There is no love like the love of Christ. The association of contrast will aid us here. God, who is love, is the author of all human affection. Love is the creation of Deity, the descendant of heaven, the reflection of God; and he whose soul is the most replete with divine love is the most like God. Paralyzed though our humanity is by the fall, tainted as it is by sin, the human heart is still the home of love in some of its loftiest and purest forms. It is impossible to behold its creations without the profoundest reverence. Who can stand, for instance, in the presence of a mother’s love and not be awed by its dignity, won by its power, and melted by its tenderness?
But there is a love which equals, a love which excels, a love which surpasses it– it is the love of Christ! Institute your contrast. Select from among the different relations of life, the nearest and dearest; choose from those relations the deepest, purest, truest love that ever warmed the human breast, prompting to generous and noble deeds, to tender and touching expressions, to costly and precious sacrifices; and place it side by side with the divine love that chose you, the love that ransomed you, the love that called you, the love that soothes you, the love whose eyelid never closes, whose accents never change, whose warmth never chills, whose hand is never withdrawn– “the love of Christ which passes knowledge” and it is the very antithesis of selfishness. The love of Christ stands out in the ‘history of the love’, as the divinest, the holiest, the strongest of all love– unequaled, unparalleled, unsurpassed. Oh! there is no love like Christ’s love! Trace its features.
1. The love of Christ is a REVEALING love. It uplifts the veil from the heart of God, and shows how that heart loves me. I would have known nothing of the love of my Father in heaven, but for the love of my Savior on earth. And that penitent, believing soul that feels the softest, gentlest pulse of Christ’s love throbbing in his breast, knows more of the heart of God, sees more of the glory of God, and understands more of the character of God, than were earth and sky and sea to collect all their wonders and lay them at his feet.
2. The love of Christ is a CONDESCENDING love. No other love ever stooped like Christ’s love. Go to Bethlehem and behold its lowliness, and as you return, pause awhile at Gethsemane, and gaze upon its sorrow, then pursue your way to Calvary, and learn, in the ignominy, in the curse, in the gloom, in the desertion, in the tortures, in the crimson tide of that cross– how low Christ’s love has stooped. And still it stoops! It bends to all your circumstances. You can be conscious of the becloudings of no guilt it will not cancel, of the pressure of no sin it will not lighten, of the chafings of no cross it will not heal, of the depths of no sorrow it will not reach, of the dreary loneliness of no path it will not illumine and cheer. Oh! is there a home on earth where the love of Christ most loves to dwell, where you will oftener find, yes, always meet it? It is the heart-broken, contrite, and humbled for sin!
3. The love of Christ is a SELF-SACRIFICING love. “Christ has loved us, and has given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.” What a laborious life, what a suffering death was his, and all was but the out-paying, outpouring of his love. Every precept of the broken law he obeyed, every penalty of an exacting justice he endured. The path that conducted him from Bethlehem to Calvary wound its lonesome way through scenes of humiliation and insult, of trial and privation, the storm growing darker and darker, the thunder waxing louder and louder, and the lightning gleaming brighter and brighter, until its pivotal horrors gathered round the cross and crushed the Son of God! O marvelous love of Christ! what more could you do than you have done? To what lower depth of ignominy could you stoop? What darker sorrow could you endure? Where did another cross ever impale such a victim, or illustrate such love?
4. Nor is there any love so FORGIVING as Christ’s love. Forgiveness of injury is an essential element of true affection. We cannot see how love can exist at the same moment and in the same breast with an unbending, unrelenting, unforgiving spirit. Real love is so unique and lofty a passion, so Godlike and divine in its nature and properties, we can not conceive of it but in alliance with every ennobling, elevating, and worthy sentiment. Selfishness, malignity, revenge, uncharitableness, and all evil speaking, are passions of our fallen and depraved humanity, so hateful and degrading, it would seem impossible that they should exist for an instant in the same atmosphere with true affection.
