Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: April 14th

GOD’S LOVE DEMONSTRATED

Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. - 1 John 4:9

What is the connection between God’s love and Christ’s death? How does any, even the extremest, love and regard and self-sacrifice on the part of Jesus, - how does that demonstrate God’s love? Is it not obvious that we must conceive the relation between God and Christ to be singularly close in order that Christ’s death should prove God’s love?

Suppose it had been said, "Paul’s death proves the love of God"? - there would have been no probative force in that fact. But when we read " Christ’s death proves it," I would press this question: Does the assertion hold water, and is there any common sense in it at all except upon one supposition - that the man who said that God’s love was proved by Christ’s propitiatory death believed that the heart of Christ was the revelation of the heart of God; and that what Christ did, God did in His well-beloved Son?

If you believe, as I believe, that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh, then it is reasonable to say, "God commendeth His own love to us in that Christ died for us. "

Let us remember, too, that God’s love is all-embracing, because it embraces each. It can only be true that Christ died for us all if every man on earth has a right to say, "Christ died for me."

That is what I pray you to do. Do not take shelter in the crowd. God does not deal with men in a crowd. And Christ’s death was not for men in a crowd; it was not for the abstraction " humanity," " the world," "the race "; it was for men, one by one, each singly, as if there had not been another human being in existence except just that one. I believe that we were all in Christ’s heart, all in His purpose, when He gave Himself up to the death for us all; and that, therefore, His cross, - on which He died that you and I, and all of us, might live; on which He yielded Himself up to the outward penalty of sin in order that none of its inward penalty might ever fall upon them that trust in Him, - is the manifestation of the love of God to the whole world; because Christ’s death embraced in its purpose the whole world, and every unit that is in it, and, therefore, thee, and thee, and thee, my brother! Do you believe that?