by Rev. John Duncan, LL.D.
(Address before Distribution of Elements)
It is the death that Jesus accomplished at Jerusalem which we this day commemorate. And in the commemoration thereof we eat of that Bread which came down from heaven, that a man might eat thereof and live for ever. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” There
have been many deaths on this earth — all the men who died have died on it, because all were sinners. But this is a peculiar death, a wondrous death, for He who died was “Jesus Christ the righteous.” Death passed upon all, for that all have sinned, but Christ died, who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. This, then, is no ordinary death. Every other death is a sinner’s death. But what is this peculiar death? It demands a peculiar attention; it is a peculiar fact in the administration of a holy and a righteous God, bearing on the case of all mortal, because sinful, men.
Now about this death, on which we are to meditate for a few minutes, I would suggest a few thoughts, and but a few examples of that which is so rich in thought, fitted to furnish an occupation for our mind, with all its powers and faculties, both in time and eternity. Of the many thoughts, therefore, which it suggests, let us for a few minutes take these two, viz., Love and Life. We commemorate this day a death which is the exhibition of love, and which is both the exhibition and price of life.
Believing communicants, ye know what ye were. Among other things, ere ye were quickened, ye were in death. “We ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, hateful and hating one another.” This is a sad account of fallen humanity. Nor is this the worst brand on us, that we are a misanthropical race (hating mankind). Not only are we misanthropical, but we are misotheistical also, that is, haters of God. “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be.” And it forms the chief element of our hatefulness, that we hate God: and it is the chief source of our misanthropy, of our hating one another. Well, “Such were some of you”; such in your primeval estate ye all were. “But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” And ye are now come as a living and loving people to meditate on love, and to warm your poor sparks at the flame of divine love.
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.” Had we loved God, that had not been worth talking about, because He is so amicable, but herein is love, that God loved us who did not love Him. Now, who can tell the hatefulness of not loving God? And yet here is the wondrous display of love, surpassing surely the Law’s display of it (which is a display of it), that God loved us, and so loved us as “to send His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” For God could not put aside the law of love, because God is love. God is justice, and justice maintains law. But what is law? The demand of love. He could not in love put love aside. He could not put aside the law of love. Justice it is that maintains
law, and the summary of law is, “Thou shalt love.” He could not in love put love aside, because of His great love to the breakers of the law, and in breaking the law, the violators of love. He could not put love aside: it could not be that the loving God could put the claims of love or the interests of love aside. But He so loved as to give His Son to maintain the law of love, when He loved His enemies, giving His Son to be a propitiation. Love is a wondrous thing. High is the praise which Paul gives of it to the Corinthians, and still higher the praise which John gives of it in the words “God is love, and He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in Him.” Now, it is the exhibition of this love — God giving His Son to be the propitiation for the sins of enemies — that lays the foundation for the outpouring of love to the fulfilment of that promise which we have in the covenant of grace established in Christ. “The Lord thy God shall circumcise thine heart to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” “I will put My law in their heart and write it in their inward parts,” that law of which the summary is, “Thou shalt love.” God’s love, as being holy love, could not compromise law, because that would be compromising love; it could not compromise justice, for justice requires only the law, which says, “thou shalt love.”
Well, let us meditate for a little on the love. The whole exhibition which God has made of Himself to man as a spiritual being, though His natural perfections are revealed in the works of creation, is in His law and in His gospel. And what is the summary of the law? Shortened into ten precepts, in compassion to our poor faculties, and shortened again for our poor faculties into two great commandments, it is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength and mind, and thy neighbour as thyself.” And what is the uniting principle of this, the summary in the two great commandments? It is, “Thou shalt love.” God is love, and the whole summary of His law is, “Thou shalt love.” And what is the summary of the Gospel? It is, “God so loved.” The sort of death which Christ died, expresses the “so.” “God so loved the world.” God in the law, the loving God, requires only love, and God in the Gospel, the loving God, so loved those who loved Him not as to give His only-begotten Son. “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by love.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God.” If we had done so, poor thanks to us, for God is infinitely amiable. His command rests most truly on a Creator’s right and property, that gives Him a right; but as a moral law it is shown that it is equitable, because He who demands it, is not only our Creator, having a right to all our being, but amiable, and having this
a right to demand love. It is a moral obligation because of the divine amiability. God is a lovely Being. Well, “Herein is love, not that we loved God.” We were hateful and hating one another, and our carnal mind was enmity against God, and not subject to His law. We were not subject to His law which told us only to love, and we were such haters that we hated God who only bade us love. “Not that we loved God,” the amiable demander of love; we hated love; we hated the amiable demander of love; we hated God. And God could not compromise justice, which, being holy, requires holy and just love; but “Herein is love” that “God loved his enemies and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins”; that, justice being satisfied, He might come and write the law of love in our hearts, and put it in our inward parts. We commemorate love, the just love, the wondrous love, the Lovely and the Loving, dying for the hateful and hating, dying for them to make them lovers.
