I. In the text we have the revelation given us as to the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. There seems to be wonderful beauty and expressiveness in this thought of the preparation God makes for His children, showing the Divine forethought, and the infinite fulness and carefulness of the love that has them in its regard, and that prepares for them things that are yet to come in the blessings that are bestowed upon them now; to remember how in the creation the world was prepared before man came upon it, and all its beauty and grandeur were ready to receive the crowning illustration of God's creative power that was found in man, whose brow bore the image of the Divine presence.
II. But now we turn for a moment to the revelation of the Spirit in which these things are made manifest to us. "God hath revealed them to us by His Spirit." Let the ministry of God the Holy Spirit be acknowledged and honoured. It is in proportion as individuals or as churches honour the Holy Spirit that we shall be prospered in the Divine work, that we shall be made strong for labour, wise for difficulty, comforted in sorrow, triumphant in all endeavour, and rejoicing in all things in the grace and glory of our Lord.
III. But then there is the third point of the condition that is essential to this, in the character of those who are to be the recipients of the blessing which God hath prepared for them that love Him. If we are children of God and disciples of Jesus Christ we ought to seek after the love that shall put the lovely into the unlovable, as the grace of God does with us. It is one of the most grievous mistakes about Christian fellowship that people are ever expecting to be loved, instead of seeking to love. We shall never have true Christian fellowship in the Church except as every one seeks to love the rest, and then all are sure to be loved and every one to be loved by all, because all realise the blessing of the indwelling Christ, of the Spirit of God, and the love that is imparted thereby.
J. P. Chown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 273.
The Story of the Cross.
I. It is true of all the great tragedies which affect mankind that they owe their power to the spiritual element in them, to the depth and truth of the ideas which they bring in living substance before our eyes. And the story of the Cross is the supreme tragedy of life, the sorrow which is like no other sorrow, but yet is the type of all sorrows; the victory in which all victory is contained, in which all the agonies, hopes, aspirations of human nature find their explanation, fulfilment, and relief. The spiritual element in it is the whole of it. The outer story is necessary to the inward truth; but without the key it would be futile, meaningless. Who invented that key? Who invented the ideas which lie at the bottom of that story, which, if they are true, make it intelligible, credible, the source of life and peace, hope and renovation without end, but which, if they are baseless, a figment of the human brain, make it an idle tale, a purposeless fragment from the story of human cruelty and human credulity?
II. We may distinguish three ideas on which, beyond others, the truth of that story rests. These are immortality, sin, the fatherhood of God. Can we believe that any of these is the baseless creation of the human fancy? What a picture to have been imagined! a picture of which not merely the special combinations are due to human fancy, but of which the materials must in that case be due also a picture too beautiful, infinitely too beautiful, to be true. Is it not more reasonable to believe with the Apostle that as in the world of sense, so in the things which touch our life more closely, our imagination instead of exceeding, falls far short of the wonders of Divine provision; that God has prepared for them that love Him not less, but infinitely more, than eye hath seen, or ear heard, or than has entered into the heart of man?
E. C. Wickham, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 360.
References: 1 Corinthians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 2:10. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ii., No. 56; Bishop Westcott, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., p. 193; D. Rhys Jenkins, The Eternal Life,p. 183. 1 Corinthians 2:10. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vii., p. 292.