“The very thought of this is enough to make us leap for joy” by John Owen

“Eye the Father as love. Look not on Him as an always lowering father, but as one most kind and tender.

Let us look on Him by faith, as one that hath had thoughts of kindness towards us from everlasting.

It is misapprehension of God that makes any run from Him. ‘They that know Thee will put their trust in Thee.’ (Psalm 9:10)

Would a soul continually eye His everlasting tenderness and compassion, His thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, His present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from Him.

Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father: as one full of eternal, free love towards them.

Let their hearts and thoughts be filled with breaking through all discouragements that lie in the way.

Consider whose love it is:

It is the love of Him who is in Himself all-sufficient, infinitely satiated with Himself and His own glorious excellencies and perfections.

It is the love of Him who hath no need to go forth with His love unto others, nor to seek an object of it without Himself. There might he rest with delight and complacency to eternity.

He is sufficient unto His own love. He had His Son, also, His eternal Wisdom, to rejoice and delight Himself in from all eternity. (Prov. 8:30)

This might take up and satiate the whole delight of the Father. But he will love His saints also.

And it is such a love, as wherein He seeks not His own satisfaction only, but our good therein also.

It is the love of a God, the love of a Father, whose proper outgoings are kindness and bounty.

Consider what kind of love it is:

It is an eternal love. It was fixed on us before the foundation of the world.

Before we were, or had done the least good, then were His thoughts upon us.

Before we were, or had done the least good, then was His delight in us.

Before we were, or had done the least good, then did the Son rejoice in the thoughts of fulfilling His Father’s delight in Him (Prov. 8:30).

Yea, the delight of the Father in the Son, there mentioned, is not so much His absolute delight in Him as the express image of His person and the brightness of His glory, wherein He might behold all His own excellencies and perfections, as with respect unto His love and His delight in the sons of men.

So the order of the words require us to understand it: ‘I was daily His delight,’ and, ‘My delights were with the sons of men;’ —- that is, in the thoughts of kindness and redemption for them: and in that respect, also, was He His Father’s delight.

It was from eternity that He laid in His own bosom a design for our happiness.

The very thought of this is enough to make all that is within us, like the babe in the womb of Elisabeth, to leap for joy.

A sense of it cannot but prostrate our souls to the lowest abasement of a humble, holy reverence, and make us rejoice before him with trembling.”

–John Owen, “Communion with God,” The Works of John Owen, Volume 2 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1684/2000), 2: 32-33.