LOVE
AND SUFFERING
The one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love, is ever the one who is doing considerate small ones.
F.W. Robertson
Love for Christ
Thomas Doolittle
Love is the everlasting grace that will continue in use and increase, even when other graces will have ceased. Some graces are particularly suited to our present state of imperfection in this world. At the present time, we live by faith, repent and mourn for sin, live in hope of the glory which will be revealed, and wait until we .
So it is that those who love Christ sincerely here, will love him perfectly hereafter, and be forever blessed in that love. But those who do not love him in this world, cannot love him in the next. For the lack of such love, they shall be accursed forever.
Love shows the true character of a man, according to the object which he loves more than anything else: for as is the love, so is the man. According to his love, so might you confidently designate the man. If he is a lover of honor, he is an ambitious man; a lover of pleasure, a sensual man; and if he chiefly love the world, he is a covetous man. If a man loves righteousness, he is a religious man; if the things above, a heavenly-minded man; and if he love Christ with a pre-eminent love, he is a sincere man: “Rightly do they love you.,” Song of Songs 1:4.
If Christ has our love, he has our all; and Christ never has what he deserves from us, till he has our love. True love withholds nothing from Christ, when it is sincerely set upon him. If we actually love him, he will have our time, and he will have our service, and he will have the use of all our resources, and gifts, and graces; indeed, then he shall have our possessions, freedom, and our very lives, whenever he calls for them. In the same way, when God loves any of us, he will withhold nothing from us that is good for us. He does not hold back his own only begotten Son, Rom. 8:32. When Christ loves us, he gives us everything we need– his merits to justify us, his Spirit to sanctify us, his grace to adorn us, and his glory to crown us. Therefore, when any of us love Christ sincerely, we lay everything down at his feet, and give up all to be at his command and service: “And they loved not their lives unto the death,” Rev. 12:11.
Thomas Doolittle
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