Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2127
“Tell Me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And He said unto him, You have rightly judged.” Luke 7:42, 43.
I REMEMBER seeing, somewhere or other, as a sign upon an inn, the words, “The First and Last.” I do not know what that may happen to be among men, but I know that love is God’s first and last. It is there that He begins with us in mercy—“We love Him, because He first loved us.” His love at the first springs up like a fountain in the midst of a desert and freely flows along the wilderness to the unworthy sons of men. In the end, the result of that love is that men love Him—they cannot help it any more than the rock can prevent the echo when the voice falls upon it. Love is not a creature of law—it comes not on demand—it must be free or not at all.
It has its reasons why it springs up in our hearts, but it is not a mercenary thing which can be procured at such-and-such a price. It is not a matter of argument—it is not of itself an act performed as a matter of duty. Love is a duty, certainly, but it does not come to us that way—it comes to us like a roe or a young hart, over every mountain and hill, leaping and bounding. It comes not as a heavy burden dragged along an iron way. If a man should give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be despised. Men do not make themselves love by a course of calculation—they are overtaken with it and carried away by its power.
When godly men consider and enjoy the great love of God to them, they begin to love God in return, just as the bud, when it feels the sunshine, opens to it of its own accord. Love to God is a sort of natural consequence which follows from a sight and sense of the love of God to us. I think it is Aristotle who said that it is impossible for a person to know that he is loved without feeling some degree of love in return. I do not know how that may be for I am no philosopher, but I am sure that it is so with those who taste the love of God. As love is the first blessing coming from God to us, so it is the last return from us to God—He comes to us loving—we go home to Him loving.
I. I intend to keep to my text and handle it red hot, by first noticing that IT IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED THAT PARDONED SINNERS WILL LOVE. “Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?” It is implied that the two debtors who had been frankly forgiven would both love their benefactor. The question was not, “Which of them will love him?” but, “Which of them will love him most?” So, then, I say, it is taken for granted in the text that those who are pardoned will love him who has so freely pardoned them. And this, first, because it seems most natural that where kindness is received gratitude should be felt.
This is so generally admitted that gratitude is found among the lowest and worst of mankind. “If you love them who love you, what thanks have you? For sinners also love those that love them.” It is man-like to return good for good and ingratitude is looked upon most rightly as one of the basest of the vices. Why we find gratitude not only in men and women—intelligent creatures—but we find it in the very beasts of the field! “The ox knows his owner and the ass his master’s crib.”
A dog that has received benefits from you will be attached to you and by every possible means will endeavor to show his affection! The ancients had many rare stories of the gratitude of wild beasts. You remember that of Androcles and the lion. The man was condemned to be torn to pieces by beasts, but a lion, to which he was cast, instead of devouring him, licked his feet because at some former time Androcles had extracted a thorn from the grateful creature’s foot. We have heard of an eagle that so loved a boy with whom he had played that, when the child was sick, the eagle sickened, too. And when the child slept, this wild, strange bird of the air would sleep, but only then. And when the child awoke, the eagle awoke. When the child died, the bird died, too.
You remember that there is a picture in which Napoleon is represented as riding over the battlefield and he stops his horse, as he sees a slain man with his favorite dog lying upon his bosom doing what he can to defend his poor dead master. Even the great man-slayer paused at such a sight! There is gratitude among the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. And surely, if we receive favors from God and do not feel love to Him in return, we are worse than brute beasts! And so the Lord, in that pathetic verse in Isaiah, pleads against us, “The ox knows his owner and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel does not know, My people do not consider.” If we receive favors from God, it is but natural that we should love Him in return. Alas, that many should be so unnatural, so false to every noble instinct, so dead to the gratitude which goodness deserves!