1 John 4
Riley1 John 4:10
BY THE BLOOD 1 John 4:10THIS morning our theme is “Propitiation by the Blood,” and my first suggestion is this,— GOD, BY CHRIST’S BLOOD, HAS Our text tells us of Jesus Christ that God set Him “forth to be a propitiation”, and that our God has done this there are abundant Scriptures that teach.That wonderful epitome of the Gospels, John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.God alone could do this. Man’s failure, through sin, sent him to total bankruptcy and left him, therefore, incompetent to provide for himself a way of salvation.General Fisk tells how he stood once at a slave-block where an old colored Christian minister was being sold. The auctioneer said of the man, “What do I hear bid for him? He is a very good kind of a man. He is a minister of the Gospel.”A slave-buyer said “$20” (He was very old and not worth very much). A second purchaser cried “$25”; “$30” a third; “$35” a fourth; “$40” was the bid of a fifth.The aged minister began to tremble.
He had hoped to be able to buy his own freedom, and he had just $70 that he had saved through weary years, and as the bids went on “$45”, “$50”, “$55”, “$60”, “$65”, the old man trembled from head to foot, and when he heard “$65” he cried at the top of his voice, “$70.”He was afraid they would outbid him. The men around divined the meaning of his bid. Nobody dared go beyond it, for they felt he wanted his freedom, and the auctioneer struck him down to himself. Done! Done!But, as Dr. Talmage says, “We were poorer than was that old African.
We could not buy our own deliverance, but God comes forward, as a friend indeed, and says, ‘I will pay the price’ and the provision is made.”It was of His grace. The Scriptures abundantly attest this truth.In Romans 5:20 we read,“Moreover the Law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even So might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord”. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Ephesians 2:4, “But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved)”. and Ephesians 2:8,“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”. “Amazing grace I how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see. “ ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believed I “Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; ’Tis grace that bro’t me safe thus far, And grace will lead me Home.” And it was for sinners. It would not be difficult for the world to understand how God could love saints if they were holy and provide for them all good. Their loyalty to Him would bring affection from Him. But that which astonishes even the unconverted, which leads to their conviction of sin, is the fact of 1 John 4:10,“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the Propitiation for our sins”. and in Romans 5:8; Romans 5:10,“God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life”. A friend of mine, in Chicago, in an after-meeting was spoken to by a mother who said, “There is my unconverted daughter; I wish you would go and talk with her.” He went straight to this young lady and said, “Don’t you want to accept Christ to-night?” She stamped her foot in anger, and said, “My mother should have known better than to do that! She ought to know it only makes me worse to send people to speak to me.” This friend opened his Bible to Isaiah 53:5,“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all”. Instantly the tears began to roll down the cheeks of this young woman, and she said, “Oh, I did not know before that God so loved me, and that Jesus Christ was slain for me—His enemy.”THIS IS TO ALL In the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 2:9, we read,“We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man”. And again in 1 John 2:2,“He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world”. Not a man left out, so far as the provision was concerned. Propitiation for all!John McNeil, preaching in Chicago during the World’s Fair, said he thought of all the people in Jerusalem, Barabbas must have had the best idea of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. “You will remember,” said McNeil, “that he should have been crucified and Jesus released, but the order was exactly reversed. The door of the prison swings open and Barabbas is free, and as he comes out into the light of the day all the people seem to be hurrying in one direction, and he asks them where they are going, and they answer, “To see Jesus of Nazareth crucified,” and after a moment’s thought Barabbas exclaims, “Why, that is the Man that is dying in my stead.”He pushes his way through the gate, up the hillside until he reaches the surging mob about the cross, and working through the crowd until he gets so near to Christ that he can touch the dying Saviour, he says, “My Friend, I don’t know who You are; but I know they put You on the cross in my stead, and You are dying for Me.” “And,” said McNeil, “until you can give a better theory of the Atonement, take that of Barabbas,—Christ your substitute dying in your place.” And He is the substitute not for us only, but for every sinner of earth!His sufferings atoned for all. Romans 5:18 reads,“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life”. There are many people that will not be saved, but it will not be because Christ shed His Blood for a few only. He shed that Blood for every man, irrespective of person, “for God is no respecter of persons”, and whether men will receive the salvation or not, each of them ought to see and be able to say what one said yonder in the days of the Civil War.There was a company of bushwhackers arrested in Missouri and sentenced to death. Just as they were about to be shot, a young boy touched the commanding officer on the arm and said,“Sir, won’t you let me take the place of the man standing yonder? He has a family and will be greatly missed and I want to take his place.”The officer gave his consent. The boy stepped forward and drew the man out of line, standing in his tracks. When the command was given to “fire,” the boy fell dead, and in yonder little Missouri town, on the stone that marks his resting place, these words are cut, “Sacred to the memory of Willie Lear.
