Psalm 45 Publications

When our great Savior ate with Simon the Pharisee, and a sinful woman washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, the Lord approved of her actions, assuring her of free and full pardon, and taught the proud Pharisee that all who have been forgiven much will love much in return, even as this woman had shown such love to him (Luke 7:36-50). For many pages now, we have been exploring the boundless dimensions of the surpassing love of Christ, and have glimpsed the staggering greatness of even the hinder parts of his free forgiveness and matchless grace. Everywhere we have turned, we have been dazzled by the further unfolding of new vistas of glory and grace in the love of the Savior, and if we have learned anything at all, it is only this, that an eternity will not suffice for us to discover all the riches we have treasured up for us. But having been so loved, dear Christian, and having received so free and immeasurable a pardon, how ought we to love in return? Will we not wet the beautiful, nail-scarred feet of the Lord with our own tears of wondering gratitude? If we have no tears for those feet of condescending love, which staggered to Golgotha bearing all our sin and shame, then we do not know the love of Christ. But all of us who have glimpsed such a love, let us cast ourselves down with our sister, this despised and sinful woman, and open up our own fountains of gratitude to bathe the feet of the Savior of the world! Continue Reading

God’s great and final purpose in all of creation and redemption is to display his divine glory, the sight of which becomes the eternal and ever-increasing joy of his people (e.g. Isa. 43:7; Rom. 9:23; Eph. 2:7); but what is it, ultimately, that displays this glory and provides this joy? It is only the love of Christ. God is faithful, merciful, just, righteous, good, patient, pure – and we may see all those attributes gloriously displayed in Christ’s accomplishment of our redemption. But of no other attribute is it said, as it is of his loving us, that it is what God “is”. But God is love. And that he is love may be seen nowhere more clearly than his redemption of us in Christ Jesus. This is the unique and highest glory of the godhead; and this glory is displayed in us, as vessels of mercy (Rom. 9:23); it is shown in the heavenly places in God’s everlasting kindness toward us in Christ (Eph. 2:7); it is seen in how the Name which the Son of God won in the accomplishment of our salvation became the Name which is above every names (Phil. 2:5-11). “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the propitiation for our sins” (John 4:12). Continue Reading

God loved us in Christ so deeply and fully that we, seeing his great love and being overwhelmed by it, could not help but love him and all those others for whom he died; and thus his love became reciprocal, and flourished among his people who had been full of hate and self-interest. We love – both him and his Church – because he first loved us (1 John 4:19-21). Because he loved us so greatly, he loved our love back to him, and he caused that love to him to arise in our hearts, and to ascend to him upon his throne, where he delights to dwell among the praises of his people. He loves to see us delight in him, and so he makes us delight in giving love back to him who gave all his love for us. Now, we are all one as the Persons of the Trinity are one, and we all share in the same fellowship of love (1 John 1:3). God the Father loves us with no other love but that by which he loves the Son (John 17:23); the Son loves us with the same love by which the Father loves him (John 15:9); the Spirit who loves to dwell with the Father and Son loves us and comes to dwell within us too, so that we all might be one. This love is unspeakably great. Continue Reading

Among men, those who are beloved are often they who are able to make some return upon that love: we love the rich, because they can repay us by purchasing pleasant gifts for us, or the honorable, because we may obtain some greater dignity in the eyes of others by our association and friendship with them. Even in the case of truer love, there is often some lesser motivation mingled with it, as when a man truly loves a woman, and desires to please her and care for her, but he is also lonely, and wishes companionship for himself, or he longs for children, or desires the familiar intimacies of the married life, or many other such things. Continue Reading

When it comes to discerning the nature and degree of the loves and passions bound up in the souls of men, it is evident that, whenever any action they should perform is motivated by multiple desires or goals, any one of those goals or desires is lesser than it might have been. If, for example, I should drive into town to buy three or four different items, when no one of them alone would have been sufficient to motivate me to make the trip, I am showing that no one of those items is as important to me as another single item might be at another time, if that one item could compel me to make a trip just to acquire it alone. But still, there may be an object or goal more highly valued and desired than that one item alone for which I was willing to make a trip; and this may be shown by my willingness to devote a whole series of actions for the accomplishment of a single goal. I may value a high education, and perform many actions requisite to obtaining a degree from an acclaimed university. The number and quality of the actions and goods that I exchange for the accomplishment of this goal shows that it is very dear to me indeed. Or else, I may love a woman and make many trips and do many things with the single goal in mind of making her my wife. Because she is dearer to me than that one item I was willing to make a single trip for, I am therefore willing to make many trips in order to gain her. So then, if the goal or desire compelling my action is single, it evinces a greater love than if it is divided between various ends; and if that single goal or desire motivates many actions and sacrifices, it evinces a greater love than if it motivates one or two actions alone. Continue Reading

When a man loves a woman deeply enough, he shows that love by taking her unto himself and solemnly vowing to have and to hold her alone, and to reject the advances and embraces of any other woman. If he proves unfaithful to his vows, and shares his love with other women, he has terribly offended the first woman of his love, and has wrought a great crime and offense. In a similar way, the greatness of the love of Christ is displayed in his willingness to take those alone whom the Father has given him and whom he knows by name, and to make them into his one, spotless bride, whom he loves with all his heart, and in favor of whom he will reject all others. He could have had any portion and inheritance in heaven or on the earth, but he has chosen his people as his portion, and in them he delights. From all eternity, he asked for this one people, and none other, to be his bride and inheritance (Psalm 2:8; 28:9; 33:12; 74:2; 78:71; 94:14); and he has never been unfaithful to this people in word or action or in the thoughts of his heart, but with a fierce and jealous persistence and particularity, he has wooed and pursued and won her as his glorious wife. Continue Reading

