The Importance of Knowing God Loves Me (2)

It is clear to anybody who knows anything in religion that we ought to labour to know God's love for us. Avoid any who teach that we ought to doubt God's love for us. Are we not prone enough to distrust the love of God, that we must be taught it? Is not Satan malicious enough, that we must arm his malice with the false doctrine that we ought to doubt God's love for us? Satan is the master of doubts. What does he aim at by the sins he tempts us to but to shake our assurance of God's love? This is to overthrow the intention of Christ's prayer in John 17. What does he pray for? That God would show them his love, that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me' (John 17:23).
What is faith, which is the work of the gospel and grace of the new covenant, but the apprehension of the love of God in Christ? We who are Christians may attain to it because we have the Spirit of God, who 'searches the deep things of God' (1 Cor. 2:10). Our spirit knows what is in us, and God's Spirit knows what is in God, and we have the Spirit of God to show us the things of God, and all the benefits and fruits of his love. A Christian in the covenant of grace knows that God loves him. There is no truth in the world so illustrious, so gloriously and apparenty true, as this. Would you have a better pledge of his love than Jesus Christ, the Son of his love, to be given for us, the dearest thing that God has? He would not have us doubt his love who has given such an invaluable thing as his own Son to assure us of it.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
The Matchless Love and Inbeing, Works, vol. 6, pp. 388-89
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