The Affectionate and Supreme Love of God

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” — Mark xii. 30.

Among all the teachers of religion that have been sent from God to men, the most eminent and illustrious are Moses and Christ; Moses, the servant of the living God, and Christ, his only-hegotten Son. Both of them lay the foundation of all true religion in the unity of God, and both of them make our religion to consist in love. Thus saith Moses in the sixth of Deuteronomy, whence my text is cited, and thus saith the blessed Jesus in the place where my text lies, Hear 0 Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Thou shalt love him with all thij heart.

It is no wonder that all the powers of our natures, with all the utmost extent of our capacities, must be devoted to the love and service of this God, since there is but one, since he is God alone, and there is none besides him, Isaiah xliv. 6. He must reign over the heart and the soul, over all our intellectual and our bodily powers, supreme, and without a rival. Though the love of our neighbor is required both by Moses and Christ, as a necessary part of our religion, yet it must never stand in competition with the love of our God.

Some suppose the supreme and intense degree of this love, to be the whole design of Christ, in recommending the love of God to us in all these four expressions. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy hearty and with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, viz., to intimate in general that all the faculties of nature should be employed in the love and service of God, with the greatest intenseness and full vigor of exercise.

But if we should distinguish these senteuces, according to the different powers of nature, into so many different significations, I think they may be most naturally thus explained: God must be loved with all the mind, that is, he must stand highest in the esteem of the judgment: he must be loved with all the soul, that is, with the strongest attachment of the will to him: he must be loved with all the heart, that is, with the warmest and sincerest aff’ection: and he must be loved with all the strength, that is, this love must be manifested by the utmost exercise and activity of all the inferior powers.

The heart, in the language of Scripture, and in the common sense of men, is the seat of the passions, that is, of fear, hope, love, hatred, joy, sorrow, shame, desire, and such like, which are usually called the passions or affections of the heart. I shall not stand in this place to give a more exact or philosophical account of them, having done that in another treatise.* If it be enquired why the heart is said to be the seat of the passions, there is this good reason for it, viz.^ It is by sensible effects on the heart, that several of the affections do chiefly exert and manifest themselves; and it was chiefly for this reason that Jewish philosophy gave the soul of man its chief residence in the heart, and made it to be the seat of the passions.

The heart also in Scripture, and in almost all nations and languages, is used to express or imply sincerity; what is done from the heart is done sincerely, perhaps, because the passions are naturally sincere, and are not so easy to be disguised as the outward actions of men.

Now since it is my design to treat of the exercises of the passions, or aff”ections of the heart in the affairs of religion, I have chosen this sentence as the foundation of my discourses. The plain and obvious proposition contained in the words is this, viz.:

“The Lord our God is the proper object of our most sincere affection, and our supreme love.” It is not enough for the eye to be lifted up to him, or the knee to bow before him; it is not enough for the tongue to speak of him, or the hand to act for his interest in the world; all this may be done by painted hypocrites, whose religion is all disguise and vanity: but the heart, with all the inward powers and passions, must be devoted to him in the first place: this is religion indeed. The great God values not the service of men, if the heart be not in it: The Lord sees and judges the heart; he has no regard to outward forms of worship, if there be no inward adoration, if no devout atlection be employed therein. It is therefore a matter of infinite importance, to have the whole heart engaged steadfastly for God. If this be done we shall have a sufficient evidence in ourselves, that we are truly religious, and are beloved of God. In treating this subject, I shall consider these seven things:

I. What is presupposed and implied in the affectionate and supreme love of God.

II. What will be the effects of this supreme love to God on all

* The Doctrine of the Passioas.

the other passions, or how this divine passion will engage all the rest of the affectionate powers in the interests of religion.

III. Of what use and importance the passions are in religion, and what advantage is to be der-ived from them.

IV. How far the passions may be abused, even in religious concerns, or what is the irregular use of them, and how their efforts should be limited and restrained. — Under each of these heads I shall propose some useful reflections.

V. We shall show how the affectionate Christian may be vindicated, against the cavils and reproaches of men, in his warmest exercises of devotion.

VI. What relief or comfort may be given to humble and sincere Christians, who complain that they feel but very low degrees of this affectionate love to God, or of the exercise of pious passions, either in public worship, or in their devout retirements.