But a yet loftier form, a more sublime embodiment of love is presented to us in the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. God cannot love– we speak reverently– and not forgive. Those whom God loves, God pardons. That God regards every individual of the fallen race with a feeling of benevolence, is unquestionable; “for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust;” but those to whom the love of God extends his everlasting, his special, and his redeeming love– the gracious, the full, the eternal forgiveness of all sin likewise extends. God could not love a being and give that being over into the hands of a stern, avenging justice. Divine love will never lose the lowest and unworthiest object of its affections.
If, my reader, you feel conscious that you love God, though your affection be but as a smoldering ember, as a glimmering spark, be sure of this, that God first loved you; and loving, he has pardoned you; and pardoning, he will preserve you to his heavenly kingdom, that you may behold his glory, and enjoy his presence forever.
We repeat the remark, there is no love so forgiving as Christ’s love. A human love may for an instant hesitate and falter; it may dwell upon the wrong inflicted, the injury done, the wound still bleeding; may, in its very muteness, speak in tones of inexpressible sadness, of confidence betrayed, of feelings lacerated, of friendship sported with, and the heart may find it difficult to take back the wrong-doer– the offender forgiven and the offense forgotten– to its embrace. But not so Jesus; he has canceled, obliterated, erased every shadow of a shade of his people’s sins, and they shall come no more into remembrance. “Then Peter came to him, and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times? Jesus said unto him– I say not unto you until seven times; but until seventy times seven.”
Contrast this love, my reader– the forgiving disciple, the forgiving Savior– and then exclaim– “Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity, and passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retains not his anger forever, because he delights in mercy.”
There is no love, too, so gentle, so patient, so enduring, as Christ’s love. Again and again you have questioned it, wounded it, forsaken it; again and again you have returned to it with tears, confession, and humiliation, and have found it as unchilled and unchanged as his nature. It has borne with your doubts, has been silent beneath your murmurings, has veiled your infirmities, and has planted itself a thousand times over between you and your unseen and implacable foe. It has never declined with your fickleness, nor frozen with your coldness, nor upbraided you for your backslidings, but all the day long, tracking your wandering, winding way, it has hovered around you with a presence that has encircled you within its divine, all-enshrouding, and invincible shield. Truly, there is no love like Christ’s!
Nor is there any love that so chimes with human grief as his. Born in sorrow, schooled in adversity, baptized in suffering, acquainted with grief in its every shape, it is just the love for which our sorrows pant. There is but one heart in this vast universe that can meet your case, O child of affliction! it is the divine, yet human heart of Christ. All other love and sympathy, the most intense and feeling, touches but the surface of our grief. Its trembling hand often irritates the wound it seeks to heal; or, perhaps, from the very intensity of its sympathy, catches the contagion of our grief, and sinks at our side helpless, hopeless, and despairing. Then it is the love of Christ approaches, touches us, and we are healed; speaks to us, and all is peace. “O unexampled love! Love nowhere to be found, less than divine.”
How much of sacred meaning is contained in the prayer breathed by Paul on behalf of the Thessalonian saints– “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God.” The image is expressive. You have often, doubtless, trodden in pensive thought the sands which belt some expanded ocean, when the tide has ebbed, and have marked the undulating surface of reef and shallow that has traced and disfigured it. You have revisited the spot when that tide has rolled back in its majesty and fullness, and lo! not a vestige of the former scene appeared; every shallow is filled, every line of blemish is erased, and the blue waves toss their jocund heads as gracefully and musically as ever.
Such is the love of Christ! When this divine ocean recedes from your soul, you are filled with dismay at the spectacle that appears is one of emptiness, barrenness, and deformity. The love of Christ in the soul depressed, all is depressed. That ebbing tide has borne upon its receding wave the heart’s last throb of gladness, and the soul’s last gleam of hope, and nothing meets the eye but spiritual aridness and sin. Alarmed at the sad picture, you are roused to prayer, and you cry– “Restore unto me the joys of your salvation!” Your petition is accepted, and the response is heard, “I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies,” and once more Christ’s love flows back in gentle wavelets upon your soul, veiling every infirmity, and nothing but the sweetest melody breathes from your heaving bosom.
