tirely in His _motive_ in
yielding. If they could have taken His life without His consent, then that
death would have been an expression of their hate, and only that. But as
it is, it forever stands an expression of two things. On their part of the
intensest, hottest hate; on His part of the finest, strongest love. It
makes new records for both hate and love. Sin put Jesus to death. In
yielding to these men Jesus was yielding to sin, for they personified sin.
And sin yielded to quickly brought death, its logical outcome.

Jesus' dying being His own act, controlled entirely by His own intention,
makes it _sacrificial_. There are certain necessary elements in such a
sacrifice. It must be voluntary. It must involve pain or suffering of some
sort. The suffering must be _undeserved_, that is, in no way or degree a
result of one's own act, else it is not sacrifice, but logical result. It
must be for others. And the suffering must be of a sort that would not
come save for this voluntary act. It must be supposed to bring benefit to
the others. Each of these elements must be in to make up fully a
sacrifice. There are elements of sacrifice in much noble suffering by man.
But in no one do all of these elements perfectly combine and blend, save
in Jesus.

To this agree the words of the philosopher of the New Testament writers.
It would be so, of course, for the Spirit of Jesus swayed Paul. The
epistle to the Romans contains a brief packed summary of his understanding
of the gospel plan. There is in it one remarkable statement of the
_Father's_, purpose in Jesus' death. In the third chapter, verse
twenty-six, freely translated, "that He might be reckoned righteous in
reckoning righteous the man who has faith." "That He might be reckoned
righteous"--that is, in His attitude toward sin. That in allowing things
to go on as they were, in holding back sin's logical judgment, He was not
careless or indifferent about sin or making light of it. He was controlled
by a great purpose.

God's great difficulty was to make clear at once both His love and His
hate: His love for man: His hate for the sin that man had grained in so
deep that they were as one. For the man's sake He must show His love to
win and change him. For man's sake He must show His hate of sin that man,
too, might know its hatefulness and learn to hate it with intensest hate.
His love for man is to be the measure of man's hate for sin. The death of
Jesus was God's master-stro