LOVE’S LOGIC – Charles Spurgeon

LOVE’S LOGIC

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

Introduction to the Doctrinal Truth of Love

This is a great doctrinal truth, and I might, with much propriety, preach a doctrinal sermon from it, with the sum and substance being the Sovereign Grace of God. God’s love is evidently prior to ours: “He first loved us.” It is also clear from the text that God’s love is the cause of ours, for “We love Him because He first loved us.” Therefore, looking back to old times—or rather before all time—we find that God loved us with an everlasting love. The reason for 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 Him, but they are not found in any inherent goodness in us, nor in anything 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 naturally followed 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 benefit as the gift of the only begotten Son. It was not possible for anything in man to have merited the incarnation and 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, nor were we regenerated because some good thing was in us by nature. Rather, 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 alienation of mind and enmity of spirit into the delightful path of love in which we are now traveling to the skies!

As believers in 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 stream, 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 water brooks. 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 wings of imagination could not traverse it, sends forth its treasures of the rain of grace, which drop upon our hearts, which are like the pastures of the wilderness. They make our hearts 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.

Experimental Approach to Love

But, dear friends, I trust that after many years of instruction in the doctrines of our holy faith, I need not keep to the beaten doctrinal track. I may lead you in a parallel path in which the same truth of God may be seen from another point of view. I purpose to preach an experimental sermon, and possibly this will be even more in accordance with 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 compelled 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. 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 loves not God, he is not a renewed man. Love of 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 context of the text. You will find in the 7th verse of this chapter that love to God is set down as a necessary mark of the new birth: “Everyone who 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 8th 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—this is not 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—ignorance of the most unhappy and ruinous kind.

II. The Source and Spring of True Love to God

“We love Him because He first loved us.” Love to God, wherever it truly 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 proof of God’s love. And 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—who had leaned his head upon the bosom of the Lord, and 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.”

III. The Revival of Our Love

It is sadly probable that there are in this house some who once loved God very earnestly, but now 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 is 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 brothers and sisters, 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 could give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be abhorred. Think of the Lord’s unchanging grace, and you will feel the springtime of His love returning to your soul.

The Lord still reserves mercy for the sinful; He still 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 you ever did, for think what love it must be that can invite you 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. But still, He graciously says, “Return unto Me.” What matchless love is this!

Come Just As You Are: The Call to Return

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 of God—whether a statement is 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 is the cord of God’s love, 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, 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, you still assure him that you love him? Suppose he knows that there is always a place at your table for him, and a bed in your house for him; yes, 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 is 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 on 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 My 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 still loves me. 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 disowned 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 repented of His love, but will embrace you still!

The Perfecting of Our Love to God

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 deeps 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 halting place on one of its elevated spurs from where they see a portion of its sublimities. Here and there an adventurous traveler climbs a minor peak, and views glaciers and alps at closer range; fewest of all are those who scale the topmost pinnacle and tread the virgin snow.

So, 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 ascend 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 has never trod—the high places of complete consecration and ardent, self-consuming love of God! 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 had 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, and so the more faith in God, the more room there is for His 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 God 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 known 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.

Beloved Brothers and Sisters, if you know that God loves 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 a desire after Him. Those we love, we long to be with; we count the hours that separate us—there is no place as happy as that in which we enjoy their society. And so love to God produces a desire to be with Him, a desire to be like He is, 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 for 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 who loves you? God, the Maker of Heaven and earth, the Almighty, All in All; does He love me? Even ME? If all men, and all angels, and all the living creatures that are before the throne loved me, it were nothing compared to this—the Infinite 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 deserves to be in Hell! I, who love 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 He 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 gray 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 forever, and forever!

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 if 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 worked upon by this truth, that if it is believed and felt, the consequence must be that you will love Him because He first loved you.

God bless you, Brothers and Sisters, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Portion of Scripture Read Before Sermon: John 4:1-5
—Charles Spurgeon