God Loves… Himself

My Dear Mrs. Hodge,
From the interview I had yesterday with your beloved partner, I find you are unwell. As I sincerely respect you for the Lord’s sake, I thought I would address a few lines to you, it being probable I may see London before I return to Cornwall; if so, then I shall not return by way of Plymouth and Dock.

In a certain sense this is a truth, that it matters not where a believer in Christ is, at home or abroad; nor in what circumstances he is, whether sick or in health; because Jesus Christ is with him. His eye is upon him for good; his everlasting arms are underneath him; yea, the believer is in Christ, one in him, and one with him–bound up in the bundle of life with him; and Jesus saith, “because I live, ye shall live also.”

I do conclude, you have tasted that the Lord is gracious; found that in his favour there is life, and his loving-kindness is better than the life itself: that Jesus is to you precious. Blessings on the slaughtered Lamb, he hath “loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.” This love is everlasting. It is the standing miracle of heaven. The heights, depths, lengths, and breadths of it, cannot by unfolded, no not in glory. It is infinite, it is incomprehensible; and Jesus hath in a most amazing way and manner expressed his love to the many which the Father hath given him. Before time began, he undertook as their head and surety, in the covenant of the Trinity, to be their Saviour and Redeemer, from sin, Satan, death, and hell. In the fulness of time he became incarnate, and bore all the sins of his people, “on his body on the tree,” and was made “a curse for us.” He hath made his soul “an offering for sin,” and his blood “cleanseth us from all sin.” In him we are saved with an everlasting salvation; in him we are sanctified, justified, accepted; have redemption, even the forgiveness of sins; in him we are complete.
My dear friend, look off every object and thing, look wholly out of yourself, and look immediately to and intensely on the Lord Jesus, as having borne your sins, and carried your sorrows. Mount higher, and consider what you were in Christ before the foundation of the world. As the object and subject of God’s everlasting love, you were chosen by the Father in Christ, before the foundation of the world: so that before all time you were in Christ, united to, interested in, and related to the Lord Jesus. Here is the believer’s blessedness; he is in Christ, and the whole heart of Christ is immutably fixed on his beloved ones. He was their Head before time began: they had a virtual representative being and existence in him from everlasting. They had grace given them in him before the world was. What the love of God is–how great, how immense–it is out of the power of all saints on earth or in heaven to say!

Do but think with yourself what it must be to shine in Christ before Jehovah the Father, to be viewed by him in Jesus our head and representative, to be beloved of him with all the love of his heart, and for that love to extend from eternity to eternity; to be kept up, fed, and continued in the infinite mind of God with perpetual pleasure, with infinite delight, in continual vigour; so that the Lord is fain to express himself thus,—“I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee. The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, he will save, he will rejoice over thee with singing!” Here I must stop; it is ineffable, it is incomprehensible love! and must cry out, “O the depth!”

God has not promised
skies always blue

Flower strewn pathways
All our lives through

God hath not promised
Sun without rain,

Joy without sorrow,
Peace without pain.

But God hath promised
Strength for the day,

Rest for the labor,
Light for the way,

Grace for the trials,
Help from above,

Unfailing sympathy,
Undying love.

Men are carried away with the notion that through religious instruction, training and favorable opportunities, children of men are made Christians; that men enter the kingdom of God through teaching and moral persuasion….A man does not have to be born again in order to be religious; he may be infatuated with religion, and be taught to observe most rigidly forms and ceremonies, and to subject himself to the strictest discipline; to mutilate his body and deprive himself of all earthly comforts; to yield perpetual obedience to priestcraft; to pray three times a day and give tithes of all he possesses; take up the sword in defense of his religion, or lay down his life in testimony of his zeal; but except he be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. A man must be born again in order to receive Christ, or embrace His doctrine in truth and reality.   H.M Curry

There is no more important event, which occurs in our world, than the new birth of an immortal soul. Heirs to titles and estates, to kingdoms and empires, are frequently born, and such events are blazoned with imposing pomp, and celebrated by poets and orators; but what are all these honors and possessions but the gewgaws of children, when compared with the inheritance and glory to which every child of God is born an heir!

