He Died for Me!

Octavius Winslow, 1870
 

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me!" Galatians 2:20

In a soldier's cemetery, situated in what was a beautiful and flourishing city of one of the Southern States of America, until desolated and depopulated by the recent war—was recently seen an individual earnestly intent upon decking one of its lonely graves with flowers. A stranger passing by approached, and in a softened tone of sympathy inquired of the individual,

"If his son was buried there?"
"No," was the reply.

"Son-in-law?"
"No."

"A brother?"
"No."

"Perhaps," said the inquirer, "a relation?
"No."

"Whose memory, then, may I venture to ask, do you thus so sacredly and tenderly cherish?"

Pausing a moment to give vent to his emotion, the individual replied, "When the war broke out I was drafted to go and join the army. I was unable to procure a substitute, and made up my mind to go. Just as I was leaving home to report for duty at the conscript camp, a young man whom I had known came to me and said, 'You have a large family, whom your wife cannot support while you are gone. I am a single man, I have no one depending upon me, and will go for you.' He went. In the battle of Chickamauga the poor fellow was dangerously wounded, and was taken to the hospital. After a lingering illness, he died, and was buried here. Ever since his death it has been my desire to visit the place of his interment, and having saved sufficient funds for the purpose, I arrived yesterday, and today found his grave."

Concluding his touching story, he proceeded to plant another flower, and then took a crude board and inserted it at the foot of the turf. The inquirer, as he passed on, turned to look, and saw inscribed upon it these simple, touching words, and nothing more: "HE DIED FOR ME!"

Such is the grateful sentiment which every believer carves upon the cross and inscribes above the tomb of Jesus, "HE DIED FOR ME!" If ever the fact of Christ's substitutionary death appears in its truest grandeur, and if ever the believing soul is subdued by its touching tenderness, it is when he travels to the Savior's cross, and from thence to His tomb—clasping the one in the arms of His faith, and garlanding the other with the offerings of His love. Oh, with what profound conviction and overwhelming pathos does this great truth of the gospel then come home to our innermost soul, "The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me!"

The spiritual reader will at once catch from these opening observations the key-note of the subject which is about to engage his attention. I am the more desirous of making it the theme of our New Year's address, and of thus bringing it distinctly and widely before the Christian Church, since both the divine doctrine and the Christian experience which we are about to vindicate and unfold, were never at so low an ebb as at the present moment.

Never, perhaps, on the one hand, was the great gospel tenet of Christ's substitutionary death more generally and boldly assailed; and never, perhaps, on the other hand, did the religion of personal assurance beat in the professing Church with a pulse so languid as now.

If, among the heterodox, there are many who ignore the sacrifice of Christ; and among the orthodox there are yet more who, while believing the doctrine, have no firm, healthful persuasion of their personal interest in its wondrous and precious blessings. They accept the great Charter of Salvation, yet deny themselves its peculiar and priceless privileges. But Paul, whose teaching we vindicate and whose experience we commend, not only believed that Christ loved and died for sinners, but that He loved and died for him; that, in that love and in that death he had a personal and assured interest, an interest so individually his own, that, of the countless myriads for whom in reality the Savior died, he felt as if he alone participated in the atoning merits of His death! "The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for ME." Thus we reach the more immediate subject of our address:

Love's SACRIFICE TO SAVE.

It would be impossible to place before the reader a Christian doctrine more essential to his salvation, or to suggest a line of Christian experience more promotive of his holiness and happiness than this. Fully to believe that Christ offered Himself as a substitute for sinners, and as fully to believe that in that one offering we have a personal and inalienable interest—is to build the edifice of our hope upon a rock, and to sit securely and serenely within its divine "munitions," firmly persuaded that we know whom we have believed, and that He is able to keep the precious and eternal interests which we have committed unto Him against that great searching day when the rain shall descend and the floods come, and the winds blow, and shall try every man's foundation, and the hope built thereon, of what sort it is.

