to say that we so fully apprehend the divine nature as to be warranted in declaring that some analogy to that is impossible for Him?  Our language is, ’I will not offer unto God that which doth cost me nothing.’  Let us bow in silence before the dim intimation that seems to flicker out of the words of my text, that so He says to us, ’I will not offer unto you that which doth cost Me nothing.’  ’He spared not His own Son’; withheld Him not from us.

But passing from that which, I dare say, many of you may suppose to be fanciful and unwarranted, let us come upon the surer ground of the other words of my text.  And notice how the reality of the surrender is emphasised by the closeness of the bond which, in the mysterious eternity, knits together the Father and the Son.  As with Abraham, so in this lofty example, of which Abraham and Isaac were but as dim, wavering reflections in water, the Son is His own Son.  It seems to me impossible, upon any fair interpretation of the words before us, to refrain from giving to that epithet here its very highest and most mysterious sense.  It cannot be any mere equivalent for Messiah, it cannot merely mean a man who was like God in purity of nature and in closeness of communion.  For the force of the analogy and the emphasis of that word which is even more emphatic in the Greek than in the English ‘His own Son,’ point to a community of nature, to a uniqueness and singleness of relation, to a closeness of intimacy, to which no other is a parallel.  And so we have to estimate the measure of the surrender by the tenderness and awfulness of the bond.  ’Having one Son, His well-beloved, He sent Him.’

Notice, again, how the greatness of the surrender is made more emphatic by the contemplation of it in its double negative and positive aspect, in the two successive clauses.  ’He spared not His Son, but delivered Him up,’ an absolute, positive giving of Him over to the humiliation of the life and to the mystery of the death.

And notice how the tenderness and the beneficence that were the sole motive of the surrender are lifted into light in the last words, ’for us all.’  The single, sole reason that bowed, if I may so say, the divine purpose, and determined the mysterious act, was a pure desire for our blessing.  No definition is given as to the manner in which that surrender wrought for our good.  The Apostle does not need to dwell upon that.  His purpose is to emphasise the entire unselfishness, the utter simplicity of the motive which moved the divine will.  One great throb of love to the whole of humanity led to that transcendent surrender, before which we can only bow and say, ‘Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.’