The implantation of spiritual life in a soul dead in sin, is an event, the consequences of which will never end. When you plant an acorn, and it grows, you expect not to see the maturity, much less the end of the majestic oak, which will expand its boughs and strike deeply into the earth as roots. The fierce blast of centuries of winters may beat upon it and agitate it, but it resists them all. Yet finally this majestic oak, and all its towering branches, must fall. Trees die with old age, as well as men. But the plants of grace shall ever live. They shall flourish in everlasting verdure. Archibald Alexander

He has created all things for Himself, and for who pleasure alone all things are, and were, created. He does His pleasure in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of earth. The scepter of whose authority He sways over all things, all worlds, and all events, with irresistible power, and unerring wisdom and righteousness. His absolute providence and decrees embrace the very hairs of our heads, unalterably fixes the number of them, and makes it perfectly impossible that one of them can fall from our head without an order from His throne. Life, death and hell, and worlds unknown, Hang on His firm decree…
Our troubles come not up unbidden out of the earth, nor do our afflictions come on us by chance…Disease and the consequences resulting are as fully appointed as all other causes and results are. We cannot perceive that any of the human family ever came to their death by any other than the means appointed. A sparrow cannot fall, nor a hair from our heads, without our Heavenly Father. God cares for sparrows as He cares for worlds. Our hairs are all numbered, as are the days of our pilgrimage on earth, so that we cannot pass our bounds. Nor can we by any possible care or foresight of ours add to our stature one cubit, make a hair black or white, or lengthen or diminish from the number of days which God has allotted us upon His footstool. When men die suddenly, human theology says they go unprepared to the bar of God; but divine revelation teaches us that “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Jesus says “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and him that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out (John 6:37).” No accident, casualty or fortuitous event can interrupt the execution of the counsel of God; and he who falls in death by a thunderbolt, if an heir of salvation, will as certainly reign in glory with Christ, as though he were translated like Enoch or Elijah; and if not a subject of God’s saving grace, would be no nearer to heaven, or likely to be saved if a thousand years were added to his days.
Plauges and death around us fly,
‘Til He bids, we cannot die;
Not a single shaft can hit,
‘Til the God of grace sees fit.

God is immutable in His counsel, of one mind, and none can turn Him; and it therefore becomes us to “Be still and know that He is God.” Gilbert Beebe

God all-sufficient must needs be His own happiness; He has His being from Himself, and His happiness is no other than His being radiant with all excellencies, and by intellectual and amatorious [#] reflexions, turning back into the fruition of itself. His understanding has prospect enough in His own infinite perfections; His will has rest enough in His own infinite goodness; He needed not the pleasure of a world, who has an eternal Son in His bosom to joy in; nor the breath of angels or men who has an eternal Spirit of His own; He is the Great All, comprising all within Himself; nay, unless He were so, He could not be God. Had He let out no beams of His glory, or made no intelligent creatures to gather up and return them back to Himself, His happiness would have suffered no eclipse or diminution at all, His power would have been the same, if it had folded up all the possible worlds within its own arms, and poured forth never an one into being to be a monument of itself. Edward Polhill

# Amatorious: The word amatorious is derived from amatory, which means relating to, or expressive of love, particularly sexual love. The word amatory may be also described as relating to or stirring sexual love or desire.

We shall add two reasons further, to confirm, and some way to clear, why it is that the Lord works, and must work thus distinctly, inwardly, really, powerfully, and immediately, in working faith, and converting sinners.

The first is draws from the exceeding great deadness, indisposition, averseness, perverseness, impotency, inability, and impossibility that is in us naturally for the exerting faith in Christ. If men naturally are dead in sins and trespasses, if the mind is blind, if the affections are quite disordered, and the will is utterly corrupted and perverted; then that which converts, and changes and renews them, must be a real, inward, peculiar, immediate, powerful work of the Spirit of God. There being no inward seed of the grace of God in them to be quickened, that seed must be communicated to them and sown in them, ere they can believe, which can be done by no less nor lower than the power of God’s grace. It is not oratory as I said, nor excellency of speech that will do it; it is such a work as begets the man again, and actually renews him.

The second is drawn from God’s end in the way of giving grace, communicating it to some, and not to others. If God’s end, in being gracious to some and not to others, is to commend His grace solely, and to make them alone in grace’s common or debt; then the work of grace in conversion must be peculiar and immediate, and wrought by the power of the Spirit of God, leaving nothing to man’s free will to difference himself from another or on which such an effect should depend. But if we look to Scripture, we will find that it is God’s end in the whole way and conduct of His grace, in election, redemption, calling, justification, etc, to commend His grace solely, and to stop all mouths, and cut off all ground of boasting in the creature as it is in I Cor 4:7. “Who makes thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou hast not received? Now if thou didst receive it, why dos thou glory as if thou didst not receive?” This being certain, that if the work of grace in conversion were not a distinct, inward, peculiar, real, immediate work, and did not produce the effect of itself by its own strength, and not by virtue of anything in man, the man would still be supposed to have had some power for the work in himself, and some way to have differenced himself from another. But the Lord designed the contrary, and therefore the work of grace in conversion must be suitable to His design. (Christ Crucified: The Marrow of the Gospel in 72 Sermons on Isaiah 53, pages 169-170; James Durham)

“God made the universe and all creatures contained therein, as so many glasses wherein He might reflect His own glory: He hath copied forth Himself in the creation; and, in this outward world, we may read the lovely characters of the Divine goodness, power, and wisdom.

“A good man, that finds himself made partaker of the Divine nature, and transformed into the image of God, infinitely takes pleasure in God, as being altogether lovely.

“We rather glorify God by entertaining the impressions of His glory upon us, than by communicating any kind of glory to Him. Then does a good man become the tabernacle of God, wherein the divine Shechinah does rest, and which the Divine glory fills, when the fame of his mind and life is wholly according to that idea and pattern which he receives from the mount.

“God hath stamped a copy of His own archetypal loveliness upon the soul, that man, by reflecting into himself, might behold the glory of God.

“Thus Moses-like, conversing with God in the mount, and there beholding His glory shining thus out upon us in the face of Christ, we should be deriving a copy of that eternal beauty upon our own souls, and our thirsty and hungry spirits would be perpetually sucking in a true participation and image of His glory. A true Divine love would wing our souls, and make them take their flight swiftly towards heaven and immortality.

“His honor is His love and goodness in paraphrase, spreading itself over all those that can or do receive it; and this He loves and cherishes wheresoever He finds it, as something of Himself therein.

“God does most glorify and exalt Himself in the most triumphant way that may be…when He most of all communicates Himself, and when He erects such monuments of His own majesty, wherein His own love and goodness may live and reign. And we then most of all glorify Him, when we partake most of Him…The first, and chiefest, is concurrent with his own internal vision of all things in that simple, expidite, and simultaneous comprehension of all things intelligible, piercing through all their essences, and viewing them all in himself, he is delighted therein, as seeing how his own glory can display and imitate itself in outward matter.

“When He is said to seek His own glory, it is, indeed, nothing else but to ray and beam forth, as it were, His own lustre.”

Some place Justification to be only in the conscience. But we place it only in Christ where it is, and to whom it belongs. Justification consists in the taking away of sin. None but Christ can do that. Justification and Acceptation are one. For without Justification there is no acceptation. And seeing we are accepted in Christ, we are justified in Him. If our Justification be a spiritual blessing, {as it is,} then it is in Christ where all spiritual blessings are.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” {Eph.1:3}

Where our Redemption and Righteousness are, there is our Justification. Righteousness and Justification are one. This we have not in our selves but in Christ, “who is made unto us of God, wisdom and righteousness.” {I Cor.1:30} “In whom we have redemption.” {Col.1:14} Our Justification is a part of our completeness. Therefore, where we are complete, there we are justified. But we are not complete in ourselves, but in Him. “And ye are
complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.” {Col.2:10} If all things on which depends our happiness were accomplished, John 19:28, {“Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled;} then was our Justification also accomplished. For without that no man could be
saved.

This mystery of Christ is a great mystery. Oh meditate and dive as deep as you are able into this mystery. The benefit will be great and sweet. The more I am exercised herein, the more I see into it and enjoy Justification by Christ alone, and more clearly see our believing cannot justify us. Yet I deny not but the power to believe is from the Spirit, who is the life of motion in faith. The life of faith is the life of Christ as I have treated elsewhere; what faith is, and what it does, and wherein it differs from presumption, etc. God hath given faith in his elect to know, assent and believe the Truth. {Acts 13:48} This encourages us to go to God for all we need. {Acts 26:18} This enables us to suffer for Christ; this enables us to conquer enemies, {Eph.6:16;} and makes our afflictions easy to bear. It enables us to obey {Rom.16:26;} and helps us to cleave to God, {Acts 11:23,} and to His word. {Psal.119:30,31}

Faith leads us to hope in His mercy; {Psal.147:11;} and causes us to depend upon Jesus Christ alone for life and
salvation. What more necessary and useful in this life than faith? There is a light in faith, and as our blind eyes and dark understandings are enlightened, {“the eyes of your understanding being enlightened;”} Eph.1:18 & 5:13; so,
accordingly, we are filled with the {comprehension by faith of} fullness of God. “And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” {Eph.3:19} Fullness of knowledge is that perfection which we are to press after. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give
unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.” {Eph.1:17} “According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.” {II Pet.1:3} “I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus…that I might know Him.” {Phil.3:12,10} “That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.” {Col.2:2} “But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.” {Jer.9:24} “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” {I Jn.5:20} “And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” {Jn.17:3} This sight shows us our Justification to be in Christ alone. And the seeking of a further measure of knowledge is a seeking to be justified, {Gal.2:17;} because this knowledge is that which justifies our Conscience.

