Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 183, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1917 — LOVE OF JESUS [ARTICLE]

LOVE OF JESUS

It Reaches Down to the Depths of Human Need and Lifts Up to God. “Blessed Is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna!” Matthew 21:9. God had sent forth his Son into the world because things were not right. That is why Jesus paused that memorable morning, in his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, over the brow of the city, and looked upon the glory of Jts temple, and remembered all for* which it had stood in the history of the Hebrew race, and all for which it now stood in the minds of the multitudes who had gathered from all over the world—and wept. Jesus wept over the city because he loved It. But he did not tarry long to weep. Time was short, and the need of the world too great. He must hasten into the city, for the day of his opportunity had come. Messianic hopes ran high. The Deliverer had been promised. The three years of his public ministry had made marfy hope that he might be the promised Deliverer, but there were thousands in this city , who had never heard of him at all. Yet when his disciples reached the outskirts of the city, someone recognized him and said: “He could calm the seas in their fury; could not he become our King and Deliverer?” And another said: “He opened the eyes of the blind;” and another. “He has even raised the dead —surely this is our Deliverer 1” And the- children hegin to sing, and the young people to ■shout, and men and women to follow him into the city, tearing paim branches from the trees —emblems of royalty—and casting their garments before him as the throng accelerated, and singing and shouting “Hosanna I Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” His Real Mission.

But the real mission of Jesus Christ was to become the King not of the world as such, but of each Individual life in the-world. Standing upon the heighfs of eternity, Ift looks off to the city of your soul, and sees therein the evil thoughts, passions, hatreds, malice, envy, jealousy, that are the real foes of your highest and best seif. He is coming to you, coming with blessing, coming with life. Others are acclaiming him King, but he seeks the sovereignty of your soul. To deny him that place, to forbid his-many mighty works, in you because of your unbelief, as Jerusalem did, is to court the. forces of death. This is the essence* of sin. JesUs knew that sin was a reality. Paul knew it. Martin Luther knew it, Augustine knew it. And so do you know it.

But Jesus Christ came into this world that he might take captive the city of the soul; that he might rule its thoughts, its ideals, its passions, its fellowships, its life. He reached out his hand to the fallen and lifted him up, and said, “Go, sin no more.” And he has been saying that to repentant sinners ever since. By some divine process which we cannot understand, but which we know to be true, he takes the sin from us as though it had never been, and gives us a new heart, a new outlook, a new passion that every moment of our lives may count only for the rightest and holiest things, both for time and for eternity. This is very far from saying that he takes away all of the suffering that sin entails upon us here. The scar will always remain; the conscience will never cease from its tortures; memory must abide. But, marvel of marvels! Christ has the power of so dealing with your sin that it is no longer yours but his. When he bore its deepest humiliation and died upon the cross, he bore the burden of our sin, and in so doing wrought a work which is for you and for me, as the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. When he passes into the city of a man’s soul, he enters into its deepest need, bears its deepest burden, lifts the load, and forgives the sin. He brings peace and the assurance of pardon, arid he also brings to us the desire to suffer with him in the salvation and service of humanity. —Rev. Victor F. Brown, D. D.