Love’s Birth and Parentage

A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 11, 1876,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"We love Him, because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19.

VERY simple words, but very full of meaning. I think I might say of
this sentence what the poet says of prayer–it is "the simplest form of
speech that infant lips can try"–and yet it is one of the "most
sublime strains that reach the Majesty on high." Take a little
believing child and ask her why she loves the Savior, and she will
reply at once, "Because He loved me and died for me." Then ascend to
Heaven where the saints are perfect in Christ Jesus and put the same
question and with united breath the whole choir of the redeemed will
reply, "He has loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood."
When we begin to love Christ, we love Him because He first loved us.
And when we grow in Grace till we are capable of the very highest
degree of spiritual understanding and affection, we still have no
better reason for loving Him than this, "Because He first loved us."

This morning, in trying to preach from the text, I would pray the Holy
Spirit that every person here may first feel it. It is wonderful, the
difference between a text read and heard and a text felt within the
soul. Oh, that you, this morning, may be able to say from your hearts
because you cannot help saying it, "We love Him." If I were to say no
more, but sit down in silence–and if you were all to spend the next
three quarters of an hour in exercising the emotion of love to God–it
would be time most profitably spent! It is, beyond measure, beneficial
to the soul to take her fill of love with the Lord Jesus. It is the
sweet cure for an her ailments for her to have leisure to delight
herself in the Lord and faith enough to dwell at ease in His
perfections. Be sure, then, to let your hearts have room, scope and
opportunity for indulging and inflaming the sacred passion of love to
God.

If the second part of the text shall also be made equally vivid to you
by the power of faith–"He first loved us"– your hearts will be
satisfied as with marrow and fatness! If the exceeding love of God in
Christ Jesus shall be shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Spirit,
you will need no sermon from me–your inward experience will be better
than any discourse! May your love, like a drop of dew, be exhaled and
carried up into the boundless Heaven of God's love. May your heart
ascend to the place where your treasure is and rest itself upon the
heart of God! Blessed shall you be if, in your hearts, Christ's love
and yours shall both be fully known and felt at this moment! O, blessed
Spirit, cause it to be so!

Thus should we have the text in action–and that is a thousand times
better than the mere quiet letter. If you have visited the picture
galleries at Versailles, where you see the wars of France from the
earliest ages set forth in glowing colors upon the canvas, you cannot
but have been struck with the pictures and interested in the terrible
scenes. Upstairs in the same palace there is a vast collection of
portraits. I have traversed those galleries of portraits without much
interest, only here and there pausing to notice a remarkable
countenance. Very few persons linger there–everybody seems to walk on
as quickly as the polished floors allow.

Now, why is it that you are interested in the portraits downstairs and
not by those upstairs? They are the same people. Very many of them are
in the same dress. Why do you not gaze upon them with interest? The
reason lies here–the portrait in still life, as a rule, can never have
the attraction which surrounds a scene of stirring action. There you
see the warrior dealing a terrible blow with his battle-ax, or the
senator delivering an oration in the assembly, and you think more of
them than of the same bodies and faces in repose. Life is impressive!
Action awakens thought! It is just so with the text. Look at it as a
matter of doctrinal statement–"We love Him, because He first loved
us"–and if you are a thoughtful person you will consider it well. But
feel the fact itself, feel the love of God–know it within your own
soul and manifest it in your life–and how engrossing it becomes!

May it be so by the power of the Holy Spirit this morning! May you be
loving God while you are hearing and may I be loving Him intensely
while I am preaching! With this as an introduction, I shall use the
text for four purposes. First,

for doctrinal instruction. Secondly, for experimental information.
Thirdly, for practical direction. And fourthly, for argumentative
defense.

I. We shall use the text, briefly, for DOCTRINAL INSTRUCTION–and one
point of doctrinal instruction is very clear, namely, that God's love
to His people is first. "He first loved us." Now, be sure of this point
of doctrine, because forgetfulness about it is connected with much
error and with more ignorance. The love of God to us precedes our love
to God. According to Scripture it must be first in the most eminent
sense because it is eternal. The Lord chose His people in Christ Jesus
from before the foundations of the world. And to each one of His people
that text may be applied–"Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting
love."

