to be like God.

For this is God's true greatness; this is God's true glory; this is
God's true royalty; the greatness, glory, and royalty of loving,
forgiving, generous power, which pours itself out, untiring and
undisgusted, in help and mercy to all which he has made; the glory of
a Father who is perfect in this, that he causeth his rain to fall on
the evil and on the good, and his sun to shine upon the just and on
the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil; a Father who
has not dealt with us after our sins, or rewarded us after our
iniquities: a Father who is not extreme to mark what is done amiss,
but whom it is worth while to fear, for with him is mercy and
plenteous redemption;--all this, and more--a Father who so loved a
world which had forgotten him, a world whose sins must have been
disgusting to him, that he spared not his only begotten Son, but
freely gave him for us, and will with him freely give us all things;
a Father, in one word, whose name and essence is love, even as it is
the name and essence of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

This, my friends, is the glory of God: but this glory never shone
out in its full splendour till it shone upon the cross.

For--that we may go back again, to that great-souled man, of whom I
spoke just now--did we not leave out one thing in his character? or
at least, one thing by which his character might be proved and tried?
We said that he should be generous and forgiving; we said that he
should bear patiently folly, peevishness, ingratitude: but what if
we asked of him, that he should sacrifice himself utterly for the
peevish, ungrateful men for whose good he was toiling? What if we
asked him to give up, for them, not only all which made life worth