Tag Archives: O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus

May 8, 2023 · 1:00 pm

“The great and wonderful love which is in the heart of Christ” by Jonathan Edwards

“There is no love so great and so wonderful as that which is in the heart of Christ.

He is one that delights in mercy; He is ready to pity those that are in suffering and sorrowful circumstances; one that delights in the happiness of His creatures.

The love and grace that Christ has manifested does as much exceed all that which is in this world as the sun is brighter than a candle.

Parents are often full of kindness towards their children, but that is no kindness like Jesus Christ’s…

Children ought to love Christ above all, in that He has done more for them than all the men in the world have ever done.

Their parents have done a great deal for them and have suffered a great deal for them—especially their mothers. And both their fathers and mothers have done a great deal in taking care of them, in providing for them and bringing of them up. They have been at a great deal of pains and charge for them.

But they have never done so much for them as Christ has done, for it is Christ that has kept ’em all their lives long. He has kept ’em from death, he has healed ’em when they have been sick.

And they have always lived upon that provision that Christ has made for them. It has been through the hands of their parents, but their parents could not have had it for ’em, had not Christ provided it for them.

They have always lived upon Christ’s provision; He has maintained ’em, and ’tis His wool and His flax that has clothed ’em. If it had not been for Christ’s preservation, they would have been in the grave, and there they would have been eaten up of worms long ago.

And ’tis Christ that has kept ’em out of the hands of the devil. The devils, if Christ permitted ’em, would immediately fall upon and carry them away. ’Tis Christ that has kept ’em out of hell. If it had not been for Christ, they would have been burning in hell among devils long before this time.

’Tis He that keeps ’em every night while they sleep. And, which is more than all, Christ has died for children.

None can conceive what dreadful things Christ has suffered, and all this he suffered not only for grown persons but for children. All children are by nature children of wrath and are in danger of eternal damnation in hell.

But children that live under the gospel have an opportunity to be delivered from hell and to become the children of God, and so to go to heaven when they die, and therefore to be happy and to shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of God, and enjoy rivers of pleasures at God’s right hand forevermore.

And this opportunity they have by the blood of Christ. They could have had no such opportunity but by its costing Christ His life and His undergoing great cruelties and a very tormenting death, though He was God’s only Son.

Now where is any in this world that has done so much for children as this? Where is anything that any have done for them to be compared with this? Surely, then, they ought to love Christ more than all things in this world.”

–Jonathan Edwards, “Children Ought to Love the Lord Jesus Christ Above All,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1739–1742, ed. Harry S. Stout, Nathan O. Hatch, and Kyle P. Farley, vol. 22, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2003), 22: 171, 173–174. Edward preached this sermon on Matthew 10:37 to the children in his congregation in August 1740.

“Article 26: The Intercession of Christ” – The Belgic Confession (1561)

Article 26: The Intercession of Christ

“We believe that we have no access to God
except through the one and only Mediator and Intercessor:
Jesus Christ the Righteous. (1 John 2:1)

He therefore was made man,
uniting together the divine and human natures,
so that we human beings might have access to the divine Majesty.
Otherwise we would have no access.

But this Mediator,
whom the Father has appointed between Himself and us,
ought not terrify us by His greatness,
so that we have to look for another one,
according to our fancy.

For neither in heaven nor among the creatures on earth
is there anyone who loves us
more than Jesus Christ does.

Although He was ‘in the form of God,’
He nevertheless ’emptied Himself,”
taking the form of ‘a man’ and ‘a servant’ for us; (Phil. 2:6-8)
and He made Himself ‘completely like His brothers.’ (Heb. 2:17)

Suppose we had to find another intercessor.
Who would love us more than He who gave His life for us,
even though ‘we were His enemies’? (Rom. 5:10)

And suppose we had to find one who has prestige and power.
Who has as much of these as He who is seated
‘at the right hand of the Father,’ (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 1:3)
and who has all power
‘in heaven and on earth’? (Matt. 28:18)

And who will be heard more readily
than God’s own dearly beloved Son?”

–From The Belgic Confession, Article 26, as quoted in Ecumenical Creeds and Reformed Confessions (Grand Rapids, MI: Faith Alive, 1988), 103-104.

“The great love of Jesus” by Charles Spurgeon

“Jesus has loved His own people from of old. A most blessed fact! He has loved them eternally. There never a time when He did not love them.

His love is positively dateless: before the heavens and earth were made, and the stars were first touched with the torch of flame, Jesus had received His people from His Father, and written their names on His heart.

‘Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.’ Jesus, before all the world, set the crown of His peculiar love upon those whom He foreordained unto His glory.

This love of His is infinite. Jesus does not love His own with a little of His love, nor regard them with some small degree of affection, but He says, ‘As the Father hath loved me, even so have I loved you,’ and the Father’s love to the Son is inconceivably great, since they are one in essence, ineffably one.

The Father cannot but love the Son infinitely, neither doth the Son ever love His people less than with all His heart. It is an affection which no angelic mind could measure, inconceivable, unknown.

Jesus loved His people with a foresight of what they would be. Love is blind, they say, but not the Saviour’s love. He knew that ‘his own’ would fall in Adam; He knew that as they lived personally each one would become a sinner; He understood that they would be hard to reclaim and difficult to retain, even after they had been reclaimed; He saw every sin that they would commit in the glass of the future, for from His prescient eye nothing can be hidden.

And yet He loved His own over the head of all their sins, and their revoltings, and their shortcomings. Hence we see that He bears towards them an affection which cannot be changed, for nothing can occur which He has not foreseen, nothing therefore which has not already been taken into calculation in the matter of His choice.

No new circumstance can shed unexpected light upon the case. No startling and unforeseen event can become an argument for a change. Hence Jesus’ love is full of immutability. There are no ups and downs in the love of Christ towards His people.

On their highest Tabors He loves them, but equally as well in their Gethsemanes. When they wander like lost sheep His great love goes after them, and when they come back with broken hearts His great love restores them.

By day, by night, in sickness, in sorrow, in poverty, in famine, in prison, in the hour of death, that silver stream of love ripples at their side, never stayed, never diminished. Forever is the sea of divine grace at its flood; this sun never sets; this fountain never pauses.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Faithfulness of Jesus,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 14 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1868), 270-271.