Christian love

“ My meditation of him shall be sweet when I consider his love for me.
The record of Christ's deeds of mercy toward a multitude of sick and suffering ones gives us a wonderful glimpse of his heart. The thought of his perfect sympathy with his people has comforted the Church in all ages. But draw a little nearer and consider his personal love for you, dear young Christian. Listen to his voice saying so tenderly, "I have loved thee." Forget for a moment the multitude that need his compassion and the disciples who share his sympathy, and try to realize his deep, personal love for you. ”

“ The representation of religious love is the most favorable subject for the beautiful creations of Christian art.
Thus, in the first place, love in God is represented by the history of Christ’s redemption, by the various phases of his life, of his passion, of his death, and of his resurrection. In the second place, love in man, the union of the human soul with God, appears in the holy family, in the maternal love of the Virgin, and in the love of the disciples. ”

“ The general love of God to the world should induce a universal love among mankind. That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth his rain on the just and on the unjust, Matt. v. 45. The peculiar love of God to the church and to the saints should be productive of a peculiar love there: If God so loved us, we ought surely (in some measure suitably thereto) to love one another.
IV. The Christian love is an assurance of the divine inhabitation: If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, v. ”

“ There is an interchange of feeling, a responsiveness of love, a thrill of mutual friendship.
You must love Him, ere to you
He shall seem worthy of your love.
The great appeal of the Christian faith is to Christian experience. Loving Christ is its own justification, as every loving heart knows. Life evidences itself: the existence of light is its own proof. The power of Christ on the heart needs no other argument than itself. Men only doubt when the life has died out, and the light has waned, and flickered, and spent itself. ”

“ No one doubts that, according to the Scriptures, love is the practical principle by which the fruits of faith are brought forth. The Christian character peculiarly consists in a Christlike love. The sum of the law from which we fell is, Thou shalt love; and, being redeemed in Christ, we find the end of the commandment to be love, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned. Redemption itself is a process of love, setting forth from heaven to earth to create and kindle love, and make it triumph in human hearts and lives. Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. ”

“ Christian love ought to be mutual love. Love, and you shall be loved. Being of one accord, and of one mind; not crossing and thwarting, or driving on separate interests, but unanimously agreeing in the great things of God and keeping the unity of the Spirit in other differences. ”

“ This instinctive, Christian love, like all true and pure love, is to manifest itself by ‘preferring one another in honour’; or as the word might possibly be rendered, ‘anticipating one another.’ We are not to wait to have our place assigned before we give our brother his. ”

“ Those would appear to be in the foremost rank, according to the apostle, who had most of true Christian love. Note, True charity is greatly to be preferred to the most glorious gifts. To have the heart glow with mutual love is vastly better than to glare with the most pompous titles, offices, or powers. ”

“ Christians ought to have a tender consideration and concern for one another; they should affectionately consider what their several wants, weaknesses, and temptations are; and they should do this, not to reproach one another, to provoke one another not to anger, but to love and good works, calling upon themselves and one another to love God and Christ more, to love duty and holiness more, to love their brethren in Christ more, and to do all the good offices of Christian affection both to the bodies and the souls of each other. ”

“ Christians should endeavour to be all of one mind in the great points of faith, in real affection, and in Christian practice; they should be like-minded one to another, according to Christ Jesus (Rom. xv. 5) , not according to man's pleasure, but God's word. 2. Though Christians cannot be exactly of the same mind, yet they should have compassion one for another, and love as brethren; they ought not to persecute or hate one another, but love one another with more than common affection; they should love as brethren. 3. Christianity requires pity to the distressed, and civility to all. ”

“ From us they flow on to those who have need of them, so that I should lay before God my faith and my righteousness that they may cover and intercede for the sins of my neighbor, which I take upon myself and so labor and serve in them as if they were my very own. For that is what Christ did for us. This is true love and the genuine rule of a Christian life. The love is true and genuine where there is true and genuine faith. Hence, the Apostle says of love in I Cor. ”

“ Unwavering in her own faith as to the peculiar doctrines of the gospel, she could nevertheless extend love without dissimulation, and the very bowels of Christian fellowship, to others who, whatever might be their mistakes, their infirmities, or their differences in smaller matters, agreed in the great Christian essential of acceptance in the Beloved. ”

“ If it should be, without stopping here to quote specific passages, or use many arguments, one consideration alone will be sufficient to set the question at rest.—True evangelical holiness consists in love to God and man; and sin is loving the creature rather than the Creator. The apostle brings into view both the regenerate and the unregenerate state in this passage—“Set your affection on things above, and not on things on the earth.” Numerous are the passages which teach that love to God is the essence of the Christian character. The affections, therefore, are the seat of this change. ”

“ The gospel of Christ, as far as it prevails, disposes men to be peaceable, softens men's spirits, and sweetens them; and the love of Christ, shed abroad in the heart, constrains men to love one another. 5. The primitive Christians were famous for brotherly love; their very adversaries took notice of it. 6. We have reason to hope that this promise shall yet have a more full accomplishment in the latter times of the Christian church, when the Spirit shall be poured out more plentifully from on high. Then there shall be on earth peace. ”