His mercy is from everlasting to them that fear Him. From all eternity
the Lord looked upon His people with an eye of love and, as nothing can
be before eternity, His love was first. Certainly He loved us before we
had a being, for did He not give His Son to die for us nearly 1900
years ago, long before our infant cries had saluted our mother's ears?
He loved us before we had any desire to be loved by Him, yes, when we
were provoking Him to His face and displaying the fierce enmity of our
unrenewed hearts! Remember "His great love with which He loved us, even
when we were dead in sin." "God commends His love toward us, in that,
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." When we had not as yet
one throb of spiritual feeling, one pulse of hope, or one breath of
desire, the Lord loved us even then!

The love of God is before our seeking. He draws us before we run after
Him. We do not seek that love–that love seeks us. We wander further
and further from it, resist it and prove ourselves unworthy of it. Our
nature and our practice are such that they offer nothing congenial to
Divine love. But the love of God arises in its freeness and stops our
mad career by its power over the conscience and the will. "You have not
chosen Me, but I have chosen you," is the voice of Sovereign Grace! Let
our response be, "By the Grace of God we are what we are!"

The Lord's love is before any repentance on our part. Impenitent
sinners never would repent if God did not love them first. The Lord
hates sin, but yet He loves sinners. He compassionately loved us when
sin was pleasant to us, when we rolled it under our tongue as a sweet
morsel, when neither the thunders of His Law nor the wooing of His
Gospel could persuade us to turn from it. When in our bosoms there were
no convictions of sin, when there were no evangelical lamentations
because of offenses against a gracious God, He loved us!

Today, Brothers and Sisters, we are possessors of faith in Jesus
Christ, but our faith in Jesus Christ did not come before His love. On
the contrary, our faith rests in what that love has done for us of old.
When we were unbelieving and hard of heart. When we resisted the
testimony of the Holy Spirit and put from us the Word of eternal life,
even then the Lord pitied us and had mercy upon us–and continued,
still, to invite, to entreat, to persuade–until, at last, the happy
hour came when we believed and entered into a sense of His love.

There are many things about you now, Beloved of the Lord, which are the
objects of Divine approbation, but they were not there at first. They
did not precede Divine love, but are the fruits of it. To use an old
English word which has somewhat lost its meaning, the love of God is
preventing love–it goes before any right motions of the soul–and in
order of time it is first, before any desires, wishes, aspirations, or
prayers on our part. Are you devout today? Yet He loved you not at the
first because you were devout, for originally you were not so! His love
was before your devotion. Are you holy today? Blessed be His name for
it! But He loved you when you were unholy. Your holiness follows His
love–He chose you that you might be holy.

You are becoming like He by the sanctifying influences of His blessed
Spirit and He loves His image in you, but He loved you when that image
was not there. Yes, He looked on you with infinite compassion when you
were heirs of wrath even as others–and the image of the devil was
conspicuous, both upon your character and your nature. However early in
life you began to love the Lord, His love was first. This is very
amazing, but, blessed be His name, we know that it is true and we
rejoice in it! The fact is that the love of God, as far as we know
anything about it, had no reason derived from us upon which to ground
itself. He loved us because He would love us, or, as our Lord put it,
"Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight."

He had reasons in His own Nature. Good reasons fetched from the best
conceivable place, namely from His own perfections. But those reasons
He has not been pleased to communicate to us. He bids us know that He
will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and will have compassion on
whom He will have compassion. Thus He tries the loyal submis-siveness
of our hearts and I trust we are able to bow in reverent silence to His
righteous will. Divine love is its own cause

and does not derive its streams from anything in us. It flows
spontaneously from the heart of God, finding its deep well-springs
within His own bosom. This is a great comfort to us, because, being
uncreated, it is unchangeable! If it had been upon us because of some
goodness in us, then when the goodness was diminished the love would
diminish, too. If God had loved us second and not first, or had the
cause of the love been in us, that cause might have altered and the
supposed effect, namely, His love, would have altered, too.

But now, whatever may be the Believer's condition today–however he may
have wandered and however much he may be groaning under a sense of
sin–the Lord declares, "I do earnestly remember him, still." The Lord
did not love you at first because you had no sin–He foreknow all the
sin you would ever have–it was all present before His sacred mind and
yet He loved you, and He loves you, still. "I am God. I change not,
therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed." O blessed love of God,
since You are first, we will give you the first place in our thoughts,
the highest throne in our hearts, the royal position in our souls! We
glorify You, for You are first!

