Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, August 27th, 1871, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"We love him because he first loved us."–1 John 4:19.
THIS is a great doctrinal truth, and I might with much propriety preach
a doctrinal sermon from it, of which the sum and substance would be the
sovereign grace of God. God's love is evidently prior to ours: "He
first loved us." It is also clear enough from the text that God's love
is the cause of ours, for "We love him because he first loved us."
Therefore, going back to old time, or rather before all time, when we
find God loving us with an everlasting love, we gather that the reason
of his choice is not because we loved him, but because he willed to
love us. His reasons, and he had reasons (for we read of the counsel of
his will), are known to himself, but they are not to be found in any
inherent goodness in us, or which was foreseen to be in us. We were
chosen simply because he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. He
loved us because he would love us. The gift of his dear Son, which was
a close consequent upon his choice of his people, was too great a
sacrifice on God's part to have been drawn from him by any goodness in
the creature. It was not possible for the highest piety to have
deserved so vast a boon as the gift of the Only-begotten; it was not
possible for any thing in man to have merited the incarnation and the
passion of the Redeemer. Our redemption, like our election, springs
from the spontaneous self-originating love of God. And our
regeneration, in which we are made actual partakers of the divine
blessings in Jesus Christ, was not of us, nor by us. We were not
converted because we were already inclined that way, neither were we
regenerated because some good thing was in us by nature; but we owe our
new birth entirely to his potent love, which dealt with us effectually
turning us from death to life, from darkness to light and from the
alienation of our mind and the enmity of our spirit into that
delightful path of love, in which we are now travelling to the skies.
As believers on Christ's name we "were born not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The sum and
substance of the text is that God's uncaused love, springing up within
himself, has been the sole means of bringing us into the condition of
loving him. Our love to him is like a trickling rill, speeding its way
to the ocean because it first came from the Ocean. All the rivers run
into the sea, but their floods first arose from it: the clouds that
were exhaled from the mighty main distilled in showers and filled the
water-brooks. Here was their first cause and prime origin; and, as if
they recognised the obligation, they pay tribute in return to the
parent source. The ocean love of God, so broad that even the wing of
imagination could not traverse it, sends forth its treasures of the
rain of grace, which drop upon our hearts, which are as the pastures of
the wilderness; they make our hearts to overflow, and in streams of
gratitude the life imparted flows back again to God. All good things
are of thee, Great God; thy goodness creates our good; thine infinite
love to us draws forth our love to thee.
But, dear friends, I trust after many years of instruction in the
doctrines of our holy faith, I need not keep to the beaten doctrinal
track, but may lead you in a parallel path, in which the same truth may
be from another point. I purpose to preach an experimental sermon, and
possibly this will be even more in accordance with the run of the
passage and the mind of its writer, than a doctrinal discourse. We
shall view the text as a fact which we have tested and proved in our
own consciousness. Under this aspect the statement of the text is
this:–a sense of the love of God to us is the main cause of our love
to him. When we believe, know, and feel that God loves us, we, as a
natural result, love him in return; and in proportion as our knowledge
increases, our faith strenthens, our conviction deepens that we are
really beloved of God; we, from the very constitution of our being, are
constrained to yield our hearts to God in return. The discourse of this
morning, therefore, will run in that channel. God grant it may be
blessed to each of us by his Holy Spirit.
I. At the outset we will consider THE INDISPENSABLE NECESSITY OF LOVE
TO GOD IN THE HEART.
There are some graces which in their vigor are not absolutely essential
to the bare existence of spiritual life, though very important for its
healthy growth; but love to God must be in the heart, or else there is
no grace there whatever. If any man love not God, he is not a renewed
man. Love to God is a mark which is always set upon Christ's sheep, and
never set upon any others. In enlarging upon this most important truth,
I would all your attention to the connection of the text. You will find
in the seventh verse of this chapter, that love to God is set down as
being a necessary mark of the new birth. "Every one that loveth is born
of God, and knoweth God." I have no right, therefore, to believe that I
am a regenerated person unless my heart truly and sincereIy loves God.
It is vain for me, if I love not God, to quote the register which
records an ecclesiastical ceremony, and say that this regenerated me;
it certainly did no such thing, or the sure result would have followed.
If I have been regenerated I may not be perfect, but this one thing I
can say, "Lord thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee."
