Love of Christ

“ Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart? Can you cry out, "My God, and my All"? Do you desire nothing but him? Are you happy in God? Is he your glory, your delight, your crown of rejoicing? And is this commandment written in your heart, "That he who loveth God love his brother also"? Do you then love your neighbour as yourself? Do you love every man, even your enemies, even the enemies of God, as your own soul? as Christ loved you? Yea, dost thou believe that Christ loved thee, and gave himself for thee? Hast thou faith in his blood? ”

“ Here is the test of our love to Jesus. What is more diffusive or expanding, or constraining in its nature, than the principle of love? It has for the object of its aim the glory of God, and seeks in every way to promote it. The desire of such a soul is, that Christ may be magnified in his body, whether it be by life or by death. ”

“ Christ is not only a treasury and a fulness of grace and power, into which the Spirit is to lead us. But Christ is the Living Saviour, with a heart that beats with a love that is most tenderly human, and yet Divine. It is in this love He comes near, and into this love He receives us, when the Father plants us into Him. In the power of a personal love He wishes to exercise influence, and to attach us to Himself. In that love of His we have the guarantee that His Holiness will enter us; in that love the great power by which it enters. ”

“ That love of Christ to us, received into our hearts, and there producing an answering love to Him, will make us, in the measure in which we live in it and let it rule us, love everything and every person that He loves. That love of Jesus Christ, stealing into our hearts and there sweetening the ever-springing 'issues of life,' will make them flow out in glad obedience to any commandment of His. That love of Jesus Christ, received into our hearts, and responded to by our answering love, will work, as love always does, a magical transformation. ”

“ Not only thy love itself, but all the fruits and products of it, its working in the heart, its works in the life. How well does it become a believer thus to love Christ, and what a pleasure does Christ take in it! ”

“ But for all that, it remains true that a heart warmed with the love of Christ needs to express its love, and will give it forth, as certainly as light must radiate from its centre, or heat from a fire. ”

“ They shall be happy in the love of Christ; for he it is that says, I love those that love me, v. 17. Those that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity shall be beloved of him with a peculiar distinguishing love: he will love them and manifest himself to them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And there are as many methods of manifestation of love as there are different temperaments. With some, it is silent; with others, it speaks. With some, it sits listening at Christ's feet; with others, it hurries too and fro to serve. With some, it is exuberant and enthusiastic; with others, it is still and deep. But whatever be the shade or the evidence, in each Christian heart there must be love to Christ, and the heart must be willing to give up its throne to the reign of Jesus as its Lord. ”

“ Blessed be thy love, for that we feel in our hearts any motion toward thee. Behold, O Lord, we present ourselves before thee, to be inspired with such a vigorous sense of thy love, as may put us forward with a greater earnestness, zeal, and diligence in all our duty. Renew in us, we beseech, a lively image of thee, in all righteousness, purity, mercy, faithfulness and truth. O that Jesus, the hope of glory, may be formed in us, in all humility, meekness, patience, and an absolute surrender of our souls and bodies to thy holy will: that we may not live, but Christ may live in us ”

“ Christ must have been honoured with all we have, and we must not think to keep back any part of the price. Do we give him the precious ointment of our best affections? Let him have them all; love him with all the heart. ”

“ He called her his love and his fair one. Whatever she is to others, to him she is acceptable, and in his eyes she is amiable. Those that take Christ for their beloved, he will own as his; never was any love lost that was bestowed upon Christ. Christ, by expressing his love to believers, invites and encourages them to follow him. ”

“ It is Christ who first reveals the full measure of love, who makes us see the one adequate Object of love, and who {333} forges within our human spirits the invisible bonds of a love that binds us forever to Him who so loved us. Here in Him—"a Man loving all the world, a God dying for mankind" [37] —we see that we are infinitely beloved, that the foundations of an eternal Friendship are laid, that God is infinitely prone to love, and that true love spares nothing for the sake of what it loves—"O miraculous and eternal Godhead suffering on a Cross for me!" ”

“ Love for God was supreme, love for one another impartial. Christ the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father,—one in nature, in character, and in purpose,—the only being in all the universe that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God. ”

“ But there may be some, calling themselves worshippers of Christ, who cannot honestly say that they love Him. They trust His power, they bow before Him as divine; but they have no affection at all for Him, as man, or as God. What St Paul described as the “constraining” love of Christ has never touched them. And yet they fancy they worship! ”

“ In adoring the Sacred Heart, then, we adore in a particular manner the love of Christ for sinners; and it is for this reason that he has given us this devotion, knowing that it is only by the thought of the love of his Heart for us that our hearts can be won to the love of him. ”

“ Are not these manifest proofs of the love which Jesus Christ has for us? Are they not motives powerful enough to oblige us to love Him? Ungrateful as we are, since it is for us alone that all these wonders have been wrought, what are we to think? Does not Jesus Christ, dwelling on our Altars, deserve to be honoured by us? Does He not shew us love sufficient to merit a return of love? Woe and anathema to him, who, after all this, does not love Jesus Christ. ”

