Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2959
“Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us.” 1 John 3:16.
[Also see Sermon No. 2958, Volume 51— “The Saints’ Love to God”]
TRUE love cannot long be dormant. It is like fire of an active nature—it must be at work. Love longs for expression—it cannot be dumb. Command it to be without expression and you command it not to live. And true love is not satisfied with expressing itself in words. It does use words, but it is painfully conscious of their feebleness, for the full meaning of love is not to be conveyed in any human language. It breaks the backs of words and crushes them to atoms when it lays upon them all that it means. Love must express itself in deeds, as our old proverb says, “Actions speak more loudly than words.” Love delights, too, in sacrifices. She rejoices in self-denials and the more costly the sacrifice, the better is love pleased to make it. She will not offer that which costs her nothing—she loves to endure pain, losses and crosses—and thus she expresses herself best.
This is a general principle which is not only applicable to men, but it reaches even up to God, Himself, for, “God is Love,” and being love, He must display love, nor can He rest with merely speaking of His love. His love must manifest itself in action. More than that, God could not rest until He had made the greatest sacrifice that He could make and had given up His only-begotten Son to die in the place of sinners. When He had done that, then He could rest in His love. God does not come to us and say, “Men and women, I love you and you must believe that I love you although I do nothing for you to prove My love.” He does ask us to believe in His love and He has given us abundant proofs of it. Therefore He has a right to claim our belief in it. The Apostle of Love, who wrote the chapter from which our text is taken, tells us, “Hereby we are made to know”—for that would be the real translation of the original—“Hereby we come to know, we do know, the love of God, because He laid down His life for us.” Just as we learn the love of others by seeing what they are prepared to sacrifice for us, so is it even with God, Himself, we discover, discern, perceive and are made to know the love which He bears for us by the fact that “He laid down His life for us.”
I. First, I want to show you that THERE ARE MANY ACTS OF GOD IN WHICH HIS LOVE IS VERY CLEAR, BUT IN WHICH THE MOST OF MEN FAIL TO SEE.
There are many of His acts of which it might be said, “Hereby the love of God is manifested,” yet many men fail to perceive the love which lies behind the actions. Let us examine ourselves to see how we stand with regard to this matter. There are some of us who ought to have perceived the love of God to us in the surroundings into which we were brought at our very birth. I am addressing many who, like myself, owe very much to Christian parents. Many of us could truly say, in the words of the children’s hymn—
“I was not born, as thousands are, Where God was never known And taught to pray a useless prayer To blocks of wood and stone.” But without being born slaves or heathens, it might have happened that we would have had to spend our childhood in the slums of London. Some of you think that you have been very good, but would you have been better than the boys that fill our reformatories—would you have been better than those who crowd our prisons—if you had had the same
training, or lack of training, that has been their lot? If you had had such an example as they have had—if the taste of strong drink had been familiar to you almost from your birth—if the first thing you ever heard was blasphemy—if you had lived in the thieves’ kitchen—do you think that you would have been any more clear from guilt than they have been? When we look down upon others and despise them, it may be that if we knew all their temptations and the conditions of their upbringing, we might almost admire them for not being worse than they are! It costs some people a great struggle to be honest. And there are many women in this dreadful London whom we, perhaps, think ill of, who, nevertheless, have suffered almost a martyrdom and who have fought stern battles with temptation! If they have fallen somewhat, they are to be honored because they have not fallen still further!
But what a blessing it was to us that when we woke up in this world, we looked up into a face that smiled upon us and to lips that, by-and-by, spoke to us of Jesus Christ! The first example that we had was one that, to this day, we wish to follow. Our companions, from our youth up, have been of a godly order and there are some who are in Heaven, now, who had much to do with the formation of our character—and for whom we should always thank God. Now, had we been wise—had we understood the meaning of this gracious arrangement—we might, in the very conditions in which we were born and brought up, have perceived the love of God to us! Yet many of us did not. I should not wonder if some of you thought that you were badly treated because you were placed in such a strict family where you were checked and kept from what you regarded as the pleasures of life. Many a young man has felt that he has been tied to his mother’s apron strings a great deal too much. He saw other young men enjoying themselves, but he could not—his father, like a grim jailer, was always looking after him too closely. That is the way many of us put it in the days of our ignorance. But now that God has opened our eyes, we can see the love of God in it all. Yet we did not see it then and, as a general rule, young men and women who have the high privilege of Christian parents and training do not perceive the love of God in it, but often kick against it and wish they had not to endure what they regard as so great a hardship!