He took my place!”The shed Blood of Jesus Christ makes that same speech the necessity of every soul. God’s claim then is upon every man.He has paid for him this precious price,—“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold,” “But with the precious Blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19). God has a right to say then what He does in Ezekiel 18:4,“Behold, all souls are Mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine”, His propitiation is provided, and proffered, and upon that basis God has a claim upon every man, woman and child.THIS IS BY FAITH In our text we read, ‘Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith by His Blood” (Romans 3:25). The proffer is to faith.“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace” (Romans 4:16). Mr. Spurgeon is right in saying that “a living faith is the faith that appropriates the promise of God, that takes the promise and presents it to the Father, claiming its fulfilment, just as you present your check to the bank, upon which it is drawn, demanding money, because of the signature.”Some years since, in this city, there lived a family in three rooms and in comparative poverty. The husband was a barber working for the small wage, when suddenly there came the news from the East that a wealthy relative of his wife had died, and had left to her a million or more. She could have thrown the letter into the waste-basket, saying, “No such fortune can be meant for me.” But she did not. On the contrary, she went on and asked for that which had been provided for her, and to which, according to the law, she was entitled. Her demand was met and she became a wealthy woman.
Her children needed no longer want for bread or clothing, or elegant home, or first circle of society. Her possessions put her in a place to command all these, and I am glad to say that she was not only rich and increased with goods, but immediately manifested the love she had professed to her Saviour by some generous offerings made to the cause of Christ.But, through the death of Jesus Christ each believer becomes heir to greater possessions still, heir to the Bread of Life, heir to the Garment of Righteousness, heir to the circle of the saints, heir to the mansions of the skies.No person ever passed from this world to make so many rich in His going as did the Son of God. See what the Scriptures say concerning our inheritance,—“All things are yours. “Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; “And ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s”, Oh, that by faith we might appropriate the promises, for then would we be rich indeed, and see that we have not only propitiation through His Blood, but that by the same Blood every blessing belongs to us.“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word! What more can He say than to you He hath said, To you, who for refuge to Jesus have fled! “Tear not; I am with thee; O be not dismayed! For I am thy God, I will still give thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand Upheld by My gracious, omnipotent hand. “‘When through the deep waters I call thee to go, The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow, For I will be with thee, thy trials to bless, And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. “‘The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not, desert to his foes; That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no, never, no, never forsake.’”
1 John 4:16
THE CENTER AND OF LOVE 1 John 4:16. MY subject this morning was, “The Length, Breadth, and Depth of Divine Love.” My theme this evening is the complement of that, and my sermon will be only the further discussion of that same verse, and the study of its human side. I think the last sentence of this text compasses “The Center and Circumference of Human Love.”God is that center, and that circumference.Within the circle of His holiness all love is sacred; beyond that circle all love is sin.Men talk about blind love. There is no such thing! Love is never blind. Men talk about free love! The terms are their own contradiction.
When love passes the bounds of godliness it is converted into other stuff, and having lost its original character, it should be called by another name, and that name is “lust”.When love blunders and falls into the ditch, say not, “love is blind,” but rather, “love is gone, and sickly sentiment is standing in her shoes.” There are some people who seek to carry their sentimentalism into religion. I happen to know a man— who is not a member of this church, I am glad to say—who often lays himself out in defense of what he calls “the gospel of love,” and yet whose life is such that if Paul was preaching again he would reproduce the sermon addressed to the immoral Felix on “Righteousness, Temperance, and the Judgment to Come, for that man’s special rebuke and benefit.Don’t degrade true love, then, by confounding her with these slatterns of lust and sentimentalism; who, though related each to the other, are not even forty-second cousins of this brightest angel of earth or Heaven, this seraph that enters human life to exalt it until it is fit to be eternally wedded with the life Divine; for “he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”.This text invites our thought to the divinest possibility of the human soul.“He that dwelleth in love”. Is it possible that a man may dwell in love and yet keep his residence on the earth? Angels may dwell in love, for they have nothing to destroy or even disturb it; saints redeemed, in Heaven, may dwell in love, because they stand in the eternal presence of love itself, and are never more to lose its life and light. But men! Mortals of earth, surrounded by all evil, possessed of sinful souls, hounded by hell, can they dwell in love and yet dwell on earth? Surely, or else our text is wrong, and John was not inspired! But you say, “How can it be?”Well, let us see. Upon this we will agree: Before a man or woman can dwell in love, they must get in love.Before you can dwell in a house, you get the key to go in. About the first step in falling in love is to get acquainted.
