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delphia > The Heart of the Gospel {For God So Loved the World} by A. T. Pierson |
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THE HEART OF
THE GOSPEL
One of twelve sermons from the book bearing the same
title.
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Page 3
Arthur Tappan Pierson
1837-1911
A Voice from the Philadelphian Church Age
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by A. T. Pierson, DD.
"THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL" in 6 html pages-
PREFATORY NOTE AND INTRODUCTION
on page 1 ---New Window
SECTION 1 on page 2 ---New Window
SECTION 2 on page 3
(this page)
SECTION 3 on page 4 ---New Window
SECTION 4 on page 5 ---New Window
SECTION 5 on page 6 ---New Window
II. The second pair of words is loved and gave. He loved and
gave. I have no desire to enter into nice distinctions, but with the simplicity
of a little child approach this heart of the Gospel. And yet a child will understand
that when we use the word love, we sometimes mean one thing and sometimes another.
For instance, suppose that you should try to get some poor criminal out of prison,
a miserable, filthy, degraded, defiled man. Somebody asks you why you do it, and
you say that you love him. Now, that would not be taken to mean the same kind of
love as you bear your mother. Those are very different loves, the love that you bear
to your mother and the love that you bear to some vile criminal. The word love has
a different meaning in different cases. The apostle John says, "We love Him because He first loved us."
[John 4:19] Was not the love of God to us something different
from the love that we bear to Him? I love God because I know him to be the most beautiful,
the most wise, the most glorious, the most fatherly, the most tender, the most pitiful,
the most gracious Being in the universe. Why did He love me? Because He saw that
I was beautiful and truthful, and lovely, and honest, and honourable? Not so, says
the apostle. "But God commendeth His love
toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." [Romans 5:8] So there are two kinds of love. We call
them the love of complacence and the love of benevolence. Complacence means a feeling
of pleasure. You love a beautiful person, a lovely character, because you see something
in the person and in the character that draws out your love.
But that is not the kind of love that we call the love of benevolence, for such love
is bestowed on people in whom we do not see anything beautiful or lovely. We love
them for the sake of the good that we may do them, and for the sake of the beautiful
character that, by grace, we may help to develop in them. So, therefore, the love
of complacence is intensive, but the love of benevolence is extensive; the love of
complacency is partial, the love of benevolence is impartial; the love of complacency
is exclusive and select, the love of benevolence is inclusive and universal. The
love of complacence is a kind of selfish love, but the love of benevolence is a generous
love. The love of complacency may be an involuntary love: we see the qualities that
attract affection, and we love unconsciously and involuntarily; but the love of benevolence
is voluntarily exercised. The love of complacence has to do with comparatively few
of the people whom we know; the love of benevolence takes in the whole world, and
hundreds and thousands of people whom we do not know, and never saw, but whom, for
the sake of Jesus, we love.
Have you fixed that in your thought? The kind of love, then, that God had for us
was the love of benevolence, extensive, inclusive, impartial, universal, self-denying,
self-forgetting, voluntary.
Now, it is the characteristic of that kind of love that it gives. We call it the
love of benevolence, and benevolence is another word for giving; and such love keeps
nothing, but gives everything that it has, and gives to everybody. Of course, if
God loved us after that sort He had to give. He could not so love if He did not give,
any more than the sun could be the sun without shining, or a spring of water could
be a spring without flowing out into a stream. And so these words, loved and gave,
naturally go together. You could not have the one without the other. There could
not be this wonderful giving without this wonderful loving; and there could not be
this wonderful loving without this wonderful giving.
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NEXT SECTION
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PREFATORY NOTE AND INTRODUCTION on
page 1 ---New Window
SECTION 1 on page 2 ---New Window
SECTION 2 on page 3
(this page)
SECTION 3 on page 4 ---New Window
SECTION 4 on page 5 ---New Window
SECTION 5 on page 6 ---New Window
For additional reading related to this
topic, please see:
---New Window
Section Sub-Index for Pierson: Voices
of Philadelphia
Holy Bible
