Love's Logic! 2
Back to Charles Spurgeon
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 unlovable; loves you who mourn over a stony heart, which will not warm or melt with love to him. Thus says the Lord: ‘I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins, return unto me; for I have redeemed you.’ O that God’s gracious voice this morning might so call some of his poor wandering ones that they may come and believe his love to them, and then cast themselves at his feet to be his servants for ever.
Brethren, rest assured that in proportion as we are fully persuaded of God’s love to us, we shall be affected with love to him. Do not let the devil tempt you to believe that God does not love you because your love is feeble; for if he can in any way weaken your belief in God’s love to you, he cuts off or diminishes the flow of the streams which feed the sacred grace of love to God. If I lament that I do not love God as I ought, that is a holy regret; but if I, therefore, conclude that God’s love to me is the less because of this, I deny the light because my eye is dim, and I deprive myself also of the power to increase in love. Let me rather think more and more of the greatness of God’s love to me, as I see more and more my unworthiness of it; the more a sinner I am, let me the more fully see how great must be that love which embraces such a sinner as I am; and then, as I receive a deeper sense of the divine mercy, I shall feel the more bound to gratitude and constrained to affection. O for a great wave of love, to carry us right out into the ocean of love.
Observe, beloved brethren, day by day the deeds of God’s love to you in the gift of food and raiment, and in the mercies of this life, and especially in the covenant blessings which God gives you, the peace which he sheds abroad in your hearts, the communion which he vouchsafes to you with himself and his blessed Son, and the answers to prayer which he grants you. Note well these things, and if you consider them carefully, and weigh their value, you will be accumulating the fuel on which love feeds its consecrated flame. In proportion as you see in every good gift a new token of your Father’s love, in that proportion will you make progress in the sweet school of love. Oh, it is heavenly living to taste God’s love in every morsel of bread we eat; it is blessed living to know that we breathe an atmosphere purified and made fragrant with divine love, that love protects us while we sleep, hanging like a silken curtain all around our bed, and love opens the eyelids of the morning to smile upon us when we wake. Ah, even when we are sick, it is love that chastens us; when we are impoverished, love relieves us of a burden; love gives and love takes; love cheers and love smites. We are compassed about with love, above, beneath, around, within, without. If we could but recognize this, we should become as flames of fire, ardent and fervent towards our God. Knowledge and Observation Are Admirable Nurses of Our Infant Love.
And, ah, the soul grows rich in love to God when she rests on the bosom of divine loving-kindness. You, who are tossed about with doubts and fears as to whether you are now accepted or shall persevere to the end, you can scarcely guess the ardors of heart which inflame those saints who have learned to cast themselves wholly upon Jesus, and know beyond a doubt his love immutable. Whether I sink or swim, I have no hope but in Christ, my life, my all.
‘I know that safe with him remains,
Protected by his power,
What I’ve committed to his hands
Until the decisive hour’
And in proportion as I am thus scripturally confident, and rest in my Lord, will my love to him engross all my heart, and consecrate my life to the Redeemer’s glory.
Beloved, I desire to make this very clear; that to feel love to God we must tread along the road of faith. Truly, this is not a hard or perilous way, but one prepared by infinite wisdom. It is a road suitable for sinners, and indeed saints must come that way too. If you would love God, do not look within you to see whether this grace or that be 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 shall your love drink in fresh life and vigor.
Remember wherever there is love to God in the soul it is an argument that God loves that soul. I recollect meeting once with a Christian woman who said she knew she loved God, but she was afraid God did not love her. That is a fear so preposterous that it ought never to occur to anybody. You would not love God in deed and in truth unless he had shed abroad his love in your heart in a measure. But on the other hand, our not loving God is not a conclusive argument that God does not love us; else might the sinner be afraid to come to God. O loveless sinner, with heart unquickened and chill, the voice of God calls even you to Christ. Even to the dead in sin, his voice says ‘LIVE.’ While you are yet polluted in your blood, cast out in the open field, to the loathing of your person, the Lord of mercy passes by, and says ‘LIVE.’ His mighty sovereignty comes forth dressed in robes of love, and he touches you the unlovable, the loveless, the depraved, degraded sinner, at enmity with God, - he touches you in all your alienation and be lifts you out of it and makes you to love him, not for your own sake but for his name sake and for his mercy sake. You had no love at all to 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.
