion, in the true sense of that word, namely, in suffering? On the Cross of Calvary, God the Father showed His own character and the character of His co equal and co-eternal Son, and of the Spirit which proceeds from both. For there He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. The comfortable prosperous man shrinks from the thought of Christ on His Cross. It tells him that better men than he have had to suffer; that the Son of God Himself had to suffer. And he does not like suffering; he prefers comfort. The lazy, selfish man shrinks from the sight of Christ on His Cross; for it rebukes his laziness and selfishness. Christ’s Cross says to him--Thou art ignoble and base, as long as thou art lazy and selfish. Rise up, do something, dare something, suffer something, if need be, for the sake of thy fellow creatures. He turns from it and says in his heart--Oh! Christ’s Cross is a painful subject, and Passion week and Good Friday a painful time. I will think of something more peaceful, more agreeable than sorrow, and shame, and agony, and death. Yes, so a man says too often, as long as the fine weather lasts, and all is smooth and bright. But when the tempest comes; when poverty comes, affliction, shame, sickness, bereavement, and still more, when persecution comes on a man; then, then indeed Passion week begins to mean something to a man; and just because it is the saddest of all times, it looks to him the brightest of all times. For in his misery and confusion he looks up to heaven and asks, Is there anyone in heaven who understands all this? Then does the Cross of Christ bring a message to that man such as no other thing or being on earth can bring. For it says to him--God does understand thee utterly. For Christ understands thee. Christ feels for thee. Christ feels with thee. Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee. Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through. Passion week tells us, I believe, what is the law according to which the whole world of man and of things, yea, the whole universe, sun, moon, and stars, is made: and theft is, the law of self-sacrifice; that nothing lives merely for itself; that each thing is ordained by God to help the things around it, even at its own expense. On this day Christ said--ay, and His Cross says still, and will say to all eternity--Wouldest thou be good? Wouldest thou be like God? Then work, and dare, and, if need be, suffer, for thy fellow men. (C. Kingsley, M. A.)
The love of God
I. John would have us magnify the love of God by the demerit of its objects. God had thoughts of love towards us before man had existence. “We rejoice in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie hath given us before the world began.” Then view man as created. “God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions.” Sin soon entered our “world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” The apostle, speaking of the heathen nations, says, “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful,” etc. So when God looked down upon the children of men, to see if there were any that sought after God, He says, “They are all gone out of the way, there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Do you ask, “Were not the Jews an exception here? for to them were committed the oracles of God.” God planted them in His vineyard, and fenced it in, and gave it every kind of culture, so that He said, “What more could have been done than I have done to My vineyard?” Yet what was His testimony? “When I looked that it should bring forth grapes, wherefore brought it forth wild grapes?” We pass from the prediction, and read the history of the transgression. “He was in the world, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” What must have been the condition of man, not to love the perfection of holiness, the source of excellence, the fountain of life, the supreme good? What must have been the perversity of his mind which should induce Him to regard God as an invader, and to say, “Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways”? Now the carnal mind is enmity against God; there is no neutrality here. “He that is not with Me,” says the Saviour, “is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me, scattereth abroad.” We are alienated in our minds by wicked works.
II. The exclusiveness of the exercise. (W. Jay, M. A.)
The love of God, and the response due to it
I. In referring to the love of God, as exhibited by the apostle, there are a variety of aspects offered to our notice.
1. There is the fact that the free, unbought love of God, is the source of human redemption.
2. The matchlessness of the Divine love, as demonstrated in the mode of its expression.
3. The signal issues of the Divine love, as it achieved a propitiation for sin.
4. A propitiation has been made.
II. The response which is due on the part of man to these matchless displays of the Divine love.
1. It is by faith that we embrace the propitiation of the gospel.
2. The costly character of the propitiation of God bespeaks a corresponding dedication to its benefits.
3. Infinite love bespeaks fervent response from us. (A. Forman.)
The great benefit received by the Incarnation
I. From the excellency of the fountain and original, from which it springs that is the love of God to us.
1. The instance: “Herein is love.” A speech it is of great emphasis, spoken by the apostle with great strength of affection; and it carrieth with it a three-fold intimation.