VII. What are the most proper and effectual methods of exciting and engaging the affections in religion. Of each of these in their order.

First, “What is presupposed and imphed in the supreme and affectionate love of God?” I answer, these five things,“*”

I. Some good degrees of the knowledge of God, and such an acquaintance with him, as may raise the highest esteem of him in our mind. It is impossible that we should love any thing that we Igjiow not: and it is not to be expected that we should love God supremely or with all our hearty if we have not known him to be more excellent, and more desirable than all other things we are acquainted with. We must have the highest opinion of his transcendent worth, or we cannot love him above all things.

It is granted, we may love or delight in some objects of an inferior nature, as they are instruments of our health or ease, or comfort; so we are said to love our habitation and our food, because they minister to our conveniency or support in the present life. We may love some poor worthless wretches with good-will and compassion, because we design to bestow some benefits upon them. We love our country and our kindred with a sort of natural attachment of the heart, because they belong to ourselves, and we are, as it were, of a piece with them. We love our friends because we esteem

* I might have described the affectionate love of God here by the love of esteem, the love of benevolence, and the love of complacency, according to the distributions of love in the “Treatise of the Passions,” mentioned in the preface; but I choose rather in this place to show what acts or opera,- tions of the understanding and will are presupposed and included in the love of God: the more affectionate operations of it are reserved to the next, discourse tliera possessed of some valuable properti.’s, and able to confer benefits on us, or to relieve our wants: But unless we see the great and blessed God, as a being possessed of the highest excellencies, and capable of bestowing on us the richest benefits; unless we see hiui as an all-sufiicient good, we shall never love him with our whole heart: The affection to so unseen and spiritual a being as God is, can never rise high where the esteem is but low; Where the love ought to be superior to all other loves, the esteem must be transcendent.

II. The affectionate and supreme love of God presupposes some hope of an interest to be obtained in his iixvor, and the highest advantages to be derived from him. If I lie down in despair of his mercy, I cannot look on God, even in all his supreme excellencies, with an eye of love. The devil, the worst of creatures, knows more of the transcendent glory and worth of the great God, than the wisest and the best of mortals here on earth: But he knows there is no hope for him to obtain an interest in his favor, and therefore he continues in his old enmity. His rebellion has cut him off from all expectation of divine mercy, and therefore he cannot love this God of infinite excellency. A dreadful state indeed for an intelligent being, that he cannot love what he knows to be infinitely amiable!

Hope is the most alluring spring of love. Terror and slavish fear stand opposite to this holy affection: Such fear has tormenL’m it, and so far as we fear God as an enemy, we are not made perfect in his love; 1 John iv. 18. We love him, because we hope that he has, or he will love us: It is the assurance, or at least the expectation of some interest in God, that engages the most affectionate love: And, perhaps, the words of my text may have some reference hereto, when it is said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God. When we believe or hope that the Lord is our God, we cannot but love him,

III. This love of the heart implies a strong inclination of the will toward God, a steady bent of soul toward this blessed Author of our being and happiness: It implies a choice of him above and beyond all things else, as our most desirable portion and our eternal good. If any thing in this world be the chosen portion of our souls, if any thing beneath and besides God be made our chief hope, our support, and our life, our hearts will run out in strongest affections toward it, for it is our chief happiness; and then we can never love God as it becomes a creature to love his Creator.

The holy Psalmist was a most affectionate lover of his God, and how often does he call him iQ portion of his inheritance his refuge,

ISAAC WATTS, D. D. loY

and his hope? Psalm xvi. 5. cxlii. 5, and in Psaliu lxxiii. 26. Thou art the strength of my hearty and my portion for even Blessed saint! He had chosen God for his eternal all.

Under this head I should add also, that where the will is thus attached to God, the soul will exert itself in continual wishes for the honor of God in the world: It is the nature of love to wish well, and to do good to the beloved object; and since God can receive no other good from us, but the manifestation of his excellencies and honors among men, we shall earnestly seek and wish this glory of God, if we are sincere lovers of him.

