In December 1881, while recovering from illness in France, Spurgeon sent his church a sermon to remind them of Christ’s love while he was away. The sermon was titled “Loved and Loving.” Amid trials and difficulties, Spurgeon held fast to the truth that the love of Christ is beyond description, for He is the Infinite One. Jesus sees us, His beloved, and He loves us despite how insignificant we are in comparison. “Though he be infinitely above us,” Spurgeon writes, “yet he delights to be one with all his loving ones, and of his own will he gives himself to us.” Jesus is the greatest proof of the love of the Father, who sent His Son to die for the salvation of the world. Now all people, no matter their sin, can come to the Father through Christ and receive His love, for it is not based on the sinner’s merit but on the Savior’s. “A polluted sinner may love the perfect Savior, for there is no word in Scripture to forbid.”
At the same time, Spurgeon wanted his congregation to be assured of Christ’s love, but not to let that joy lead to apathy. The Christian must be vigilant not to let their feet slip or their gaze drift. The more precious the treasure, the more care we will take in preserving it and maintaining it. “The costly vase, the product of a thousand laborious processes, may be broken in a moment; and so the supreme delight of communion with the Lord Jesus, the flower of ten thousand eminent delights, may be shattered by a few moments’ negligence.”
This Christmas season, how are you rejoicing in the love of Christ, who loved us and came for our salvation?
Excerpt:
Christ is ours, and we know it. Jesus is present, and by faith we see him. Our marriage union with husband or wife cannot be more clear, more sure, more matter of fact, than our oneness with Christ and our enjoyment of that oneness. Joy! joy! joy! He whom we love is ours! We can also see the other side of the golden shield, for he whom we prize beyond all the world also prizes us, and we are his. Nothing in the universe besides deserves for an instant to be compared in value with this inestimable blessing. We would not change with the cherubim: their chief places in the choirs of heaven are poor as compared with the glory which excelleth,— the glory of knowing that I my best Beloved’s am and he is mine. A place in Christ’s heart is more sweet, more honourable, more dear to us than a throne among the angels. Not even the delights of Paradise can produce a rival to this ecstatic joy— “My Beloved is mine, and I am his.”
Read the rest of the sermon here.