III. This leads us, in the third place, to consider for a moment THE REVIVAL OF OUR LOVE. It is sadly probable that there are in this house some who once loved God very earnestly, but now they have declined and become grievously indifferent; God’s love to us never changes, but ours too often sinks to a low ebb. Perhaps some of you have become so cold in your affections, that it is difficult to be sure that you ever did love God at all. It may be that your life has become lax, so as to deserve the censure of the Church. You are a backslider and you are in a dangerous condition; yet, if there be indeed spiritual life in you, you will wish to return.
You have gone astray like a lost sheep, but your prayer is, ‘seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.’ Now, note well, that the cause which originated your love is the same which must restore it. You went to Christ as a sinner at first, and your first act was to believe the love of God to you when there was nothing in you that evidenced it. Go the same way again. Do not stop, my dear brother, to pump up love out of the dry well within yourself! Do not think it possible that love will come at your bidding. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
Think of the Lord’s unchanging grace, and you will feel the spring-time of love returning to your soul. Still does the Lord reserve 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 bosom of his love. Many considerations ought to aid you, a backslider, to believe more in the love of God than ever you did. For think what love it must he that can invite you still to return, you, who after knowing so much have sinned against light and knowledge; you, who after having experienced so much, have given the lie to your profession.
He might justly have cut you down, for you have cumbered the ground long enough. Surely, when Israel went astray from God, it was a clear proof to her of Jehovah’s love when he graciously said, ‘They say if a man put away his wife, or she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return to her again?’ Why, the answer in every bosom is ‘No!’ Who would love a wife who had so polluted herself? But thus says the Lord, ‘You have played the harlot with many lovers, yet return unto me.’
What matchless love is this. Hear yet more of these gracious words, which you will find in the third chapter of Jeremiah’s prophecy. ‘Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, you backsliding Israel, says the Lord; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, says the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever.’ ‘Turn, O backsliding children, says the Lord; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one from a city, and two of 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 beg you take the wings of God’s love to fly back to him with. But I hear you enquiring, Will he still receive me? Shall I be once more:
To the Father’s bosom pressed,
Once again a child confessed?
It shall be so. Does he not declare that he is God and changes not, and therefore you are not consumed? Rekindled are the flames of love in the backslider’s bosom when he feels all this to be true; he cries, ‘Behold, we come to you, for you are the Lord our God.’ I beg 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 Savior, you are mistaken. Come just as you are, bad as you are, hardened, cold, dead as you feel yourselves to be, come even so, and believe in the boundless love of God in Christ Jesus. Then shall come the deep repentance; then shall come the brokenness of heart; then shall come the holy jealousy, the sacred hatred of sin, and the refining of the soul from all her dross; then, indeed, all good things shall come to restore your soul, and lead you in the paths of 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 to Him, to whom he clings with a faith that dares not let go its hold.
‘But,’ says one, ‘I think it is very dangerous to tell the backslider to believe in God’s love, surely it will be gross presumption for him so to believe.’ It is never presumptuous for a man to believe the truth: whether a statement be comfortable or uncomfortable, the presumption does not lie in the matter itself, but in its untruthfulness. I say again, it is never presumptuous to believe the truth. And this is the truth, that the Lord loves his prodigal sons still, and his stray sheep still, and he will devise means to bring his banished back again, that they perish not. ‘If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.’
Remember here that the motive power which draws back the backslider again, is the cord of love, the band of a man, which makes him feel he must go back to God with weeping and repentance, because God loves him still. What man among you this morning 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 doubts it not, that you have struck his name out of your family, and will not regard him as a child any longer, do you think that your severity will induce him to return to you in love? Far from it.
But suppose instead thereof, you still assure him that you love him; that there is always a place at your table for him, and a bed in your house for him, ay, and better still, a warm place in your heart for him; suppose he sees your tears and hears your prayers for him, will not this draw him? Yes, indeed, if he be a son. It is even thus between your God and you, O backslider. Hear the Lord as he argues your case within his own heart. ‘My people are bent to backsliding from me; though they called to the most High, none 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 mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not man.’
Surely, if anything will draw you back, this will. ‘Ah!’ says the wandering son, ‘my dear father loves me still. I will arise and go to him. I will not vex so tender a heart. I will be his loving son again.’ God does not say to you prodigals, who once professed his name, ‘I have unchilded you, I have cast you away,’ but he says, ‘I love you still; and for my name’s sake will I restrain my wrath that I cut you not off.’ Come to your offended Father, and you shall find that he has not turned from his love, but will embrace you still.
