Quote 4535
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The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
God loves all in some ways, and God loves some in all ways.
To know that God knows everything about me and yet loves me is indeed my ultimate consolation.
There is tremendous relief in knowing his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion him about me.
It is the love of Christ, i. e. his love to us which passes knowledge. It is infinite; not only because it inheres in an infinite subject, but because the condescension and sufferings to which it led, and the blessings which it secures for its objects, are beyond our comprehension. This love of Christ, though it surpasses the power of our understanding to comprehend, is still a subject of experimental knowledge. We may know how excellent, how wonderful, how free, how disinterested, how long-suffering, how manifold and constant, it is, and that it is infinite. And this is the highest and most sanctifying of all knowledge. Those who thus know the love of Christ towards them, purify themselves even as he is pure.
Heaven is a freedom from all evil both of sin and suffering, so that a name in heaven entitles us to a blessed redemption from all evil. There is no sin there. Grace weakens sin, but it is glory that abolishes it. Old Adam shall there be put off, never be put on again. The Lord Christ will present His church in that day, "faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy" (Jude 24). There is no affliction there. Sin and sorrow came in together, and they shall go out together.
Many men are changed in a moral sense, and one may say they are become new men, but they are in heart and nature the same men still. They are not changed in a spiritual and supernatural sense, and therefore it cannot be said of them they are become new creatures. Restraining grace may cause a moral change, but it is renewing grace that must cause a saving change. Now many are under restraining grace, and so changed morally, that are not under the power of renewing grace, and so changed savingly.
A godly man weeps sometimes out of the sense of God's love. Gold is the finest and most solid of all the metals, yet is soonest melted with the fire. Gracious hearts, which are golden hearts, are the soonest melted into tears by the fire of God's love.
If you would know whether your names are written in heaven, satisfy yourselves in this: that the call of God hath took effectual hold of your hearts. Hath it brought your souls off from every thing below Christ wholly to follow Christ? It is said when Christ called Peter and Andrew, they presently "left their nets, and followed him" (Matt. 4:18โ20). Every man hath his nets, somewhat that his soul is entangled in, till the call of God take hold of him. Can you now, with Peter, when God calls, lay aside your nets to follow Him?
A threefold love of God is commonly held; or rather there are three degrees of one and the same love. First, there is the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฐ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ by which God willed good to the creature from eternity; second, the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ง๐ช๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ by which he does good to the creature in time according to his good will; third, the love of ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐บ by which he delights himself in the creature on account of the rays of his image seen in them. By the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฐ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ, he loved us before we were; by the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ง๐ช๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ, he loves us as we are; and by the love of ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐บ, he loves us when we are (viz., renewed after his image). By the first he elects us; by the second, he redeems and sanctifies us; but by the third he gratuitously rewards us as holy and just. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.8,5
God loves us more than father, mother, friend, or anyone else could love, and even more than we are able to love ourselves.
None walk so evenly with God as they who are assured of the love of God.
divine love, by contrast, is not reactive but creative: God does not find that which is lovely and then move out in love toward it; something is made lovely by the fact that God first sets his love upon it. He does not look at sinful human beings and see among the mass of people some who are intrinsically more righteous or holy than others and thus find himself attracted to them. Rather, the lesson of the cross is that God chooses that which is unlovely and repulsive, unrighteous and with no redeeming quality, and lavishes his saving love in Christ upon it.
The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.
Without Jesus Christ, talk about the "depth of God's love" would be simply an abstraction. Without Jesus Christ, God could send you sixty volumes, with every page saying, "I love you deeply, I love you deeply, I love you deeply," but it would still be an abstract concept, not a life-changing reality. To genuinely understand the depths of God's love you must know the depths to which Jesus Christ went in order to love you.Prayer, 174
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