“Here is a sea indeed if we should enter into it, to see the love of God, which is the most beautiful and amiable grace of all: the love of God in Christ, and the love of Christ towards us.
Christ was never more lovely to His church than when He was most deformed for His church; ‘there was no form nor beauty in him,’ Isa. 53:2, when He hung upon the cross.
Oh! There was a beauty to a guilty soul, to see his surety enduring the wrath of God, overcoming all his enemies, and nailing the law to his cross. And that should endear Christ to us above all things.
He should be the dearer to us, the more vile and base He was made for us, and He should be most lovely in our eyes, when He was least lovely in His own, and when He was deformed, when our sins were upon Him.
We should consider those times especially. The world is most offended at that, that a Christian most joys in. ‘God forbid that I should joy in anything but in the cross of Christ,’ Gal. 6:14, saith St Paul.
So we should joy in and love that especially in Christ.”
–Richard Sibbes, “A Breathing After God,” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes (ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart; vol. 2; Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet And Co.; W. Robertson, 1862), 231.
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