Also we confess that he that believes not has no knowledge of any Justification. All who are without faith are visibly in a perishing state. There is not the least appearance to the contrary. No man may apply salvation to such as believe not. Nor may they apply any to themselves. Such as believe not have no enjoyment of God, no true peace, no evidence of life, no right to Baptism, or the Supper. They cannot see the mystery of the Truth. He
cannot honor God nor love the truth, nor suffer for it. Yet faith cannot satisfy justice, nor merit the pardon of the least sin; for only Christ can do that. And that exposition that gives most glory to Christ and least to man, I believe is the truth.     Samuel Richardson

The eye of faith is opened to take in Christ in a gradual way and manner. When it is first opened, it sees Christ as having been crucified: as having died for sin and sinners. It finds all its peace and happiness in the blood and righteousness of Christ, who came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost. It closes with Christ in the full belief of his own word, Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out; and it looks wholly at, and trusts simply in, the wounds and blood of Jesus Christ. This is agreeable to the preaching the gospel of salvation to what is first experienced in the mind at our first believing on Christ; He saith Look unto me, and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth for I am God, and there is none else. It is also agreeable to what the apostle John says, “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake” (I John 2:12).

As the eye of faith is afresh illuminated, and we are favored with more glorious discoveries of Christ, we naturally forget our former apprehensions of him, because the present are more enlarged, and in this sense more glorious. Yet you were as truly a believer when you first trusted in Christ, as you are As the eye of faith is afresh illuminated, and we are favored with more glorious discoveries of Christ, we naturally forget our former apprehensions of him, because the present are more enlarged, and in this sense more glorious. Yet you were as truly a believer when you first trusted in Christ, as you are now; but you had not the same conceptions of him then, as you have now. When you were a babe in Christ, you were chiefly attentive to his love and salvation: as you advanced and came to be a young man in Christ, you were then chiefly concerned to look to him for strength against sin, that you might not fall to the dishonor of his most holy name. To be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, was then the most principal thing with you as now, the most sublime mysteries in the book of God, are become your one grand study; and this is but one and the same faith, only more distinctly and immediately exercised. I hope this clearly opens the case. It is the highest stage in Christianity, to be taken with the spirituality of the gospel; and the study of Christ’s Person promotes this beyond all other meditations whatsoever.     Samuel Eyles Pierce

Our Lord says in his great prayer to the Divine Father, which is recorded in the 17th chapter of John’s gospel, And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, We have not eternal life in our souls, if we have not the true spiritual and supernatural knowledge of his person in our minds. The apostle John, speaking after his divine Lord, says, God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. I John, 5:11,12. I prefer the knowledge of Christ, beyond all the enjoyments of him: yea, I absolutely do prize the knowledge of the God-Man, the object and subject of the love and delight of all the Persons in the Essence, beyond heaven and eternal glory. I conceive of nothing in heaven, beyond seeing him as he is; and I am sure this will so perfect my knowledge of him, as will fix my mind immutably on him for ever and ever: and in this all true blessedness consists. There is also salvation, and all the blessings of life everlasting, contained in the knowledge of the Person of Christ. There is none other name given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved One said of old, Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. Psalm, 73:25. The Apostle says, Yea, doubtless, and I count till things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him. That I way know him. All this gives full evidence of what is contained in the knowledge of Christ, and also how highly he is prized by such as know him.

Question: How saints are brought to the knowledge of Christ?

Answer: By the word, and by the Spirit. The word contains the revelation of Christ; the Holy Spirit from the word reveals Christ. In a spiritual apprehension of him, everlasting life is begun in the soul, which issues in all the acts of it up into life everlasting. We cannot know Christ but by the word, which, whilst it is full of Christ, yet we do not see, know, and believe on him to life everlasting, until the Lord the Spirit become our teacher and instructor.        Samuel Eyles Pierce