I answer, A man may retort that upon Satan the tempter, and upon his own heart. The spirit retorts that upon the flesh : ' God corrects every son, and he is a bastard that hath not correction,' Heb. xii. 8. In this world, to thrive in a course of sin, when a man hath offended God, it is a sign of reprobation rather than otherwise. Every child God corrects ; and for poverty, shame, and the like, we must not measure God's love by these, for God loves us as he loved Christ. Mark here Christ's prayer : ' That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them.'
Quest. How was God's love in Christ ? To fence him from poverty, from disgrace, from persecution, from the sense of God's wrath ? No. But the first-begotten Son, the natural Son, he was persecuted as soon as he was born ; he was disgraced, calumniated, slandered, and abused to the death. Nay, and he felt the wrath of God. ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' Mat. xxvii. 46. We then may be in the love of God if we be no otherwise than the natural Son was, in whom the love of God was when he was at the worst. In the lowest degree of his abase- ment, God loved him then as much as at any other time, even when he was accompanied with the sense of the wrath of God. And therefore reject and beat back all temptations with this invincible argument, It is no other- wise with me than it was with his natural Son. Shall I desire to be loved any otherwise of God than Christ was loved ? His love to Christ did not exempt him from slander, from disgrace, from abasement, from the sense of his wrath, when yet he was' the Son of God always ; and I, being in this case, shall I doubt of my adoption ? Shall I dishonour God ? Shall I add this sin to the rest of my sins ?
Satan is wonderful prone to take these weapons, to sharpen them, as I said before, of sin, desertions, sometime of temptations and outward afilic- tions; and so he comes with his ' If,' ' If thou wert the Son of God, would he deal thus and thus with thee ? ' It was alway his course. We must therefore have present, to repel all such temptations, that God loves us as he loves his Son, that he chastiseth every son ; and that God's love is not always and only manifested in exempting of us from these things. Let us measure God's love that he bears to us in Christ, by the best fruits of his love. What are those ? An heart to seek him ; to fear his name ; love to his majesty ; love to his children ; delight in good things ; hatred of that which is evil. None but his can esteem and value his love by these things. By these therefore, and the like peculiar marks and stamps of the Spirit that are in us, let us judge of his love, and not by any outward thing whatsoever ; for all outward crosses whatsoever befell his own Son. And
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can we desire that he should love us otherwise than he loved him ? We are predestinate to be conformable unto him, Kom. viii. 29, and why should we refuse to be conformable to him in abasement, with whom we hope to be conformable in glory ? Let faith therefore plead against all the sugges- tions of Satan and accusations of conscience. By faith in the word of God persuade we ourselves that we are in the love of God. If we find any evidences of his love in our spirits, we shall come to them by and by. But, first, I will name one or two directions how we may come to have God's love in us, and how to know that his love is in us.
1. "We may come to have his love in us, if ice he careful to preserve our- selves under tlie means of salvation, and if so ive do x>i'esent God to ourselves, as he is piresented in our glorious gospel. When we are convinced of sin first (I speak of such as are convinced thoroughly of a sinful state, such may come to the knowledge of God's love in Christ by the gospel, and by pre- senting God to their souls as he is presented in the gospel, to be the Father of mercy and the Father of Christ. The devil he puts other colours upon God : he presents him as a tyrant, as a judge, as a revenger, as one that hates him.
2. Again, Labour to be such as God may love us. God loves his own image. Wherefore doth he love Christ, but because he perfectly repre- sents him ? If we would come to have God's love in us, beg of him, that by his Spirit he would stamp his likeness in us ; that as he is light, we may be light ; as he is love, so we may have love ; as he is pitiful, so we may have our hearts enlarged ; as he is free in love, so we may be free in love ; and that we may be holy, as he is holy ; that as he hates sin, so we may hate it ; that we may joy in him, affect what he doth affect, hate that which he hates ; that so he may look upon us, as his own image, and delight in us, as the representation of his own likeness.