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Music For the Soul
Devotional: April 7th

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FOR HIS SAKE

I do not this for your sake, but for Mine Holy Name. - Ezekiel 36:22

Do you not think that the Cross of Jesus Christ speaks to the world of a love which is not drawn forth by any merit of goodness in us? Men love because they dimly discern, or think they do, that there is something worthy of their love. God loves because we need Him; God loves because He is God. His love is not evoked by anything in me, except my dependence and necessity; but God’s love wells up from the infinite depth of His own nature, undrawn forth by anything in His creatures. " I Am that I Am " is His name. He is His own cause, His own motive; and as His being, so His love, which is His being, is automatic, self-originated, and pouring out for ever, in obedience to the impulse of His own heart, the inexhaustible treasures of His love. "Not for your sakes be it known unto you, O house of Israel, but for Mine own Name’s sake."

But if that love revealed by the Cross be a love which is not drawn forth by any merit or goodness of ours, then, not being contingent upon our goodness, it is not turned away by our badness. We cannot sin it away. It was not bestowed on us at first, any more than His sunshine falls on us, because we deserve it, but because He is God, and He made us. And so it will encircle us for ever, and cleave to us to the very end, and never let us go.

The Cross of Christ preaches to us a love that has no cause, motive, reason, or origin except Himself.

That is what is meant by the theological phrase "free grace" - an expression which has often been regarded as the shibboleth of a narrow school, but which, rightly understood, is no hard piece of technical theology, but throbbing with life - the very grandest conception of the heart of God which men can grasp. Such grace, the gilt of such love, does the Christ commend to us.

"For our behalf,"- bending over us in order that the benefit might come to us, - that is the picturesque metaphor that lies in the little word " for." Observe, too, the significant present tense, " God commendeth His love," and the emphatic repetition three several times in the verse (Romans 5:8) of "us" and " we." Both peculiarities bring out the great truth that Christ’s death is a death, "not for an age, but for all time"; not for this, that, or the other man; not for a section of the race, but for the whole of us in all generations. The power of that death, as the sweep of that love, extends over all humanity, and holds forth benefits to every man of woman born.

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