Morning, June 11
Go To Evening Reading
“We love him because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the
sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which
cometh from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain
of the infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This
must ever be a great and certain truth, that we love him for no other
reason than because he first loved us. Our love to him is the fair offspring of his love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God,
anyone may have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the
heart by God’s Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been
brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that when we had rebelled
against him, he should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to
draw us back. No! never should we have had a grain of love towards
God unless it had been sown in us by the sweet seed of his love to
us. Love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed abroad in
the heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must be divinely nourished . Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally
in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus is a flower
of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but that which
could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon wither. As
love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread. It cannot
exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on high. Love
must feed on love. The very soul and life of our love to God is his
love to us.
“I love thee, Lord, but with no love of mine,
For I have none to give;
I love thee, Lord; but all the love is thine,
For by thy love I live.
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee.”