Now what are these facts? What is it that possesses this love-producing power? In the passage from the Corinthians there is one great fact mentioned: viz., the propitiatory death of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘If one died for all, then were all dead,’ ‘or died.’ They died in Him, inasmuch as they were represented by Him; and it is that great fact which is said to produce the constraining love. In this passage no one fact is mentioned, but the appeal is made to the whole multitude of His mercies: ‘I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.’ Throughout the Epistle St. Paul had been showing that we are all saved by mercy. In the eleventh chapter he had enlarged on the mercy by which we Gentiles are now saved in Christ Jesus and the mercy about to be manifested towards the Jews, till he arrives at the conclusion that ‘God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.’ Then he bursts forth in the exclamation, ‘Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!’ and follows it up by the appeal of the text: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.’ If such mercy has been shown you, if, notwithstanding all your unbelief, by boundless and unmerited mercy you have been saved and made one even with Christ Himself, is it now too much to ask of you that, without delay and without reserve, you yield your whole lives to His service? I believe it is impossible for us to be too careful in observing this connexion between consecration and mercy, for in the very vague theology of the present day there is a great deal which certainly has the appearance of teaching that the blessed peace of a union with Christ is to be the result of entire consecration. But we are here taught, not that we are to reach mercy as the result of the completeness of our consecration, but that, having realized mercy, we should yield ourselves in consecration to God. That union with the Lord Jesus must be given through the personal appropriation of the mercy of God in Him; and we should regard with the utmost jealousy any teaching which, either intentionally or unintentionally, turns the thoughts inwards to analyze the extent of consecration, with a view to obtaining the blessing of that union, instead of rather diverting all thoughts to the fulness of mercy in Christ Jesus, and so calling forth out of His fulness the abounding love of a consecrated heart.