(1) It is a specification of that affection, or rather attribute, in God, which most of all shone in this great work of Christ’s Incarnation. It was His love that employed His wisdom, His power, His righteousness; set them on working for our good and benefit.
(2) It shows the real proof and manifestation of His love. It was love testified in the reality of love. It intimates not only an act of love, but an effect of love, a fruit of love. It was not a well wishing love only, but a love that breaks forth into action and evidence.
(3) It carries with it the most clear and full demonstration of love to us. Other fruits of love He hath vouchsafed us, and we enjoy them daily; but none so evident proofs of His love as the sending of His Son to us.
2. The illustration of the greatness and excellency of this love. “Not that we loved Him, but that He loved us.”
(1) We may resolve these words into a preventing sense. We began not with Him in this league of love, but He began with us. That is one excellency of His love; it was a forward, antecedent, preventing love.
(2) We may resolve it into a negative sense. We loved not Him, and yet He loved us. That is another excellency of His love; it was a free, undeserved love, no way due to us.
(3) We may resolve it into a comparative sense. Had we loved Him, or do we love Him? Yet that is nothing in comparison of His love to us. “Herein is love, not that we loved Him”: no great matter in that. Our love to Him--it is not worth the naming.
II. The excellency of the benefit which flows from the fountain--that is the sending of Christ to accomplish our salvation. And here are three great and gracious fruits of love.
1. That He would send to us.
(1) This act of sending to us argues much love. It had been much for Him to admit of our sending addresses to Him. Consider upon what terms we stood with God, and we will confess it.
(a) The inferior should send and seek to the superior.
(b) The party offending to the party offended.
(c) The weaker should send to the stronger.
(d) They that need reconciliation should seek to him that needs it not.
(2) God sent Him to us wittingly and willingly. Our Saviour came not of Himself only, but the Father sent Him. It was a full mission and commission. He sent Him; yea, more than so, He sent Him and authorised Him (Joh_6:27).
(3) He sent Him--
(a) Not as a Messenger only but as a Gift also; that is the best kind of sending. He so sent Him as that He gave Him to us.
(b) He was a gift not only promised but actually bestowed and exhibited to us. We enjoy Him, whom the prophets promised, the patriarchs expected.
2. Here is an higher expression of His love in that He sent His Son to us.
(1) Take notice of the dignity of Him that was sent (Php_2:6-7).
(2) For so great a God to send any, though never so mean, to such wretches as we were, had been a favour more than we could expect; but to send His only Son, His beloved Son, is a testimony of love beyond all comprehension.
3. The purpose and end of sending Him--that is, “to be the propitiation for our sins.”
(1) It was for sins.
(a) It had been much for just and good men and for their benefit.
(b) To mediate for those that have offended another is a kindness and office of love that may be found amongst men; but God is the Person wronged, our sins are all against Him, His law was broken, His will disobeyed, His name dishonoured. Yet see His love--He sends to propitiate and expiate our sins against Himself.
(c) To send to rebels in arms and to offer them pardon, hath been found amongst men; but for rebels subdued and under the power of their sovereign, nay, shut up--we lay all at His mercy--and then He sends unto us His propitiation.
(2) It was for the propitiating of our sins. That was the great work for which He came (Isa_27:9). That was His errand on which He came. This He published and made known to the world.
(a) To propitiate is to appease God’s wrath and displeasure, justly taken against us, and to reduce us into grace and favour again. He loved us in our deformity, that He might put upon us a spiritual beauty. He loved us when we displeased Him, that He might work in us that which pleaseth Him.
(b) He did it by the means of making a full satisfaction to the justice of God for us. He hath done away our sins, not by a free dispensation, but by a full and just compensation.