The unique and unrivaled greatness of the love of Christ for his Church may be seen very clearly in this, that of all husbands his love is the most faithful, constant, and unchanging. When men love, they may seem to have a love so great and passionate that it could never die, and they may love so deeply that they become sick and miserable whenever they are separated from their beloved, and feel as if they will die if they cannot look upon them. Amnon, the brother of Absalom, had such a love for his sister Tamar, but when his love had been consummated, it was immediately extinguished as a little spark separated from the fire, and he utterly loathed her instead (2 Sam. 13:1-19). How different is this love from the love of Christ! Even the best of human loves last but a lifetime, but his love was conceived before the world began, it was born with the dawning of human time, it grew to maturity with the climax of human history, and for all eternity, it will continue to increase in its infinite fullness, so that we might forever grow in our knowledge of its breadth and width and height and depth, and still never plumb the farthest reaches of his surpassing love for us. Truly has the beloved disciple proclaimed that Jesus, “having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end” (John 13:1). Continue Reading

Another consideration by which we may assure our hearts of the greatness of the love of Christ for us is this, that he has freely provided for us innumerable gospel blessings which are vast and rich beyond all measure. Even among men, we understand that love which is love indeed always seeks to give good and pleasing things to the beloved. If we say that we love our children, but when they need an egg or a piece of bread, we give them a scorpion instead, we have no true love for them at all (Luke 11:11-13). Love always seeks the good of the beloved, and the greater the proffered good, the greater the love must be which offers it. If this is the case, then how great beyond all understanding must the love of Christ be for us, for the riches he has given us in the gospel are immense, manifold, and precious beyond all understanding! Continue Reading

When we consider the love of men, we immediately realize that one thing in which the greatness of their love may be seen is the extent to which they are willing to go, and the labors they are ready to undertake, in order to win for themselves their beloved. It was a great love of Jacob for Rachel that he labored for her seven years, and they seemed but a few days (Gen. 29:18-20); but how much greater must the love of our Savior be for us, who for thirty-three years set his hand to unspeakably great and difficult labors and never looked back, until he had finally made us his own! But no, it was far longer than thirty-three years, even, that he undertook his immense labors to redeem us – for from all eternity, before the worlds had been created, he solemnly undertook to make us his own, and for all of history he has been engaged in no other work but that. Continue Reading

It is no strange thing when someone loves the beautiful and intelligent, the admirable and worthy. In fact, a man of great wisdom, courage, and charisma may even inspire many followers to give up their lives for his sake. But Christ’s love is much greater than this, for when we were yet sinners, he died for us (Rom. 5:7-8). But consider more fully just how unworthy we are to be loved by the almighty Son of God: first, as mere creatures, we are infinitely below him in dignity by our very nature. We would think it an amazing thing if a powerful king or emperor paid any attention to us, or called us out from the crowds to enter into his private suites; but kings are our own kind, and have only a prominence of rank and position, not of essential nature. But Christ by his very nature is infinitely above us, and hence his love for us is far more amazing than any mere love of human to human could be. But not only are we by nature inferior to the Son of God, we are also sinful and disgusting in his sight; and not only have we sinned, which to Christ in his holiness is utterly loathsome (Psalm 119:104), but we have directed our sin personally against him (Psalm 51:4): we have rejected his kingly authority by violating his sovereign commands (1 Samuel 8:7); we have despised his infinite worth by forsaking the Fountain of living waters and hewing for ourselves broken cisterns (Jer. 2:12-13); we have perverted his glory and fashioned him into our own corrupt image (Rom. 1:21-23); and then, after flinging such great opprobrium at the most glorious Holy One, we have added insult to injury, by neither wanting nor seeking to be reconciled and forgiven (Rom. 3:11), and positively resisting the free advances of the Spirit, and the gracious and heartfelt cries of the Savior for our salvation (Mat. 23:37-39; Eph. 2:1-3). How great the love of the Savior must be, that he still loved us when we were so unworthy to be loved, and when we hated and despised him who alone deserves to be loved and worshiped! Continue Reading

The love of Christ is unique in that it is all the love of his infinite and divine nature; and it is also the tender and empathetic love of the true humanity he assumed for our sakes. There is no other love like this, nor could there ever be another such love from anyone, for there is no other god to love with infinite magnitude, and no other person of the triune godhead to take on flesh; and he, having assumed our nature, embraced it forever, with an incarnation that can never be repeated, but which will last for all eternity. Continue Reading

1. An Explanation of the Prayer

At the beginning of the third chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul begins to formulate an intercessory prayer for the church in Ephesus, upon the basis of the rich truths of the gospel which he had just been revealing to them in the first two chapters; but before he is able to express his prayer, he is drawn aside again to the greatness of the gospel mystery, and exults in the message which he has been entrusted with bringing to the Gentiles. This message is the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ, which in their depths and expansiveness had been hidden from the previous ages, but were finally being made known to all the world, viz., how all the nations of men, according to God’s eternal purpose, were now being brought in to become full heirs of all the promises made to the saints, and how they had even more direct access to God the Father, and boldness to approach him such as even Abraham and Moses and other great men of God had never known. It is Paul’s joy and passion to proclaim so great a gospel to every creature under heaven, not just so that many sinful men could come to know the free grace and boundless goodness of God, but so that, through this Church of redeemed sinners, the infinite and manifold wisdom of God might be displayed even before the highest angels and authorities in all creation. Continue Reading