Dec 21
4
Go and lay your icy heart upon
His flaming heart of love!
(From Octavius Winslow’s, “Christ, the Everlasting Father”)
The everlasting love of Christ never veers, never
chills, and knows not the shadow of a change.
Measuring Christ’s love to us by our love to Him,
we often imagine that it must necessarily be
affected by the cold, chilling atmosphere of our
hearts; that when our love to Him ebbs, His love
to us also ebbs; that when ours proves fickle
and treacherous, wandering after some creature
idol, then His love, exacting reprisals, in like
manner starts off, and leaves us for another
and perhaps more faithful object.
No! the love of Jesus to His saints, is as eternal
as His being, is as unchangeable as His nature.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
Yield not, then, to despondency, beloved, when
you discover the mercury of your love sink, even
though it be to freezing point.
There may be times when you can scarcely
detect its existence, so faint its beating pulse,
so congealed its warm current.
But since Christ’s love is not the effect, but the
cause of ours to Him, and is an everlasting love,
glowing in His heart ages that cannot be numbered
or measured, before one pulse throbbed in ours;
we may take comfort in the assurance that no
variation of affection in us towards the Savior
can in the slightest degree affect the tenderness,
depth, or immutability of the great love with
which He has loved us.
Look, then, to Christ’s love to you,
and not to your love to Christ!
Go and lay your icy heart upon His flaming
heart of love! Go to His cross, and there muse
upon the love that bore your sins, that suffered
and bled, that wept, and groaned, and died for you,
paying the death penalty of your transgressions;
and, while you thus muse, the flame will kindle,
the fire will burn, and your tongue will break forth
into singing!
DIVINE LOVE QUESTIONED
Octacvius Winslow
“I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?”–Mal. 1:2
Was ever baser, darker, ingratitude than this? Study it, O my soul, for have you not, in spite of the countless evidences of your Lord’s love to you, often doubted its reality, and questioned the wisdom, righteousness, and tenderness of its dealings? But, listen to the divine declaration of its existence. God Himself asserts it; and who shall dare call it in question?
“I have loved you.” How does the Lord evidence the reality of His love to us? Take the display of God’s love to the literal Israel, as typifying His love to His spiritual Israel; and in the analogy we shall see more distinctly wherein He has loved us. The Lord’s love to His ancient people was exhibited in choosing them above all nations upon the face of the earth to be His peculiar people in conferring upon them especial blessings and distinctive privileges; by perpetuating their nationality amid many changes and revolutions; by bringing them up out of Egypt; by emancipating them from the Babylonish captivity; and by conducting them to their own land. And to crown these signal and especial blessings, having one Son, well-beloved, He sent Him to deliver and save them, saying, “They will reverence My Son.”
In all this, O my soul, see your Lord’s love shadowed forth. Did He not choose you to be His peculiar treasure, loving you with an everlasting love, and with love drawing you from your idol state to Himself; making you to forget your own people and your father’s house, that He might “betroth you to Himself forever, in righteousness and in judgment, and in loving kindness and in mercy?” Has He not “blessed you with all spiritual things in Christ Jesus,” conferring upon you the relation of a child, the dignity of a saint, the inheritance of an heir? And to crown all, has He not given you His dear Son to be your Sin-Bearer, your Surety, your Redeemer, your Portion, and your all? Truly may the Lord say, “I have loved you.”
“And yet you say, How have You loved us?” Ah! here is your dark ingratitude and base unbelief. When a cloud has shaded His love–when a providence has hidden it–when a trial of faith has tested it–when some dark, crushing dispensation of your God seems to belie it, then you have exclaimed, “How have you loved me? Is this love? Has love painted this dark cloud, blighted this beauteous flower, broken this strong staff, and embittered this cup of earthly sweet, emptying me from vessel to vessel, all His waves and His billows overflowing me?”
Yes, my soul, divine love–everlasting love–redeeming love–unchanging love has done it all! Then, Lord, I will no longer distrust your love–no more will I ask, How have You loved me? but will accept every cloud that shades it–every trial that embitters it–every correction that changes its voice from the accents of tenderness and sympathy, to those of austerity and terror, as still love, disguised though it be. Dear Lord, allow me never more–in the gloomiest hour, in the sorest trial, in the severest rebuke, in the saddest moment–to call in question, to allow the shadow of a doubt to rest upon the great, the tender, the changeless love with which You have from all eternity loved me.
But, my soul, how much greater reason have you to doubt your true and deep love to Christ! He may well ask, “Do you love Me?” Be humbled at the cross for this; and yet be not discouraged. Look to the Lord’s great and changeless love to you, and not to your poor, faint, faltering love to Him. This will inflame your affections, kindle a more responsive, obedient and patient love in return–a love that will constrain you to do all and suffer all your blessed Lord in love commands and ordains.
2Th. 2:16 ¶ Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace,
2Th. 2:17 Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.
J.C.Philpot
When the Lord is pleased to apply a promise, drop in a word of encouragement, speak home an invitation with power, he administers consolation thereby. It comforts the drooping heart; it speaks peace to a guilty conscience. And this consolation is “everlasting consolation;” for it flows from nothing less than such a source, that is, the eternal love of God; and flows onward to an everlasting ocean of infinite delight. Any intimation of a saving interest in the everlasting love of God is a blessing beyond all price; for the Lord never gives any such intimation but as a certain pledge and foretaste of immortal bliss. He can neither disappoint nor deceive. Once blest, blest forever.
