The Father's Love to the Son

Chapter 6 THE FATHER'S LOVE TO THE SON, THE MODEL AND MEASUREMENT OF THE SON'S LOVE TO HIS PEOPLE.

'As my Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.' -- John 15:9

I HAVE LOVED YOU.' Blessed Jesus, we know it, and we cannot doubt it. There is not a moment of our lives in which we are not reminded of it. Every blessing we possess leads us to the cross, the scene of Thy love in its noblest victory, and impels us to look up to the throne on which Thou sittest in benign and generous supremacy. The church is filled and fragrant with it; 'it drops as sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock.' The life and joy of every holy bosom, is this precious truth from the lips of Him whose heart was the home of love. May He not appeal to His birth, His baptism. His agony. His death and burial, as tokens of His vast and ineffable fondness, and say, 'I have loved you.' These facts are irresistible evidence; for they are the elements of a history imbued with love. The babe on his mother's lap; the boy in the temple; the man on the bank of the Jordan, receiving the Spirit, and in the wilderness, wrestling with the tempter; the victim scourged and crucified; the corpse wrapt in linen and spices, ― are features of a picture on which the eye is never tired of looking, while the tongue is exclaiming in rapture, ' Herein is love.' But the Lord's assertion of this cheering fact, 'I have loved you,' is preceded by a bewildering statement ― As the Father hath loved me.' Amazing thought, that the Father's love to the Son should be the model and the measurement of the Son's love to His people! We may not comprehend the statement. How indeed can we? 'Who can by searching find out God, who can find out the Almighty unto perfection?' We do not plead for identity in all respects, between the Father's love to the Son, and the Son's love to His people; but we plead for a similarity which really amounts to it. For men can never bear the same relation to Christ that Christ bears to God. In the one case, the subject and object are the same, and the affection of a divine person is lavished upon a divine person; but in the other case, they are widely different ― as we are at once guilty creatures, who have no claim on Christ's attachment, and are also finite creatures, who cannot therefore absorb the whole of it. Yet we may glean something to satisfy us; we can wander along the frontier, though we may not enter the unexplored territory. We may look at the clusters brought from Eschol, though we may not scan the luxuriant foliage and fruits of its vineyards. If the Son's love to us be as the Father's love to Him, we are surely warranted to rest upon it as an eternal, infinite, and unchanging affection.

I. The Father's love to the Son is an eternal love, and, therefore, so is the Son's love to His people. For Father and Son have co-existed from eternity, and their mutual affection, like themselves, had no commencement. Both being perfectly holy, no other feeling than love could subsist between them. The Father must love His own image, and that 'express image' being ever before Him, love must have for ever glowed in His bosom towards Him who lay there. Had there been a period when the Son was not, or when His likeness to His Father was not complete, this affection might have begun to exist only when the Son sprang into being, or when He began to assume, in their fulness, the features of the paternal resemblance. But the Son claims a co-equal eternity, an underived divinity, and being so pure and so lovely, must have been from everlasting the object of the divine complacency ' The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. . . . Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight.' Yes, the Son is eternal and self-existent, and is styled 'He who was, and is, and is to come.' He is 'before all things;' for he summoned them into being, and He preserves them in it. "What an unhallowed perversion to ascribe the commencement of His existence to the date of His birth, or even to regard Him as the earliest and highest of the creatures of God? Is He not the same in His moral and physical attributes with the Father? For they are both objects of worship, wielding the same prerogatives, and clothed in the same holiness and majesty. If, then, we are warranted to apply to eternity the phraseology suggested by the duration of time, we may surely say that the eternal Father has loved His own eternal Son in all the past periods of their co-existence. And if so, if the Father's love to His Son never began to be, but always was; so, in a similar way, the Son's love to us never began to be, but always was. Being eternal Himself, all the emotions of His heart are unbeginning. Affections of love or hatred rise in the heart of man, as objects amiable or hostile present themselves. No one of us can tell how soon any emotion may be created within him, or what may be its sweep or character. It may be fear, if danger be apprehended; or hope, if good be anticipated; or sorrow, if ill be borne; or joy, if blessing be received; or anger, if injury be inflicted; or gratitude, if unmerited favour be conferred. But in the mind of the Son, there can be no such changes or vicissitudes: 'All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.' The guilt and misery of man were present to Him from eternity; and, therefore, He can say, ' I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with everlasting kindness have I drawn thee.' There was no epoch when His mind was charged with enmity towards us; neither did the sin of our world so take Him by surprise as to convert a previous affection into enmity. 0, then, what origin can you assign to His love, if it be not coeval with His nature?