IV. This affectionate and supreme love of God includes in it an outgoing of the heart after him, with most intense longings, and most pleasing sensations: This is what we are wont to call more eminently the love of desire, and the love of delight, which I shall speak of more at large in the following discourse. The heart of a sincere good man is restless till it find God, that is, till it obtain a solid hope and persuasion of his love, a growing conformity to him, and constant delight in him. The heart is not easy without God: It acquiesces and rests in him alone. If I have God for my friend, and my everlasting portion, I have all: If he be absent, 0 that I knew where I might find him! Job xxiii. 3. And if he manifest his presence with his divine influences, “Come back, O my soul, from amongst the creatures; come back, and return to God thy rest;” Psalm cxvi. 7.

V. Where the love of God reigns in the affections it will command all the other powers of nature, and all the rest of the passions, to act suitably to this sovereign and ruling affection of love: The eye will often look up to God in a way of faith and humble dependence: The ear will be attentive to his holy word: The hand will be lifted up to heaven in daily requests: The knees will be bended in humble worship: all the outward powers wull be busy in doing the will of God, and promoting his glory: He that loves God will keep his commandments and fulfil every present duty with delight: He will endeavor to please God in all Ins actions, and watch against and avoid whatsoever may oflend him. And while the several outward powers are thus engaged, all the inward affections of nature will be employed in correspondent exercises. Supreme love will govern all the active train of human passions, and lead them captive to cheerful obedience.

This brings me to the next thing I proposed: But before I enter upon it I would make these four reflections, which will conclude the present discourse.

Reflection I. How vain are all their pretences to love God who know little or nothing of him, who are neither acquainted with the glorious perfections of his nature, nor with the wondrous discoveries of his grace! Love must be founded in knowledge. How vain are their pretences to love God with all their heart, and in a supreme degree, who never saw him to be a being of transcendent worth, of surpassing excellency, and capable of making them for ever happy; who value their corn, and their wine, and their oil, their business, their riches, or their diversions more than God and his love! How senseless and absurd is the pretence to love God above all things, if we do not resolve to live upon him as our hope and happiness; if we do not choose him to be our God and our All, our chief and all-sufficient portion in this world, and that to come! Where the idea of God as a being oi supreme excellence doth not reign in the mind, where the will is not determined and fixed on God, as our supreme good, men are strangers to this sacred and divine aifection of love. Till this be done, we cannot be said to love God with all the heart.

Reflection 11. How necessary and useful a practice it is for a Christian to meditate often on the transcendent perfection and worth of the blessed God, to survey his attributes, and his grace in Christ Jesus, to keep up in the mind a constant idea of his supreme excellence, and frequently to repeat and confirm the choice of him, as our highest hope, our portion, and our everlasting good! This will keep the love of God warm at the heart, and maintain the divine aifection in its primitive life and vigor. But if our idea of the adorable and supreme excellence of God grow faint and feeble, and sink lower in the mind; if we lose the sight of his amiable glories, the sense of his amazing love in the gospel, his rich promises and his alluring grace, if our will cleave not to him as our chief good, and live not on him daily as our spring of happiness, we shall abate the fervency of this sacred passion, our love to God will grow cold by degrees, and sufier great and guilty decays.

Reflection HI. How greatly and eteroally are we indebted to Jesus the Son of God, who has revealed the Father to us in all his most amiable characters and glories, and brought him, as it were, within the reach of our love! The three great springs of love to God are these: a clear discovery of what God is in himself; a lively sense of what he has done for us; and a well-grounded hope of what he will bestow upon us. All these are owing chiefly to oui blessed Jesus. Let us consider them distinctly:

1. It is he, even the beloved Son of God, who lay in the bosom, of the Father, who has made a fuller and brighter discovery to us what God is, what an admirable and transcendent Being, a Spirit glorious in all perfections. It is true, the light of nature dictates some of these things to us, and the ancient prophets have given further manifestations. But none knows the Father so as the Son does, and those to whom the Son will reveal him. Matt. xi. 27. That blessed person, who is one with the Father, must know him best. That illustrious man, who is so intimately united to God, and in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Col. ii. 9. He whose name is, Emmanuel, God icith us, Matt. i. 23, or God manifest in the flesh, 1 Tim. iii. 16, he must know the Father with, such an exquisite knowledge, as far transcends the reach of all our ideas.