“ Love is the fruit of the Christian spirit, and the proof of its genuineness. It should be manifested to every believer in Christ. The love of a common Saviour and the sharing in a common suffering tend to intensify mutual esteem and affection. The prayer of the apostle on behalf of the Thessalonians was fulfilled (1 Thess. iii. 12) —an encouragement to pray on behalf of others. ”

“ That hast thou done to me."
Anon.
LOVE.
Thus, when Christianity announced its fundamental idea of love, it, by an immovable logic, enveloped all things in that affection, and every dumb brute of the street comes within the colored curtains of the sanctuary. The Humane Society is a branch of God's Church, and we Christian church-members are all members of all such associations, so far as we are intelligent members of the Church of Christ. Love does not mean love of me or you, but it means love always and for all. ”

“ In the same sermon I observed, "'Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment.' It is not only 'the first and great' command, but all the commandments in one. 'Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,' they are all comprised in this one word, love. ”

“ Faith and love must go together; it is not enough to believe the sound words, and to give an assent to them, but we must love them, believe their truth and love their goodness, and we must propagate the form of sound words in love; speaking the truth in love, Eph. iv. 15. Faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; it must be Christian faith and love, faith and love fastening upon Jesus Christ, in and by whom God speaks to us and we to him. ”

“ I desire you, in addition to having faith and apprehending the four proportions of Christ's kingdom, to know the love of Christ we should have—the love Christ bears toward us, and the love we owe our neighbor. This knowledge transcends all other, even familiarity with the Gospel; for, know as much as you may, your knowledge will avail little or nothing without love. ”

“ Love will spring to where the beloved is; and if we be Christians in any deep and real sense, our hearts will have risen with Christ, and we shall be sitting with Him at the right hand of God. My brother, measure your Christianity, and the reality of your love to Jesus Christ, by this—is it to you natural, and a joy, to turn to Him, and ever to make present to your mind the glories in which He loves and lives, and intercedes, and reigns, for you? ”

“ All hearts confess the saints elect Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect The Christian pearl of charity! ”

“ Yet, alas! what sad seasons of darkness, doubts and fears come on till these clouds which come betwixt, are dispersed by some precious manifestation of love; the holy spirit creating in the mind some very precious exalted views of Christ, clear apprehensions of the love of God, his secret purposes, and decrees the glorious covenant of redemption, the gracious transactions of each adorable person in the Trinity, respecting the salvation of the church; the truth as it is in Christ producing holy meltings of soul, and filling it with all joy and peace in believing ”

“ We might lead them insensibly to acknowledge and understand those ancient and universal laws of love which Christ declared to be the foundation of all religion—"The Lord our God is one Lord.... Love him with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and love thy neighbor as thyself. ”

“ Let him who has love in Christ keep the commandments of Christ. Who can describe the [blessed] bond of the love of God? What man is able to tell the excellence of its beauty, as it ought to be told? The height to which love exalts is unspeakable. Love unites us to God. ”

“ The Christian religion is the religion of sinners, of such as have sinned, and in whom sin in some measure still dwells. The Christian life is a life of continued repentance, humiliation for and mortification of sin, of continual faith in, thankfulness for, and love to the Redeemer, and hopeful joyful expectation of a day of glorious redemption, in which the believer shall be fully and finally acquitted, and sin abolished for ever. ”

“ Unto the edifying of itself in love. We may understand this two ways:—Either that all the members of the church may attain a greater measure of love to Christ and to one another; or that they are moved to act in the manner mentioned from love to Christ and to one another. Observe, Mutual love among Christians is a great friend to spiritual growth: it is in love that the body edifies itself; whereas a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.
verses 17-32 Exhortation to Purity and Holiness; Cautions against Sin; Against Grieving the Spirit. ”

“ So in Eph. i. 4, ‘That we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love.’ But specially in that remarkable passage: ‘The Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another, and toward all men, to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness.’ The holiness and the blamelessness, the positive hidden Divine life-principle, and the external and human life-practice—both are to find their strength, by which we are to be established in them, in our abounding and ever-flowing love. ”

“ Here he lets love stand by itself among other fruits of the Spirit to remind the Christians to love one another, "in honor preferring one another," to esteem others more than themselves because they have Christ and the Holy Ghost within them. ”

“ Our Saviour never fell into sentimentalism or affectation, but His great soul ran over His eyes when on earth; and it would do the same if He dwelt with us now. Christianity excites the deepest emotion, and wakes up all the tumultuous feelings of the soul. Christianity is in harmony with your social nature. It takes your state under its auspices; and its tendency is, by its laws and influences, directly or indirectly, to etherealize the affections of the family, to ennoble the love of country, and to inflame all the enthusiasms which point to the good and glory of the race. ”

“ This same principle of love is led forth to those who bear the image of Christ, who are divinely taught, whether they are Children, young Men, or Fathers—for, he that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God—Ye are taught of God to love one another—he that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten. ”

“ But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is explained by our Apostle to be ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Love illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but a love which has a channel and a course; love which has a method and a process by which it pours itself over the world. ”

“ All the Prophets have striven to make love manifest in the hearts of men. Jesus Christ sought to create this love in the hearts. He suffered all difficulties and ordeals that perchance the human heart might become the fountain source of love. ”