Supposing that His love did not exist from eternity, what posterior source could you possibly imagine for it? Could you ever dream that your existence would be necessary to His happiness, and that He must therefore love and save you; or that the repair of the ruin was a natural and indispensable work on the part of Him who had first erected the structure? Or, if you turn your vision upon yourselves, can you be so vain as to believe that you can discover within you anything having power to excite the affection of the Son of God? Did you even mourn over your lapse, and sigh and cry unto Him to save you? What more provoking to Him than your sin, or more revolting than your spiritual pride, hostility, and deformity! True; but His love had no temporal beginning; for it pre-existed you, and it pre-existed time. It was ever in Him, and prompted Him from eternity to make provision for your recovery. It is no momentary compassion produced by your unexampled wretchedness; no incidental commiseration stirred up within Him for the first time, when He saw you 'lying in your blood.' It is not an impulse, but an eternal emotion, sublime alike in the awful remoteness of its past, and in the unvarying nearness of its present existence. 'As my Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.'

2. The love of the Father to the Son is an infinite love, and therefore so is the Son's love to His people. Every emotion in God is co-extensive with His nature, and that nature is infinite ― its centre being everywhere, but its circumference nowhere. 'Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand, lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.' "We believe, too, that all that has been eternal in its existence is also and necessarily limitless in its extent ― that He who inhabited eternity, must also fill immensity. That God loves Himself with infinite complacency, will not be questioned; and as His Son is His other Self, the affection cherished towards Him will also be without limitation. What has God which His Son has not ― what attribute which his Son does not possess in a similar degree ― what property does He love in Himself, that he does not equally love in the ' Only begotten? And if these properties be all of them infinite in the Son, the love excited by them will correspond in its measure.