There is no Savior like Christ. Sin is inventive; itself the greatest invention of all. It is Satan’s infernal machine for destroying precious souls by the million! In nothing is his ingenuity and power more put forth than in constructing expedients of salvation other than the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. But Jesus is the one and only Savior of men; “neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” It is the glory of Christ’s salvation that it is perfectly adapted to every condition of our fallen and helpless humanity. Christianity is the only religion that fully recognizes the natural and utter depravity of our nature, and our consequent impotence to save ourselves. Jesus, therefore, is the Savior of sinners. He has undertaken to save us just as we are. He finds us a ruin, and recreates us; he finds us fallen, and raises us up; he finds us guilty, and he cleanses us; he finds us condemned, and he justifies us– all our salvation is in him. All the merit God requires, all the help man needs, all the grace and strength our salvation demands, dwells in infinite fullness in Christ.
My reader, your everlasting future of happiness or of woe depends upon your acceptance of Christ as your Savior! Compared with this, your vital union with the Lord Jesus– churches are nothing, sacraments are nothing, religious duties are nothing, rites and ceremonies are nothing– because Christ must be all in the momentous matter of your everlasting well-being. Nothing saves you but faith in Christ, and, possessing that faith, nothing shall condemn you. You may adopt the soundest creed, may join the most apostolic communion, and may observe the most rigid austerities, and yet not be a Christian. United by faith to Christ, you may be saved in any Church; separated from Christ, you can be saved in no Church; “for other foundation can no man lay than what is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” What a Savior, then, is Christ!
That there should be to us lost sinners any Savior, is marvelous; but that there should be provided for us such a Savior as Christ is, so divine and human, so atoning and gracious, so able and willing, distances all thought, and is above all praise. None will he reject, who come to him. Oh! it is impossible to exaggerate this statement. All thought droops, all words fail in their attempt to show what a Savior Christ is to poor lost sinners. He saves to the uttermost. He saves from the lowest depth of ruin, from the loftiest height of guilt, from the farthest limit of sin, from the utmost verge of the yawning precipice, from the very mouth of hell! “Where sin has abounded, grace does much more abound.”
If, abjuring all human merit, bewailing and deploring all sin, you accept as a free-grace bestowment, the salvation Christ wrought in his soul’s travail on the cross, you shall be saved. If you stay away from Christ, your best righteousness will not preserve you from the eternal pains of hell. If you humbly and believingly come to Christ, your worst sins will not exclude you from the everlasting joys and blessedness of heaven. But it is of the utmost moment that you clearly recognize the only character and the sole ground on which Christ will save you. He will only save you “as a sinner”, and on the ground of his finished work, his infinite merit, atoning blood, and righteousness. You must stand where the tax-collector stood; must kneel where the “woman who was a sinner” knelt; must feel with Saul of Tarsus, that you are the “chief of sinners,” must look and appeal to him with the true penitence and simple faith of the dying malefactor, and you shall be saved!
Cling Closer to Him! Believer in Jesus! cling closer and closer to the Savior, for there is none like unto him! Let the life you live be a daily coming up out of self, into Christ. Place no limit to your transactions with Jesus. As yet you have but touched the edge of his ocean-fullness, you have but tasted that he is gracious, you have but crept beneath the hem of his ample robe. Oh! let this year be one of advance; your motto, “forward.” The truth each day’s history will but confirm you in is, “There is none like Christ.” The more you trust to, and the more you draw from him, the deeper and sweeter will be your conviction and experience of this. It is a truth he intends you shall experimentally learn. He will have you prize, and love, and serve him above and beyond all others.
The process by which you reach this high and holy attainment may be trying, the path rugged and toilsome, the ascent steep and difficult; it may cost you many a severe pang, many a deep sigh, many a lonely tear, many a sad wrench; nevertheless, a clearer realization of this truth, “none like Christ, none so near, none so powerful, none so precious,” will more than recompense for all. Christ, in the sufficiency of his love and grace, will come and fill the blank, and soothe the pain, and dry the tear, and you shall look up, and with more than a seraph’s rapture exclaim– “Whom have I in heaven but you? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside you.”