IV. Time fails, but I must speak for a little, time or no time, upon the fourth point - THE PERFECTING OF OUR LOVE TO GOD. Beloved, there are few of us who know much of the depths of the love of God; our love is shallow; ah, how shallow! Love to God is like a great mountain. The majority of travelers view it from afar, or traverse the valley at its base: a few climb to a resting place on one of its elevated spurs, whence they see a portionof its sublimities: here and there an adventurous traveler 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.
Likewise in the Church of God. Every Christian abides under the shadow of divine love: a few enjoy and return that love to a remarkable degree: but there are few, in this age sadly few, who reach to seraphic love, who 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 hath never trodden, the high places of complete consecration and ardent self-consuming love. Now, mark you, it may be difficult to ascend so high, but there is one sure route, and only one, which the man must follow who would gain the sacred elevation. It is not the track of his works, nor the path of his own actions, but this, ‘We love him because he first loved us.’ John and the apostles confessed that thus they attained their love. For the highest love that ever glowed in human bosom there was no source but this - God first loved that man.
Do you not see how this is? The knowledge that God loves me casts out my tormenting dread of God: and when this is expelled, there is room for abounding love to God. As fear goes out, love comes in at the other door. So the more faith in God the more room there is for soul-filling love.
Again, strong faith in God’s love brings great enjoyment; our heart is glad, our soul is satisfied with marrow and fatness when we know that the whole heart of God beats towards us as forcibly as if we were the only creatures he had ever made, and his whole heart were wrapped up in us. This deep enjoyment creates the flaming love of which I have just now spoken. If the ardent love of some saints often takes the shape of admiration of God, this arises from their familiarity with God, and this familiarity they never would have indulged in, unless they had know that he was their friend. A man could not speak to God as to a friend, unless he knew the love that God has toward him. The more true his knowledge and the more sure, the more close his fellowship.
Brethren beloved, if you know that God has loved you, then you will feel grateful; every doubt will diminish your gratitude, but every grain of faith will increase it. Then as we advance in grace, love to God in our soul will excite desire after him. Those we love we long to be with; we count the hours that separate us; no place so happy as that in which we enjoy their society. Hence love to God produces a desire to be with him; a desire to be like him, a longing to be with him eternally in heaven, and this breaks us away from worldliness; this keeps us from idolatry, and thus has a most blessedly sanctifying effect upon us, producing that elevated character which is now so rare, but which wherever it exists is powerful for the good of the church and for the glory of God. Oh that we had many in this church who had reached the highest platform of piety. Would God we had a band of men full of faith and of the Holy 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 to us, is the only way to climb to the love of God.
And now I must spend a minute in putting the truth of my text to the test. I want you not to listen to me so much as to listen to your own hearts, and to God’s word, a minute, if you are believers. What is it we have been talking about? It is God’s love to us. Get the thought into your head a minute: ‘God loves me - not merely bears with me, thinks of me, feeds me, but loves me. Oh, it is a very sweet thing to feel that we have the love of a dear wife, or a kind husband; and there is much sweetness in the love of a fond child, or a tender mother; but to think that God loves me, this is infinitely better!
Who is it that loves you?
God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Almighty, All in all, does he love me? Even he? If all men, and all angels, and all the living creatures that are before the throne loved me, it were nothing to this - the Infinite God loves me!
And who is it that 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 not this melt you? Does not this fire your soul? I know it does if it is really believed. It must.
And how did he love me? He loved me so that he gave up his only begotten Son for me, to be nailed to the tree, and made to bleed and die.
And what will come of it? Why, because he loved me and forgave me, - I am on the way to heaven, and within a few months, perhaps days, I shall see his face and sing his praises.
He loved me before I was born; before a star began to shine he loved me, and be has never ceased to do so all these years. When I have sinned he has loved me; when I have forgotten him he has loved me; and when in the days of my sin I cursed him, yet still he loved me; and he will love me when my knees tremble, and my hair is grey with age, ‘even to hoar hairs’ he will bear and carry his servant; and he will love me when the world is on a blaze, and love me for ever, and for ever.
Oh, chew the cud of this blessed thought; roll it under your tongue as a dainty morsel; sit down this afternoon, if you have leisure, and think of nothing but this - his great love wherewith he loves you; and it you do not feel your heart bubbling up with a good matter, if you do not feel your soul yearning towards God, and heaving big with strong emotions of love to God, then I am much mistaken.
This is so powerful a truth, and you are so constituted as a Christian as to be wrought upon by this truth, that if it be believed and felt, the consequence must be that you will love him because he first loved you. God bless you, brethren and sisters, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
Back to Charles Spurgeon