(Address after Distribution of Elements)
Love and Life. Love and Life are bound up together, not by an arbitrary tie, but by a oneness. “He that hateth his brother abideth in death.” Love and Life; hatred and death. A life of hatred is a life in sin. That is the death which we fell into. There was death as a sentence, no doubt, because we had broken the law of justice, which is the law of love; we had broken that, and in breaking that, had incurred death as a penalty, but we fell also into death as a state. For hatred is death. God is love, and God lives; and he who hates is dead, dead in trespasses and sins. For sin is the transgression of the law, and the summary of the law is, “Thou shalt love.”
Well, we commemorate a death which brings life; that death which is the life of the faith which works by love, and the love of the faith with respect to God’s love and which works in the production of love. For, as I said, this is a peculiar death. “I am the Living One, and I became dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of the unseen state and death.” Now, “I am the Living One,” lies at the bottom of His bestowal of the life by becoming dead. How did He by becoming dead become life? Because He was the Living One, and had thus to bestow on us an infinite fountain of life. “Because of life the fountain pure remains alone with Thee.” The character of Jehovah is that He is the Living One.
Now, the Son, being in the form of God and thinking it no robbery to be equal with God, that is, having the divine nature and in it divine independence, being servant of none, took upon Him the form of a servant. He is the eternal life which was with the Father, Jehovah the
living God, full of all being, of infinite being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth unchangeably. And He is the eternal life by the external generation. “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in Himself.” Being the Son as contradistinguished from all other creatures He hath life in Himself, this holy, blessed life. But that this life might be communicated to dead sinners, He who was the life took on Him humanity, the form of a servant, for dead me, for guilty me, for unholy me. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
“I am the life.” “The fountain of life remains with Thee.” “I am the life.” “As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, even so He that eateth Me shall live by Me.” That we should eat Him and live, He took flesh, and gave that flesh that we might have life through the mystical union with the only-begotten Son of God who lives by the Father.
Thus our life reverts into the three-fold union; first, that by which the three Persons are one God; secondly, that by which the two natures are one Christ, one God-man; and thirdly, that by which we are members quickened together by His Spirit and accepted through His atoning death. Thus we, by virtue of our mystical union to the Son of God, who is one with the Father and the Holy Ghost, live with a divine life from and in the living One, who is the eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us.
Now this death is that through which the divine life that is in Christ outflows. It is thus:—That life could not flow out, because the sentence of death had passed on us, being lawbreakers. We were not lovers, because we were haters. But love could overcome that. God cannot let go His demand of obedience to the law, but divine justice being satisfied, out flows His Spirit to bring us into connection with Him who is the giver of life; not simply because He died for us, but because He who died for us is Himself the eternal life in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. According to the Father’s and His own agreement, with the consent of the Holy Spirit, the applier, He comes and dwells in us, that we may live by union to Him who is the life.
In all this, I think it is somewhat apparent that love and life are so united, not arbitrarily, but in the very nature of things as that they are inseparable. And what does all teach us? Surely this, “Walk in love, as Christ also loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a
sacrifice to God.” So the gospel brings us back to the law. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and soul and strength and mind: and thy neighbour as thyself,” and law and gospel unite in one covenant testimony. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” Now, love to God will make us very careful of offending the good God; and love to our neighbour — “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour” — will make us do all the good we can. For “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”
And so I stop with the prayer, “The Lord direct our hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.” “And the Lord make us to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God.”