When by believing we receive the privilege to become the sons of God,
we receive also the nature of sons, and with filial love we cry, "Abba,
Father." There is no exception to this rule; if a man loves not God,
neither is he born of God. Show me a fire without heat, then show me
regeneration that does not produce love to God; for as the sun must
give forth its light, so must a soul that has been created anew by
divine grace display its nature by sincere affection towards God." "Ye
must be born again," but ye are not born again unless ye love God. How
indispensable, then, is love to God.
In the eighth verse we are told also that love to God is a mark of our
knowing God. True knowledge is essential to salvation. God does not
save us in the dark. He is our "light and our salvation." We are
renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created us. Now, "he
that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." All you have ever
been taught from the pulpit, all you have ever studied from the
Scriptures, all you hove ever gathered from the learned, all you have
collected from the libraries, all this is no knowledge of God at all
unless you love God; for in true religion, to love and to know God are
synonymous terms. Without love you remain in ignorance still, ignorance
of the most unhappy and ruinous kind. All attainments are transitory,
if love be not as a salt to preserve them; tongues must cease and
knowledge most vanish away; love alone abides for ever. This love you
must have or be a fool for ever. All the children of the true Zion are
taught of the Lord, but you are not taught of God unless you love God.
See then that to be devoid of love to God is to be devoid of all true
knowledge of God, and so of all salvation.
Further, the chapter teaches us that love to God is the root of love to
others. The eleventh verse says, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought
also to love one another. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us,
and his love is perfected in us." Now no man is a Christian who does
not love Christians. He, who, being in the church, is yet not of it
heart aud soul, is but an intruder in the family. But since love to our
brethren springs out of love to our one common father, it is plain that
we must have love to that father, or else we shall fail in one of the
indispensable marks of the children of God. "We know that we have
passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren;" but we
cannot truly love the brethren unless we love the father; therefore,
lacking love to God, we lack love to the church, which is an essential
mark of grace.
Again, keeping to the run of the passage, you will find by the
eighteenth verse, that love to God is a chief means of that holy peace
which is an essential mark of a Christian. "Being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord," but where there
is no love there is no such peace, for fear, which hath torment,
distresses the soul; hence love is the indispensable companion of
faith, and when they come together, peace is the result. Where there is
fervent love to God there is set up a holy familiarity with God, and
from this flow satisfaction, delight, and rest. Love must co-operate
with faith and cast out fear, so that the soul may have boldness before
God. Oh! Christian, thou canst not have the nature of God implanted
within thee by regeneration, it cannot reveal itself in love to the
brotherhood, it cannot blossom with the fair flowers of peace and joy,
except thine affection be set upon God. Let him then be thine exceeding
joy. Delight thyself also in the Lord. O love the Lord ye his saints.
We also see, if we turn again to St. John's epistle and pursue his
observations to the next chapter and the third verse, that love is the
spring of true obedience. "This is the love of God, that we keep his
commandments." Now a man who is not obedient to God's commandments is
evidently not a true believer; for, although good works do not save us,
yet, being saved, believers are sure to produce good works. Though the
fruit be not the root of the tree, yet a well rooted tree will, in its
season, bring forth its fruits. So, though the keeping of the
commandments does not make me a child of God, yet, being a child of
God, I shall be obedient to my heavenly Father. But this I cannot be
unless I love God. A mere external obedience, a decent formal
recognition of the laws of God, is not obedience in God's sight. He
abhors the sacrifice where not the heart is found. I must obey because
I love, or else I have not in spirit and in truth obeyed at all. See
then, that to produce the indispensable fruits of saving faith, there
must be love to God; for without it, they would be unreal and indeed
impossible.
I hope it is not necessary for me to pursue this argument any further.
Love to God is as natural to the renewed heart as love to its mother is
to a babe. Who needs to reason a child into love? As certainly as you
have the life and nature of God in you, you will seek after the Lord.
As the spark, because it has in it the nature of fire, ascends aloft to
seek the sun, so will your new-born spirit seek her God, from whom she
has derived her life. Search yourselves, then, and see whether you love
God or no. Put your hands on your hearts, and as in the sight of him,
whose eyes are us a flame of fire, answer to him; make him your
confessor at this hour; answer this one question: "Lovest thou me?" I
trust very many of you will be able to say–
"Yes, we love thee and adore;
Oh, for grace to love thee more."
This much was necessary to bring us to the second step of our
discourse. May the Holy Spirit lead us onward.
