Daily Lament

 “It is our daily lament that we cannot love God enough.”

— Charles Spurgeon

Look to Christ Every Day

 My dear friend, I am a poor sinner still; and I have to look to Christ every day as I did at the very first.

--Charles Spurgeon. 

Does Jesus Love Me

 It is a question that many believers have asked. It is often on the mind of the downcast and discouraged. “Does Jesus love me?” It may be a nagging doubt or an agonizing cry of the heart—possibly quite similar to

Psalm 22:1

. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” sounds much like, “God, do you really love me?”

While this may be a common experience for the Christian, we must look to the not-very-common answer. In other words, we need the biblically satisfying solution to such deep longing.

To arrive there, we begin where the Scriptures begin, and not with our own subjective experience. We so easily look to ourselves for the answer: “Do I feel loved? Am I really all that lovable? Have I obeyed Jesus enough that He would love me?” But all these subjective attempts at comfort are no comfort at all. Who among us has ever-steady emotions? Who, biblically speaking, is lovable in their own right? Who could ever obey enough to be acceptable in their own righteousness before a holy God? The Scriptures are clear on these points: no one.

No, the solution to this fundamental question is not in ourselves. Rather, it is in the person and work of Jesus. When the Scriptures encourage us with the reality of Christ’s love for His people, they always look to Him and never to us.

“But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (

Rom. 5:8

, BSB). Don’t miss how that verse begins: “God proves his love for us.” How is it that we know God loves us? He sent Christ to save us even when we were yet His enemies. Elsewhere, the Apostle John argues the exact same way: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (

1 John 4:10

). When we doubt the love of God in our lives, we must look to what Christ has objectively done for us, in that He came, He pursued, He sought us, He saved. After all, this was the very reason Christ came into the world: to seek and to save His people (

Luke 19:10

).

God’s perfect love flows from Him and is entirely of Him, as He places it upon us.

This type of love, a love that originates entirely in God and not in our own loveliness, is at the heart of biblical “unconditional love,” or agape love. God’s perfect love flows from Him and is entirely of Him, as He places it upon us. While we are devoid of everything lovable, excellent, praiseworthy, or beautiful, God lavishes His love upon us. He did this “in order to make known the riches of his glory,” as

Romans 9:15–23

makes clear. The love that God shows us, now His children in Christ, is entirely free and gracious, flowing from Him to us, not because of us, but entirely because of Him.

Once we can comprehend this type of love, it is a glorious and encouraging reality. Human love is so often grounded in the object of our love, which is why people speak of “falling in and out of love.” What makes our hearts sing one day leaves us disappointed and despairing the next. We can be so fickle. Then we take our ever-changing, always-conditional love, and read our humanness back into God. We think He loves like we love. May it never be. The unmerited love that God displays toward us is of an entirely different kind. Listen to how

Ephesians 1

describes it: “He chose us . . . before the foundation of the world . . . in love . . . according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (

Eph. 1:4–6

).

He chose us in Christ. He perfectly loves Jesus, described here as “the Beloved.” That is who Christ is—the loved one of God. And out of Himself, He loves us just as He loves Christ, and this from all eternity. Could there be any greater news?

If ever there is a question about whether God loves us, the biblical solution is not to look to ourselves, our love, or our faithfulness. Instead, we are called to look at the objective reality of what God has done for us in Christ. We are to ground our certainty and assurance of His love in who He is and what He has done—not in ourselves, which is ever-shifting sand.

As biblical theologian Geerhardus Vos famously said,

“The best proof that He will never cease to love us” is “that He never began.”

Jesus has loved us from all eternity. He has always and will always love His people—His sheep—His precious chosen ones. As the children’s song so simply and profoundly puts it, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” May this be all the answer to the question “Does Jesus love me?” we ever need. The answer, in Christ, is “yes.”

Dr. Keith A. Evans is associate professor of biblical counseling at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., and a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.

Love of God

 The love of God has no meaning apart from Calvary. And Calvary has no meaning apart from the holy and just wrath of God. Jesus did not die just to give us peace and a purpose in life; He died to save us from the wrath of God.

--Jerry Bridges

All Our Existence

 “The better we know God, the more we will want all of our existence to revolve around him, and we will see that the only goals and plans that really matter are those that are somehow tied to God himself, and to our eternity with him.”

