Love's Logic!

"We love Him — because He first loved us!" 1 John 4:19

This verse contains 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 thecause 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 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 omnipotent 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 traveling 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 waterbrooks. Here was their first cause and prime origin; and, as if they recognized 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 you, Great God; your goodness creates our good; your infinite love to us draws forth our love to you.

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 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 strengthens, and 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 call 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 loves is born of 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 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 you know all things, you know that I love you.’ 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. ‘We must be born again,’ but you are not born again unless you 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 loves not knows 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 have ever gathered from the learned, all you have collected from the libraries, all this is not true 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 spiritual attainments are transitory, if love is not as a salt to preserve them. Tongues must cease, and knowledge must 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 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, is yet not of it heart and 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 peacewhich 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 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 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, you can not have the nature of God implanted within you by regeneration, it cannot reveal itself in love to the brotherhood, it cannot blossom with the fair flowers of peace and joy, except your affection be set upon God. Let him then be your exceeding joy. Delight yourself also in the Lord. O love the Lord you his saints.

We also see, if we turn again to John’s epistle and pursue his observations to the next chapter and the third verse, that love to God 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. God 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 as a flame of fire, answer to him; make him your confessor at this hour; answer this one question: ‘Loves you me?’ I trust very many of you will be able to say:‘Yes, we love you and adore; Oh, for grace to love you 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 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 favor, 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 Savior 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 he 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 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 a liar; the man would be clearly a worshiper 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 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 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 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 unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,’ you shall find your heart going out after God. ‘Whosoever believes in Jesus Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life;’ Do you believe this? Can you now believe in Jesus; that is, trust him? Then, Christ died for you; Christ the Son of God, in your stead, suffered for your guilt. God gave his only Son to die for you.

‘Oh,’ says one, ‘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 Savior, and then love to 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 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,’ says 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 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 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.’

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