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Excerpt: We have a blessed description of love in this chapter. “God is love.” It is sovereign goodness, coming out of itself. It goes beyond “The love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.” It is the same love, but here it is in its different characters. “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity (love), it profiteth me nothing.” It is not a definition, but the way love works. But what we find here is divine love in the world; which is such a different thing from law. It is what is above all the evil that is round it, and therefore can feel for all the evil; love is affected, but never touched in itself by it. That is what I see in its working. So we see Christ going through this world. Love is a sovereign thing. There are two kinds of love, both divine: a downward love which is sovereign in its nature—God really—which is in our hearts in a certain sense through the Holy Spirit; and then I find another which goes upward, and there is a holy affection to which I am subject. We find an analogy to it in husband and wife. Thus, where divine love is working in my heart towards others, it goes downwards; but when I get the state of my soul, I must look up and I am subject. In “walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and given Himself for us” (Eph. 5:2), we have divine love. This is the giving up of myself altogether; and then I get to God, who is the object. And therefore it is said that we are light, but it is never said that we are love, because love is sovereign, and we cannot say we are that.
Table of Contents
1. Romans, Outline of the Epistle to the
2. Romans, Notes on: Introduction
3. Romans 1, Notes on
4. Romans 2-4, Notes on
5. Romans 5, Notes on
6. Romans 6, Notes on
7. Romans 7, Notes on
8. Romans 8, Notes on
9. Romans 9-11, Notes on
10. Romans, Exposition of the Epistle to the
11. 1 Corinthians 1, Notes on
12. 1 Corinthians 2, Notes on
13. 1 Corinthians 3, Notes on
14. 1 Corinthians 4, Notes on
15. 1 Corinthians 5, Notes on
16. 1 Corinthians 6, Notes on
17. 1 Corinthians 7, Notes on
18. 1 Corinthians 8, Notes on
19. 1 Corinthians 9, Notes on
20. 1 Corinthians 10, Notes on
21. 1 Corinthians 11, Notes on
22. 1 Corinthians 12, Notes on
23. 1 Corinthians 13, Notes on
24. 1 Corinthians 14, Notes on
25. 1 Corinthians 15, Notes on
26. 1 Corinthians 16, Notes on
27. 2 Corinthians 1, Notes on
28. 2 Corinthians 2, Notes on
29. 2 Corinthians 3, Notes on
30. 2 Corinthians 4, Notes on
31. 2 Corinthians 5, Notes on
32. 2 Corinthians 6, Notes on
33. 2 Corinthians 7, Notes on
34. 2 Corinthians 8-9, Notes on
35. 2 Corinthians 10, Notes on
36. 2 Corinthians 11, Notes on
37. 2 Corinthians 12, Notes on
38. 2 Corinthians 13, Notes on
39. 2 Corinthians 5: What Death Is to the Christian