The first time I saw a certain girl, I was interested in her. The train was just pulling out from Lafayette when she came and sat across the car-aisle from me. I was interested, I say! I was sorry when the train slowed up at the junction and she got off, and yet I don’t think I was in love until later, and after some acquaintance. That may seem to spoil the romance of “love at first sight,” but I don’t take much stock in love at first sight. Genuine love isn’t a question of pleasure in features, form and face.
It is centered in character, and as Drummond says, “It is largely a spiritual thing.”I really think that many of the world’s unbelievers are without love for God, because they don’t know God; they haven’t studied to understand the infinite love which God has shown in Jesus Christ.That is what John thought. That is what John said, “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God, He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love”.Ah, my friends, I would like to do for you in religion what others did for me in social life.
I should like to introduce you to the One who is so worthy of your love. I remember dealing with a man who was utterly antagonistic to “the sweetest name on mortal tongue,” when first I called it in his presence. Three weeks afterward I found him reading his Bible. I bowed with him in prayer, and without saying much went away. A few days more and he was singing love songs unto the Lord. How came it? By reading the Word he got acquainted with God, and no man ever yet knew Him and remained indifferent to His irresistible charms. Read the Word and let that introduce you to the true God.
Go on your knees in prayer and hold sweet communion with Him until you come to feel that you are fast and familiar friends. That is the first step toward dwelling in love. Get acquainted!Again, center your affection in Him. Every husband understands how to do that. Other women may attract and please him in a measure, but in the wife’s person the true husband finds the object about which every tender chord of his life delights to wind itself. After he has bestowed upon her every affection, he feels that she deserves more devotion.
So it should be with our love of God, save that as God is infinitely above even the idols of earth, so our love for Him should be more spiritual and intense.But some people say, “How can I love Him whom I have not seen?” We answer, love does not necessarily depend on that personal acquaintance which comes from meeting often. Love is an emotion of the soul and can go out toward the character even in the absence of the body.
Many a man lives in love with one whom he has not seen. His ideal of womanhood is a well defined thought, a mental photograph of flesh and blood and soul. Of her he dreams, and through the earth he searches in hope of seeing her, incarnate. It is not madness so to do! Men laugh at such sentiments as folly, and counsel their friends to settle down to realities and wed a woman instead of scouring the earth for an angel. But these creatures of the imagination are not angels. Men who have thought of them and waited in hope of seeing their faces, never look for angels. They don’t stand beneath the open sky and watch the stars in expectancy of her coming; they don’t sit on the shore of the sea and play the dunce in hope of wooing a mermaid from the water to the office of a wife.
They pass along the street, or stand in the crowd and look on the faces of real, live women, and among them hope to find her whose companionship will furnish the needed complement of life.To grow tired of waiting and marry another who is a stranger to all one’s fondest dreams, is to pave the way for infelicities, a court, and a divorce. I remember that Hawthorne, in one of his shorter stories, perfectly illustrates my point. It is the story of Sylph Etherege, who was shown a picture of her supposed cousin to whom she was betrothed by her parents when yet a babe. The one who led her to grace that cousin with so many bright and delicate perfections was none other than Edward Vaughn, himself the pledged groom. And yet he concealed the relationship, and talked constantly of another, as Edward, after having been presented to Sylph as the room-mate of Vaughn, and under the name of Hamilton.The charm worked. The beautiful girl dreamed of a cousin yet to come.
For weeks and months she waited for his return from France. At last his step was heard in the hall.
Sylph, in the wild excitement of ecstatic affection, rushed to meet him. Then the real Edward, in hollow mockery of her hope, laughed in her face and told her: that he had erected her phantom lover, but now preferred to tell her the truth. He, Hamilton, whose presence was repulsive, was her own and only cousin.The young girl fell, unconscious, at the revelation. A few weeks of waning passed, and then with broken heart and wasted form, she took her flight to find in Heaven an atmosphere of love that could restore her charms.Do you say that we must see to love, when some have died of over-passion for that one on whose form they never gazed in blissful rapture? Neither do we need to see the body of Christ in order to love Him. Acquaint yourself with God’s character as written here in this Bible and your life must fill with affection supreme.
