Love's Crowning Deed 2
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You remember when the Russian nobleman was crossing the steppes of that vast country in the snow, the wolves followed the sled in greedy packs, eager to devour the travelers. The horses were lashed to their utmost speed, but needed not the lash, for they fled for their lives from their howling pursuers. Whatever could halt the eager wolves for a time was thrown to them in vain. A horse was loosed: they pursued it, tore it to pieces, and still followed, like grim death. At last a devoted servant, who had long lived with his master's family, said, "There remains but one hope for you; I will throw myself to the wolves, and then you will have time to escape." There was great love in this, but doubtless it was mingled with a habit of obedience, a sense of reverence to the head of the household, and probably emotions of gratitude for many obligations which had been received through a long course of years. I do not depreciate the sacrifice, far from it; would that there were more of such a noble spirit among the sons of men! But still you can see a wide difference between that noble sacrifice and the nobler deed of Jesus laying down his life for those who never obliged him, never served him, who were infinitely his inferiors, and who could have no claims upon his gratitude. If I had seen the nobleman surrender himself to the wolves to save his servant, and if that servant had in former days tried to be an assassin and had sought his life, and yet the master had given himself up for the undeserving menial, I could see some parallel, but as the case stands there is a wide distinction.
Jesus had no motive in his heart but that he loved us, loved us with all the greatness of his glorious nature, loved us, and therefore for love, pure love, and love alone, he gave himself up to bleed and die. "With all his sufferings full in view And woes to us unknown, Forth to the tack his spirit flew, It was love that urged him on." Put the third crown upon his glorious head! Oh angels, bring forth the immortal coronet which has been stored up for ages for him alone, and let it glitter upon that ever blessed brow!
Fourthly, remember, as I have already begun to hint, that in our Savior's case it was not precisely, though it was, in a sense, death for his friends.Greater love has no man than this towards his friends that he lay down his life for them; read the text so, and it expresses a great truth: but greater love a man may have than to lay down his life for his friends, namely, if he dies for his enemies. And herein is the greatness of Jesus' love, that though he called us "friends," the friendship was all on his side at the first. He called us friends, but our hearts called him enemy, for we were opposed to him. We loved not in return for his love. "We hid as it were our faces from him, he was despised, and we esteemed him not." Oh the hostility of the human heart to Jesus! There is nothing like it. Of all enmities that have ever come from the pit that is bottomless, the enmity of the heart to the Christ of God is the strangest and most bitter of all; and yet for men polluted and depraved, for men hardened until their hearts are like the nether millstone, for men who could not return and could not reciprocate the love he felt, Jesus Christ gave himself to die. "Scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good (benevolent) man one could even dare to die, but God commends his love to us in that while we were yet sinners in due time Christ died for the ungodly." "O love of unexampled kind! That leaves all thought so far behind; Where length, and breadth, and depth, and height, Are lost to my astonished sight." Bring forth the royal diadem again, I say, and crown our loving Lord, the Lord of love; for as he is King of kings everywhere else, so is he King of kings in the region of affection.
I shall not, I hope, weary you when I now observe that there was another glorious point about Christ's dying for us for we had ourselves been the cause of the difficulty which required a death. There were two brothers on board a raft once, upon which they had escaped from a sinking ship. There was not enough of food, and it was proposed to reduce the number that some at least might be able to live. So many must die. They cast lots for life and death. One of the brothers was drawn, and was doomed to be thrown into the sea. His brother interposed and said, "You have a wife and children at home; I am single, and therefore can be better spared, I will die instead of you." "No," said his brother, "not so; why should you? The lot has fallen upon me;" and they struggled with each other in mutual arguments of love, until at last the substitute was thrown into the sea.
Now, there was no ground of animosity between those too brothers whatever; they were friends, and more than friends. They had not caused the difficulty which required the sacrifice of one of them, they could not blame one another for forcing upon them the dreadful alternative. But in our case there would never have been a need for any one to die if we had not been the offenders, the wilful offenders. And who was the offended one, whose injured honor required the death? I speak not untruthfully if I say it was the Christ that died who was himself the offended one! Against God the sin had been committed, against the majesty of the divine Ruler; and in order to wipe the stain away from divine justice it was imperative that the penalty should be exacted and the sinful one should die. So he who was offended took the place of the offender and died, that the debt due to his own justice might be paid!
It is the case of the judge bearing the penalty which he feels compelled to pronounce upon the culprit. Like the old classic story of the father who on the judgment bench condemns his son to lose his eyes for an act of adultery, and then puts out one of his own eyes to save an eye for his son, the judge himself bore a portion of the penalty. In our case, he who vindicated the honor of his own law, and bore all the penalty, was the Christ who loved those who had offended his sovereignty, and grieved his holiness. I say again - but where are the lips that shall say it aright?
bring forth, bring forth a new diadem of more than imperial splendor, to crown the Redeemer's blessed head anew, and let all the harps of heaven pour forth the richest music in praise of his supreme love.
Note again that there have been men who died for others, but they have never borne the sins of others; they were willing to take the punishment, but not the guilt. Those cases which I have already mentioned did not involve character. Pythias has offended Dionysius, Damon is ready to die for him, but Damon does not bear the guilt given by Pythias. A brother is thrown into the sea for a brother, but there is no guilt in the case. The servant dies for his master in Russia, but the servant's character rises, it is in no degree associated with any guilt of the master, and the master is, indeed, faultless in the case. But here, before Christ must die, it must be written, "He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many." "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." "He made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." "He was made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree." Now, far be it from our hearts to say that Christ was ever less than perfectly holy and spotless, and yet there had to be established a connection between him and sinners by the way of substitution, which must have been hard for his perfect nature to endure. For him to be hung up between two felons, for him to be accused of blasphemy, for him to be numbered with transgressors, for him to suffer, the just for the unjust, bearing his Father's wrath as if he had been guilty, this is amazing, and surpasses all thought! Bring forth the brightest crowns and put them on his head, while we pass on to weave a seventh chaplet for that adorable brow.