(c) What is the matter of our propitiation--the price of our ransom? That is the highest improvement of love. He is our propitiation: not only our propitiator, but our propitiation. He is not only our Saviour, but He is become our salvation--as David speaks. He is not only our Redeemer, but our ransom (1Ti_2:6; Isa_53:10; Rom_3:25; Lev_17:11). He was not only the Priest, but the Sacrifice also. He not only acted for us, but suffered for us (Gal_2:20; Gal_3:13).
III. What effect should this love of God work in us?
1. It should teach us to fasten our admiration on this great love of God, to work ourselves to an holy wonderment, that God should bestow such love upon us.
2. This great love of God to us calls for another effect: that is an holy retribution of love to Him again. Provoke thyself, inflame thine heart with the love of Him who hath so loved thee.
3. This love of God requires in us an holy imitation. In particular, imitate this love of God in all the characters of love expressed in my text.
(1) The reality of thy love. Show thy love by the fruits of love, as St. John speaks (1Jn_3:18).
(2) We must imitate this love of God in the preventions of love, in showing of love, going one before another.
(3) We must imitate this love of God in the condescensions of His love to our inferiors, to our enemies.
(4) We must imitate this love of God in that great and main effect of His love to our souls in freeing them from sin (Lev_19:17). Love to the soul of thy brother, it is the best love; and to keep him from sin, or to free him of sin, it is the best love to his soul. (Bp. Brownrigg.)
Christ the great propitiation
LeaveChrist as God’s salvation out of the Bible, and it is of little account to a guilty, perishing sinner.
I. We are to state the import of the term, or show you what we are to understand by propitiation, And here I would appeal to the understanding of all men, whether we have not some other idea of this word than what is contained in repentance, amendment, and mortification. The Jews well understood the meaning of it: they had their eucharistical and expiatory or atoning sacrifices. Now can it reasonably be supposed that the apostles would recede from the well known meaning of this word, especially in their writings to the Jews, and always use it in a metaphorical or figurative sense? Further, the heathens were no strangers to the sense of the word propitiation.
II. To inquire into the necessity and importance of it. By necessity, I do not mean that God was obliged to provide an atonement for the sin of man. Misery may excite but not oblige to pity, especially where guilt is the spring of it; and ruin the just consequence of apostasy. I know the Socinians suppose the goodness of God will not admit Him to demand or receive a satisfaction. Mercy is abundantly more natural and glorious without a propitiation; but the Scripture asserts the fact, and points out the necessity of it. I stay not to inquire whether God could not have fixed on any other method of recovery. Had we proper apprehensions of the holiness and justice of God when we consider this, and our circumstances as transgressors without saying what He might do, we may well adore Him for what He has done. The necessity of an atonement might be further evinced from the sanction of the law, clothed with the authority of a God who cannot lie; a God as jealous of His glory as of His faithfulness. As to the importance of the blessing of propitiation. Is there anything valuable in the favour and friendship of God?
III. To point out something of the excellence and perfection of this propitiation.
1. That God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
2. The doctrine, worship, and faith of the Old Testament saints were directed to this as the great centre of efficacy and perfection.
3. God the Father, sustaining the character of a Judge, has declared the highest satisfaction in it, by raising His Son from the dead and crowning Him with honour and glory as Mediator.
4. He will receive no confession, petition, or thanksgiving but through His hands. No man can come unto the Father but by Him. Lastly, the virtue of this sacrifice remains the same through all ages.
IV. That propitiation is the pure effect of Divine love, and the brightest display of it. By love we mean not a foolish, weak passion, but such favour, grace, or mercy as founded in infinite wisdom and in full agreement with all the perfections of God; and that the gift of His Son is the fruit of Divine love stands uncontested. Love is the noble spring of all the good the believer has in time, and all the glory he will possess in eternity; but the gift of God’s Son exceeds them all. Application:
1. Sinner, art thou deeply affected with thy guilt, and afraid of the consequences of thy transgressions? Here is a remedy exactly suited to thy ease.
