He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all....Romans 8:32

What God gave us was neither His portrait nor His principle; He gave us Himself - His presence, His life, His action. He did more than show us Himself, more than teach us about Himself - He gave us Himself, He sacrificed Himself.

It is ourselves He seeks, therefore it was Himself He gave, life for life and soul for soul. He asks us for life-committal, because it was His life He committed to us.

He gave us love by giving us Himself to love. He does not make His love and goodness just to pass before us in a panorama; nor does He lay it out parcelled so that we may readily just take it or leave it....

.....He takes the last pains to get it home to us, He carries it home Himself,  he does it all Himself. He "commends His own love". He does not woo us by proxy. Christ was no mere messenger, but present God.

The divine Lover is His own apostle. He did not simply send His Son; He came in His Son, and in His Son's cross. God was in Christ's reconciling. He did not simply make use of death, of His Son's death - He died.

Surely what the Son suffered cost the Father even more. When Paul spoke to the Galatians about his preaching of Christ, he says he "placarded Christ" before them (Galatians 3:1), made a great exhibition of Him, writ Him large, made a show of Him, and glorified Him openly.

That was an apostle's work. He depicted Christ, and pointed to Christ, and commended Christ. He said "Hear me,"—not, "Look to me," but "Look to Christ," "Receive Christ."

He was continuous with God as He is not with us. He did not represent God to us on the same principle as He does us to God. Christ dying therefore was God commending His own love to us.

The Cross was no mere assurance of God's love, but its action. Christ was the love of God giving itself to us, the grace of God bestowing, spending, pouring itself out on us, the holiness of God reclaiming us to holiness, not turning us toward it, but replacing us in it.

God does not love us by deputy; He does not give us by deputy; He does not save us by deputy. He brings and wings His own love. His holiness takes its own consequences in an evil world. He does His own suffering and ,saving.

He is a jealous God. None but Himself shall redeem us for Himself. He is a monopolist of sacrifice. He does not part with the agony and glory of the Cross to any creature. None shall outdo Him in sacrifice.

No creature has a right to sit with God on the throne of the Cross. It was no created being that died for us. Creatures as we are, it is in no created Spirit that we can live. Our Redemption is too costly for any but our Creator, and a creature must let it alone for ever.

P. T. Forsythe

Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost
But now am found
Was blind
But now I see

Around the turn of the 20th century, P.T. Forsythe was a voice for orthodox faith in England as theological slippage was occurring with agonizing regularity all around him. His prophetic voice is needed now more than ever.  He seemed to have a one-track mind - that the cross of Christ would not be taken for granted, or its atoning value be devalued.

"There has passed away from faith that moral amazement and awe which are inseparable from the mystery of grace. It has ceased to be to us a most strange thing that God should love, forgive, and save us."

Amazing love
How can it be?
That thou, my God
Shouldst die for me! 

"And today there is only a minority of Christians whose piety takes the form of standing and overwhelming wonder that God should touch or save "me."

"We wonder at prodigies, and sensations, and a thousand things supplied to us by the news of the day. We wonder at cosmic discoveries and physical imaginations. Our wonder is plied till it is almost benumbed and we lost the power to wonder."

"But whether or no it be from a like cause - stupidity from over-feeding, or from the trivializing of grace - we have lost the power to wonder at grace. And we do not marvel, as Christ did, at the hardness of the human heart. It was the one thing unintelligible to Him. We dispute hotly about miracles, and all the time we lose the sense of marvel, because we have lost the sense of grace."

"And yet, how shall an evangelical faith or pulpit endure, how can it, if in wonder at the universe of God, it lose its wonder at the grace of God - wonder that God should think, and think to such loving, saving purpose, of small and evil me; should have sought me sorrowing, and snatched me to His joy; should have face for wicked me His own holiness and judgment; should have conquered for good and all the evil power that held me; that He should have borne my judgment, cancelled my guilt, and taken away the sin of the world?"

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

Amazing love
How can it be?
That thou, my God
Shouldst die for me!