To the revelation thus made in humanity, of God as Love, the Apostle then refers in the succeeding words. "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation [reconciliation] for our sins."

Here, overlooking all else, John fixes his eye upon that highest fact, in which the love of God reveals itself most gloriously; his love toward those, who after being by this love made capable of its highest communications, being created in its image, had rendered themselves unworthy of it. To a world of sin, thus alienated from the God of love, he gave that highest gift, -- -Him who is called, as no other can be, the Son of God, -- -that through him he might bestow on the sinful race of man that high destiny for which it was created, and which it had lost through its own guilt; to impart to the dead in sin that true blissful life, which should endure forever. In this fact, says John, we perceive the true nature of love. It was not our love to God, that called forth a return of love in him. His own love moved him to that highest proof of love, to send his Son into the world, that those who were alienated from him by sin, and through sin arrayed against him the Holy One, might be rescued from this state of ruin, -- to send him to be the reconciliation for our sins. From these words it is evident, that we are not so to conceive of this reconciliation, as if God the hater of men as sinners had now, at this particular time, become reconciled to them through Christ. On the contrary, the work of reconciliation presupposes that love in God, which moved him to adopt this plan, to be actualized at an appointed period; the eternal love of God as the ground, not the result, of this reconciliation. Hence also, the New Testament never speaks of a reconciliation of God with man, but only of a reconciliation of man with God; indicating that God, as love, ever desires to impart himself to man, that the hindrance is in man himself. To those who are estranged from God by sin, he must, from the relation which they consciously hold to him, appear as the angry Judge, whose just vengeance they have incurred. Since then, no man was capable of raising himself out of himself into another relation to God, the hindrance must first be removed by God himself; and the medium, through which this was effected, is called by John the reconciliation for sin, the sin-offering for man.

It is plain, therefore, that the changed relation to God of which man becomes conscious, presupposes a divine act independent of himself, whereby this has been made possible. To this also pointed the sin-offering in the Old Testament, to which John seems to allude. It was intended to awaken in the human spirit the conviction, that no man is of himself able to close that gulf, which separates the sinner from God. As God is love, so also is He holiness; as is taught by John when he says, that God is Light, excluding all darkness, -- meaning that he is Holiness, excluding all evil. As The Holy, he reveals himself in a moral government of the world corresponding to his holiness. This requires a perfect actualization of the holy law by man; only on this condition, can the holy God impart himself to humanity in the revelations of his love, can come into fellowship with it, can become to it the fountain of bliss, of eternal life. But to this stands opposed the universal prevalence of sin in man. Hence Christ, the Holy, must perform for all what they cannot themselves perform; must restore harmony in God's moral government, by himself satisfying its demands on man. In the laws of this moral government, the connection of sin with misery as the punishment of sin, was forever fixed. Christ as man, in actualizing the holy law, submitted himself to its conditions in this respect also, -- to this connection of sin and misery, which weighed down the human race. In his suffering, he took upon himself their guilt and made it his own; his all-devoting love entered into the whole feeling of man's guilt and wretchedness; as expressed in that cry, when, in the fulness of his sympathy for humanity, he felt himself one with it in its load of guilt: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me! All which men had to bear he took upon himself, and in his holy life and sufferings, imparted to them all that was his. This it is which constitutes the turning point in the relation of man to God; that whereby sin ceases to be the separating wall between man and God, -- the reconciliation (expiation) for sin, as it is termed by the Apostle. Herein we perceive the true nature of holy love.