Let it be noted also, that the blessed Jesus came down from heaven not only to shew God all-glorious to men, but to make him appear all-lovely and desirable in the eyes of sinners, by representing him in all the wonders of his compassion and forgiving mercy. Even a great, a just, and a holy God, is lovely and amiable in the sight of guilty creatures, when he is willing to reconcile the world to himself in and by his Son Jesus Christ, not imputing to them their iniquities; 2 Cor. v. 19. Such a sight of God is the first attractive of our love.

2. It is the Son of God who came to inform us what God has done for us, and thereby to engage our love. The reason of man, and our daily experience, teach us that he is the author of our being and our blessings; He causes the sun to shine, and his rain to descend on the earth; Matt. v. 45. He gives us fruitful seasons, and fills our hearts with food and gladness; Acts xiv. 17. But it is Jesus who has told us the eternal counsels of his Father’s love, and what kind designs he formed for our recovery from sin and hell, when, in his own fore-knowledge, he beheld us fallen and miserable: He has told us what eternal and unfailing provision God has made for us, by giving us into the hands of his Son, even into those hands where he has entrusted the infinite concerns of his own honor; and that he appointed his Son to redeem our lives, by his own bloody death.

This is love glorious indeed, and fit to allure and kindle our warmest affections to God. It is the blessed Son of God himself, who, by his Father’s appointment, has suffered agonies and sorrows of unknown kinds, unknown degrees, for us. He poured out his own soul to death to secure us from the deserved wrath and vengeance of God; he sustained many a painful stroke, to make a way for us to partake of his Father’s mercy, and to render the offended Majesty of heaven a proper and more engaging object of our love.

3. Again, it is this same glorious person, the Son of God, who has informed us at large, not only what God has already done, but what he will do for us; and has given us the hope of everlasting blessings. He has confirmed all the words of grace that God spake to men by angels and prophets in former ages; and he has added many a rich and most express promise of a glorious resurrection, and a future state, and set them before us in a divine light, beyond what the prophets or the angels ever knew in ancient times: He has assured returning sinners of the pardon of highest crimes, and the most aggravated iniquities; and he has secured the everlasting favor and presence of God to all his followers; for by the Father’s appointment he is gone to prepare mansions of glory /or thein that where he is they may be also; that they may dwell with him, and with his Father for ever.

Thus it appears that our everlasting thanks and praises are due to the blessed Jesus, who has laid the foundation of love between an offended God and his guilty creature, man. He has revealed the great God to us, has told us what he is, and has set him before us, in his most amiable glories; He has taught us what wonders of mercy God hath wrought for us already, and what blessings he will bestow on us, through the future ages of eternity: And thus he hath opened all the springs of love to allure our hearts to God. What Christian can withhold his love and praise from so worthy, so divine a benefactor?

Reflection IV. I may therefore well add, in the last place, that no person in heaven or earth was so proper to recommend to us this divine virtue, the love of God, as Christ Jesus, our Saviour, who speaks the words of my text: he who was himself the beloved Son of God, the first favorite of heaven, the highest object of his Father’s love, and the best and most perfect lover of his Father: He who was the great peacemaker between God and sinners, the chief minister and messenger of his Father’s love to men. If he had not undertook to make peace, we had still continued children of wrath and in the same state with fallen angels, who are never invited to return to the love of God. There is no prophet, no messenger sent to require or charge them to love God, for there is no priest or peacemaker appointed for them.

Who is so fit a person to urge upon our consciences this blessed command of love to God, as he who came to redeem us from our state of rebellion and enmity, to deliver us from the anger of God, and the curse of the law and everlasting death? Who can give us such pathetic motives, and so powerful a charge to love the Lord our God with our whole hearty as he who came to write his Father’s love to us in lines of blood, even his own blood? He whose heart was pierced for the sake of sinful men; he who came to seal the covenant of love between God and man with the anguish of his soul, and the blood of his heart! How all-gloi’ious and well-chosen is this messenger of the love and precepts of God! this blessed Prophet, who is sent from God to recommend to us the eternal duty of divine love; who is also our great High Priest to reconcile us to God! Yet how little success has the message had on the hearts of men! What a sad and just occasion of shame and holy mourning! Forbid it, 0 God, that such a messenger and such a message should be sent from heaven in vain!

