1008. Love’s Logic

A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, August 27, 1871, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. 8/10/2011*8/10/2011

We love him because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

For other sermons on this text:
   (See Spurgeon_SermonTexts "1Jo 4:19")

1. 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 for 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 consequence 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 blessing as the gift of the Only Begotten; it was not possible for anything 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 by blood, nor by the will by the flesh, nor by the will of man, but by 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 for 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 waters 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 out 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 imparted life flows back again to God. All good things are from you, Great God; your goodness creates our good; your infinite love for us draws out our love for you.

2. 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 seen from another point. I purpose to preach a practical 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 proven in our own consciousness. Under this aspect the statement of the text is this: — a sense of the love of God for us is the main cause of our love for 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 strengthens, and our conviction deepens that we are really beloved by 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. May God grant it to be blessed to each of us by his Holy Spirit.

3. I. At the outset we will consider THE INDISPENSABLE NECESSITY OF LOVE FOR GOD IN THE HEART.

4. There are some graces which in their vigour are not absolutely essential to the bare existence of spiritual life, though very important for its healthy growth; but love for God must be in the heart, or else there is no grace there whatever. If any man does not love God, he is not a renewed man. Love for 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 call your attention to the connection of the text. You will find in the seventh verse of this chapter, that love for God is recorded as being a necessary sign of the new birth. “Everyone who loves is born from God, and knows God.” I have no right, therefore, to believe that I am a regenerated person unless my heart truly and sincerely loves God. It is vain for me, if I do not love 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 you know all things, you know that I love you.” When by believing we receive the privilege to become the sons of God, we also receive the nature of sons, and with filial love we cry, “Abba, Father.” There is no exception to this rule; if a man does not love God, neither is he born from God. Show me a fire without heat, then show me regeneration that does not produce love for 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. “We must be born again,” but you are not born again unless you love God. How indispensable, then, is love for God.

5. In the eighth verse we are told also that love for God is a sign of our knowing God. True knowledge is essential for 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 who created us. Now, “he who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” All you have ever been taught from the pulpit, all you have ever studied from the Scriptures, all you have 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 still remain in ignorance, ignorance of the most unhappy and ruinous kind. All attainments are transitory, if love is not as a salt to preserve them; tongues must cease and knowledge must vanish away; love alone remains for ever. You must have this love or be a fool for ever. All the children of the true Zion are taught by the Lord, but you are not taught by God unless you love God. See then that to be devoid of love for God is to be devoid of all true knowledge of God, and so of all salvation.

6. Further, the chapter teaches us that love for God is the root of love for others. The eleventh verse says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. If we love one another, God dwells 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, and is not committed to it heart and soul is only an intruder in the family. But since love for our brethren springs out of love for our one common Father, it is plain that we must have love for that Father, or else we shall fail in one of the indispensable signs of the children of God. “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren”; but we cannot truly love the brethren unless we love the Father; therefore, lacking love for God, we lack love for the church, which is an essential sign of grace.

7. Again, keeping to the run of the passage, you will find by the eighteenth verse, that love for God is a chief means of that holy peace which is an essential sign 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 has 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 for 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, you cannot have the nature of God implanted within you by regeneration, it cannot reveal itself in love for the brotherhood, it cannot blossom with the fair flowers of peace and joy, unless your affection is set upon God. Let him then be your exceeding joy. Delight yourself also in the Lord. Oh you who are his saints love the Lord.

8. 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 is not the root of the tree, yet a well rooted tree will, in its season, produce 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 the heart is not found. I must obey because I love, or else I have not obeyed at all in spirit and in truth. See then, that to produce the indispensable fruits of saving faith, there must be love for God; for without it, they would be unreal and indeed impossible.

9. I hope it is not necessary for me to pursue this argument any further. Love for God is as natural to the renewed heart as love for 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. Just as the spark, because it has in it the nature of fire, ascends aloft to seek the sun, so will your newborn spirit seek her God, from whom she has derived her life. Search yourselves, then, and see whether you love God or not. Put your hands on your hearts, and as in the sight of him, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, answer to him; make him your confessor at this hour; answer this one question: “Do you love 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.

10. This much was necessary to bring us to the second step of our discourse. May the Holy Spirit lead us onward.

11. II. You see the indispensable importance of love for God: let us now learn THE SOURCE AND SPRING OF TRUE LOVE FOR GOD. “We love him because he first loved us.”

12. Love for God, wherever it really exists, has been created in the heart by a belief of God’s love for us. No man loves God until 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 with the divine affection towards him, he of necessity loves his God.

13. Observe, then, that love for 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 had 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 observed 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 from 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 for 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 just 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 lovingkindness 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, oh seeker, trouble your heart with nice distinctions about disinterested love, but be content with the beloved disciple to love Christ because he first loved you.

