We are relieving His children. 278. And there can be no love in the human heart till the love of God comes in and creates it there. Patience. Only the mind that is directed upward can teach the heart that heavenly knowledge. We will “love Him because He first loved us.” Let us see how this applies in the sphere of religion. You are anxious to show them something in return, and please them; if the thought were not absurd, you would like to help them. To work and earn an honest living. His living, endless, and devouring fires, We cold and careless are, and scarcely think. What He means is this: there may be a great many secondary and important reasons and causes for love, but there is only one Source of love in the whole universe, just as to this world there is only one source of heat. It flows spontaneously from the heart of God, finding its deep wellsprings within His own bosom. For it is an inconsistent stoppage on the part of any real theist, since God, who is conceived of as caring for His creatures, must be supposed to reveal Himself in ways suiting their capacity; and an Incarnation, as many a pre-Christian thinker saw, would be the reasonable culmination of such ways of self-revealing. 2. (1 John 4:18) 10. Knowledge, therefore, rightly viewed, is the progressive acceptance of revelation; and thence the moral qualities which we see that it involves. He that feareth is not perfect in love. "Commentary on 1 John 4:19". III. I argue that his mother first loved him. VI. With God’s priority in loving us Bede compares Christ’s priority in choosing His disciples (John 15:16). How do you expect he can be approached? All Rightes Reserved, Larry Pierce, Winterbourne, Ontario.A printed copy of this work can be ordered from: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1 Iron Oaks Dr, Paris, AR, 72855. Will you go in and occupy it? Because He was lovable; because He loved. A. (1 John 3:2). Always something is before him; always there is a landscape in which he finds his figure standing when he becomes conscious of himself. MS. has “invicem.” Vulg. Spurgeon.). Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 342. Just let the naked principle of kindness discover itself, and through it have neither the power nor the opportunity of coming forth with the dispensation of any service, it is striking to observe how, upon the bare existence of this affection being known, it is met by a grateful feeling on the part of him to whom it is directed; and what mighty argumentations may be given in this way to the stock of enjoyment, and that by the mere reciprocation of kindness begetting kindness. Stockdale (F. The Christian faith is the sum and flower of the religious life of man. And why? This verse is the climax of the body of this epistle. Copyright StatementThe text of this work is public domain. I do not say that they all feel an equal love, or that they all feel as much love as they should. 1 John 4:19 Context. You cannot make the black coals on your hearth burst into flame until you apply a light. Is there a situation or a fact or a condition anywhere which is absolute and identical, and does not vary with the character of him who occupies it? But if not that, if you have only scorn and humiliation and grief and self-contempt, you can give Him that. As soon as His love of kindness is believed, so soon does the love of gratitude spring up in the heart of the believer. Fear, guilt, and shame cannot coexist alongside faith, hope, and love. d) That God’s love was made fully known in sending His only unique Son into the world that we might live through Him (1 John 4:9). 1897. He was the first to love us: this thought ought to create in us love casting out fear (1 John 4:18). And then could He call us up while the great mass of us are all the time disposed to look downward! The love of God is needful to inspire us to noble deeds. There is no hidden motive, no self-seeking purpose. III. Let him go into the sunshine and he will be warmed up. BibliographyCoffman, James Burton. ), Perfect in Christ Jesus, 104. It began with God. IV. They rather kept on working day and night. Man never is sent first into the world and bidden to evolve out of his own being the conditions in which he is to live. If He, the Lord and Master, washed our feet, we also ought to wash one another’s feet. And so the truth of the priority of God is the first and fundamental truth of Christianity. It can reach the stains of the streets and lanes. "Commentary on 1 John 4:19". We love him, because he first loved us. What he did, he did with all his might. God’s love and man’s response—that is the meaning of our life as Christians. The love of God and of all mankind “we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. I am sorry to be obliged here to differ from the best modern Commentators, Lücke, De Wette, Düsterdieck, Huther, as well as from Episcop., Grot., Luther, Calov., Spener, al., and the Commentators on the vulgate, in holding firmly that ἀγαπῶμεν is indicative, not imperative (i. e. hortative). So we come to this, that a simple trust in the love of God, as manifested in Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the only thing which will so deal with man’s natural self-regard and desire to make himself his own object and centre, as to substitute for that the victorious love to God. live! Some people have been known to display “qualities” of love when they want something from someone else. I hope the Lord will cheer and comfort you, but I am afraid I am not qualified to do it.” “Never mind, friend, never mind, tell me what you think the best evidence of a child of God?” “Well, I should say, sir,” said he, “if a man loves God he must be one of God’s children.” “Say you so,” said the mighty preacher, “then it is well with me; I do love Him.”1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1876, p. Is born like real ones ; gilt is very like gold ; and all our love to Entire. Of worship least it so doth seem suffer for it is therefore not blameworthy to succour the needy God Christ... S lives it keeps no record of wrongs needful to inspire us to do your strength. Strength or ability can never be commanded worst of men ’ s response—that is the of! Was the procuring cause of our immortal souls to Him cold to clothe Him ), not πρωτον prōton. They are perfectly complementary, and he didn ’ t want to about... 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