The Death of Christ, our only Stay. If the thoughts of sin, death, and judgment be so terrible, as in truth they are to every soul of man, on what shall we stay ourselves when our time is at hand?
I. First, upon the love of God, in giving His Son to die for us. This is our first foundation, that God loves the world; that He looks upon the works of His hands with an eternal and stedfast love, with a tender, yearning compassion. Whatever is doubtful, this is sure. Light does not pour forth from the sun with a fuller and directer ray, than does perfect and eternal love overflow from the bosom of God upon all the works that He has made. God's creative love alone would be enough to still our fears, and to show us that, if any perish, it is not because He is austere, but because they are evil. The whole will and Kingdom of God is love; and to Him, in that Kingdom, we may come with boldness of hope and trust.
II. We have, as a second foundation on which to build our trust, the love of the Son in giving Himself for us. Being in the form of God, He emptied Himself of His glory. His Godhead He could not lay aside for us; but He took to Himself something the dearest and most precious to the soul of man He took our nature, and therein a life, the most loved and priceless of all thegifts of God. There is nothing to be compared with life.We cherish it as our very self; it is the centre of every care; the end of all our labours. Such He took unto Himself, and thereby He possessed Himself of something He might give for us.
III. In Christ's death were united the oblation of a Divine person, and the sanctity of a sinless man; the perfection of a holy will, and the fulfilment of a spotless life; the willing sacrifice of the sinless for the sinful, of the shepherd for the sheep that was lost, of life for the dead. How this wrought atonement for the sin of the world, we cannot say further than is revealed. How the guiltless could take the place of the guilty how the penalty, due to our sin, could be laid on any but ourselves, above all, on One who was sinless must, at least in this our wayfaring on earth, be a mystery unsearchable, and a depth past finding out. In this life it is enough for us to know that He hath "tasted death for every man"; that "there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 331.
References: John 15:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1128; H. R. Haweis, Church Sermons,vol. i., p. 81.