Therefore, like His Father's love to Himself is the Son's love to His own. who can mete out its bounds! You might number the sand on the sea-shore, or tell the stars of the firmament ― the difficulty of calculation might be surmounted; but never could you compute the depth and extent of the Lord's affection for you. Alas that we have so low and unworthy conceptions of it! Could we expand our souls to its full idea, we should create heaven upon earth. Yet we may have some notion of it. 'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.' Ineffable condescension! Rich He was in the possession of divine glory, and the enjoyment of unsurpassed felicity, receiving the ardent homage of the noblest intelligences, and the hymn of the great universe ever rising before Him in mighty and varied minstrelsy; and yet He became poor ― born in penury ― 'for low lies His bed with the beasts of the stall' ― living a life of privation ― earning His bread by the sweat of His brow as a village mechanic ― 'a worm and no man' ― His character aspersed, and Himself branded as a wine-bibber, a Sabbath-breaker, and an associate of publicans and sinners ― threatened to be stoned for blasphemy ― mocked, and set at nought ― scourged, and put to death by a public and ignominious execution. "What but infinite love could have stooped to such sufferings, or sustained Him under them? A love that might be measured would have shrunk or fainted when its energies were overstepped. It would have trembled as it counted the cost; thus far, and no farther, would have been its resolve. And within the sphere of such sufferings there must have been intense anguish too, when ' it pleased Jehovah to bruise him, and put him to grief.' ' Why hast Thou forsaken me?' was a deep and mysterious complaint, wrung from Him who never complained before. As if the only woe which He felt was this desertion, it was the only lamentation which he uttered. Can that love be fathomed which could voluntarily bear such an infliction from the hand of a loving Father? And is He not still before the throne, pleading and guarding ― provoked, but yet loving ― often grieved, but never withdrawing His attachment? Man's love would weary, but Christ's is unquenchable. It is not a stream whose waters might fail, but an ocean of immeasurable depth and volume ― infinite like Himself, and like His Father's love to Him. If, then, Jesus has taken upon Him our frail and fleshly nature, compassed with infirmities, and doomed to die; if, under the judicial infliction of His Father, he groaned, and bled, and expired; if He lay in the grave a lifeless and mangled corpse; if now He intercede, and govern, and hold heaven in our name, and be unsatisfied till all His own are gathered around in the ' perfection of beauty' ― is not the love that leads to this self-denial, labour, and sacrifice, boundless in its extent, as well as eternal in its origin?' Nor can we fail to refer to the rich variety of blessings which are provided for us in the fulness of His love. Everything needed by us, and everything as we need it, is copiously supplied. His exhaustless attachment is not worn out by our perversity and unbelief 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me.' Look on this picture. Look on Him, at the door, not upon the throne; at the door, not in the gorgeous livery of state, but as a guest expecting admission; not merely glancing at the door, as if its portals were to be thrown open in instinctive and loyal rapidity, but standing and waiting our time; standing, and not departing under the insult of refusal and procrastination; nay, so bent is He on admission, that He is knocking, as if craving a boon, when He might demand it as a right, and on being denied, might shatter to pieces the surly and ungrateful mansion. The very idea of His salvation springs from infinite love. He descended to earth, that we might rise to heaven. He became a servant, that we might be sons. He was made a curse for us, that we might experience blessing in Him. He wandered without a place to lay His head, that we might have a settled home in the skies. He hungered, that we might be filled. That we should be reckoned among the saints, ' he was numbered among transgressors.' 'He offered up supplication, with strong crying and tears,' in order that we might sing immortal melodies. He died, that we might live; and He lay in the grave, to secure for us a blessed resurrection. Aye, and how many have reaped the fruits of this love, and yet it is not spent ― how many have been saved, and how many will yet be translated to heaven! The darkest and worst have been met by His love; and though they had ' lain among the pots,' yet in the reflection of His love they appear like ' doves whose wings are covered with silver, and their feathers with yellow gold.' O how it descends to the impure and wretched! Myriads of all ranks and classes, of all characters and occupations, shall be blessed by it, and shall bask in its unquenchable sunshine for ever and ever. Their happiness is of the purest and most exalted nature ― they live in light, and they walk in love. They ' receive double' of the Lord their Saviour. 'They have no sorrow in their song' ― they are comforted for all their past tribulations, the tears are wiped from off all faces, for death has died, and mortality has been swallowed up of life. Tell me, then, thou saved one, is not the Saviour's love beyond the reach of thy comprehension? It stretches away on every side as far as thou canst see. The more thou dost penetrate into its extent, it still shifts like the horizon before thee, still encircling thee, and still receding as thou would attempt to near its limits, or define its circuit.

