Morning, June 11

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"We love him because he first loved us."

  1 John 4:19

   There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun;
   and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh
   from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the
   infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever
   be a great and certain truth, that we love him for no other reason than
   because he first loved us. Our love to him is the fair offspring of his
   love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may
   have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the heart by God's
   Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been
   brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that when we had rebelled
   against him, he should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to draw
   us back. No! never should we have had a grain of love towards God
   unless it had been sown in us by the sweet seed of his love to us.
   Love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed abroad in the
   heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must be divinely
   nourished. Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish
   naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus
   is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but
   that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon
   wither. As love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread.
   It cannot exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on
   high. Love must feed on love. The very soul and life of our love to God
   is his love to us.


   "I love thee, Lord, but with no love of mine,

   For I have none to give;

   I love thee, Lord; but all the love is thine,

   For by thy love I live.

   I am as nothing, and rejoice to be

   Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee."