Nick Roark's Blog, page 27

“God loves us” by Thomas Goodwin

“The angels, we read, are elect, ‘the elect angels.’ (1 Timothy 5:21) But we nowhere read of them that they are elect in Christ.

Likewise that they are the sons of God, by creation namely; but not adopted sons through Christ, as we here are said to be.

And so they are highly favoured of God; but nowhere that they are accepted in the beloved, as here we are said to be (Ephesians 1:5-6).

It may be said, they are highly favoured as menial servants to God, but not as sons adopted.

Many courtiers were in high favour with Saul; but David speaks of his being son to him as an higher matter by far. As in nobility there are higher ranks than other, so among the nobles in heaven.

The angels, it may be said, God hath loved them with a special love, and He hath loved Christ and both from eternity; but it is nowhere said, that He hath loved the angels as Christ said there, ‘Thou hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me.’ (John 17:23)

And how special a privilege this is I shall express to you by this similitude.

The sun, you know, shines upon all the world; but if you take a burning-glass and hold it in the point of union or concentration, between the shining sun and something that you would have inflamed, hereby the sunbeams are contracted, and do fall upon that object with a more intense heat and fervour, even to an inflammation of it; and this by reason that the beams were first contracted in the centre of the glass, and then diffused and with more vehemency darted upon the object under it.

Thus God loveth all His creatures; His love is ‘over all His works,’ (Psalm 145:9) so the Scripture expresseth it; but He loves them not in His beloved, He accepts them not in Him.

But now for the sons of men elect, that Son of God, who is His beloved, contracts all the beams of God’s love into Himself.

They fall all upon Him first, and then they through Him shine and diffuse themselves upon us all, with a ray infinitely more strong and vigorous than they would have done if we had been considered in ourselves alone.

And this is the advantage of being accepted in the Beloved.

God loves us with the same love wherewith He loved His Son.”

–Thomas Goodwin, “Sermon 7: Ephesians 1:5-6,” The Works of Thomas Goodwin, Volume 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1861/2006), 1: 111.

“One beam of lovingkindness” by Richard Sibbes

“The love of God in Christ is not barren kindness.

It is a love that reaches from everlasting to everlasting: from love in choosing us, to love in glorifying us.

In all the miseries of the world, one beam of this lovingkindness of the Lord will scatter all.”

–Richard Sibbes, “Divine Meditations and Holy Contemplations,” The Works of Richard Sibbes, vol. 7 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1638/2001), 7: 187.

“As the spring follows winter” by Richard Sibbes

“Glory follows afflictions, not as the day follows the night, but as the spring follows winter.

For the winter prepares the earth for the spring: so do afflictions sanctified prepare the soul for glory.”

–Richard Sibbes, “Divine Meditations and Holy Contemplations,” The Works of Richard Sibbes, vol. 7 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1638/2001), 7: 189.

“He is worth all creatures” by Thomas Goodwin

“God’s chief end was not to bring Christ into the world for us, but us for Christ.

He is worth all creatures.

And God contrived all things that do fall out, and even redemption itself for the setting forth of Christ’s glory, more than our salvation.”

–Thomas Goodwin, “Sermon 6: Ephesians 1:5-6,” The Works of Thomas Goodwin, Volume 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1861/2006), 1: 100.

“We should rejoice that God is without passions” by Samuel Renihan

“God does not have love; God is love (1 John 4:8).

God does not have mercy; God is merciful (Eph. 2:4).

God does not have joy; God is eternally blessed (1 Tim. 6:15).

You see, for creatures, these things are qualities; they can be added or subtracted, increased or decreased, provoked or extinguished.

But not so in God. Thomas Adams said, ‘They are perfections in him what are affections in us.'[1]

My dear reader, this is what makes impassibility such a wonderful doctrine. It causes us to recognize our creaturely frame, so changeable and weak. And it causes us to see the essential unchanging perfection of our God.

You can wake up and not feel very loving towards others. You have bad days. You have mood swings. You have temper tantrums. You have depression. You have fear, worry, anxiety, stress, bitterness, resentment, and more. You are constantly being overcome by all sorts of things, outside of you.

But it is not so with God. He is all that he is. He is ‘I AM WHO I AM.” He is the one who does not change.

He is not a man, nor a son of man. Love in God, therefore, is not a passion or affection, but an unchanging perfection.

Mercy in God is not like human mercy. Our mercy is heart-misery towards another. We are more prone to be moved by a picture of puppies and kittens than we are to help our neighbor.

