by Arthur W. Pink
by Arthur W. Pink
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
by Arthur W. Pink
April, 1938
THE LOVE OF GOD.
“I will love them freely” (Hosea 14:4). God's love is a most free and bountiful love, having no motive or foundation but within itself, and His free love and grace is the ground of all His other mercies to His people. He showeth mercy on whom, and because He will show mercy (Rom. 9). From the beginning to the end of our salvation, nothing is primarily alive but free grace: freely loved (Deut. 7:7, 8), freely chosen (Eph. 1:5, 6), Christ the gift of free love (John 3:16), His obedience freely accepted for us and bestowed upon us (Rom. 5:15, 18). Justification free (Rom. 3:24), adoption free (Eph. 1:3), faith and repentance free (Phil. 1:29; 2 Tim. 2:25), good works free (Eph. 2:10), salvation free (Titus 3:5). Thus the foundation of all mercies is free love.
We do not first give to God, that He may render to us again. We turn, we pray, we covenant, we repent, we are holy, we are healed, only because He loves us; and He loves us not because He sees anything lovely or amiable in us, but because He will show the absoluteness of His own will, and the unsearchableness of His own counsel towards us. We are not originally denominated good by anything which flows from us, or is done by us, but by that which is bestowed upon us. Our goodness is not the motive of God's love, but His love the fountain of our goodness. None indeed are healed and saved, but those that repent and return; but repentance is only a condition, and that freely given by God, disposing the subject for salvation; not a cause or procuring God to save us. It is necessary as the means to the end, not as the cause to the effect. That which looks least free of any other gift of God is His rewarding of obedience, but that is all and only of mercy. When we sow in righteousness, we must reap in mercy (Hosea 10:12), but when He renders according to our works, it is because of His mercy (Psa. 62:12).
This is the solid bottom and foundation of all Christian comforts, that God loves freely. Were His love to us to be measured by our fruitfulness or carriages towards Him, each hour and moment might stagger our hope; but He is therefore pleased to have it all of grace, “that the promise might be sure to all the seed” (Rom. 4:16). This comforts us against the guilt of the greatest sin, for love and free grace can pardon what it will. This comforts us against the accusations of Satan drawn from our own unworthiness. 'Tis true, I am unworthy, and Satan cannot show me unto myself more vile, than without his accusations I will acknowledge myself to be; but that love that gave Christ freely, doth give in Him more worthiness than there is or can be unworthiness in me. This comforts us in the assured hope of glory, because when He loves He loves to the end (John 13), and nothing can separate from His love (Rom. 8:35-39). This comforts us in all afflictions, that the free love of God, who has predestinated us thereunto, will wisely order it unto the good of His servants (Rom. 8:28).
And what is our duty in response thereto? First, to labour for assurance of this free love. It will assist us in all duties; it will arm us against all temptations; it will answer all objections that can be made against the soul's peace; it will sustain us in all conditions which the saddest of times can bring us into—“If God be for us, who can be against us”! Though thousands should be against us to hate us, yet none shall be against us to hurt us. Second, if God loves us freely we should love Him thankfully (1 John 4:19), and let love be the salt to season all our sacrifices. For as no benefit is saving unto us which does not proceed from love in Him, so no duty is pleasing unto Him which does not proceed from love in us (1 John 5:3). Third, plead this free love and grace in prayer. When we beg pardon, nothing is too great for love to forgive; when we beg grace and holiness, nothing is too good for love to grant. There is not anyone thing which faith can manage unto more spiritual advantages, than the free grace and love of God in Christ.
Fourth, yet we must so magnify the love of God as that we turn not free grace into wantonness. There is a corrupt generation of men, who under pretence of exalting grace, do put disgrace upon the Law of God, by taking away the mandatory power thereof from those that are under grace—a doctrine most extremely contrary to the nature of this love. For God's love to us works love in us to Him—and our love to Him is this, that we keep His commandments. And to keep a commandment is to confirm and to subject my conscience with willingness and delight unto the rule and preceptive power of that commandment. Take away the obligation of the Law upon conscience as a rule of life, and you take away from our love to God the very matter about which the obedience thereof should be conversant. It is no diminution to love that a man is bound to obedience (nay it cannot be called “obedience” if I be not bound unto it) but herein the excellency of our love to God is commended, that whereas other men are so bound by the Law that they fret at it, swell against it, and would be glad to be exempted from it, they who love God and know His love to them delight to be thus bound, and find infinitely more sweetness in the strict rule of God's Holy Law than any that man can do in that presumptuous liberty, wherein he allows himself to shake off and break the cords of it.—Edward Reynolds (1648).
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