Our subject, we trust, will not be found unsuitable as a New Year reflection. What a new and elevated character will it impart to a new and important period of time! How will the sacred duties, and the solemn responsibilities, and anxious thoughts, and varied trials, and ever-changing scenes, together with the high, noble, and sacred service for Christ—if a new year finds us equipped, fortified, and prepared, if we commence its history at the cross of Jesus, gazing upon it with a fresh, realizing faith, in the full conviction of the sublime and precious truth, "HE DIED FOR ME!" It will then, in its highest, holiest sense, be a new year in our history—God fulfilling in our experience a most precious and encouraging promise as much made to us as to the "worm Jacob," "Behold, I will make you a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: you shall thresh the mountains and beat them small, and shall make the hills as chaff."

Thus renewing our strength by a fresh act of faith in this wondrous truth, "Christ loved ME! He died for ME!" we shall go forth to duty, to service, and to suffering—girt with a diviner might, and with a more constraining motive, before which the mountains of difficulty and doubt shall become a plain, and the hills of sin and unbelief as chaff; and we "shall REJOICE in the Lord, and GLORY in the Holy One of Israel."

LOVE—the love with which Christ loved us, the love which constrained Him to die in our stead—is the starting point of our address. "The Son of God LOVED me." There is no possibility of advancing a single step in unfolding this great mystery of a substitutionary sacrifice of the Innocent One for the guilty, but as faith finds the clue in the divine love that originated, planned, and executed the marvelous expedient. The salvation of man was a conception so entirely of God—a work involving in its accomplishment:
a union of Divine perfections so opposite,
a harmonizing of heavenly interests so jarring,
a reconciliation of beings so much at variance,
that in vain we search for a motive adequate to an undertaking so stupendous, for a key capable of unlocking a mystery of grace so profound, save in the LOVE of Him who gave Himself a substitutionary offering for us!

Such, my reader, is our leading thought. Shall I apologize for its introduction? What! Has the LOVE of your Savior become a theme so trite, a truth so familiar, a story so effete—as to have lost:
its power to attract you,
its beauty to charm you,
its authority to influence you,
its pathos to subdue you?

God forbid! Rather let all other passion die let the wife forget the love of her espousals, the mother her first-born affection, the husband the last fond look—but let not the love that constrained Jesus to sacrifice Himself, to save us from a condemnation so indescribable to a Heaven so glorious, cease to rouse every thought, to kindle every pulse, and to mold and influence every action of our being. Such is the love upon which we desire to bend your thoughts!

"The Son of God LOVED me." Our first inference is, that the love of Jesus is the love of DEITY. It was the Son of GOD who loved me. Tested by the rule that human affection derives its character, value, and preciousness from the relation which it sustains to us—then how great is the love of our sacrificing and sacrificed Savior! His was the love of God, the love of Deity; which compared with the love of the combined universe, would be but as the fine dust upon the balance!

Love less essentially divine, less immaculately pure, would have availed nothing in the offering of a sacrifice that could save from sin. We have remarked that, human affection must be regulated by the relation it sustains to us—though the most intense and pure, must necessarily be finite and dependent. The ties of kindred, the obligations of duty, the reaction of sympathy—must place our love beyond the range of an unselfish affection. It would be an exaggerated conception of its importance to call a love so finite in its nature, and so limited in its acts, and so selfish in its motive—inconceivable and immeasurable! As well may we talk of the fathomless depths of a rivulet, or of the overpowering effulgence of a glowworm!

But when we attempt to describe the love of Christ—which is the love of DEITY—we find ourselves confronting an affection for the measurement of which we have no scale, and for the sounding of which no line. For, "who by searching can find out God? Who can find out the Almighty unto perfection?" Let our minds fully take in the Infinite and compass the Divine, then shall we be "able to comprehend what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge!" and not until then!