God, on the other hand, without the passion of mercy, without the heart-misery of human feeling, is the God who helps the helpless.

He is the one who helps those who can give absolutely nothing back to him, and who do not deserve his help. He is truly merciful.

I hope that this helps you to see how wonderful a doctrine this is.

Rather than giving us a picture of an apathetic uncaring God of whom we know nothing, and cannot possibly relate to, we see divine unchanging perfections, which become the very foundation for our running to God.

I can wake up every day, and go to sleep every night, knowing that when I cry out to God, I am crying out to the God who is love, who is merciful, who is kind.

He is all that He is. We should praise Him that He is not like us.

We should rejoice that God is without passions.

God does not have a stomach that grumbles, or arms that tire, or legs that tremble, or a mind that needs caffeine, or a head that aches, or a heart that races.

He does not have lust, or violent rage, or depression, or fear, or anxiety.

God is love. God is mercy. God is holiness.

He is a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions.

Let us love God, with rightly ordered affections, and let us praise our God who is love. Amen.”

–Samuel Renihan, God Without Passions: The Majesty of God’s Unshakeable Perfection (Middletown, DE: Broken Wharfe, 2024), 24-25.

Thomas Adams, The Workes of Tho: Adams (London: Tho. Harper, 1629), 258.

“The more it is chewed, the pleasanter it is” by William Tyndale

“Forasmuch as this epistle is the principal and most excellent part of the New Testament and most pure evangelion, that is to say, glad tidings, and that we call gospel, and also is a light and a way unto the whole scripture, I think it meet that every Christian man not only know it, by rote and without the book, but also exercise himself therein evermore continually, as with the daily bread of the soul.

No man verily can read Romans too often, or study it too well.

For the more it is studied, the easier it is.

The more it is chewed, the pleasanter it is.

And the more groundly it is searched, the preciouser things are found in it, because so great treasure of spiritual things lieth hid therein.”

–William Tyndale, “A Pathway Into the Holy Scripture,” in Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, ed. Henry Walter, vol. 1, The Works of William Tyndale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 1: 484. Tyndale seems to be echoing Martin Luther’s comments on Romans.

“Joyful tidings that maketh a man leap for joy” by William Tyndale

“Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy.

Just as when David had killed Goliath the giant glad tidings came unto the Jews, that their fearful and cruel enemy was slain and that they were delivered out of all danger.

In like manner is the Evangelion of God (which we call gospel; and the New Testament) joyful tidings. The gospel is published by the apostles throughout all the world, of Christ, the right David, who hath fought with sin, with death, and the devil, and overcome them.

Whereby all men that were in bondage to sin, wounded with death, overcome of the devil, are, without their own merits or deservings, loosed, justified, restored to life and saved, brought to liberty and reconciled unto the favor of God, and set at one with Him again, which tidings as many as believe laud, praise, and thank God and are glad, sing and dance for joy.”

–William Tyndale, “A Pathway Into the Holy Scripture,” in Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, ed. Henry Walter, vol. 1, The Works of William Tyndale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 1: 8–9.

“Let this be your motto and your guide” by J.C. Ryle

“Oh, keep your eye steadily fixed on Christ, and you shall go through fire and water and they shall not hurt you.

Are you tempted? Look unto Jesus.

Are you afflicted? Look unto Jesus.

Do all speak evil of you? Look unto Jesus.

Do you feel cold, dull, backsliding? Look unto Jesus.

Never say, ‘I will heal myself and then look unto Jesus, I will get into a good frame and then take comfort in my Beloved.’

It is the very delusion of Satan.

But whether you are weak or strong, in the valley or on the mount, in sickness or in health, in sorrow or in joy, in going out or in coming in, in youth or in age, in richness or in poverty, in life or in death, let this be your motto and your guide— ‘LOOKING UNTO JESUS.‘”

–J.C. Ryle, The Christian Race and Other Sermons (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2024), 147.

“We shall see Christ face to face” by Charles Spurgeon

“Jesus is represented in the Bible; there is His portrait; we look on the Bible, and we see it. We see Him ‘through a glass darkly.’ (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Just as sometimes, when you are looking in your looking glass, you see somebody going along in the street. You do not see the person; you only see Him reflected.

Now, we see Christ reflected; but then we shall not see Him in the looking-glass; we shall positively see His person.

Not the reflected Christ, not Christ in the sanctuary, not the mere Christ shining out of the Bible, not Christ reflected from the sacred pulpit; but ‘we shall see Him as He is.’ (1 John 3:2)

Again: how partially we see Christ here. The best believer only gets half a glimpse of Christ.