Another part of the doctrine of the text is this, that the love of God
is the cause of our love to God. A thing may be first and another
second, and yet the first may not be the cause of the second. There may
be no actual link between the two– but here we have it
unmistakably–"We love Him because He first loved us," which signifies
not merely that this is the motive of which we are conscious in our
love, but that this is the force, the Divine power, which created love
in us. I put it to you, should we have loved God had He not first given
His Son to die for us? Had there been no redeeming Sacrifice should we
have had any love to God? Unredeemed men, left to go on like fallen
angels in their sin, would have had no more love of God than fallen
angels have. How could they?

The great foundation of love is the Son given to redeem. God gives His
Son and so reveals His own love and creates ours. Is not His love seen
to be the cause of ours when we remember Calvary? But He might have
given His Son to die for men, Beloved, and yet you and I might not have
loved Him because we might not have been aware of the great fact. It is
no small Grace on God's part that, "to you is the Word of this
salvation sent." While the heathen have never heard it, by the
arrangement of His gracious Providence you have been favored with the
good news! You have it in your homes in the form of the Holy
Scriptures! You hear it every Sunday from the pulpit. How would you
have ever come to love Him if He had not sent His Gospel to you?

The gift of His Son, Jesus, and the Providence which leads the herald
of mercy to the saved one's door, are evident causes of man's love to
God. But more than this, Christ died and the Gospel is preached–and
yet some men do not love Him. Why not? Because of the hardness of their
hearts. But others do love Him–shall I trace this to the natural
better-ness of their hearts? I dare not and much less do they! There is
no Believer who would ask me to do so in his own case. I must trace it
to the influence of the Holy Spirit, going with the Revelation of the
love of God in Christ Jesus, affecting the heart and creating faith and
love and every Grace in the soul! Beloved, if you love God, it is with
no love of yours, but with the love which He has planted in your bosom!

Unrenewed human nature is a soil in which love to God will not grow.
There must be a taking away of the rock and a supernatural change of
the barren ground into good soil. And then, as a rare plant from
another land, love must be planted in our hearts and sustained by
Divine power or else it never will be found there. There is no love to
God in this world that is of the right kind except that which was
created and formed by the love of God in the soul! Put the two Truths
of God together–that the love of God is first, and that the love of
God is the cause of our love–and I think you will be inclined, from
now on, to be Believers in what are commonly called the Doctrines of
Grace.

To me it is very wonderful that they are not received by all Churches
because they are practically acknowledged by all Christians when on
their knees! They may preach as they like, but they all pray according
to the Doctrines of Grace and those doctrines are so consistent with
the Christian's experience that it is notable that the older a Believer
becomes– and the more deeply he searches into Divine Truths, the more
inclined he is to give the whole of the praise of his salvation to the
Grace of God–and to believe in those precious Truths which magnify,
not the free will of man, but the free Grace of the Ever Blessed! I
need no better statement of my own doctrinal belief than this, "We love
Him, because He first loved

us."

I know it has been said that He loved us on the foresight of our faith
and love and holiness. Of course the Lord had a clear foresight of all
these–but remember that He also had the foresight of our absence of
love, and our lack of faith, and our wandering, and our sins! And
surely His foresight in one direction must be supposed to operate as
well as His

foresight in the other direction! Remember, also, that God Himself did
not foresee that there would be any love to Him in us arising out of
ourselves, for there never has been any and there never will be! He
only foresaw that we should believe because He gave us faith. He
foresaw that we would repent because His Spirit would work repentance
in us. He foresaw that we should love because He worked that love
within us!

Is there anything in the foresight that He means to give us such things
that can account for His giving us such things? The case is
self-evident–His foresight of what He means to do cannot be His reason
for doing it! His own eternal purpose has made the gracious difference
between the saved and those who willfully perish in sin. Let us give
all the glory to His holy name, for to Him all the glory belongs. His
preventing Grace must have all the honor.

II. Secondly, we shall use the text FOR EXPERIMENTAL INFORMATION.
First, we learn that all true Believers love God. "We love Him," and we
all love Him for one reason, "because He first loved us." All the
children of God love their Father. I do not say that they all feel an
equal love, or that they all feel as much love as they should. Who
among us does? I will not say that they do not, sometimes, give cause
to doubt their love. No, I will urge that it is well for them to
examine, even as Christ examined Peter, and said, "Simon, son of Jonas,
do you love Me?" But there is love in the heart of every true-born
child of God–it is as necessary to spiritual life as blood is to
natural life.