One of our young ladies related, on one Sabbath evening, that pretty story from Henry Drummond, in which he tells of his charming young friend, the sweetness of whose life and character was the delight of her friends. In health she had worn a locket at her neck which no one was allowed to open.
After she sickened and died a friend unclasped the tiny thing and found within this text: “Whom having not seen, I love.” Then the strength and sweetness of her life was explained.In the second place, love is the power that most enlarges life.“He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”. Only think of it! There is a power that can so enlarge the heart that God—He who fills immensity—can enter that little room in one’s spiritual tabernacle. You never hear of God’s getting into the heart of a stingy man, a mean man, an unloving man. It can’t be. If it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven, it is easier for an elephant to find a stall in a mustard seed than for God to find room in a mean heart. The question of your godliness and mine is plain enough. Do we love? Do we love sinners and seek to save their souls?
Do we love Christians and delight in all their service and sacrifice to God? Do we love God and find our hearts so empty of the world and its rubbish that God comes in and fills us with joy and peace and praise?Some people say they don’t know whether they are Christians! How can we be ignorant of such a glorious occupancy of the heart as God’s presence makes?It is related that during one of Napoleon’s wars, a soldier who had been wounded was in the surgeon’s hand. In removing some of the torn and dead flesh, the knife came near the heart. The suffering soldier, lover of Napoleon, said: “Surgeon, be careful there! If you cut a little deeper you will find the Emperor.” Thus love so enlarges life, that the heart can furnish room for God.Yes, our text teaches that God can do more than enter; He can dwell there!
Only think of it! I have heard men tell in boastful speech how Abraham Lincoln once dined with them; and once a Baptist preacher said to me that Frankie Cleveland almost grew up in his house, so often did she visit beneath the clergyman’s roof.
It was good to hear him talk, so proud was he of the distinction that the favored and famed guest conferred. But the King of Glory has honored some of the lowliest of all human homes by entering a hut, seeking out its loving heart and taking possession for good.“Why,” you say, “it can’t be! If God could enter a heart, He never could live there. The apartments would be too narrow and cramped for Him who knoweth how to fill the infinite heavens with His presence!”But whether the Heaven will hold God, or whether the earth is great enough for a comfortable foot-stool, still it remains a fact that in a loving heart He finds both room for Himself and His Kingdom of grace. When the disciples were anxious to know where Christ would set up His Kingdom, the Master answered, “The Kingdom of God is within you”. Such power has love to scoop out and enlarge the heart.I heard Philip Moxom say that when he died, if his heart was opened, Spain would be found.
But Spain isn’t big enough to fill a Christian’s heart. Since I entered into love with God, His Kingdom has come in here!
That includes America, that includes Europe, that includes Asia, that includes Africa, that includes the Isles of the sea. Wherever God seeks to reign, that land lies fully within this cell, and to it I send some money to express my love. Ah, my friends, let God into your heart and love will so enlarge it that all else will be thrown out and His Kingdom of grace brought in.A whaler who had gone from Nantucket Sound, by Cape Horn, and up to the Northern Pacific, in search of the monsters, said to a Christian who sought his heart for Christ, “I fear you are losing your labor! I think of nothing but whales; I care for nothing by day but whales; and I dream of naught else at night. If you should explore this heart you would find in its cavity a sperm whale.”Some hearts are full of jewels; some are full of gold; some are full of ambition; some are full of questionable schemes; some are crowded to suffocation with the devils of impure thought and purpose!Oh, thank God that Jesus Christ can scourge out these all, as He drove the money-changers from the holy place of old, and at one’s bidding God will walk in and bring His glorious Kingdom after Him.Will you let love reign there and God sit on that favorite of thrones? A soldier boy lay dying in a hospital.
The nurse who watched at his side saw the end approaching, and bending near she said in tender voice, “My dear boy, if this should be death that is coming upon you, are you ready to meet your God?”He answered, “I am ready, Dear Nurse,” and then as he laid his hand over his heart, never to be lifted again, he said, “Here is the place of His Kingdom. Why should I be afraid?”The breath was gone, but angel-arms were underneath him, and he who had furnished room to God’s Kingdom was bourne away to his room in that mansion not made with hands; and God met him at its door and gave him a welcome as much more royal than that he had given God as God is more kingly than men.