The Highest Stair

Puritan William Gurnall wrote this:

Consider God's unspeakable love for His beloved Son as He watched Him--alone--enter the stage of bloody tragedy. Be still here and know the painful price both God and His Son paid for you to be one with Him. I think you are at the highest stair God's Word can lead you to ascend into the meditation of His love.

Picture a father who has only one son--and can have no more--sending that child to prison and with his own lips sentencing him to death. And then, to guarantee the execution be completed with the most horrible torment possible, he watches his child's death with eyes brimming not with grief but with anger. If you study this parent's countenance you conclude surely he hates his son or the sin he committed. This is what you see in the Father towards his Son, for it was God, more than men or devils, who caused Christ's death.

Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!