II. You see the indispensable importance of love to God: let us now
learn THE SOURCE AND SPRING OF TRUE LOVE TO GOD. "We love him because
he first loved us." Love to God, wherever it really exists, has been
created in the bosom by a belief of God's love to us. No man loves God
till he knows that God loves him; and every believer loves God for this
reason first and chiefly, that God loves him. He has seen himself to be
unworthy of divine favour, yet he has believed God's love in the gift
of his dear Son, and he has accepted the atonement that Christ has made
as a proof of God's love, and now being satisfied of the divine
affection towards him, he of necessity loves his God.
Observe, then, that love to God does not begin in the heart from any
disinterested admiration of the nature of God. I believe that, after we
have loved God because he first loved us, we may so grow in grace as to
love God for what he is. I suppose it is possible for us to be the
subjects of a state of heart in which our love spends itself upon the
loveliness of God in his own person: we may come to love him because he
is so wise, so powerful, so good, so patient, so everything that is
lovable. This may be produced within us as the ripe fruit of maturity
in the divine life, but it is never the first spring and fountain of
the grace of love in any man's heart. Even the apostle John, the man
who had looked within the veil and seen the excellent glory beyond any
other man, and who had leaned his head upon the bosom of the Lord, and
had seen the Lord's holiness, and marked the inimitable beauty of the
character of the incarnate God, even John does not say, "We love him
because we admire him," but "We love him because he first loved us."
For see, brethren, if this kind of love which I have mentioned, which
is called the love of disinterested admiration, were required of a
sinner, I do not see how he could readily render it. There are two
gentlemen of equal rank in society, and the one is not at all obliged
to the other; now, they, standing on an equality, can easily feel a
disinterested admiration of each other's characters, and a consequent
disinterested affection; but I, a poor sinner, by nature sunk in the
mire, full of everything that is evil, condemned, guilty of death, so
that my only desert is to be cast into hell, am under such obligations
to my Saviour and my God, that it would be idle for me to talk about a
disinterested affection for him, since I owe to him my life, my all.
Besides, until I catch the gleams of his mercy and his loving-kindness
to the guilty, his holy, just, and righteous character are not loveable
to me, I dread the purity which condemns my defilement, and shudder at
the justice which will consume me for my sin. Do not, O seeker, trouble
your heart with nice distinctions about disinterested love, but be you
content with the beloved disciple to love Christ because be first loved
you.
Again, our love to God does not spring from the self-determining power
of the will. I greatly, question whether anything does in the world,
good or bad. There are some who set up the will as a kind of deity,–it
doeth as it wills with earth and heaven; but in truth the will is not a
master but a servant. To the sinner his will is a slave; and in the
saint, although the will is set free, it is still blessedly under bonds
to God. Men do not will a thing because they will it, but because their
affections, their passions, or their judgments influence their wills in
that direction. No man can stand up and truly say, "I, unbiassed and
unaided, will to love God and I will not to love Satan." Such proud
self-assuming language would prove him a liar; the man would be clearly
a worshipper of himself. A man can only love God when he has perceived
some reasons for so doing; and the first argument for loving God, which
influences the intellect so as to turn the affections, is the reason
mentioned in the text, "We love him because he first loved us."
Now, having thus set the text in a negative light, let us look at it in
a more positive manner.
