“The work of redemption, which the gospel declares unto us, above all things affords motives to love. For that work was the most glorious and wonderful work of love ever seen or thought of. Love is the principal thing which the gospel reveals in God and Christ.
The gospel brings to light the love between the Father and the Son, and declares how that love has been manifested in mercy and how that Christ is God’s beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.
And there we have the effects of God’s love to His Son set before us in appointing Him to the honor of a mediatorial kingdom, in appointing Him to be the Lord and Judge of the world, in appointing that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father.
There is revealed the love which Christ has to the Father, and the wonderful fruits of that love, as particularly His doing such great things, and suffering such great things in obedience to the Father, and for the honor of the Father’s justice, authority and law.
There it is revealed how the Father and the Son are one in love, that we might be induced in like manner to be one with them, and with one another, agreeable to Christ’s prayer, John 17:21–23:
‘That they all may be one; as thou Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.’
The gospel teaches us the doctrine of the eternal electing love of God, and reveals how God loved those that are redeemed by Christ before the foundation of the world, and how He then gave them to the Son, and the Son loved them as His own.
The gospel reveals the wonderful love of God the Father to poor sinful, miserable men, in giving Christ not only to love them while in the world, but to love them to the end.
And all this love is spoken of as bestowed on us while we were wanderers, outcasts, worthless, guilty, and even enemies. The gospel reveals such love as nothing else reveals. John 15:13, ‘Greater love hath no man than this.’
Romans 5:7–8, ‘Scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’
God and Christ in the gospel revelation appear as clothed with love, as being as it were on a throne of mercy and grace, a seat of love encompassed about with pleasant beams of love. Love is the light and glory which are about the throne on which God sits.”
–Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, in Ethical Writings, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 8, Ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1749/1989), 143-145.