Rest assured there has never been born into the kingdom of God one
solitary individual destitute of love for God. You may be deficient in
some virtues, (you should not be), but yet the root of the matter may
be in you. But if you are without love, you are as a sounding brass and
as a tinkling cymbal. Whatever your outer works, though you give your
body to be burned and all your goods to feed the poor, yet, if there is
no love to God in your soul, the mark of God's sheep is not upon you
and your lot is not the lot of His children. Rest assured that whoever
is born of God loves God!

Observe carefully the kind of love which is essential to every
Christian–"We love Him, because He first loved us." Much has been said
about disinterested love to God. There may be such a thing and it may
be very admirable, but it is not mentioned here. I trust, Beloved, we
know what it is to love God because of His superlative excellence and
goodness. Surely the more we know Him the more we shall love Him for
what He is. But unless we love Him because He first loved us, whatever
other sort of love we may have or think we have, it does not prove us
to be children of God. This is the love we must have! The other form of
love, if it is true, will grow up in us afterwards. That, however, is
not essential nor need we unduly exalt it–loving God because He first
loved us is sufficient evidence of Grace in the soul.

Gratitude has been vilified as a mean virtue, but, indeed it is a noble
emotion and is one of the most forcible of spiritual motives! Let a man
love God admiringly because of what He is, but yet there must run, side
by side with it, this grateful love of God because He first loved him,
or else he lacks that which John says is to be found in all the saints!
Beloved, do not vex yourselves about any supposedly higher degrees, but
see to it that you love Him because He first loved you. You may not be
able to rise into those heights into which others of your Brethren have
ascended because you are as yet only a babe in Grace, but you are safe
enough if your love is of this simple character–that it loves because
it is loved.

Within this humble form of love, which is so essential, there dwells a
gracious sense of unworthiness necessary to a true Christian. We feel
that we did not deserve the love which God sheds upon us. This humility
we must have or we lack one mark of a child of God. There is, also, in
this lowly form of gracious affection, a clear recognition of the fact
that the Lord's love is graciously bestowed–and this, also, is
essential to a Christian and becomes to him the main source of his
obedience and affection. If a man only loves me as much as I deserve to
be loved, I do not feel under any very strong obligations and,
consequently, do not feel any very intense gratitude. But because the
Lord's love is all of pure Grace and comes to us as utterly
undeserving, therefore we love Him in return. See whether such a
humble, grateful love towards God dwells in your hearts, for it is a
vital point.

Love to God, wherever it is found, is a sure evidence of the salvation
of its possessor. If you love the Lord in the sense described, then He
loved you first and loves you now. You need no other evidence but this
to assure yourself that you abide in the love of God–that you love
Him. I was told by a venerable Brother some little time ago a story of
our famous preacher, Robert Hall. He charmed the most learned by the
majesty of his eloquence, but he was as simple as he was great–and he
was never happier than when conversing with poor Believers upon
experimental godliness. He was accustomed to make his journeys on
horseback and having been preaching at Clipstone he was on his way home
when he was stopped by a heavy snowfall at the little village of
Sibbertoft.

The good man who kept the "Black Swan," a little village hostelry, came
to him and besought the preacher to take refuge beneath his roof,
assuring him that it would give him great joy to welcome him. Mr. Hall
knew him to be one of the most sincere Christians in the neighborhood
and, therefore, got off his horse and went into the little inn. The
good man was delighted to provide him a bed, a stool and a candlestick
in the prophet's chamber, for that rustic inn contained such an
apartment. After Mr. Hall had rested awhile by the fire, the landlord
said. "You must stay here all night, Sir, and if you do not mind I will
call in a few of my neighbors, and if you feel that you could give us a
sermon in my taproom they will all be glad to hear you."

"So let it be, Sir," said Mr. Hall, and so it was! The taproom became
his cathedral and the, "Black Swan," the sign of the Gospel banner! The
peasants came together and the man of God poured out his soul before
them wondrously. They would never forget it, for to hear Mr. Hall was
an event in any man's life! After all were gone, Mr. Hall sat down and
there came over him a fit of depression out of which he strove to rise
by conversation with his host. "Ah, Sir," said the great preacher, "I
am much burdened and am led to question my own condition before God.
Tell me now, what do you think is a sure evidence that a man is a child
of God." "Well, Mr. Hall," said the plain man, "I am sorry to see you
so tried. You doubt yourself, but nobody else has any doubt about you.
I hope the Lord will cheer and comfort you, but I am afraid I am not
qualified to do it."

"Never mind, Friend, never mind, tell me what you think is the best
evidence of a child of God?" "Well, I should say, Sir," said he, "if a
man loves God, he must be one of God's children." "Say you so," said
the mighty preacher, "then it is well with me!" And at that signal he
began to magnify the Lord at such a rate that his hearer afterwards
said that it was wonderful to hear him, as for about an hour he went on
with glowing earnestness, declaring the loveliness of God! "O Sir,"
said he who told the tale, "you should have heard him! He said, 'Love
God, Sir? Why I cannot help loving Him! How could I do otherwise?'

"And then he went on to speak about the Almighty and His love and
Grace, extolling the Lord's greatness, goodness and glory in
redemption, and all that He did for His people, till he said, 'Thank
you, thank you, my Friend. If love to Him is an evidence of being God's
child, I know I have it, for I cannot help loving Him! I take no credit
to myself. He is such a lovely Being and has done so much for us that I
should be more brutish than any man if I did not love and adore Him.'"
That which cheered that good and great man's heart may, perhaps, cheer
yours. If you are loving God, you must have been loved of God! True
love could not have come into your heart in any other conceivable way!
And you may rest assured that you are the object of His eternal choice!

But oh, if you do not love God, dear Hearer, I invite you to think, for
a minute, upon your state! Hear of God and not love Him? You must be
blind! Know anything about His Character and not adore Him? Your heart
must be like the heart of Nabal when it was turned into stone! See God
in Christ, bleeding on the Cross, for His enemies and not love Him? O
Hell, you cannot be guilty of a worst offense than this! Here is love,
shall it have no acknowledgment? It is said that a man cannot feel that
he is loved without, in some measure, returning the flame. But what
shall I say of a mind which beholds Christ's love but feels no love in
return? It is brutish! It is devilish! God have mercy upon it! Breathe
the same prayer, O unloving heart, and say, "Lord, forgive me and by
Your Holy Spirit renew me and give me, from now on, to be able to say,
'I, also, in my humble fashion, love God because He first loved me.'"

III. Thirdly, we shall use the text as a matter OF PRACTICAL DIRECTION.
I earnestly trust that there are some here who, although they do not
love God at present, yet desire to do so. Well, dear Friend, the text
tells you how to love God. You say, perhaps, "Oh, I shall love God when
I have improved my character and when I have attended to the external
duties of religion." But are you going to get love to God out
ofyourself? Is it there, then? "No," you say. How, then, will you get
it from where it is not? You may go often to an empty iron safe before
you will bring a thousand pound note out of it! And you may look a long
time to your own heart before you will bring out of it a love to God
which is not there!

What is the way by which a heart may be made to love God? The text
shows us the method of the Holy Spirit. He reveals the love of God to
the heart and then the heart loves God in return. If, then, you are
awakened, this morning, to desire to love God, use the method which the
text suggests–meditate upon the great love of God to man, especially
upon this, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life." See clearly that you, by faith, trust your soul with Christ, and
perceive that it is vast love

which sets before you such a way of salvation in which the only thing
required of you is that you be nothing and trust Christ to be
everything–and even that faith He gives you as a gift of His Spirit,
so that the plan of salvation is all of love.

If you want to repent, do not so much consider your sin as the love of
Jesus in suffering for your sin! If you desire to believe, do not so
much study the doctrine as study the Person of Jesus Christ upon the
Cross! And if you desire to love, think over perpetually, till it
breaks your heart, the great love of Jesus Christ in laying down His
life for His worthless foes! The love of God is the birthplace of holy
love! Not there in your hearts where you are attempting an absurdly
impossible feat, namely, to create love in the carnal mind which cannot
be reconciled to God! But there in the heart of Jesus must love be born
and then it shall come down to you. You cannot force your mind into the
condition of believing even a common thing, nor can you sit there and
say, "I will love So-and-So," of whom you know nothing.

Faith and love are second steps arising out of former steps. "Faith
comes by hearing," and love comes by contemplation. It flows out of a
sense of the love of Christ in the soul even as wine flows from the
clusters in the winepress. Go to the fragrant mystery of redeeming love
and tarry with it till in those beds of spices your own garments shall
be made to smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia! There is no way of
sweetening yourself but by tasting the sweetness of Jesus Christ! The
honey of His love will make your whole nature to be as a
honeycomb–every cell of your manhood shall drop sweetness.

Brothers and Sisters, if we wish to sustain the love we have received,
we must do the same thing. At the present moment you are loving God and
desire, still, to love Him. Be wise, then, and feed love on love–it is
its best food. This is the honey which will keep your sweetness sweet.
This is the fire which will keep your flame flaming. Could we be
separated from the love of Christ, our love would die out like a lamp
in yonder streets when cut off from the main. He who quickened us into
the life of love must keep us alive or we shall become loveless and
lifeless. And if, perhaps, your love has grown somewhat cold. If you
long to revive it, do not begin by doubting God's love to you–that is
not the way of reviving, but of weakening love!

Believe in Divine love, my Brothers and Sisters, over the head of the
coldness of your heart! Trust in Jesus Christ as a sinner if you cannot
rejoice in Him as a saint, and you will get your love back. You see the
flowing fountain, how it gushes with a constant stream? And here I
bring a pitcher and set it down so that the stream rushes into it and
fills it till it overflows. In this manner our souls ought to be filled
with the love of Christ. But you have taken away your pitcher and it
has become empty. And now you say to yourself, "Alas, alas, there is
nothing here! What shall I do? This pitcher is empty." Do? Why do what
you did at first–go and set it under the flowing stream and it will
soon be full again! It will never get full by your removing it into a
dry place.

Doubting is the death of love. Only by the hand of faith can love be
fed with the Bread of Heaven. Your tears will not fill it. You may
groan into it, but sighs and moans will not fill it. Only the flowing
fountain can fill the vacuum. Believe that God still loves you, even if
you are not a saint. Believe in the mighty love of Christ towards
sinners and trust yourself with Him! And then His love will come
pouring in till your heart is again full to overflowing. If you want to
rise to the very highest state of love to Christ. If you desire
ecstatic joy, or to be perfectly consecrated. If you aim at an
Apostle's self-denial, or at a martyr's heroism, or if you would be as
like to Christ as the spirits are in Heaven–no tool can engrave you to
this image but love! No force can fashion you to the model of Christ
Jesus but the love of Jesus Christ shed abroad in your soul by the Holy
Spirit. Keep to this, then, as a matter of practical direction. Dwell
in the love of God to you that you may feel intense love to God.

Once more, as a practical direction, if you love God show it as God
showed His love to you. You cannot do so in the same degree, but you
may in the same manner. God loved the worthless. You love the
worthless. God loved His enemies. You love your enemies. The Lord loved
them practically. Love not in word, only, but in deed and in truth. He
loved them to self-sacrifice, so that Jesus gave Himself for us. You
love to self-sacrifice, also. Love God so that you could die a thousand
deaths for Him. Love Him till you make no provision for the flesh, but
live only for His Glory. Let your heart burn with a flame that shall
consume you till the zeal of God's house shall have eaten you up. "We
love Him, because He first loved us," therefore let us love Him as He
loved us! Let His love be both motive and model to us–

"Loved of my God, for Him again, With love intense I burn. Chosen of
Him before time began I choose Him in return."

IV. Our text suggests to us AN ARGUMENTATIVE DEFENSE. You will see what
I mean when I observe, first, that our love to God seems to need an
apology. We have heard of an emperor casting eyes of love upon a
peasant girl. It would have been monstrous for her to have first looked
up to him as likely to be her husband! Everybody would have thought her
to be bereft of her senses had she done so. But when the monarch looked
down upon her and asked her to be his queen, that was another thing.
She might take leave to love from his love!

Often does my soul say, "O God, I cannot help loving You, but may I?
Can this poor heart of mine be allowed to send up its love to You?
I–polluted and defiled, nothingness and emptiness and sinfulness–may
I say, 'Yet do I love You, O my God, almighty as You are'? 'Holy, holy,
holy,' is the salutation of the seraphim, but may I say, 'I love You, O
my God'?" Yes, I may, because He first loved me! There is love's
license to soar so high–

"YetI may love You, too, OLord, Almighty as You are, For you have
stooped to ask of me The love of my poor heart!"