It is certain, beloved brethren, that faith in the heart always
precedes love. We first believe the love of God to us before we love
God in return. And, Oh what an eneouraging truth this is. I, a sinner,
do not believe that God loves me because I feel I love him; but I first
believe that he loves me, sinner as I am, and then having believed that
gracious fact, I come to love my Benefactor in return. Perhaps some of
you seekers are saying to yourselves, "Oh, that we could love God, for
then we could hope for mercy." That is not the first step. Your first
step is to believe that God loves you, and when that truth is fully
fixed in your soul by the Spirit, a fervent love to God will
spontaneously issue from your soul, even as flowers willingly pour
forth their fragrance under the influence of the dew and the sun. Every
man that ever was saved had to come to God not as a lover of God, but
as a sinner, and to believe in God's love to him as a sinner. We all
wish to take money in our sacks when we go down hungry to this Egypt to
buy the bread of life; but it must not be, heaven's bread is given to
us freely, and we must accept it freely without money and without
price. Do you say, "I do not feel in my heart one good emotion; I do
not appear to possess one good thought; I fear I have no love to God at
all." Do not remain in unbelief until you feel this love, for if you
do, you will never believe at all. You ought to love God, it is true,
but you never will till you believe him, and especially believe in his
love as revealed in his only begotten Son. If you come to God in
Christ, and believe this simple message. "God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them," you
shall find your heart going out after God. "Whosoever believeth in
Jesus Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life;" believest
thou this? Canst thou now believe in Jesus; that is, trust him? Then,
Christ died for thee; Christ the Son of God, in thy stead, suffered for
thy guilt. God gave his only Son to die for thee. "Oh," saith one, "if
I believed that, how I would love God !" Yes, indeed, thou wouldst, and
that is the only consideration which can make thee do so. Thou, a
sinner, must take Christ to be thy Saviour, and then love to God shall
spring up spontaneously in thy soul, as the grass after showers. Love
believed is the mother of love returned. The planet reflects light, but
first of all it receives it from the sun; the heliotrope turns its face
to the orb of day, but first the sunbeams warm and woo it. You shall
turn to God, and delight in God, and rejoice in God; but it must be
because you first of all believe, and know, and confide in the love of
God to you. "Oh," saith one, "it cannot be that God should love an
unloving sinner, that the pure One should love the impure, that the
Ruler of all should love his enemy." Hear what God saith: "My thoughts
are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, for the heavens
are higher than the earth; so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts." You think that God loves men because they
are godly, but listen to this: "God commendeth his love towards us, in
that, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." "He came not to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." "While we were yet
without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Think of
his "great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in
trespasses and sins." God has love in his heart towards those who have
nothing in them to love. He loves you, poor soul, who feel that you are
most unloveable; loves you who mourn over a stony heart, which will not
warm or melt with love to him. Thus saith the Lord: "I have blotted
out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins;
return unto me; for I have redeemed thee." O that God's gracious voice
this morning might so call some of his poor wandering ones that they
may come and believe his love to them, and then cast themselves at his
feet to be his servants for ever.
Brethren, rest assured that in proportion as we are fully persuaded of
God's love to us, we shall be affected with love lo him. Do not let the
devil tempt you to believe that God does not love You because your love
is feeble; for if he can in any way weaken your belief in God's love to
you, he cuts off or diminishes the flow of the streams which feed the
sacred grace of love to God. If I lament that I do not love God as I
ought, that is a holy regret; but if I, therefore, conclude that God's
love to me is the less because of this, I deny the light because my eye
is dim, and I deprive myself also of the power to increase in love. Let
me rather think more and more of the greatness of God's love to me, as
I see more and more my unworthiness of it; the more a sinner I am, let
me the more fully see how great must be that love which embraces such a
sinner as I am; and then, as I receive a deeper sense of the divine
mercy, I shall feel the more bound to gratitude and constrained to
affection. O for a great wave of love, to carry us right out into the
ocean of love.
Observe, beloved brethren, day by day the deeds of God's love to you in
the gift of food and raiment, and in the mercies of this life, and
especially in the covenant blessings which God gives you, the peace
which he sheds abroad in your hearts, the communion which he vouchsafes
to you with himself and his blessed Son, and the answers to prayer
whieh he grants you. Note well these things, and if you consider them
carefully, and weigh their value, you will be accumulating the fuel on
which love feeds its consecrated flame. In proportion as you see in
every good gift a new token of your Father's love, in that proportion
will you make progress in the sweet school of love. Oh, it is heavenly
living to taste God's love in every morsel of bread we eat; it is
blessed living to know that we breathe an atmosphere purified and made
fragrant with divine love, that love protects us while we sleep,
changing like a silken curtain all around our bed, and love opens the
eyelids of the morning to smile upon us when we wake. Ah, even when we
are sick, it is love that chastens us; when we are impoverished, love
relieves us of a burden; love gives and love takes; love cheers and
love smites. We are compassed about with love, above, beneath, around,
within, without. If we could but recognise this, we should become as
flames of fire, ardent and fervent towards our God. Knowledge and
observation are admirable nurses of ourn infant love.
And, ah, the soul grows rich in love to God when she rests on the bosom
of divine lovingkindness. You, who are tossed about with doubts and
fears as to whether you are now accepted or shall persevere to the end,
you call scarcely guess the ardours of heart which inflame those saints
who have learned to cast themselves wholly upon Jesus, and know beyond
a doubt his love immutable. Whether I sink or swim, I have no hope but
in Christ, my life, my all.