– D. A. Carson

Through Faith

 We are not said to be justified 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘮 (on account of faith) but 𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘮 (through faith).

—Puritan Thomas Manton, Works 13:478

Faith is said to justify, because without it we cannot apprehend the righteousness of Christ; as the hand may be said to feed and nourish the body, but the nutritive virtue is not in the hand, but in the meat. —Puritan Thomas Manton, Works 13:477

Seeing the Hand of God

 "Cultivate the holy habit of seeing the hand of God in everything that happens to you."

-Arthur Pink.

Contentment

 “Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.”

-Jeremiah Burroughs

Not to His Decrees

 It is our duty to look to God’s commands, and not to His decrees; to our own duty & not to His purposes. The decrees of God are a vast ocean, into which many have curiously pried to their own horror and despair...

- Thomas Boston

Christ Intercedes

 WHEN CHRIST INTERCEDES

FOR ALL THE ELECT, HE PRAYS

FOR THEM THE SAME AS HE DID

FOR PETER, THAT THEIR FAITH

MAY NEVER FAIL.

-JOHN CALVIN

God Loves You

  “Do not let the devil tempt you to believe that God does not love you because your love is feeble.”

— Charles Spurgeon

Relationship

 Maybe you were told that Christianity is about your personal relationship with Jesus. And of course, there is some truth to this...

Faith is personal. and Christ saves sinners, not crowds, but somewhere along the way, “personal” became “private.” So you tried to manage it. You monitored your quiet times. You evaluated your sincerity. You dissected your motives. Because of this, you may have learned to ask questions like: Am I close enough? Do I feel Him enough? Am I serious enough? Am I different enough? You were turned inward so often that you forgot where Christ actually is. So, let me be blunt. If your identity depends on the quality of your devotion, you and I both are in a world of trouble. Our devotion fluctuates, and if the stability of our standing before God rises and falls with your devotion, you will live either proud or panicked. But, you were not saved as an individual spiritual project; you were united to Christ (Eph. 1:6), and that means your identity is not generated by you; it is bestowed upon you. You did not climb into Him; the Spirit grafted you in. You did not negotiate adoption; the Father declared it. You did not secure your own righteousness; the Son accomplished it. When you were joined to Christ, you were joined to His body. A covenant people gathered around a preached Word and a visible gospel. Your instinct likely says, “How is my relationship with Jesus doing today?” But the church exists to keep telling you that, “Christ is risen, you are baptized into Him, and His verdict over you stands.” One is introspective. The other is declarative. One keeps you looking at your navel. The other drags your eyes to a cross and an empty tomb. If Christianity is primarily about your inner experience, you will constantly recalibrate who you are based on how you feel about God this week. But if Christianity is about union with Christ, then your identity is anchored outside of you. Week after week, you walk in as someone tempted to reinvent yourself, and Christ says through His Word, “You are Mine.” Not because you are intense enough, not because you are consistent enough, not because you are improved enough. Because He obeyed perfectly for you. Because He died for you. Because He was raised for you. Because He is coming again for you. You are not on an individual journey called “My Walk with Christ.” You are a baptized sinner whose life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). and will never fluctuate.

Faith in Christ for Sanctification.

 Faith acts upon Christ for justification, as he is a Jesus, or by receiving him as a Jesus; faith acts upon Christ for sanctification, as he is a Lord, or by receiving him as Lord.

- Ralph Erskine

Rejoice in Christ

 Be humble, and mourn over the many flaws and failures in your obedience; yet withal rejoice, and glory, and make your boast in the fullness, perfection, and unchangeableness of that righteousness of the Incarnate God which will place you without fault before the throne.

— Octavius Winslow (1808-1878),

No Condemnation in Christ Jesus: As Unfolded in the Eighth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans

John Cotton: Faith

 There is no more required of you than to lay hold on Christ. He does not look for perfection of faith, but truth of faith. Be your faith ever so weak, if true, it gives you Christ, and He gives you the promise, and that gives you eternal life.

—Puritan John Cotton, Works 3:310

That which makes us doubt [our salvation] is a secret cleaving to the works of the law. —Puritan John Cotton, Works 3:310