Meditation.” What shall I do to become a true lover of God? Since I know there is but one God, I would give up my whole heart to him alone; I would fain have him reign in my affections supreme and without a rival. But let me recollect myself a little, and let me not deny what God and his grace have wrought in my soul. Do I not love him sincerely, and above all things? Am I not possessed of those qualifications which are contained and implied in the affectionate and supreme love of God? Let me run over them in meditation and self-enquiry.

“Have I not beheld him as the first and the best of beings? Have I not seen him most glorious in himself, and worthy of the highest esteem and love? Am I not deeply convinced and firmly persuaded that he is the only all-sufficient good? That he is the overfloving spring of grace and blessedness? Have I not been taught to see the vanity and emptiness of all things beneath and besides God, and that without him I can never arrive at true happiness? Has he not the most transcendent place in my esteem? Yes, O Lord, through thy grace I can say, the creatures are nothing in comparison of thee; nor can any thing appear in my eyes more lovely and more desirable than God and his love.

“Again: have I not been invited and raised by thy grace to some humble hope of thy favor? Hast thou not revealed thyself, in thy word, as a God condescending to be reconciled to sinners, willing to be reconciled to me? As a God wilUng to make creatures happy, even every creature that desires to centre itself in God, and take up its rest in him: O that sublime, that most excellent, that supreme Being, the holy and blessed God! How merciful! How conipassionate! Have I not seen him in his word descending within the reach of my hope? And have I not rejoiced to think that he gives me leave to hope in him, as an eternal portion for my soul, and that he holds out the arm of his love to receive me?

“May I not proceed yet further, 0 my God? Has not my wilj been drawn powerfully toward thee, and made choice of thee as my everlasting good? Have I not turned my back upon creatures at thy call, and divided myself from every thing, that I might be more nearly united to thee? Have I not renounced them all, that I might be entirely the Lord’s? Does not my soul with firm purpose cleave to thee, as my immortal portion, and my ever-during inheritance?

“Yet again, O my Lord, does not my heart sometimes go out after thee, with most pleasing sensations! O that I could say it never wandered! But I humbly hope it will never, never be at rest while absent from God. Sometimes, like the needle that is feebly touched with the sovereign influence of the loadstone, it may be drawn aside by other influences, and it is too ready to wander from the beloved point: But may I not appeal to thee, O my God, that, like the needle, it is ever restless till it point to thee again, to thee, the object of my strongest desire, and my supreme love?

“Are not my flesh and spirit, with all their active powers, under the command of this divine principle, this holy fire of love? Does not this heavenly aflfection reign in my soul over all my faculties, all my senses, and all my passions? Are not all my little aflfairs in this world, and all my more important concerns, regulated and governed by this holy love? Canst thou bear the thought, 0 my soul, of acting contrary to this inward vital and reigning principle? Are not all my mortal interests subdued and devoted to dildne love, and all my immortal interests united and summed up in it? Whom have I in heaven, 0 Lord, hut thee, and what is there on earth that I desire in comparison of thee? Psalm lxxiii. 25.

“These eyes of mine, whither shall they look but toward thee? These feet, whither shall they go but on thy messages? What shall these hands do, but the work which thou appointest them ‘i What is there that my tongue is employed in, with so much delight, as in speaking of thee, and to thee, my Lord, and my God? All that I am, and all that I have, is thine for ever and ever: Am I not then a sincere lover?

“Blessed be the name of Jesus, the Son of God, and my Saviour, that has descended from heaven to dwell with dust and ashes, that he might bring such worthless wretches as we are within the attractive force of divine love: Our sins stood between God and man like a wall of dreadful separation; but by his glorious atonement he has removed the bar, and made the way of access to God free and open, that God and man might be united in the bond of perpetual love: He called sinners by his own voice, and he calls them still by the words of his gospel, to partake of this privilege. O blessed Messenger of divine love! And he sends down his own Spirit from heaven, where he dwells, to make us willing to partake of this felicity, and to draw our hearts near to God. Come, O Divine Spirit, come, dwell in this heart of mine, as an unchangeable principle of holy love! Guard my heart from all meaner allurements and influences, while I am travelling through the dangerous region of this world, till I am arrived beyond the reach of danger, till I rest for ever in the bosom of God, my supreme love, and my everlasting all.”