Meditations on ManhoodSample

THE RADIANCE OF GOD’S LOVE

Beloved, the Father loves His Son so much that His love overflows its banks and covers all of us whom the Lord Jesus has taken to be His own. The Father’s love is like a great beacon light kindled in honor of the well-beloved, but shedding its radiance far and wide to enlighten those who sit in darkness, and in the valley of the shadow of death. Let us contemplate this fact so fraught with blessing to all believers. First, as our Lord Jesus is man, the Father places His work to man’s account. The Lord had made man in His own image; He had created him a remarkable being of united matter and spirit; but man made a revolt from Him, so that “it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth.” When the Lord looks upon our race at this moment, He cannot take satisfaction in creatures who have made themselves so vile. Our nature is prone to evil, and it cannot but be abhorrent unto the thrice-holy Jehovah. Yet is not man blotted out from the list of beings, for there is one Man, true man, born of a woman, made under the law, a partaker of flesh and blood, who is in Himself so well-pleasing to the Lord that He makes up for all the displeasure felt towards the rest of our race. This Man was so obedient, so self-sacrificing, so pure, so devout, so gentle, so everything that is admirable, that when the Father considers Him, the virtues of that one Man’s life and death endear to Him the race; so that for His sake He forgets the sins of men and is well pleased to accept all who are united to Him. “By the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.”