It is from no misgiving of its truth, that we are accustomed to lay such frequent and such great stress upon the doctrine of the Savior's Divinity. Our object is to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men who deny, and to confirm the faith of wise men who believe it, and thus vindicate the truth of a doctrine upon the rejection or acceptance of which hinges the eternal well-being of the soul. Would it not be blasphemy to ascribe to a mere creature the names, the attributes, the works, and the worship of Deity? And yet the Holy Spirit in the Bible ascribes all these essential qualities of Deity to Jesus. What is the inference, strictly logical and true—but that He who died for us possessed a Divine dignity, lacking which—His blood had availed no more to cleanse us, His sacrifice had no more availed to save us than the death of Socrates the pagan, or, the martyrdom of Stephen the saint?

When sin strikes its scorpion-sting into my conscience, when my spirit is shaded with grief and my heart is overwhelmed with woe—when guilt oppresses me, and death and eternity confront me, longing for peace, but unable to find it, longing for hope, but cannot grasp it—oh, you deniers of my Lord's Divinity, you rejecters of my Savior's Atonement—do not insult my anguish, mock not my guilt, trifle not with my despair, by pointing me to a mere man, a creature like myself, as my Savior! No! You angels that excel in strength, you seraphim who chant; you cherubim who burn before the throne—there is not one of all your countless shining ranks to whom I would confide my guilt-burdened spirit, or entrust the salvation of my immortal soul! There is not one among your thrones, or dominions, or powers who is able to open the Book of Life, or even to look thereon! There is not one who, when death shall loose the silver cord of my present being, could waft me in triumph to the skies.

But my spirit does rejoice in God my Savior, who is Head of all principalities and powers, whose blood cleanses from all sin because He is God, who is able to save to the uttermost because He is Divine. Yes, who loved me, and gave Himself for me! No dry, speculative truth is this, beloved. It is:
the foundation of our faith,
the soul of our religion,
the lifeblood of our Christianity,
the substance of our hope.

All that is real and precious to us in view of a solemn eternity is bound up in the truth that the love that loved us unto the death, that suffered, that died, that sacrificed itself to save us—was the love of GOD! "God manifest in the flesh!" Shall we then doubt:
either its virtue to pardon,
or its willingness to receive,
or its power to save us?

Shall we, on the one hand, think of purchasing it by a worthiness of our own; or, on the other hand, limit its efficacy and refuse its offer on the ground of our vileness, poverty, and deservings of Hell? God forbid that we should so deal with the divine, the marvelous, the matchless love of Him who died for us! What higher tribute can we pay to this love, how can we best mark our estimate of its worth, our gratitude for its self-sacrifice, than by believing it simply, and, under its all-constraining influence, walking in it obediently?

Such, beloved, is the love of Jesus. Love less divine would have been unequal in its strength and intensity, to the work of our salvation. Our measure of the Savior's love must be the stupendousness of its achievement, for we have no other scale of Infinity but this. Let your faith take a firm hold of this truth —the Infinite immensity of Christ's love to you! It will silence every argument of unbelief, and repel every suggestion of Satan, and meet every accusation of sin. It will draw you away from the fruitless contemplation of your love to Christ. Ceasing to look down into the deep, dark well of your own heart—you will look up at the bleeding, loving heart of Christ, and all your doubts and fears will vanish.

If I turn my back upon the sun, I create my own shadow, and it startles and chills me. But if I turn to the sun, my shadow disappears, and I am bathed in a flood of living, golden light.

Thus, if I look away from Christ to myself, the shadow of my sinful self falls darkly and coldly around my spirit, and my soul is in eclipse; but if I look only and straight to Christ, the moment I stand face to face with Him, the darkness melts into light, the coldness kindles into warmth, and, like the angel of the Apocalypse, I stand in the very center of the Sun; and now my pathway homeward, across the desert, through much tribulation, conflict, and sorrow—is yet the "path of the just, which shines more and more unto the perfect day."

