Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2448
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:10.
As there not scenes and circumstances which, now and then, transpire before us that prompt an exclamation like that of the Apostle, “Herein is love”? When we have seen the devotedness of a mother to her children. When we have marked the affection of friend for friend and caught a glimpse in different human relationships of the kindness that exists in human hearts, we have said, “Herein is love!” Yesterday these words seemed to rise up and float upon my tongue, although I did not use them, for they seemed to be consecrated to something higher than creature affection. I had the painful duty of attending the Abney Park Cemetery, to bury a beloved Sister in Christ, one of the most useful women we had among us—and as I stood there to commit her body to the grave, I was pleased—I cannot tell you how I was beyond measure pleased, on that dark foggy day, at that distance from town, to find nearly a hundred, mostly poor people, gathered there to show their respect to their friend who had helped, in many cases, to feed them and clothe them and, in every instance, had tried to point them to Christ.
There were thousands of tears shed of the sincerest and most heavenly kind. While conducting the service, I could not help feeling not only a sympathy with her bereaved husband, but with those who had been the objects of our Sister’s care—men and women who, perhaps, had given up a day’s work and walked long dreary miles in the unpropitious weather of yesterday, that they might come and mingle their tears over the dust of one who, as a Christian woman, had served them well. I could not help thinking, and it suggested the text to me, “Herein is love!” Seeing what love had done and seeing how love comes back in return, I said within myself, when love has learned its way into one bosom, it scatters its seed and fructifies in the hearts of hundreds more! Love begets love—let it once begin and none can tell its end!
But the words were too sacred for me to use, even at that solemn service, though they came up so suddenly to the surface of my mind. The Apostle had consecrated them to another love, still higher, more profound, more perfect and more celestial. I shall ask you, tonight, to look at and consider the wonder which the Apostle discovered and made him, with uplifted hands, exclaim, “Herein is love!”
The wonder, he tells us, which astonished him was not that we loved God, for suppose that all men had loved God— what wonder would there have been in it? God created us. We are wonderful specimens of His power and wisdom. The various devices for securing our comfort and maintaining us in life—the devices within the body and outside the body, the way in which the whole world is made to be the servant of man, so that, as George Herbert says—
“Man is one world, and has another to attend him,” these tokens of benevolence ought to have made all men love God! If every creature who sprang from the loins of Adam had lived a perfect life of obedience and had continually reverenced the God who made him and supplied his needs, there would not have been anything so very remarkable in the fact, for God deserves the love of all His creatures. Making His sun to shine upon us and giving us fruitful seasons—keeping us in life and preserving us from going down into the Pit— we ought to love Him. And if we did, it would not be anything to excite astonishment.
And, beloved Brothers and Sisters, when the Grace of God comes into the human heart, casts Satan out of it and renders us capable of loving God, there is nothing very surprising in our loving Him. I shall not ask you to think of the ordinary love which there is in common Christians. Indeed, the wonder about it is that it should be so ordinary, so little, so faint! It is a great wonder—to be spoken of with tears—that God should do so much for us and that we should love Him so little in return. Watts did well to pen those lines—
“Dear Lord! And shall we ever lie At this poor dying rate? Our love so faint, so cold to You, And Yours to us so great? Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove With all Your quickening powers, Come, shed abroad a Savior’s love, And that shall kindle ours.”
But now, think of the truly earnest missionary. Think of such men as Carey, or Moffat, or John Williams—men who give up all the comforts of life, all the hopes of wealth—and go forth among a barbarous people to suffer insult, perhaps to meet with death for Christ’s sake! They brave the terrors of fever and pestilence! They pass through jungles! They dare tempestuous seas—no mountains are too high, no weathers are too stern to deter them! They force their way into the center of Africa, or high up among the Esquimau if they may but tell of the love of Jesus to dying men! It may seem very amazing to us, but if you come to think of it, compared with what Christ has done for them, they may, and they usually do, sit down and confess that they have done nothing whereof to glory! They have done only what it was their duty to have done and they all confess that they fall short of the service which Christ deserves. Though we might say, in a modified sense, “Herein is love,” yet, after all, it is but faintly spoken, for it is but comparatively true.