John Owen & The Love of God
James T. Lima
In our study in Ephesians 3:14-21, we saw Paul’s desire for the Ephesians (and us) to have “strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” It ought to always be our desire to become more and more acquainted with the love of Christ for us. Along those lines, I just wanted to share some quotes that might encourage you to rejoice in the love of our God! These are taken from Communion with God by John Owen. I highly recommend the whole book as it just overflows from beginning to end with the wonders of God’s love for us in Christ!
“We must learn to think of his everlasting gentleness and compassion. We must remember his kind thoughts toward us which have been from eternity. Let us remember how eager and willing he is to accept us. If we did this, then we would not be able to bear one hour’s absence from him. Instead, we find it difficult to spend even one hour with him. Let then this be the first thought that we have of the Father, that he is full of eternal love to us.”
“The love of the Father is unchangeable. Though we change every day, yet his love does not change. If anything in us or on our part could stop God loving us, then he would long ago have turned away from us. It is because his love is fixed and unchangeable that the Father shows us infinite patience and forbearance. If his love was not unchangeable, we would perish.”
“It is the gladness of the heart of Christ, the joy of his soul, to take poor sinners into this relationship with himself. He rejoiced in the thoughts of it from eternity (Prov. 8:31). And how willing he was to undertake the hard task required to bring this relationship to reality (Psa. 40:7, 8; Heb 10:7). He suffered the pangs of a woman in childbirth until he had accomplished this task (Luke 12:50). Because he loved his church, he gave himself for it (Eph. 5:25). He despised the shame and endured the cross (Heb. 12:2). He did all this that he might enjoy his bride, that he might be for her, and she for him, and not for another (Hos. 3:3).”
“How many millions of sins in every one of the elect, every sin sufficient to condemn them, has Christ’s love overcome! What mountains of unbelief has Christ’s love removed! Look at the behavior of any one saint. Consider his heart. See the many sinful stains and spots, the defilement and the weaknesses with which his life is contaminated, and tell me whether the love that bears with all this is not to be admired? And is not Christ’s love the same to thousands every day? What streams of grace, purging, pardoning, quickening and helping, flow from Christ’s love every day!”
“The one whom they obey is the one whom they love and desire above all things. To unrepentant sinners, God is terrible. But to his adopted ones, he is altogether lovely. To believers, God is seen as a Father. They call him Father, not merely in word, but in the spirit of sons (Gal. 4:6). They do not, like others, see God as a hard taskmaster, but they go to him as one who lives and loves them. Receiving love from the Father, they power out their love on him.”
To end with a quote from Geerhardus Vos: “The reason God will never stop loving you is that he never began.” Ponder that wonderful truth! If you are God’s, he has loved you from all eternity, and because that love has no beginning, it will have no end!