For remember, once more, the death of Christ was a proof of superlative love, because in his case he was denied all the helps and alleviations which in other cases make death to be less than death.
I marvel not that a saint can die joyously; well may his brow be placid, and his eye be bright, for he sees his heavenly Father gazing down upon him, and glory awaiting him. Well may his spirit be immersed in joy, even while the death sweat is on his face, for the angels have come to meet him, and he sees the far off land, and the gates of pearl growing nearer every hour.
But ah, to die upon a cross without a pitying eye upon you, surrounded by a scoffing multitude, and to die there appealing to God, who turns away his face, to die with this as your requiem, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!" to startle the midnight darkness with an "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" of awful anguish such as never had been heard before: this is terrible. The triumph of love in the death of Jesus rises clear above all other heroic acts of self sacrifice! Even as we have seen the lone peak of the monarch of mountains rise out from all adjoining Alps and pierce the clouds to hold familiar converse with the stars, so does this love of Christ soar far above anything else in human history, or that can be conceived by the heart
of man! His death was more terrible, his passing away more grievous by far. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down such a life in such a fashion, and for such enemies so utterly unworthy. Oh, I will not say, Crown him - what are crowns to him? Blessed Lamb of God, our hearts love you, we fall at your feet in adoring reverence, and magnify you in the silence of our souls.
III. Lastly, and I must be very brief, as my time has fled, MANY ROYAL THINGS OUGHT TO BE SUGGESTED TO US BY THIS ROYAL LOVE. And first, dear brethren, how this thought of Christ's proving his love by his death ennobles self denial. I do not know how you feel, but I feel utterly
contemptible when I think of what Christ has done for me. To live a life of comparative ease and enjoyment shames me. To work to weariness seems nothing. After all, what are we doing compared with what he has done? Those who can suffer, who can lay down their lives in mission fields, and bear hardships, and poverty, and persecution for Christ; my brethren, these are to be envied, they have a portion above their brethren. It makes us feel ashamed to be at home and to possess any comforts when Jesus so denied himself. I say the thought of the Lord's bleeding love makes us think ourselves despicable to be what we are, and makes us nothing in our own sight, while it causes us to honor before God the self denial of others, and wish that we had the means of practicing it.
And oh, how it prompts us to heroism. When you get to the cross you have left the realm of little men: you have reached the nursery of true chivalry. Does Christ die? then we feel we could die too. What grand things men have done when they have lived in the love of Christ! That story of the Moravians comes to my mind, and I will repeat it, though you may often have heard it, how in the South of Africa there was, years ago, a place of lepers, into which people afflicted with leprosy were driven. There was a tract of country surrounded by high walls, from which none could escape. There was only one gate, and he who went in never came out again. Certain Moravians looked over the wall and saw two men: one, whose arms had rotted off with leprosy, was carrying on his back another who had lost his legs, and between the two they were making holes in the ground and planting seeds. The two Moravians thought, "They are dying of a foul disease by hundreds inside that place, we will go and preach the gospel to them." "But," they said, "if we go in, we can never come out again; there we will die of leprosy too." They went in, and they never did come out until they went home to heaven; they died for others for the love of Jesus.
Two others of these Moravians went to the West Indian Islands, where there was an estate to which a man could not go to preach the gospel unless he was a slave, and these two men sold themselves for slaves, to work as others worked, that they might tell their fellow slaves the gospel. Oh, if we had that spirit of Jesus among us we should do great things. We need it back, and must have it. The church has lost everything when she has lost her old heroism; she has lost her power to conquer the world when the love of Christ no longer constrains her.
But mark how the heroic in this case is sweetly tinctured and flavored with gentleness. The chivalry of the olden times was cruel; it consisted very much in a strong fellow cased in steel going about and knocking others to pieces who did not happen to wear similar suits of steel. Now a days we could get a good deal of that courage back, I dare say; but we shall be best without it. We need that blessed chivalry of love in which a man feels, "I would suffer any insult from that man if I could do him good for Christ's sake, and I would be a door mat to my Lord's temple gate, that all who come by might wipe their feet upon me, if they could honor Christ thereby." The grand heroism of being nothing for Christ's sake, or anything for the church's sake, that is the heroism of the cross; for Christ made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. O blessed Spirit, teach us to perform like heroic acts of self abnegation for Jesus' name's sake!
And, lastly, there seems to my ears to come from the cross, a gentle voice that says, "Sinner, sinner, guilty sinner, I did all this for you, what have you done for me?" and yet another which says, "Return unto me! Look unto me and be saved, all you ends of the earth." I wish I knew how to preach to you Christ crucified. I feel ashamed of myself that I cannot do better than I have done. I pray the Lord to set it before you in a far better way than any of my words can. But, oh, guilty sinner, there is life in a look at the Redeemer! Turn now your eyes to him, and trust him! Simply by trusting him, you shall find pardon, mercy, eternal life, and heaven. Faith is a look at the Great Substitute. God help you to get that look for Jesus' sake. Amen.
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