3. The love of the Father to the Son is an unchangeable love, and therefore so is the Son's love to His people. The immutability of God is derived from His necessary existence. He depends on no other will or power; there can, therefore, be no cause of change without Him. Nor within Him-self can there be any source of mutation, for already being the best. He cannot change to the better, and any alteration to the worse would be an abdication of divinity. Our confidence is based on an unchanging God. The uniformity of the laws of physical nature declares Him to be 'of one mind,' and, at the same time, answers the question, ' Who can turn Him? His proclamation to His universe is, 'I AM Jehovah: I change not.' The orbs in the sky rise and set, but He is the ' Father of lights: with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' Any suspicion of change on the part of God would throw an eclipse over all His works, and bring upon them a suspense ― the very image and shadow of death. There may be a change of dispensation, but there can be none of character. As the Father is thus immutable in His being, therefore is He immutable also in His affections and purposes. He loves His Son, and that love can admit neither of alteration nor diminution. He cannot love Him more, and He will not love Him less. And if there can be no change in Him who feels the love, neither can there be any in Him who is its divine recipient, for He is perfect as the Father. Of Him specially it is said, ' Thou, Lord, in the beginning has laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: they shall perish, but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.' Ere He came into the world He enjoyed an unvarying attachment, and ' the voice from the excellent glory' said of Him after He assumed humanity, ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' And thus as His Father's love to Him is changeless, so is His love to us. ' One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' And He who loves us is ' the same yesterday, to-day, and for-ever.' The affections of men are apt to vary, and they do vary, for they are liable both to increase and diminution. A fault may be forgiven today, but if repeated tomorrow it may be visited with its appropriate penalty. One transgressor may be pardoned, but some other, guilty of the same offense, may be severely dealt with. One class of offenses may be overlooked, and another species of crimes not worse, or more aggravated, may have meted out to it the whole rigor of law. Man is moody and capricious, and feels and acts from momentary impulse, sometimes from unaccountable whim. According to the frame of spirit in which you find him, or the peculiar associations which are passing through his mind, or have occupied his previous thoughts, are the anticipations you form of his kindness. But the love of Jesus, like the Father's love to Himself, has no caprices. It will not cool and it cannot rise higher, for it is infinite. Glowing with quenchless ardor, it needs no additional excitement. He ' endured the cross, despising the shame;' and if it carried its possessor through these agonies of Calvary, will it flag in His bosom now when every obstacle to its free egress has been so gloriously removed? Could you suppose His love capable of change, how melancholy and dark would be your prospects! There would be no certainty of your attaining life ― nay, there would be a ' way to hell even from the gates of heaven.' Let a prince pick up a gypsy child as it wandered in despair and hunger; and let him clothe it, educate it, and refine it, till the style of its assumed station was felt to be essential to its happiness; and then let him, in a freak, dismiss the youth from his palace, and all its coveted and appreciated luxuries, and send him to the ' hedge and highways,' would not such a procedure be a refinement and excess of torture? And, oh, would it be different if Jesus were to love us for a season ― throw his mantle over us ― declare us to be his brethren ― fill us with new desires and majestic hopes ― and then suddenly, and in a dismal moment, frown upon us and exclude us from His heart! "Would it not be exalting us to heaven, and then thrusting us down to hell; allowing us to taste the cup of life, and then, as we began to relish it, dashing it from our lips! The bare thought of it is enough to madden us; and we feel the supposition of it to be almost an impious reflection on the Son of God. Our hopes depend on the immutability of Thy love ― Jesus, thou incarnation of love; for those Thou lovest Thou lovest unto the end ― supporting their souls by Thy grace ― supplying all their wants out of Thine own fulness ― still deepening their faith, and lifting their spirits to Thyself ― forgiving their waywardness ― assimilating them to Thy image, and giving them indubitable proofs of Thy undeviating and endless attachment. Who can forgot the fervent and lofty tone of the apostle's challenge: ' Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

Beyond change, or possibility of change, is the love of Christ. When we look on the ancient ridges of the Alps or Andes, so firm on their base, and so huge in their aspect, which have so long reared their lofty summits to the sky, and borne upon them the snows of unnumbered winters, we naturally regard them in their sublimity and vastness, as types of stability. More glorious and secure is the divine love, for a sudden shock may up-heave the everlasting mountains' and 'the perpetual hills may bow,' but Jehovah exclaims in blessed triumph, ' The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.' So that again and joyfully we revert to the conclusion. As the Father's love to the Son is immutable, so the Son's love to us partakes of a similar immutability. May not He, therefore say, 'As my Father hath loved me, so have I loved you?'