14. Again, our love for 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 does 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, unbiased and unaided, will to love God and I will not to love Satan.” Such proud self-assuming language would prove him to be a liar; the man would be clearly a worshipper of himself. A man can only love God when he has perceived some reasons for doing so; and the first argument for loving God, which influences the intellect in order to turn the affections, is the reason mentioned in the text, “We love him because he first loved us.”

15. Now, having thus set the text in a negative light, let us look at it in a more positive manner.

16. It is certain, beloved brethren, that faith in the heart always precedes love. We first believe the love of God for us before we love God in return. And, oh what an encouraging 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 Holy Spirit, a fervent love for God will spontaneously issue from your soul, even as flowers willingly exude their fragrance under the influence of the dew and the sun. Every man who 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 for 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 for 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 until 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 to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them,” you shall find your heart going out after God. “Whoever believes in Jesus Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life”; do you believe this? Can you believe in Jesus now; that is, trust him? Then, Christ died for you; Christ the Son of God, in your place, suffered for your guilt. God gave his only Son to die for you. “Oh,” one says, “if I believed that, how I would love God!” Yes, indeed, you would, and that is the only consideration which can make you do so. You, a sinner, must take Christ to be your Saviour, and then love for God shall spring up spontaneously in your 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 (a) turns its flower 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 for you. “Oh,” one says, “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 says: “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 commends his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” “He did not come 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 by which 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 for him. So the Lord says: “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins, return to me; for I have redeemed you.” Oh that God’s gracious voice this morning might so call some of his poor wandering ones so that they may come and believe his love for them, and then cast themselves at his feet to be his servants for ever.

17. Brethren, rest assured that in proportion as we are fully persuaded of God’s love for us, we shall be affected with love for 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 for you, he cuts off or diminishes the flow of the streams which feed the sacred grace of love for God. If I lament that I do not love God as I ought to, that is a holy regret; but if I, therefore, conclude that God’s love for me is all 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 for 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. Oh for a great wave of love, to carry us right out into the ocean of love.

18. Observe, beloved brethren, day by day the deeds of God’s love for you in the gift of food and clothing, 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 bestows upon you with himself and his blessed Son, and the answers to prayer which he grants you. Notice 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 you will 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, hanging like a silken curtain all around our bed, and love opens the eyelids of the morning to smile upon us when we wake up. 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 strikes. We are surrounded with love, above, beneath, around, within, and without. If we could only recognise this, we should become as flames of fire, ardent and fervent towards our God. Knowledge and observation are admirable nurses of our infant love.

19. And, ah, the soul grows rich in love for God when she rests on the bosom of divine lovingkindness. You, who are tossed about with doubts and fears concerning whether you are now accepted or shall persevere to the end, you can scarcely guess the ardours of heart which inflame those saints who have learned to cast themselves wholly upon Jesus, and know beyond a doubt of his immutable love. Whether I sink or swim, I have no hope except 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 for him engross all my heart, and consecrate my life to the Redeemer’s glory.

20. Beloved, I desire to make this very clear; that to feel love for God we must walk 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 you wish to love God, do not look within you to see whether this grace or that is as it ought to be, but look to your God, and read his eternal love, his boundless love, his costly love, which gave Christ for you; then your love shall drink in fresh life and vigour.

21. Remember wherever there is love for God in the soul it is a confirmation that God loves that soul. I remember 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 anyone. 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; otherwise the sinner might be afraid to come to God. Oh loveless sinner, with heart unquickened and chill, the voice of God calls even you to Christ. Even to the dead in sin, his voice says “Live.” While you are still polluted in your blood, cast out into the open field, to the loathing of your person, the Lord of mercy passes by, and says “Live.” His mighty sovereignty comes out dressed in robes of love, and he touches you the unloveable, the loveless, the depraved, degraded sinner, at enmity with God, — he touches you in all your alienation and he lifts you out of it and makes you love him, not for your own sake but for his name’s sake and for his mercy’s sake. You had no love at all for him, but all the love lay in him alone; and therefore he began to bless you, and will continue to bless you world without end, if you are a believer in Jesus. In the bosom of the Eternal are the deep springs of all love.

