“This love of Christ which we inquire after is the love of His person,—that is, which He in His own person acts in and by His distinct natures, according unto their distinct essential properties.
And the acts of love in these distinct natures are infinitely distinct and different; yet are they all acts of one and the same person.
So, then, whether that act of love in Christ which we would at any time consider, be an eternal act of the divine nature in the person of the Son of God; or whether it be an act of the human, performed in time by the gracious faculties and powers of that nature, it is still the love of one and the self-same person,– Christ Jesus.
It was an act of inexpressible love in Him, that He assumed our nature, (Heb. 2:14, 17). But it was an act in and of His divine nature only; for it was antecedent unto the existence of His human nature, which could not, therefore, concur therein.
His laying down His life for us was an act of inconceivable love, (1 John 3:16). Yet was it only an act of the human nature, wherein He offered Himself and died.
But both the one and the other were acts of His divine person; whence it is said that God laid down His life for us, and purchased the church with His own blood.
This is that love of Christ wherein He is glorious, and wherein we are by faith to behold His glory.
A great part of the blessedness of the saints in heaven, and their triumph therein, consists in their beholding of this glory of Christ,– in their thankful contemplation of the fruits of it. (See Rev. 5:9-10)
The illustrious brightness wherewith this glory shines in heaven, the all-satisfying sweetness which the view of it gives unto the souls of the saints there possessed of glory, are not by us conceivable, nor to be expressed.
Here, this love passeth knowledge,– there, we shall comprehend the dimensions of it.
Yet even here, if we are not slothful and carnal, we may have a refreshing prospect of it; and where comprehension fails, let admiration take place.
My present business is, to exhort others unto the contemplation of it, though it be but a little, a very little, a small portion of it, that I can conceive; and less than that very little that I can express.”
–John Owen, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,” The Works of John Owen, Volume 1: The Glory of Christ (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1684/2000), 1: 336–337.