4. But, fourthly and lastly, as the Father's love to the Son did not prevent Him from punishing sin in the person of that Son as our substitute, so the love of the Son to us will not keep Him from inflicting on His people any requisite chastisement. Though Jesus were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.' The law is to be satisfied ere pardon be dispensed, but the Son of God became our surety. God's intense and unchanging hatred of sin must show itself in and by an atonement. Therefore, the incarnate Jesus died, became ' a curse,' ' suffered once for sins, the Just One in the room of unjust men.' 'He hath put him to grief ' He spared not his own Son.' Marvelous thought! did not spare Him, with every motive to do so, if we might employ the language of human analogy. Yes, it was upon His Son ― inconceivably near to Him, inexpressibly dear to Him ― the object of His eternal, infinite and unchanging complacency, that He laid ' the chastisement of our peace.' Had it been from some creature who stood in a distant relation to God that such exaction was made, the wonder might not have been so great; but our iniquity was laid, in its guilt and penalty, on the Son of His bosom, who had ever been with Him in mysterious and reciprocal attachment. Nor did He cease to love Him, when 'he was wounded for our transgressions,' and when it ' pleased ' Him, as Righteous Governor, ' to bruise him.' His affection abated not for an instant; for there was no vindictive enmity on His part, and the desertion upon the cross was judicial and not personal manifestation. Nay, we are told that God's love for his Son was one motive which urged him to commit to Christ the salvation of men; and the Son's love to his Father was shown and glorified in His acceptance of the enterprise. ' The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.' 'But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.' And if you could imagine any purer intensity of an infinite love, or any crisis when its thrill was deeper, might we not point to the scenes of the garden and of Golgotha; for then was displayed, in high and hallowed majesty, the love of that Son to His Father, when ' he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost;' then was reflected, in bright serenity, the purest virtue and the tenderest grace; then was developed, under suffering, what the man Jesus really was, how perfect and noble; and then was laid a foundation for ' glory to God in the highest,' and for 'peace on earth.' Therefore doth my father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.' The suffering laid upon Jesus by his Father was in no way inconsistent with His Father's perfect love, but rather showed its august and mysterious depth and power.

Now, in a similar way, Christ's love to His people is in complete harmony with His administration of discipline. Though they are brought within the bond of the covenant, they are liable to sin, and such liability exposes them to chastisement. But do not imagine that His love changes. Parents on earth chastise 'after their pleasure; but he for your profit.' Afflicted brother, do not hang thy harp upon the willow; but tune it to a high melody: ' Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.' He loves thee dearly, and never more dearly than when He chastises thee. His love at such a time has a special penetration ― it searches thee and knows thee, finds a way to thy heart of hearts, and works out glory for thee. It is surely sinful and wayward on the part of Zion to moan and say, ' The Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me.' Let your afflictions be what they may, never doubt His love. It may be that these afflictions are complex, heavy, and prolonged, and that your sorrow is deeper than any to be seen around you ― yet why should you despond; your agony is not penal evil, but benign castigation. There is some lesson which you must learn, and the fraternal preceptor is striving to impress it ― something which is as yet but a mere element of theory, but which needs to be deepened into one of experience. He who knows your frame adopts this method of promoting a spiritual revolution within you. O, then, in the day of gloom, rejoice in the inspired soliloquy, ' Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.' Christ's love is without bound and without end, and when it impels to your discipline, it worketh out the peaceable fruits of righteousness.' Feel, then, that His love is quite compatible with your correction, nay, that it is love in its tenderest form, and under its most practical adaptation to your present and eternal welfare.

O, then, surely the statement we have been considering will deeply and permanently impress us. What ground have we not for confidence? Can any believer perish when such a love encircles him? What purity and fervour should characterize our love to Christ! How indelibly should the commands be engraven on our hearts, ' Continue ye in my love;' ' Keep yourselves in the love of God.' To forfeit such a love would be to forfeit all: 'If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.' Ye that love the Lord, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints.'

Besides, Christ's love to us should picture out that kind of love which we ought to bear to the brethren. ' This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.' Our duty is to regard them with un-deviating fondness, loving Christ in them, loving them without reserve and without interruption. Alas! how feeble is our imitation of Christ's love ― as a drop in comparison with the ocean ― as a cloud in front of the deep and impenetrable blue of the sky beyond it.

And, in fine, let the idea and consciousness of this love reign within you. Amidst all the sin and the discipline, the trials and crosses of life ― even when conscience accuses, and deep confession of unworthiness is poured out before the throne, and prolonged and earnest prayer bursts from the heart surcharged with sorrow ― let this be your consolation ― your bow in the storm ― that the Father's love to the Son is the model and measurement of the Son's love to His chosen ones. 'He that hath an ear, let him hear,' and lay up in his heart, the amazing declaration, ' As my Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.' Thus, by divine grace, shall be fulfilled in you the Lord's own prayer, 'I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.'