THE MEASURE OF LOVE

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you." —John 15:9

This is the most amazing verse in the Bible. Who can sound the unimagined depths of that love which dwelt in the bosom of the Father from all eternity towards His Son?—and yet here is the Savior's own exponent of His love towards His people!

There is no subject more profoundly mysterious than those mystic inter-communings between the first and second persons in the adorable Trinity before the world was. Scripture gives us only some dim and shadowy revelations regarding them—distant gleams of light, and no more. Let one suffice. "Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him."

We know that earthly affection is deepened and intensified by increased familiarity with its object. The friendship that began only yesterday is not the sacred, hallowed thing which years of growing communion have matured. If we may with reverence apply this test to the highest type of holy affection, what must have been that interchange of love which the measureless span of Eternity had fostered—a love, moreover, not fitful, transient, vacillating, subject to altered tones and estranged looks—but pure, constant, untainted, without one shadow of turning! And yet, listen to the "words of Jesus," As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you! It would have been infinitely more than we had reason to expect, if He had said, "As my Father has loved angels, so have I loved you." But the love borne to no finite beings is an appropriate symbol. Long before the birth of time or of worlds, that love existed. It was together with Eternity itself. Hear how the two themes of the Savior's eternal rejoicing—the love of His Father, and His love for sinners—are grouped together—"Rejoicing always before Him, and in the habitable part of His earth!"

To complete the picture, we must take in a counterpart description of the Father's love to us—"Therefore does my Father love me," says Jesus in another place, "because I lay down my life!" God had an all-sufficiency in His love—He needed not the wearisome love of creatures to add to His glory or happiness; but He seems to say, that so intense is His love for us, that He loves even His beloved Son more (if infinite love be capable of increase), because He laid down His life for the guilty! It is regarding the Redeemed it is said, "He shall rest in His love—He shall rejoice over them with singing."

In the assertion, "God is love," we are left truly with no mere unproved affirmation regarding the existence of some abstract quality in the divine nature. "Herein," says the apostle, "perceive we THE LOVE,"—(It is added in our authorized version, "of God," but, as it has been remarked, "Our translators need not have added whose love, for there is but one such specimen")—"because He laid down His life for us." No expression of love can be wondered at after this. Ah, how miserable are our best expressions compared with His! "Our love is but the reflection—cold as the moon; His is as the sun." Shall we refuse to love HIM more in return, who has first loved, and so loved us?

"Never a man spoke like this man."