the freeness and the riches
Loved When Enemies
“God loved us when we were dead in sins. There is no fact which seems to be so staggering to faith. Such action is so utterly at variance with all the feelings which we experience, or witness in others.
Our love is excited by what we deem lovely; our hearts are warmed by the charms of extraordinary worth and grace; we turn with disgust from the hideous deformities of vice and iniquity; we loathe and reprobate the dark features of undisguised evil. Who ever loves that which is altogether hateful?
Such is the manner of man. How different the manner of our God! He loves us with a great love before one particle of divine grace enters our souls; while we are one mass of loathsome iniquity; while we hate Him and His holy law, and manifest our complete alienation from Him by every word and work. What a wondrous thought is here! Oh, for more grace to see it distinctly, and to realize it abidingly! God has greatly loved us, when we were nothing but sin, when we did nothing but sin.
Whence then sprang this love? Surely from nothing belonging to us. It sprang entirely from His own nature, which is Love. ‘God is Love.’ He loved us because it was His will to love us. We may search and reason until all our powers fail, and we shall find no motive or cause outside of God Himself. Let us then adore our God, and the freeness and the riches of His love! Who is a God like unto Him, who so greatly loved us, vile, hateful sinners! What an instance of God-like grace!”
- Henry Law, Meditations on Ephesians
“God loved us when we were dead in sins. There is no fact which seems to be so staggering to faith. Such action is so utterly at variance with all the feelings which we experience, or witness in others.
Our love is excited by what we deem lovely; our hearts are warmed by the charms of extraordinary worth and grace; we turn with disgust from the hideous deformities of vice and iniquity; we loathe and reprobate the dark features of undisguised evil. Who ever loves that which is altogether hateful?
Such is the manner of man. How different the manner of our God! He loves us with a great love before one particle of divine grace enters our souls; while we are one mass of loathsome iniquity; while we hate Him and His holy law, and manifest our complete alienation from Him by every word and work. What a wondrous thought is here! Oh, for more grace to see it distinctly, and to realize it abidingly! God has greatly loved us, when we were nothing but sin, when we did nothing but sin.
Whence then sprang this love? Surely from nothing belonging to us. It sprang entirely from His own nature, which is Love. ‘God is Love.’ He loved us because it was His will to love us. We may search and reason until all our powers fail, and we shall find no motive or cause outside of God Himself. Let us then adore our God, and the freeness and the riches of His love! Who is a God like unto Him, who so greatly loved us, vile, hateful sinners! What an instance of God-like grace!”
- Henry Law, Meditations on Ephesians
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