“ I see no way; but now that Christ has excited our love for him by showing unutterable love for us; now that we know him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts, feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become possible to love as God loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to God. Besides, Christ is the express image of God's person: in loving him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the Father, whom we see, he tells us, when we see him. ”

“ And where I say that He abideth sorrowfully and moaning, it meaneth all the true feeling that we have in our self, in contrition and compassion, and all sorrowing and moaning that we are not oned with our Lord. And all such that is speedful, it is Christ in us. And though some of us feel it seldom, it passeth never from Christ till what time He hath brought us out of all our woe. For love suffereth never to be without pity. ”

“ Note, as to the first, the extraordinary boldness of that majestic saying: 'If a man loves Me, My Father will love him.' God regards our love to Jesus Christ as the fulfilling of the law, as equivalent to our supreme love to Himself, as containing in it the germ of all that is pleasing in His sight. And so, upon our hearts, if we love Christ, there falls the benediction of the Father's love. ”

“ It seems a paradox that it is possible for one to be a Christian without having a consuming passion for souls. But in reality the whole matter centers not upon our love for those around us, but upon our love for the Lord Jesus Himself. When we are in unbroken fellowship with Christ, the natural result is love for those so dear to Him. 'The love of Jesus is not an absorbing, but a radiating love. ”

“ When we have not a full assurance of Christ's love we must live by a faithful adherence to him. "Though I have not the sensible consolation I used to have, yet I will cleave to this, Christ is mine and I am his." ”

“ Jesus Christ wishes each of us to love Him. If it is true that He loves me, then, intertwisted with the outgoing of His heart towards me is the yearning that my heart may go out towards Him. Dear brethren, this is no pulpit rhetoric, it is a plain, simple fact, inseparable from the belief in Christ's love—that He wishes you and every soul of man to love Him, and that, whatever else you bring, lip reverence, orthodox belief, apparent surrender, in the assay shop of His great mint all these are rejected, and the only metal that passes the fire is the pure gold of an answering love. ”

“ Christ says that His end, an end which is surely attained in the declaration of the divine name, is that 'the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them.' We are here touching upon heights too dizzy for free and safe walking, on glories too bright for close and steady gaze. ”

“ Christ is the darling of the Father, and the grand object of the Spirit’s glorification: angels adore him, saints admire him, and in our poor feeble way, oh that we could love him with every power and passion, with every member and faculty of body, soul and spirit. ”

“ Returning to the Lord, is the heart, mind, faith, and hope of a soul, who was chosen in Christ, and united to Christ. Now, by the power of the spirit bending, inclining, seeking, and desiring Christ. Coming to the Lord our God is moving in mind to the Father, as a God of love, grace, and mercy, in Christ to us. Yet, if the Lord is drawing you to Christ, as your only hope, mark, he will have mercy, he will abundantly pardon. Are you, my dear girl, seeking his favour and mercy to be manifested to your soul, convinced of your need of it? ”

“ If we love Christ, we love one another, we love His work, His Word, and are eager to obey Him in all things He commands. We may not agree in a uniformity of creeds, but we reach a higher union when our hearts are mingled in the capacious alembic of a Christ-like love. ”

“ May we all thus experience what it is, to be not almost only, but altogether Christians! Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus: knowing we have peace with God through Jesus Christ: rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, and having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost given unto us! ”

“ God grant that both our hearts may he filled with Christ, and whilst 'with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,' may we 'be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.' Looking unto Jesus' is after all, the grand secret for keeping alive a love for holiness in the heart, and a longing for a more constant and close communion with our Heavenly Father. ”

“ LESSED is he that understandeth what it is to love Jesus, and to despise himself for Jesus' sake.
Thou oughtest to leave thy beloved for the beloved; for Jesus must be loved alone above all things. ”

“ Christ is for him the complete manifestation of life and the perfect exhibition or unveiling of God's love, and he who appreciates this love, feels its attraction, and lives a life which corresponds to his soul's insight, becomes {26} himself Christlike, forsakes sin and self, and enters upon a life of salvation. "All who are saved," he says, "are of one spirit with God, and he who is the foremost in love is the foremost of those who are saved." ”

“ St Paul says, “as the Christ also loved us and gave up Himself for us a sacrifice.” When the apostle writes the Christ, he points us along the whole line of the revelation of the cross. [132] We think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness of such love as this. Christ’s was a representative and exemplary love, with its forerunners and its followers all walking in one path. “The Christ loved and gave”; for love that does not give, that prompts to no effort and puts itself to no sacrifice, is but a luxury of the heart,—useless and even selfish. ”

“ When Jesus Christ appeared as a symbol of love and mercy in this world, preaching the prodigal son, and proclaiming the God of this world to be a God of righteousness and compassion, could the hearts of his hearers remain insensible to the manifestation and the sermon? ”

“ And believe me, that if thou art called unto my fiery ordeal, Christ will give thee grace and strength equal unto thy need. It is not much for them who love Christ, if they see Him stand beyond a little fire, to pluck up heart and go through the fire to Him. ”

“ 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. ”