"I know that safe with him remains,
Protected by his power,
What I've committed to his hands
Till the decisive hour:"
And in proportion as I am thus scripturally confident, and rest in my
Lord, will my love to him engross all my heart, and, consecrate my life
to the Redeemer's glory.
Beloved, I desire to make this very clear, that to feel love to God we
must tread along the road of faith. Truly, this is not a hard or
perilous way but one prepared by infinite wisdom. It is a road Suitable
for sinners, and indeed saints must come that way too. If thou wouldst
love God, do not look within thee to see whether this grace or that be
as it ought to be, but look to thy God, and read his eternal love his
boundless love, his costly love, which gave Christ for thee; then shall
thy love drink in fresh life and vigour.
Remember wherever there is love to God in the soul it is an argument
that God loves that soul. I recollect meeting once with a Christian
woman who said she knew she loved God, but, she was afraid God did not
love her. That is a fear so preposterous that it ought never to occur
to anybody. You would not love God in deed and in truth unless he had
shed abroad his love in your heart in a measure. But on the other hand,
our not loving God is not a conclusive argument that God does not love
us; else might the sinner be afraid to come to God. O loveless sinner,
with heart unquickened and chill, the voice of God calls even thee to
Christ. Even to the dead in sin, his voice saith "Live." Whilst thou
art yet polluted in thy blood, cast out in the open field, to the
loathing of thy person, the Lord of mercy passes by, and says "live."
His mighty sovereignty comes forth dressed in robes of love, and he
touches thee the unloveable, the loveless, the depraved, degraded
sinner, at enmity with God,–he touches thee in all thine alienation
and he lifts thee out of it and makes thee to love him, not for thine
own sake, but for his name sake and for his mercy sake. Thou hadst no
love at all to him, but all the love lay in him alone; and therefore he
began to bless thee, and will continue to bless thee world without end,
if thou art a believer in Jesus. In the bosom of the Eternal are the
deep springs of all love.
III. This leads us, in the third place, to consider for a moment THE
REVIVAL OF OUR LOVE. It is sadly probable that there are in this house
some who once loved God very earnestly, but now they have declined and
become grievously indifferent; God's love to us never changes, but ours
too often sinks to a low ebb. Perhaps some of you have become so cold
in your affections, that it is difficult to be sure that you ever did
love God at all. It may be that your life has become lax, so as to
deserve the censure of the Church. You are a backslider and you are in
a dangerous condition; yet, if there be indeed spiritual life in you,
you will wish to return. You have gone astray like a lost sheep, but
your prayer is, "seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy
commandments." Now, note well, that the cause which originated your
love is the same which must restore it. You went to Christ as a sinner
at first, and your first act was to believe the love of God to you when
there was nothing in you that evidenced it. Go the same way again. Do
not stop, my dear brother, to pump up love out of the dry well within
yourself! Do not think it possible that love will come at your bidding.
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would
utterly be contemned. Think of the Lord's unchanging grace, and you
will feel the spring-time of love returning to your soul. Still doth
the Lord reserve mercy for the sinful, still he waiteth to be gracious;
he is as willing to receive you now that you have played the prodigal,
as he was to have retained you at home in the bosom of his 1ove. Many
considerations ought to aid you, a backslider, to believe more in the
love of God than ever you did. For think what love it must be that can
invite you still to return, you, who after knowing so much have sinned
against light and knowledge; you, who after having experienced so much,
have given the lie to your profession. He might justly have cut you
down, for you have cumbered the ground long enough. Surely, when Israel
went astray from God, it was a clear proof to her of Jehovah's love
when he graciously said, "They say if a man put away his wife, or she
go from him, and become another man's, shall he return to her again?"
Why, the answer in every bosom is "No !" Who would love a wife who had
so polluted herself? But thus saith the Lord, "Thou hast played the
harlot with many lovers, yet return unto me." What matchless love is
this. Hear yet more of these gracious words, which you will find in the
third chapter of Jeremiah's prophecy. "Go and proclaim these words
toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the
Lord; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am
merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever." "Turn, O
backsliding children, saith the Lord , for I am married unto you: and I
will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you
to Zion." "Return, ye backs1iding children, and I will heal your
backslidings." Can you hear these words without emotion? Backslider! I
pray thee take the wings of God's love to fly back to him with. But I
hear you enquiring, Will he still receive me? Shall I be once more–
"To the Father's bosom pressed,
Once again a child confessed."
It shall be so. Does he not declare that he is God and changes not, and
therefore you are not consumed? Rekindled are the flames of love in the
backslider's bosom when he feels all this to be true; he cries,
"Behold, we come to thee for thou art the Lord our God." I pray you,
then, any of you who are conscious of gross derelictions of duty, and
wanderings of heart, do not ask Moses to lead you back to Christ, he
knows the way to Sinai's flames, but not to Calvary's pardoning blood.
Go to Christ himself at once. If you go to the law and begin to judge
yourself, if you get the notion that you are to undergo a sort of
spiritual quarantine, that you must pass through a mental purgatory
before you may renew your faith in the Saviour, you are mistaken. Come
just as you are, bad as you are, hardened, cold, dead as you feel
yourselves to be, come even so, and believe in the boundless love of
God in Christ Jesus. Then shall come the deep repentance; then shall
come the brokenness of heart; then shall come the holy jealousy, the
sacred hatred of sin, and the refining of the soul from all her dross;
then, indeed, all good things shall come to restore your soul, and lead
you in the paths of righteousuess. Do not look for these first; that
would be looking for the effects before the cause. The great cause of
love in the restored backs1ider must still be the love of God to him,
to whom he clings with a faith that dares not let go its hold.
"But," saith one, "I think it is very dangerous to tell the backslider
to believe in God's love, surely it will be gross presumption for him
so to believe," It is never presumptuous for a man to believe the
truth: whether a statement be comfortable or unconmfortable, the
presumption does not lie in the matter itself: but in its
untruthfulness. I say again, it is never presumptuous to believe the
truth. And this is the truth, that the Lord loves his prodigal sons
still, and his stray sheep still, and he will devise means to bring his
banished back again, that they perish not. "If any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."
Remember here that the motive power which draws back the backslider
again, is the cord of love, the band of a man, which makes him feel he
must go back to God with weeping and repentance, because God loves him
still. What man among you this morning hath a son who has disobeyed him
and gone from him, and is living in drunkenness, and in all manner of
lust? If you have in anger told him, so that he doubts it not, that you
have struck his name out of your family, and will not regard him as a
child any longer, do you think that your severity will induce him to
return to you in love? Far from it. But suppose instead thereof, you
still assure him that you love him; that there is always a place at
your table for him, and a bed in your house for him, ay, and better
still, a warm place in your heart for him; suppose he sees your tears
and hears your prayers for him, will not this draw him? Yes, indeed, if
be be a son. It is even thus between thy God and thee, O backslider.
Hear ye the Lord as he argues thy case within his own heart. "My people
are bent to backsliding from me; though they called them to the most
High, none at all would exalt him. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?
how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how
shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my
repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of
mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not
man." Surely, if anything will draw you back, this will. "Ah !' saith
the wandering son, "my dear father loves me still. I will arise and go
to him. I will not vex so tender a heart. I will be his loving son
again. God does not say to you prodigals, who once professed his name,
"I have unchilded you, I have cast you away," but he says, "I love you
still; and for my name's sake will I restrain my wrath that I cut you
not off." Come to your offended Father, and you shall find that he has
not repented of his love, but will embrace you still.
IV. Time fails, but I must speak for a little, time or no time, upon
the fourth point–THE PERFECTING OF OUR LOVE TO GOD.
Beloved, there are few of us who know much of the deeps of the love of
God; our love is shallow; ah, how shallow! Love to God is like a great
mountain. The majority of travellers view it from afar, or traverse the
valley at its base: a few climb to a halting place on one of its
elevated spurs, whence they see a portion of its sublimities: here and
there an adventurous traveller climbs a minor peak, and views glacier
and alp at closer range; fewest of all are those who scale the topmost
pinnacle and tread the virgin snow. So in the Church of God. Every
Christian abides under the shadow of divine love: a few enjoy and
return that love to a remarkable degree: but there are few in this age
sadly few, who reach to seraphic love, who ascend into the hill of the
Lord, to stand where the eagle's eye hath not seen, and walk the path
which the lion's welp hath never trodden, the high places of complete
consecration and ardent self-consuming love. Now, mark you, it may be
difficult to ascend so high, but there is one sure route, and only one,
which the man must follow who would gain the sacred elevation. It is
not the track of his works, nor the path of his own actions, but this,
"We love him because he first loved us." John and the apostles
confessed that thus they attained their love. For the highest love that
ever glowed in human bosom there was no source but this–God first
loved that man. Do you not see how this is? The knowledge that God
loves me casts out my tormenting dread of God: and when this is
expelled, there is room for abounding love to God. As fear goes out,
love comes in at the other door. So the more faith in God the more room
there is for soul-fllling love.
