ROM. v. 8. “But
God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
IN broad and striking contrast with the comparative
poverty of our human love, Paul sets the greatness and
the wonder of God’s love to man.
I. God does not ask us to take His love simply on trust.
To doubt His love would be an affront to the reason
as well as a dishonour to the heart.
Our faith is not vain in the sense of being unsupported
by proofs.
II. What is the proof?
1. Christ died for us.
The death of Christ was the manifestation of the infinite
love of God to man, and was designed to prove it to the
world. It was not necessary for Christ to die to make God
love us, but Christ died to show that God already loved us
2. While we were yet sinners He died for us.
If He had died for good men it would have been an
amazing act of love; but it was more.
A profound sense of sin is always associated with a pro-
found realization of the greatness of the love of God.
III. The cross of Christ is a present reality. The
Apostle does not say God has proved His love towards,
as if it were something away in the past; but he says it
is a proof going on still. The cross speaks to the heart of
man with the same tenderness and power as it did to the
eye-witnesses of the love and sorrow of His passion and
death.
G. S. Barrett, B.A.