While here one Christian sees Christ’s glorious head, and he delights much in the hope of His coming.

Another beholds His wounds, and he always preaches the atonement.

Another looks into His heart, and he glories most in immutability and the doctrine of election.

Another only looks at Christ’s manhood, and he speaks much concerning the sympathy of Christ with believers.

Another thinks more of his Godhead, and you will always hear him asserting the divinity of Christ.

I do not think there is a believer who has seen the whole of Christ.

No. We preach as much as we can do of the Master; but we cannot paint him wholly.

Some of the best paintings, you know, only just give the head and shoulders; they do not give the full-length portrait.

There is no believer, there is no choice divine, that could paint a full-length portrait of Christ.

There are some of you who could not paint much more than his little finger; and mark, if we can paint the little finger of Jesus well, it will be worth a life-time to be able to do that.

Those who paint best cannot paint even His face fully. Ah! He is so glorious and wondrous, that we cannot fully portray Him.

We have not seen Him more than partially. Come, beloved; how much dost thou know of Christ?

Thou wilt say:

“Ah! I know some little of him; I could join with the spouse, when she declares that he is altogether lovely; but I have not surveyed him from head to foot, and on his wondrous glories I cannot fully dwell.”

Here we see Christ partially; there we shall see Christ entirely, when “we shall see him as He is.”

Here, too, how dimly we see Christ! It is through many shadows that we now behold our Master.

Dim enough is the vision here; but there “we shall see him as He is.”

Have you never stood upon the hill-tops, when the mist has played on the valley?

You have looked down to see the city and the streamlet below; you could just ken yonder steeple, and mark that pinnacle.

You could see that dome in the distance; but they were all so swathed in the mist that you could scarcely discern them.

Suddenly the wind has blown away the mist from under you, and you have seen the fair, fair valley.

Ah! it is so when the believer enters heaven.

Here he stands and looks upon Christ veiled in a mist—upon a Jesus who is shrouded; but when he gets up there, on Pisgah’s brow, higher still, with his Jesus, then he shall not see Him dimly, but he shall see Him brightly.

We shall see Jesus then “without a veil between”— not dimly, but face to face.

Here, too, how distantly we see Christ! Almost as far off as the farthest star!

We see Him, but not nigh; we behold Him, but not near to us; we catch some glimpse of Him; but oh! what lengths and distances lie between!

What hills of guilt—a heavy load!

But then we shall see Him closely; we shall see Him face to face; as a man talketh with his friend, even so shall we then talk with Jesus.

Now we are distant from Him; then we shall be near to Him.

Away in the highlands, where Jesus dwells, there shall our hearts be too, when heart and body shall be ‘present with the Lord.'”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Beatific Vision,” in The New Park Street Pulpit Sermons, vol. 2 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1856), 2: 64–65.

“He came as a conqueror with the gladness of the imminent victory in His heart” by B.B. Warfield

“We call our Lord ‘the Man of Sorrows,’ and the designation is obviously appropriate for one who came into the world to bear the sins of men and to give His life a ransom for many.

It is, however, not a designation which is applied to Christ in the New Testament, and even in the Prophet (Isa. 53:3) it may very well refer rather to the objective afflictions of the righteous servant than to His subjective distresses.

In any event we must bear in mind that our Lord did not come into the world to be broken by the power of sin and death, but to break it.

He came as a conqueror with the gladness of the imminent victory in His heart; for the joy set before Him He was able to endure the cross, despising shame (Heb. 12:2).

And as He did not prosecute His work in doubt of the issue, neither did He prosecute it hesitantly as to its methods.

He rather (so we are told, Luke 10:21) ‘exulted in the Holy Spirit‘ as He contemplated the ways of God in bringing many sons to glory.

The word is a strong one and conveys the idea of exuberant gladness, a gladness which fills the heart.

And it is intimated that, on this occasion at least, this exultation was a product in Christ— and therefore in His human nature— of the operations of the Holy Spirit, whom we must suppose to have been always working in the human soul of Christ, sustaining and strengthening it.

It cannot be supposed that, this particular occasion alone being excepted, Jesus prosecuted His work on earth in a state of mental depression.

His advent into the world was announced as ‘good tidings of great joy‘ (Luke 2:10), and the tidings which He himself proclaimed were ‘the good tidings‘ by way of eminence.

Is it conceivable that He went about proclaiming them with a ‘sad countenance‘ (Matt. 6:16)?”

–Benjamin B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1950), 122-124.