Being able to see how it is that God loves Himself within the Trinity as His only true love and all that He loves comes from Himself teaches us what grace really is. This is the teaching that should give us confidence before God. This allows us to seek His face for Himself because it is God in us giving us a love for Himself and that is true grace. Let me give some quotes from Jonathan Edwards that make this point so powerfully and beautifully:
“Our love to God is given to us by God, and is the fruit of His love to us; but God’s love to us is originally from Himself. If God had not first loved us and, as a fruit of His love had not inserted a principle of love unto us, we never would have loved Him. Our love to God is a great gift, and a fruit of infinite kindness; but God needed not to have love inserted into His heart for those whom he loves; it was there from eternity, and was of Himself.”
“Our love to God is for His worthiness and is infinitely less than His worthiness; but God loves us without worthiness. He loves you with your infinite unworthiness. Our love is not only attracted and drawn by God’s worthiness of our love, but after all it is infinitely short of any equality to the loveliness of the being beloved. But God’s love is not only not attracted by any loveliness in us to attract it; but it overcame infinite repulsion.”
“We love God because He has won us by His love and kindness to us, whereas His love has no motive out of Himself. God’s love is not only the cause that gave our love to God, but ’tis the good or motive of it. We don’t love God without an expectation of infinite benefit by Him, whereas God loves us without expectation or possibility of any benefit by us. When a godly man sets his love on God it is as all his happiness and as his Chief Good, because he sees Him to be the Fountain of happiness, the only happiness fit for him. But God’s happiness doesn’t consist in man, but in Himself, which shows how infinitely more disinterested God’s love to man is than is man’s love to God.”
What we see from these quotes of Edwards is in one sense the real comfort of all who love God in and through Christ. God does not love us based on our love for Him or our works for Him, but He loves us based on His love for Himself or His love for Christ. God beholds His glory in Christ and works love for Himself in us so that He may behold Himself and the shining forth of His glory in Christ in His people. God looks upon His people with infinite pleasure because He beholds His own glory in them. Our love for Him is really His love for Himself that He has worked in the hearts of His people.
As we reflect on this, we get the real idea of what perseverance of the saints looks like. It is not that I am to trust in myself and work harder in order to keep myself saved, but it is God in Christ giving me faith in Himself and love for Himself. It removes our sight from self to Christ. This is all a gift of God and is His grace because all of His motives are from Himself. He does not love a human being because of anything in the human other than Himself. This is of unspeakable comfort to the true believer who trusts in Christ alone. This should help us to understand grace as the love of God which is shown to human beings based on God rather than based on human beings. It shows us how God can show grace and why He shows it. As Ephesians 1:6 puts it, “to the praise of the glory of His grace.”
This also instructs us in the way of evangelism. We must always teach people that they must be broken of their pride and of their self-sufficiency in order to trust Christ. A person must learn to trust in Christ by grace alone which teaches us and them that salvation is totally apart from anything they have done or have merited. A so-called “gospel” teaching us that Christ died for men because they had value is another gospel in all ways. It is not a Gospel of grace alone and it is not the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ. The teaching that all God does is from a love for Himself as triune is the only teaching that sustains the biblical and Reformed Gospel of grace alone and of “to God alone be the glory.” The love of God for Himself, therefore, is the real foundation for all true grace, which is the foundation of the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ. It is in Christ that we see the glory of God and it is Christ in us who manifests that glory through us by grace. True and pure grace can alone give true and pure assurance. It is this teaching that removes all hope from ourselves and from that emptiness of self one is enabled to trust in God alone because He saves based on Himself alone as triune with nothing from us.
God Loves... Himself 
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