Then, again, if any should enquire of us as they did of the spouse,
"What is your Beloved more than another beloved, O you fairest among
women? What is your Beloved more than another beloved, that you do so
charge us? What is this passion that you have for God, this love you
bear to His Incarnate Son?" We have a conclusive argument as against
them, even as we had a quietus for our own fears. We reply, "We love
Him, because He first loved us. And if you did but know that He loved
you. If you did but know that He had done for you what He has done for
us, you would love Him, too. You would not need to ask us why–you
would wonder why you do not love Him, too."–

"His love, if all the nations knew, Surely the whole world would love
Him, too." We shall not need, to all eternity, any other defense for
loving God than this, "Because He first loved us."

Here is, also, an argument for the lover of the old orthodox faith. It
has been said by some that the Doctrines of Grace lead to
licentiousness, but our text is a most excellent shield against that
attack. Brothers and Sisters, we believe that the Lord loved us, first,
and most freely–not because of our tears or prayers, nor because of
our foreseen faith, nor because of anything in us–but first! Well,
what comes out of that? Do we, therefore, say, "If He loved us when we
were in sin, let us continue in sin that Grace may abound," as some
have wickedly said? God forbid! The inference we draw is, "We love Him,
because He first loved us."

Some can be swayed to morality by fear, but the Christian is sweetly
drawn to holiness by love. We love Him, not because we are afraid of
being cast into Hell if we do not–that fear is gone–we who are
justified by God can never be condemned! Nor because we are afraid of
missing Heaven, for the inheritance is upon as many of us as are joint
heirs with Jesus Christ. Does this blessed security lead us to
carelessness? No, but in proportion as we see the greatness and the
infinity of the love of God, we love Him in return! And that love is
the basis of all holiness and the groundwork of a godly character. The
Doctrines of Grace, though often maligned, have proved in the hearts of
those who have believed them, the grandest stimulus to heroic virtue!
And he who affirms otherwise knows not what he says!

Last of all, here is a noble argument to silence a gainsaying world. Do
you see what a wonderful text we have here? It is a description of
Christianity! Men say they are weary of the old faith and beg us to
advance with the times–how shall we reply to them? They need something
better, do they? The philosophers who pander to the age are going to
give it a better religion than Christianity? Are they? Let us see. We
shall, however, wait very long before their false promises will
approximate to fulfillment. Let us rather look at what we have already.

Our text is a circle. Here is love descending from Heaven down to
man–and here is love ascending from man to God–and so the circle is
completed. The text treats only of love. We love the Lord and He loves
us. The text resembles Anacreon's harp which resounded love. Here is no
word of strife, selfishness, anger, or envy! All is love and love
alone. Now, it comes to pass that out of this love between God and His
people there grows, (see the context of my text), love to men, for, "he
that loves God loves his brother, also." The ethical essence of
Christianity is love and the great master doctrine that we preach when
we preach Jesus Christ is this–"God has loved us, we love God–and now
we must love one another."

O you nations, what Gospel do you desire better than this? This it is
that will put aside your drums, your cannons and your swords! When men
love God and love each other, what need for all the bloodstained
pageantry of war? And this

will end your slavery, for who will call his brother his slave when he
has learned to love the image of God in every man? Who is he that will
oppress and domineer when he has learned to love his God and love the
creatures God has made? Behold! Christianity is the Magna Charta of the
universe! Here is the true, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," which
men will seek for in vain in politics! Here is the sacred Communism
which will injure no man's rights, but will respect every man's griefs
and succor every man's needs! Here is, indeed, the birth principle of
the golden age of peace and joy, when the lion shall eat straw like the
ox and the weaned child shall play on the cockatrice's den!

Spread it, then, and let it circulate throughout the whole earth–God's
love first, our love to Him, next! And then the universal love which
shuts not out a man of any color, of any class, or of any name–but
calls upon itself to love both God and man because God is loved! The
Lord bless this meditation to you, by His Spirit, for Christ's sake.
Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–1 John 4. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
HYMN BOOK"–19, 248, 810.
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