A fellow brother shared some thoughts during last Sunday's meeting related to the personal nature of the work of Christ. While listening to him speak, I was reminded of this section from John Murray's sermon titled "The Father's Love" from Romans 8:32, found in his Collected Writings (Vol. 3, 219-220). If you can read this, and still entertain doubts as to whether or not you should purchase Murray's Collected Writings, then I worry for you. Just kidding. Sort of...
Each person has his or her own individuality. No two persons are identically the same. Even identical twins have their distinguishing features. This particularity is true also in sin, misery, and liability. 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way' (Isa. 53:6). We cannot place this manifold of guilt in one category. There are as many categories as there are individuals in the one characterization that 'all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God' (Rom. 3:23). Hence when God saves he does not save man in the mass. He deals with each in his or her own particularity. It is this that is likewise true in God's dealing on behalf of man in the giving up of his own Son. The Father contemplated them in the distinctiveness of the sin, misery, and liability of each.
If we are sensitive to the enormity of our own sins, it may be difficult to entertain this thought. It may be easier to think of the Father's love and provision if we were submerged in the mass and not contemplated in our own individuality. But we dare not think of the Father's provision thus. If we were submerged in the mass and as it were forgotten in the mass, there would be no salvation at all. Salvation can only be for us if it is salvation in all the particularity of our need. Paul expresses the thought elsewhere in terms of Christ's love: he 'loved me, and gave himself for me' (Gal. 2:20). In our text [Rom. 8:32] he expresses it in terms of the Father's love. On more sober and mature reflection this great truth becomes supremely precious. For this truth alone inspires the confidence needed in face of the gravity of our own sin. The Father gave up his own Son to the wrath, curse, and condemnation that our sins merited.
There is, therefore, no case that falls outside of the Father's provision. Let us ever bear in mind that the Father knew each in all the loathsomeness of his defilement, in the enormity of his guilt, in all the wretchedness of his misery, in all the particularity of his perversity, and in all the intensity of his need. And he loved with everlasting love, nevertheless. He loved with a love so great, so invincible, so purposeful that he gave over his own Son to taste death for every one of the sons to be brought to glory, and they will never taste one drop of the damnation due. Oh! the marvel of the Father's love. Eternity will not scale its heights nor fathom its depths. It is like the love of Christ himself; it passeth knowledge, yet a love to be apprehended by all saints.