Oh, when will gracious souls cease to measure Christ's love by their own? When will they fully learn that the great secret of all spiritual fruitfulness is, "Looking unto Jesus"? Listen to His own cheering words, "From Me is your fruit found." "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine—no more can you bear fruit unless you abide in Me." Oh, it is this abiding in Christ that makes the heart to blossom with grace, and the life to bloom with the beauty of holiness.

There is nothing but death, darkness, and corruption in your fleshly nature—an open sepulcher! But in Christ Jesus there is all righteousness and holiness and beauty; and God, seeing and accepting you in Him, rests in His love, rejoices over you with singing, and exclaims, "You are all fair, my love, I see no spot in you." Turn, then—turn your eye out of and off self, and see Jesus only "For one look at self," as the saintly M'Cheyne says, "take twenty looks at Christ!"

What could the serpent-bitten Israelite have done but for this? Poring over his inflamed and festering wound would have brought him no healing. But the instant that he looked from the poison to the antidote, from the wound to the remedy-he was made whole. It might have been, in some cases, at the last moment—the shadow of death upon the eyelids, the brain swimming, the pulse sinking, life ebbing. But even then, if he but looked in faith at the brazen serpent uplifted on the pole, simple, distant and dim though the object was, he was saved.

But, suppose some of those dying Israelites had reasoned thus, "If I knew that the remedy was designed expressly for me, I would look."

Others, "If I was quite sure that I belonged to the elect Church of God, I would look."

Yet others, " I would look, but I have no faith, or, I fear that my faith is not of the right kind, or, my faith is so weak that I cannot look."

What but death would have been the inevitable and most righteously-deserved consequence of such false reasoning, of such solemn trifling? Are the excuses and objections by which multitudes of serpent-stung souls are deterred from looking in simple and unquestioning faith to Christ, more reasonable or less fatal than these? We think not. My reader, if you are one of this class, allow me to remind you that the reasoning that may do for a living hour, will not do for a dying hour. At that solemn moment all false subterfuges, all lying refuges, all vain excuses—give place to the naked, the stern, the solemn conviction, "I am about to appear in the presence of my Maker and my Judge! Am I prepared? Am I upon Christ the Rock?" Take immediate hold, then, in faith, of the glorious, the precious announcement of Jesus, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness—even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

But we reach an interesting part of our subject—its personality.

"The Son of God, WHO LOVED ME." Paul, though esteeming himself the "chief of sinners," the "least of the apostles," and "less than the least of all saints," could say, "Christ loved ME!" teaching us that the highest assurance of faith is ever in alliance with the profoundest abasement of self. Thus, when Christ is in the ascendant, occupying His own proper place as the Center, self is in the decline. But when self is exalted, Jesus sinks. "He must increase," exclaimed the lowly-minded evangelist, "but I must decrease."

The most humble disciple, the most feeble believer in Jesus, is privileged to put in this personal claim with the apostle, "The Son of God loved ME!" Disciple of Christ, the Savior loves you! He loves you individually! He loves you as though He loved no other! Just as the sun which pours its light upon all, but seems to shine for you alone—thus Jesus who loves alike all who love Him, so concentrates His whole heart upon you, so shed His precious blood for you, so wears your name upon His breastplate before the throne—as though the eyes of His love rested upon no other being in the universe but you!

Oh, claim your personal interest in His love! nor pause until, with deep humility of mind, yet with the unfaltering accent of faith, you exclaim, "Christ loves me!"

Do you inquire how this assurance of salvation may be yours? Do you object, that it is so high that you cannot attain unto it? I answer, believe firmly the general truth that, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and thus faith will turn the general fact into a particular one, and you shall exclaim, "Then He came to save me!" My soul! put in your claim of faith to a personal interest in your Savior's love, and hesitate not to say 'He died for me!' Lord! I would leave the barren shore of my poor love, and plunge into the infinite ocean of Your infinite love; and pray You from its soundless depths, to fill the shallows of my heart, that, tiding over all my sin and unworthiness, my derelictions of duty, my failures in service, my declension in grace, my countless shortcomings and infirmities—I may become, in my love to You, and in my love to Your saints—a purer and more transparent reflection of Yourself.

