The work of Jesus Christ could not be done unless He died. He could not be the Savior of the world unless He was the sacrifice for the sins of the world.
. . . It was because of the requirements of the divine righteousness, and because of the necessities of sinful men. And so Christ's was no martyr's death, who had to die as the penalty of the faithful discharge of His duty. It was not the penalty that He paid for doing His work, but it was the work itself. . . He "came to give His life a ransom for many."
. . . He must die because He would save, and He would save because He did love. His filial obedience to God coincided with His pity for men. . .
Oh, brethren! nothing held Christ to the Cross but His own desire to save us. Neither priests nor Romans carried Him tither. What fastened Him to it was not the nails driven by rude hands. And the reason why He did not, as the taunters bade Him do, come down from it, was neither a physical nor a moral necessity unwelcome to Himself, but the yielding of His own will to do all which was needed for man's salvation.
This sacrifice was bound to the altar by the cords of love. . . Jesus Christ fastened Himself to the Cross and died because He would. . . . His purpose never faltered, think that each of us may say, "He must die because He would save me."
. . . It is guaranteed by the power of the Cross; it is certain, by the eternal life of the crucified Savior, that He will one day be the King of humanity, and must bring His wandering sheep to couch in peace, one flock round one Shepherd.
Glad obedience is true obedience. . . . Obedience is obedience, whether in large things or in small.
Joy and liberty and power and peace will fill our hearts when this is the law of our being: "All that the Lord has spoken, that must I do" (Expositions of Holy Scripture, St. John, I-VIII, pp. 174-180).
The Philippian jailer cried out, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"They said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:30-31).
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Maclaren had been for almost sixty-five years a minister, entirely devoted to his calling. He lived more than almost any of the great preachers of his time between his study, his pulpit, his pen.
He subdued action to thought, thought to utterance and utterance to the Gospel. His life was his ministry; his ministry was his life. In 1842 he was enrolled as a candidate for the Baptist ministry at Stepney College, London. He was tall, shy, silent and looked no older than his sixteen years. But his vocation, as he himself (a consistent Calvinist) might have said, was divinely decreed. "I cannot ever recall any hesitation as to being a minister," he said. "It just had to be."
In the College he was thoroughly grounded in Greek and Hebrew. He was taught to study the Bible in the original and so the foundation was laid for his distinctive work as an expositor and for the biblical content of his preaching. Before Maclaren had finished his course of study he was invited to Portland Chapel in Southampton for three months; those three months became twelve years. He began his ministry there on June 28, 1846. His name and fame grew.
His ministry fell into a quiet routine for which he was always grateful: two sermons on Sunday, a Monday prayer meeting and a Thursday service and lecture. His parishioners thought his sermons to them were the best he ever preached. In April 1858 he was called to be minister at Union Chapel in Manchester. No ministry could have been happier. The church prospered and a new building had to be erected to seat 1,500; every sitting was taken. His renown as preacher spread throughout the English-speaking world. His pulpit became his throne. He was twice elected President of the Baptist Union. He resigned as pastor in 1905 after a ministry of forty-five years.
Maclaren's religious life was hid with Christ in God. He walked with God day by day. He loved Jesus Christ with a reverent, holy love and lived to make Him known. In his farewell sermon at Union he said: "To efface oneself is one of a preacher's first duties."