HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR US.

 

EVENING DEVOTION by James Smith

MARCH 14

 

1 John 3:16

Hereby perceive we the love of God,

because he laid down his life for us: and

we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

 
This is a most stupendous fact, an amazing mystery,
   that God should take our nature,
       in order to labour, suffer, and
           die in our stead.
 
Jesus was God.
 
He became man.
 
He is God and man in one person.
 
As such he laid down his life for us.
 
He laid it down willingly, no one took it from him, he laid it down of himself.
 
He laid it down with a perfect knowledge of what we should be, and do, and deserve.
 
He was not moved to do so by anything in us, it was his own pure, infinite, and sovereign love alone, which led him to do so.
 
“Herein is love.”
 
And there is no such love anywhere else.
 
Nor has his love been so gloriously displayed in anything else.
 
Beloved, let us dwell on the love of Jesus. We can never think of him enough.
 
We can never praise him for it enough.
 
Let us think of our state before God,
   our sins against God, and
    our desert at the hands of God; and
 then let us dwell upon this great fact,
 that instead of dealing with us according to our sins, or
rewarding us to our iniquities,

 “He laid down his life for us.”
 
Laid it down as the price of our ransom.
 
 

How hath he loved us? How?

Can man or angel tell?

Before his cross we bow,

The power of love to feel;

To see him love, and bleed, and die,

That we may live and reign on high.

 
James Smith