And, O Lord, teach me to resolve all the afflictive discipline of Your covenant, the dispensations of Your providence, even:
this adversity that so darkly overshadows me,
this bereavement that so terribly crushes me,
this sickness that so sorely tries me,
this need that so keenly presses me into Your love, that I may more experimentally learn the consolatory and assuring truth that You have sought to teach me that, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten!"

My reader, we have entered upon a new cycle of time—we have started upon a fresh stage of life's journey. The year that opens upon you so brightly, may close as darkly. Or the year that dawns in cloud, may terminate in sunshine.

But, be this as it may—light or shade, joy or sorrow—the love that Christ bears to you will be equal to all its history, will cling to you through all its vicissitudes; and bring you out of all more advanced in spiritual knowledge, more matured in divine grace, and more fitted for eternal glory, to the praise of His Great Name.

But we must now transfer our thoughts from the love of Christ, to the sacrifice of Christ; from the love He felt for us—to what He did for us.

"The Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me." These words at once confront us with the great doctrine of the gospel—the substitutionary offering of Christ on our behalf. "He gave Himself." It was a personal sacrifice.

An individual may give his property, his time, his talents, but stop short of a giving himself. But Jesus gave us all this and infinitely more. He gave Himself:
to His Father as a servant,
to the Law as a Fulfiller,
to Justice as a sacrifice,
to sinners as a Savior,
to the Church as a Redeemer,
to Satan to be tempted,
to His foes to be insulted,
to His murderers to be slain,
to death to die,
to the grave to be its prisoner!

O, the great love with which He loved us! "Christ loved us, and has given Himself for us—an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor!"

"Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for her."

"He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin—that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

Equally pointed is the language of the evangelical prophet, "For the transgression of my people was He stricken." What more could our blessed Lord do for us? In giving Himself, He gave us all. He gave:
His deity and humanity,
His time and labor,
His poverty and wealth,
His ignominy and glory,
His life,
His death,
every drop of His blood,
every pulse of His being
—all, all—to rescue us from Hell, and to bring us to Heaven! So divine, costly, and efficacious was this one dedication of Himself, we are told that "by one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified," and that "after He had offered one sacrifice for sin forever, sat down on the right hand of God." No need have we now of another priest, or sacrifice, or altar! Jesus embodied all of them forever, when "He gave HIMSELF for us." Away with an earthly priest, a human sacrifice, a carnal altar! None but Christ!

None but Christ!

No Priest but Christ!

No Sacrifice but Christ!

No Altar but Christ!

In life, in death, and through eternity—Christ shall be all and in all! The declaration of our faith, and the foundation of our hope, and throne of our love through eternity shall ever be, "HE DIED FOR ME!"

But who may put in a personal plea to the saving benefits of His sacrificial offering? Who in humble faith and grateful love may carve his name upon the cross of Jesus, and write, "HE DIED FOR ME!" Let us attempt a rapid reply to this momentous question, and thus speak a word of encouragement and hope to the soul whose one great, all-absorbing desire is to be quite sure that he is saved.

It is the language of the penitent soul. The Holy Spirit works true repentance for sin in the hearts of all for whose sins Jesus gave Himself. The sins for whom He bowed His soul unto death, must bow their heart in contrition for sin beneath the cross. There must be, and there ever is, in real conversion, a close and uniting bond of sympathy between a bleeding-hearted Savior and a broken-hearted sinner. All for whom He travailed in soul-sorrow, are led to see and feel the plague of their hearts, and to acknowledge, "Behold, I am vile, and abhor myself in dust and in ashes!"