We may indeed for a long time together cease to enjoy the comfort, and even may fall into the greatest depths of darkness and confusion, so as to lose sight of almost all our evidences; but the foundation of God stands sure–“The Lord knows those who are his.” The river of eternal love may seem to flow by and not reach our breast, so high are the banks and hidden out of sight the stream. Still if ever it has watered our soul, it will be one day “waters to swim in” of eternal delight.
He could not love you more!
(Charles Spurgeon)
Jer. 31:3 The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
He loved you without beginning. Before years, and centuries, and millenniums began to be counted—your name was on His heart! Eternal thoughts of love have been in God’s bosom towards you. He has loved you without a pause; there never was a minute in which He did not love you. Your name once engraved upon His hands—has never been erased, nor will He ever blot it out of the Book of Life.
Since you have been in this world—He has loved you most patiently. You have often provoked Him; you have rebelled against Him times without number, yet He has never stayed the outflow of His heart towards you; and, blessed be His name—He never will. You are His, and you always shall be His. God’s love to you is without boundary. He could not love you more—for He loves you like a God; and He never will love you less. All His heart belongs to you!
“As the Father has loved Me—so have I loved you!” John 15:9
EVERLASTING LOVE
John MacDuff
“How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God!”
Jer. 31:3 The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
Here we have an everlasting thought of God, “in the beginning, before ever the earth was.” Believer, travel back in imagination to the ages of the past. Before the trance of eternity was broken by any visible manifestation of power—before one temple was erected in space, before one angel waved his wing, or one note was heard of seraph’s song—when God inhabited alone these sublime solitudes—then there was a thought of you, and that thought was—Love!
Think of the sovereignty of that love. He says not, ‘You have loved Me with your poor earthly love, therefore have I drawn you.’ No, no! It is from nothing in you—no foreseen goodness on your part. Grace is the reason of all He has done—”God who is rich in mercy for His great love with which He loved us.” “I will have mercy,” is His own declaration—on whom I will have mercy.” “Jacob,” (that cunning, scheming, crafty youth,) “I have loved.”
Manasseh, (that miserable man who has defiled his crown, dishonoured his throne, and deluged Jerusalem with blood,) “I have loved.” That dying thief—fresh from a life of infamy, breathing out his blasphemies on a felon’s cross—”I have loved.” And why, let each of us ask, am I not a Cain or a Judas? Why am I not a wrecked and stranded vessel, like thousands before me? Here is the reason; “Yes, I have loved you.” Before you had one thought of Me, yes, when your thoughts were those of hatred, rebellion, enmity—My thoughts towards you were thoughts of love!
And that Sovereign love, as it is from everlasting, so is it to everlasting—endless in duration—enduring as eternity. The love of the creature is but of yesterday—it may be gone tomorrow—dried like a summer-brook when most needed. But the love of God is fed from the glacier summits—the everlasting hills. We may estimate its intensity, when the Savior could utter regarding it such a prayer as this, “That the love with which You have loved Me, may be in them.”
Oh, amid the often misgivings of my own doubting heart, with its frames and feelings vacillating as the shifting sand, let me delight to ponder this precious thought—the long line of unbroken love—every link love—connecting the eternity that is past with the eternity to come—God thinking of me before the birth of time—even then mapping out all my future happiness and heavenly bliss—and standing now, with the hoarded love of that eternity in His heart, seeking therewith to “draw” me!
It is “the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus”—the moral gravitation-power of the cross, by which His true people have ever been drawn. “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself.” Draw me, Lord, and I will run after You. Show me Your loving-kindness thus enshrined and manifested in Your dear Son. Constrain me to love You in Him, because You have first loved, and so loved, me.”
How excellent is Thy lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.
Psalm 36:7
So fathomless, boundless, and inexhaustible!
(From Octavius Winslow’s, “Christ, the Wonderful”)
Christ is wonderful in His love.
Love was the first and eternal link in the golden
chain lowered from the highest throne in heaven
down to the lowest depth of earth.
That Christ should love us was the beginning of
wonders. When we endeavour to comprehend that
love, measure it, fathom it, scale it; we learn that
it has heights we cannot reach, depths we cannot
sound, lengths and breadths we cannot measure!
Such love,
such divine love,
such infinite love,
such everlasting love,
such redeeming, dying love,
is an Ocean whose eternal waves waft into our
fallen world every wonder of God and of heaven.
That Jesus should love such beings as us; that
He should love us while we were yet sinners;
that He should set his heart upon us, choose us,
die for us, call us, and finally bring us to glory,
knowing what we were, and what we should prove,
Oh, this is wondrous love indeed!
Plunge into this fathomless, boundless ocean of love,
O you sin burdened one! It will cover all your sins,
it will efface all your guilt; it will flood over all your
unworthiness; and, floating upon its golden waves,
it will gently waft you to the shore of eternal blessedness.
How often have you wondered why Christ should set
His heart upon such a one as you! And is it not a
wonder that, amid all your fickleness, backslidings,
cold, base returns, this love of God towards you has
not chilled or changed?
But do not rest, do not be satisfied with your present
limited experience of Christ’s wonderful love. It is so
marvellously great. This Ocean of love is so fathomless,
boundless, and inexhaustible, you may plunge, with
all your infirmities, sin, and sorrow, into its fullness,
exclaiming, “O the depth!”
“The well is deep,” drink abundantly, O beloved!