The Father

Look to God’s Eternal, Costly Love

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? – Romans 8:32

The soul grows rich in love to God when she rests on the bosom of divine lovingkindness. 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 ardours 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
Till 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 thou wouldst love God, do not look within thee to see whether this grace or that be as it ought to be, but look to thy God, and read His eternal love, His boundless love, His costly love, which gave Christ for thee; then shall thy love drink in fresh life and vigour. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

The Proof of God’s Love

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

…because He first loved us. – 1 John 4:19

John does not say, “We love Him because we admire Him,” but “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 till 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 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, 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 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 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 John to love Christ because He first loved you. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

True Knowledge and True Love

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. – 1 John 4:7

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 loveth not knoweth 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 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 remain in ignorance still, ignorance of the most unhappy and ruinous kind.

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. If we love one another, God dwelleth 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 yet not of it with 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…Oh! Christian, thou canst not have the nature of God implanted within thee by regeneration, it cannot reveal itself in love to the brotherhood, it cannot blossom with the fair flowers of peace and joy, except thine affection be set upon God. Let Him then be thine exceeding joy. Delight thyself also in the Lord. O love the Lord ye His saints. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

Our Love to God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

We love Him, because He first loved us. – 1 John 4:19

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 loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” I have no right, therefore, to believe that I am a regenerated person unless my heart truly and sincereIy 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 Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.” 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.” “Ye must be born again,” but ye are not born again unless ye love God. How indispensable, then, is love to God. 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, 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. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

Why We Love Him

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

“We love Him because He first loved us.”- 1 John 4:19

God’s love is evidently prior to ours: “He first loved us.” 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 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…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 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…All good things are of Thee, Great God; Thy goodness creates our good; Thine infinite love to us draws forth our love to Thee. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

Life Spiritual, Life Eternal

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

He that hath the Son hath life… – 1 John 5:12

Our text testifies that “He that hath the Son hath life.” Of course, by “life” here is meant not mere existence, or natural life; for we all have that whether we have the Son of God or no-in the image of the first Adam we are all created living souls, and continue in life until the Lord recalls the breath from our nostrils-but the life here intended is spiritual life, the life received at the new birth, by which we perceive and enter into the heavenly kingdom, come under new and spiritual laws, are moved by new motives, and exist in a new world. The life here meant is the life of God in the soul, which is given us when we are newly created in the image of the second Adam, who was made a quickening spirit; a celestial form of life inwardly perceptible to the person who possesses it, and outwardly discernible to spiritual observers by its holy effects and heavenly fruits. This spiritual life is the sure mark of deliverance from the penal death which the sentence of the law pronounced. Man under the law is condemned, sentence of death is recorded against him; but man under grace is free from the law, and is not adjudged to death, but lives by virtue of a legal justification, which absolves him from guilt, and consequently liberates him from death. These two kinds of life, the life which is given by the judge to the offender when he is pardoned, and the life which is imparted from the divine Father, the heir of heaven is begotten again unto a lively hope-these two lives blend together and ensure for us the life eternal, such as they possess who stand upon the “sea of glass,” and tune their tongues to the music of celestial hosts. Eternal life is spiritual life made perfect. If we live by virtue of our pardon and justification, and if, moreover, we live because we are quickened by the Holy Spirit, we shall also live in the glory of the eternal Father, being made in the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the true God and eternal life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

Seeker, He Upbraideth Not

Sherry Attributes of God, prayer, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not… – James 1:5

If you help a friend who is in debt, and wants to borrow money, you say, “Remember, I do not like it, you ought not to be in such a state.” Your brother wants some aid; you have helped him many times, and will again, but still, you upbraid him and tell him he is very imprudent; he ought not to get into these messes; he ought to manage his business better.” If you do not tell him so with the mouth, you look at him, and he thinks to himself, “It’s very kind of him to give me the help, but really it is very humiliating to me to have to ask him because I get so severe a lesson.” I suppose we do right to upbraid. I have no doubt we do so with good motives. But God never does upbraid seeking souls. He giveth liberally and does not dim the lustre of His grace by harsh rebukes. He does not say. “Ah! you sinner, how came you to commit such sin; I will forgive you, but —–.” The Father does not talk thus to the returning prodigal. (Luke 15:11-32) One would have supposed that when the prodigal came back, the father would have said, “Well, dear boy, you are forgiven, but never let me see you do that again. How wrong of you to take that portion of my goods and spend it in that way! I shall never be so well off as before; you have wasted half my living; and now think where you have been: what a dishonour you have cast upon your father’s name and character through wasting your living with harlots. I forgive: I cannot forget.” My brethren, it was not so! The prodigal remembered his sins, but his father forgot them all, and exclaimed with joy, “This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” O soul, if thou didst but know the heart of the Saviour, thou wouldst not tarry in sin. If thou couldst but know the overflowing love of the divine Father, thou wouldst not linger in unbelief. “Teach me, O God, to trust Thy dear Son this day.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0735.cfm