Five Days of Encouragement From Saints of OldSample

This Verse Reminds Us of What Comes First: God’s Love to Us

Human beings typically love something they find lovely or loving. But we were not lovely or loving when God loved us. The reasons for God’s love belong solely within him—his eternally loving and gracious character.

Our salvation did not start when we turned our lives around. It started with God and his love. But this verse also reminds us of what comes second: our love to God and other people. The experience of God’s love, especially God’s love seen in the cross, captures our hearts.

As the Puritan Stephen Charnock reminds us, we can’t go on loving the sin that led our dear Savior to the horrors of the cross.

"All love and thankfulness is due to you, Father,

for you gave us your Son,

not only to live but to die for us:

a death so shameful,

a death so accursed,

a death so sharp,

all so that we might repossess the happiness we had lost.

How thankful we are, Father God, for a crucified Redeemer.

Nothing in heaven or earth

is such an amazing wonder as this;

nothing can compete with it for excellence.

May all the many charms of sin

be overcome by this ravishing love,

which bubbles up in every drop of our Redeemer’s blood.

How can we, with thoughts of the cross alive in our hearts,

sin against so much tenderness, compassion, and grace,

and all the other perfections of you, our God,

which sound so loud in our ears from the cross of Jesus?"

-Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)