What a truth that God has sent His only-begotten Son into the world! How wonderful the bare fact, especially as it was in nothing but love! It was not something done in heaven. The only-begotten Son He had sent to give a life in this world to fit for God there whence He came. But no work done even by the Son on high could suit either God or man. The way of love was that the Son should become man to glorify God and give life in its highest nature to dead man by faith.
The Old Testament tells how the race, whether Jews or Gentiles, had behaved toward God for thousands of years; the New Testament tells a still worse tale. Yet He who knew all beforehand has sent His only-begotten into the world, and for what? Was it for judgment? It was for the very opposite; it was to quicken dead souls with the life eternal that was in His Son, for no less is meant in the words, "That we might live through Him." [23]