2. Let believers labour, in the strength of grace, after the comfortable evidence of an interest in that which is to be their great support in death and security in judgment. Lastly, let us all take heed that we are not deceived; repentance and reformation without Christ will leave us short of heaven. (Samuel Wilson.)
The propitiation
I. The state of man required a propitiation.
1. The perfection and excellence of the law which he has broken.
2. The inability of man to expiate his offences.
3. The inflexible nature of Divine justice, which supports the honour of the law, and enforces its claims.
II. Jesus Christ is the propitiation required.
1. No creature could or would become a propitiation for man.
2. Jesus Christ is every way adapted to become our propitiation.
3. The Scriptures everywhere testify that Jesus Christ is our propitiation
(Isa_53:5-7; Isa_53:10; Mat_20:28; Rom_3:24-25; Rom_4:25; 2Co_5:21; Gal_3:13; Col_1:20; 1Ti_1:15; Heb_9:22-26; 1Jn_2:2). The Father gave the Son (Joh_3:16). The Son gave Himself (Gal_1:4). He offered Himself through the Eternal Spirit (Heb_9:14).
III. This propitiation is a glorious display of the love of God.
1. Unparalleled in its nature.
2. Intense in its ardour.
3. Immense in its extent.
4. Glorious in its purpose and final issue.
Inferences:
1. How pernicious is the doctrine of Socinianism, which completely destroys this only hope of a penitent--redemption by Christ!
2. How dangerous is the delusion of the self-righteous!
3. What abundant consolation does this subject afford penitent sinners!
4. In this love of God we are furnished with a rule and a motive for love to each other, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” (Sketches of Sermons.)
The atonement for sin, by the death of Christ
I. State the case, with regard to the nature and necessity of the atonement, as represented in scripture.
II. Establish the fact that Jesus Christ has offered a true and proper atonement for sin.
1. I am well aware it does nothing towards the proof of this proposition to observe that this is precisely such a provision as the circumstances of man required, while it was perfectly consistent with all the attributes of Deity that God should grant it. There is nothing in the Scripture doctrine of the atonement by Jesus Christ repugnant to the most correct ideas of fitness and propriety, with regard either to the offending or the offended party. If man had never sinned, we should have seen the glory of the Divine power, wisdom, and benevolence in the creation of the world. If, having sinned, man had been left to perish, we should have seen the glory of the Divine justice. If he had been freely pardoned, without any satisfactory atonement, we should have seen the glory of the Divine mercy; but, having sinned, and receiving free forgiveness and eternal life by means of an adequate, because infinitely valuable, atonement, we see the glory of all the Divine attributes, and, overwhelmed with the astonishing exhibition, exclaim with the apostle, “Herein is love.”
2. The universal prevalence of sacrifices.
3. The sacrifices of the Mosaic economy.
4. The language of the prophets.
5. The testimony of the apostles, from that of Philip, in his preaching to the eunuch, to that of John, in the visions of the Apocalypse.
6. The language of Jesus Christ Himself. (T. Raffles, LL. D.)
Love descends
Love is its own perennial fount of strength. The strength of affection is a proof not of the worthiness of the object, but of the largeness of the soul which loves. Love descends, not ascends. The Saviour loved His disciples infinitely more than His disciples loved Him, because His heart was infinitely larger. Love trusts on, ever hopes and expects better things, and this a trust springing from itself and out of its own deeps alone. (F. W. Robertson.)
God seeks our love
Amother said to her pastor, “I wish some one could tell me why the Saviour died for us. I have never heard it answered to my satisfaction. You will say it was because He loved us; but why was that love? He certainly did not need us, and in our sinful state there was nothing in us to attract His love.” “I may suppose,” said her pastor, “that it would be no loss for you to lose your deformed little babe. You have a large circle of friends, you have other children, and a kind husband. You do not need the deformed child; and what use is it?” “Oh, sir,” said the mother, “I could not part with my poor child. I do need him. I need his love. I would rather die than fail of receiving it.” “Well,” said her pastor, “does God love His children less than earthly, sinful parents do?”
