So, then, let us think of that pleading.  To sue for love, to beg that an enemy will put away his enmity is the part of the inferior rather than of the superior; is the part of the offender rather than of the offended; is the part of the vanquished rather than of the victor; is the part surely not of the king but of the rebel.  And yet here, in the sublime transcending of all human precedent and pattern which characterises the divine dealing, we have the place of the suppliant and of the supplicated inverted, and Love upon the Throne bends down to ask of the rebel that lies powerless and sullen at His feet, and yet is not conquered until his heart be won, though his limbs be manacled, that he would put away all the bitterness out of his heart, and come back to the love and the grace which are ready to pour over him.  ’He that might the vengeance best have taken, finds out the remedy.’  He against whom we have transgressed prays us to be reconciled; and the Infinite Love lowers Himself in that lowering which is, in another aspect, the climax of His exaltation, to pray the rebels to accept His amnesty.

Oh, dear brethren! this is no mere piece of rhetoric.  What facts in the divine heart does it represent?  What facts in the divine conduct does it represent?  It represents these facts in the divine heart, that there is in it an infinite longing for the creature’s love, an infinite desire for unity between Him and us.

There are wonderful significance and beauty in the language of my text which are lost in the Authorised Version; but are preserved in the Revised.  ‘We are ambassadors’ not only ‘for Christ,’ but ‘on Christ’s behalf.’  And the same proposition is repeated in the subsequent clause.  ‘We pray you,’ not merely ‘in Christ’s stead,’ though that is much, but ‘on His account,’ which is more—­as if it lay very near His heart that we should put away our enmity; and as if in some transcendent and wonderful manner the all-perfect, self-sufficing God was made glad, and the Master, who is His image for us, ‘saw of the travail of His soul, and,’ in regard to one man, ‘was satisfied,’ when the man lets the warmth of God’s love in Christ thaw away the coldness out of his heart, and kindle there an answering flame.  An old divine says, ’We cannot do God a greater pleasure or more oblige His very heart, than to trust in Him as a God of love.’  He is ready to stoop to any humiliation to effect that purpose.  So intense is the divine desire to win the world to His love, that He will stoop to sue for it rather than lose it.  Such is at least part of the fact in the divine heart, which is shadowed forth for us by that wonderful thought of the beseeching God.