Again, strong faith in God's love brings great enjoyment; our heart is
glad, our soul is satisfied with marrow and fatness when we know that
the whole heart of God beats towards us as forcibly as if we were the
only creatures he had ever made, and his whole heart were wrapt up in
us. This deep enjoyment creates the flaming love of which I have just
now spoken.
If the ardent love of some saints often takes the shape of admiration
of God, this arises from their familiarity with God, and this
familiarity they never would have indulged in, unless they had know
that he was their friend. A man could not speak to God as to a friend,
unless he knew the love that God hath toward him. The more true his
knowledge and the more sure, the more close his fellowship.
Brethren beloved, if you know that God has loved you, then you will
feel grateful; every doubt will diminish your gratitude, but every
grain of faith will increase it. Then as we advance in grace, love to
God in our soul will excite desire after him. Those we love we long to
be with; we count the hours that separate us; no place so happy as that
in which we enjoy their society. Hence love to God produces a desire to
be with him; a desire to be like him, a longing to be with him
eternally in heaven, and this breaks us away from worldliness; this
keeps us from idolatry, and thus has a most blessedly sanctifying
effect upon us, producing that elevated character which is now so rare,
but which wherever it exists is powerful for the good of the church and
for the glory of God. Oh that we had many in this church who had
reached the highest platform of piety. Would God we had a band of men
full of faith and of the Holy Ghost; strong in the Lord and in the
power of his might. It may help those who aspire to mount high in
grace, if they keep in mind that every step they climb they must use
the ladder which Jacob saw. The love of God to us is the only way to
climb to the love of God.
And now I must spend a minute in putting the truth of my text to the
test. I want you not to listen to me so much as to listen to your own
hearts, and to God's word, a minute, if you are believers. What is it
we have been talking about? It is God's love to us. Get the thought
into your head a minute: "God loves me–not merely bears with me,
thinks of me, feeds me, but loves me. Oh, it is a very sweet thing to
feel that we have the love of a dear wife, or a kind husband; and there
is much sweetness in the love of a fond child, or a tender mother; but
to think that God loves me, this is infinitely better! Who is it that
loves you? God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Almighty, All in
all, does he love me? Even he? If all men, and all angels, and all the
living creatures that are before the throne loved me, it were nothing
to this–the Infinite loves me! And who is it that he loves? Me. The
text saith, "us." "We love him because he first loved us." But this is
the personal point–he loves me, an insignificant nobody, full of
sin–who deserved to be in hell; who loves him so little in return–God
loves me. Beloved believer, does not this melt you? Does not this fire
your soul? I know it does if it is really believed. It must. And how
did he love me? He loved me so that he gave up his only begotten Son
for me, to be nailed to the tree, and made to bleed and die. And what
will come of it? Why, because he loved me and forgave me,–I am on the
way to heaven, and within a few months, perhaps days, I shall see his
face and sing his praises. He loved me before I was born; before a star
begun to shine he loved me, and he has never ceased to do so all these
years. When I have sinned he has loved me; when I have forgotten him he
has loved me; and when in the days of my sin I cursed him, yet still he
loved me; and he will love me when my knees tremble, and my hair is
grey with age, "even to hoar hairs" he will bear and carry his servant;
and he will love me when the world is on a blaze, and love me for ever,
and for ever. Oh, chew the cud of this blessed thought; roll it under
your tongue as a dainty morsel; sit down this afternoon, if you have
leisure, and think of nothing but this–his great love wherewith he
loves you; and if you do not feel your heart bubbling with a good
matter, if you do not feel your soul yearning towards God, and heaving
big with strong emotions of love to God, then I am much mistaken. This
is so powerful a truth, and you are so constituted as a Christian as to
be wrought upon by this truth, that if it be believed and felt, the
consequence must be that you will love him because he first loved you.
God bless you, brethren and sisters, for Christ's sake. Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–John 4:1-5.