Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1128
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13.
I HAVE lately in my ministry very much detained you in the balmy region of Divine lovingkindness. Our subjects have frequently been full of love. I have, perhaps, repeated myself, and gone over the same ground again and again, but I could not help it. My own soul was in a grateful condition and therefore out of the abundance of the heart the mouth has spoken. Truly I have little reason to excuse myself, for the region of love to Christ is the native place of the Christian. We were first brought to know Christ and to rest in Him through His love, and there, in the warmth of His tenderness, we were born to God. Not by the terrors ofjustice, nor the threats of vengeance were we reconciled, but Divine Grace drew us with cords of love.
Now, we have sometimes heard of sickly persons, that the physician has recommended them to try their native air, in hopes of restoration. So we, also, recommend every backsliding Christian to try the native air of Christ’s love and we charge every healthy Believer to abide in it. Let the Believer under decays of Grace go back to the Cross—there he found his hope, there he must find it again. There his love to Jesus began—we, “love Him because He first loved us”—and there must His love be again inflamed. The atmosphere around the Cross of Christ is bracing to the soul. Get to think much of His love and you grow strong and vigorous in Grace.
As the dwellers in the low-lying Alpine valleys become weak and full of disease in the close, damp atmosphere, but soon recover health and strength if they climb the hillside and tarry there, so in this world of selfishness, where every man is fighting for his own and the mean spirit of caring only for one’s own self reigns predominant, the saints become weak and diseased, even as worldlings are. But up on the hillsides, where we learn Christ’s self-denying, disinterested affection to the sons of men, we are braced to nobler and better lives. If men are ever to be truly great they must be nurtured beneath the wing of Free Grace and dying love.
The grandeur of the Redeemer’s example suggests to His disciples to make their own lives sublime, and both furnishes them with motives for doing so and with forces to constrain them thereto. Moreover, we may well tarry for many a day in the region of the love of Christ because not only is it our native region and full of bracing influences, but it has an outlook towards the better shore. As shipwrecked mariners upon a desert island have been known to linger most of the day upon that headland which pushes farthest out into the main ocean, in the hope that, perhaps, if they cannot catch a glimpse of their own country across the waves, they may possibly discern a sail which had left one of the ports of the well-beloved land, so it is that while we are sitting on the headlands of Divine Love we may look across to Heaven and become familiar with the spirits of the just.
If ever we are to see Heaven while we are yet tarrying here, it must surely be from Cape Cross or Mount Fellowship—from that jutting piece of holy experience of Divine Love which runs away from the ordinary thoughts of men and approaches the heart of Christ. There, at any rate, do I long to sit for many an hour till the eternal day shall break and the shadows flee away. And I shall dwell with all the chosen in the land where there is no more sin—for if there can be found a Heaven below, it is where Heaven came down from Heaven to die for sinful men, that sinful men might go up to Heaven to live eternally.
Our subject this morning, then, is Divine Love, and we have chosen the highest hill in all the goodly land for you to climb. We shall take you, today, to Love’s most sacred shrine, to the Jerusalem of the holy land of Love, to the labor of Love where it was transfigured, and put on its most beautiful garments. Where it became, indeed, too bright for mortal eye fully to gaze upon it, too lustrous for this dim vision of ours. Let us come to Calvary where we find Love stronger than death, conquering the grave for our sakes!
We shall speak, first, upon Love’s crowning act—“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” But, then, since the text, grand as it is, and high, so that we cannot attain unto it, yet seems to fall short of the great argument—though it is one of the Master’s own sayings—we shall speak upon the sevenfold crown of Jesus’ Love. And when we have done so, we shall have some royal things to say which befit the place whereon we stand when we are gathered at the foot of the Cross.
I. First, then, LOVE’S CROWNING DEED. There is a climax to everything and the climax of love is to die for a beloved one. “Free Grace and dying love” are the noblest themes among men and when united they are sublimity itself. Love can do much, can do infinite things, but greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. This is the ultima thule of love—its sails can find no further shore, its deeds of self-denial can go no further. To lay down one’s life is the most that love can do. This is clear if we consider, first, that when a man dies for his friends, it proves his deep sincerity. Lip-love, proverbially, is a thing to be questioned—too often is it a counterfeit. Love which speaks can use hyperbolical expressions at its will, and when you have heard all you can hear of love’s speech, you are not sure that it is love, for all are not hunters that blow the horn, all are not friends who cry up friendship.