My reader, has the Spirit thus revealed to you the startling picture of your heart's original depravity, and your life's continual sin? And has the Spirit brought you to God in the spirit and with the prayer of the publican—humble and contrite, confessing, "God be merciful to me a sinner"? Then, traveling to the cross of Jesus, you may lift your hand, and inscribe upon it, "He died for ME!"

It is the language of the believing soul. With a yet more unhesitating and assured tone, may faith, looking to Jesus, appropriate to itself these words. Saving faith deals directly, and only with the Savior. No other object has power of attraction for it, but Jesus. Not more naturally is the steel drawn by the loadstone, or more truly does the needle turn to the pole, than does the faith that saves travel to Jesus, and finds its only and perfect repose in Him! If the Holy Spirit has wrought this divine principle in your soul—if you believe in Jesus, resting only in His blood and righteousness—then, however humble, weak, and trembling that faith may be, it is "like precious faith" with all who are saved by grace; and with them, you may stand before the Savior's cross, and gazing upon it, exclaim, "He died for me!" It is the language of the loving soul. No words are more natural, none more expressive of the sentiment of the true disciple of Christ than this.

If, my beloved, you discover, glowing amid the cold embers of your affections, a solitary spark of love—if, amid the deadness and torpor of your soul, you are conscious of a faint pulsation of love to the Savior—every pulse, of whose soul throbbed with a love for you, which many waters of sorrow could not quench, nor the most agonizing death itself could still—then you may take your own loving heart, and inscribe upon the Savior's cross, and above His empty grave, the expressive and precious epitaph, "HE DIED FOR ME!"

The backsliding Christian, returning from the error of his ways, and retracing his footsteps back to the blood that heals all our declensions, and to the love that pardons all our sins, as he weeps and acknowledges his waywardness beneath the cross—may, with a faith which no assault of Satan could shake, and with a love which no departure of heart could extinguish, exclaim, "Sinful, wretched backslider though I am, vile and ungrateful as I have proved, yet He died for me!" "Return unto Me, for I have REDEEMED you."

Our subject is eminently practical. Did Christ DIE for you? Then LIVE for Him. This is but your most reasonable service. "He died for me! Then be it my aim, my privilege, my highest, holiest joy, henceforth not to live unto myself, but unto Him who died for me and rose again!" Oh, what a power of holiness, what an incentive to service, what an irresistible, all-commanding motive to unreserved consecration of mind and heart, of rank and health, of time and influence; yes, of our entire being to Christ, is included in the stupendous, the realized fact, "HE DIED FOR ME!"

Does Christ LIVE for you? Then DIE for Him. Not a bodily death does He expect at your hands. He asks you not to go to the stake, and die in a martyr's flames. But He does ask you to go to His cross, and there crucify the flesh, with its deceitful lusts; and the world, with its ensnaring seductions; that, henceforth dead unto sin, and crucified to the world, you may "live unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Lord! did You indeed die for me? Then may it be my desire, my aim, to "die daily" for You, to sin, to self, and to the world, confessing Your name, bearing Your cross, and following hard after You!

With this sentiment glowing in your heart, with this motto engraved upon your standard, embark upon another stage of life's travel, service, and conflict. May this precious, this all-inspiriting and animating truth, be ever before you, "He died for me!"

Then, whether you live, you will live unto the Lord; and whether you die, you will die unto the Lord, that, whether living or dying, you shall be the Lord's. And when the Lord Jesus comes and come He soon will, with all those who sleep in Him—then we too shall appear with Him in glory. "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so those also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him."

O glorious coming! O blessed Epiphany! O blissful vision of Jesus! O joyous reunion with all the holy, precious dead in Christ, clasped once more in their fond embrace, participating in their glory, uniting in their song, a pillar in the temple of our God forever! There, joining the hallelujah chorus, the arches of Heaven will forever and forever ring and reverberate with our sublime and swelling anthem, "HE DIED FOR ME!"