22. III. This leads us, in the third place, to consider for a moment THE REVIVAL OF OUR LOVE.

23. 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 for 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 is indeed spiritual life in you, you will wish to return. You have gone astray like a lost sheep, but your prayer is, “Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.” Now, notice 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 for 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 from the dry well within yourself! Do not think it to be 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 condemned. Think of the Lord’s unchanging grace, and you will feel the springtime of love returning to your soul. Still the Lord reserves mercy for the sinful, still he waits 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 heart of his love. Many considerations ought to aid you, a backslider, to believe more in the love of God than you ever did. For think what love it must be that can invite you to still return, you, who after knowing so much have sinned against light and knowledge; you, who after having experienced so much, have betrayed your profession. He might justly have cut you down, for you have encumbered 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 puts away his wife, or she goes from him, and become another man’s, shall he return to her again?” Why, the answer in every heart is “No!” Who would love a wife who had so polluted herself? But thus says the Lord, “You have played the prostitute with many lovers, yet return to me.” What matchless love is this. Hear even more of these gracious words, which you will find in the third chapter of Jeremiah’s prophecy. “Go and proclaim these words towards the north, and say, ‘Return, oh backsliding Israel,’ says the Lord; ‘and I will not cause my anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful,’ says the Lord, ‘and I will not keep anger for ever.’ ” “ ‘Turn, oh backsliding children,’ says the Lord; ‘for I am married to you: and I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.’ ” “Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.” Can you hear these words without emotion? Backslider! I urge you to 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 does not change, and therefore you are not consumed? The flames of love are rekindled in the backslider’s heart when he feels all this to be true; he cries, “Behold, we come to you, for you are the Lord our God.” I urge 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 the deep repentance shall come; then the brokenness of heart shall come; then the holy jealousy shall come, 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 righteousness. Do not look for these first; that would be looking for the effects before the cause. The great cause of love in the restored backslider must still be the love of God for him, to whom he clings with a faith that dares not let go its hold.

24. “But,” one says, “I think it is very dangerous to tell the backslider to believe in God’s love, surely it will be gross presumption for him to believe so.” It is never presumptuous for a man to believe the truth: whether a statement is comforting or not, 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 still loves his prodigal sons, and his stray sheep, and he will devise means to bring his banished back again, so that they do not perish. “If any man sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

25. 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 still loves him. What man among you this morning has 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 does not doubt it, 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 of that, 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, indeed, and better still, a warm place in your heart for him; suppose he sees your tears and hears your prayers for him, will this not draw him? Yes, indeed, if he is a son. It is even so between your God and you, oh backslider. Hear the Lord as he argues your case within his own heart. “My people are bent on backsliding from me; though they call to the most High, no one at all would exalt him. How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, Israel? How shall I make you as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of my 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!” says the wandering son, “my dear father still loves me. 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 disowned you, I have cast you away,” but he says, “I still love you; and for my name’s sake I will restrain my wrath that I do not cut you off.” Come to your offended Father, and you shall find that he has not repented of his love, but will still embrace you.

26. IV. Time fails, but I must speak for a little, time or no time, upon the fourth point — THE PERFECTING OF OUR LOVE FOR GOD.

27. Beloved, there are few of us who know much of the depths of the love of God; our love is shallow; ah, how shallow! Love for 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 rest stop on one of its elevated spurs, from where 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 it is in the Church of God. Every Christian resides 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 ascent into the hill of the Lord, to stand where the eagle’s eye has not seen, and walk the path which the lion’s whelp has never trodden, the high places of complete consecration and ardent self-consuming love. Now notice, 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 by this they attained their love. For the highest love that ever glowed in human heart 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 for 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-filling love.

28. 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 wrapped up in us. This deep enjoyment creates the flaming love of which I have just now spoken.

29. If the ardent love of some saints often takes the form of admiration for God, this arises from their familiarity with God, and they never would have indulged in this familiarity, unless they had known that he was their friend. A man could not speak to God as to a friend, unless he knew the love that God has towards him. The more true his knowledge and the more sure, the more close his fellowship.

30. Beloved brethren, 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 for God in our soul will arouse desire for him. Those we love we long to be with; we count the hours that separate us; no place is so happy as that in which we enjoy their company. Hence love for 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 so 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. Oh that we had a band of men full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; 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 for us is the only way to climb to the love of God.

31. And now I must spend a minute in putting the truth of my text to the test. I do not want you to listen to me so much as to listen to your own hearts, and to God’s word, for a minute, if you are believers. What is it we have been talking about? It is God’s love for us. Get the thought into your head for 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 who are before the throne loved me, it would be nothing compared to this — the Infinite loves me! And who is it whom he loves? Me. The text says, “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 this not melt you? Does this not fire your soul? I know it does if it is really believed. It must. And how did he love me? He loved me so much 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 began 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 he still loved me; and he will love me when my knees tremble, and my hair is grey with age, “even to white hair” he will bear and carry his servant; and he will love me when the world is ablaze, 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 except this — his great love by which he loves you; and if you do not feel your heart bubbling up with a good matter, if you do not feel your soul yearning towards God, and heaving with strong emotions of love for God, then I am much mistaken. This is so powerful a truth, and you are so constituted as a Christian as to be moved by this truth, that if it is believed and felt, the consequence must be that you will love him because he first loved you. May God bless you, brothers and sisters, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

[Portion of Scripture Read Before Sermon — John 4:1-5]

(a) Heliotrope: A name given to plants of which the flowers turn so as to follow the sun; in early times applied to the sunflower, marigold, etc.; now, a plant of the genus Heliotropium. OED.