By RICHARD SIBBES.
I. If we consider what He has done and suffered for her, we may well say the Church is “His love.”
Beside the former favours, to speak of election, He chose us before we were. In time He chose us by actual election, by which He called us. And then also He justified us, and clothed us with His own righteousness, and after feeds us with His own body. As the soul is the most excellent thing in the world, so He has provided for it the most excellent ornaments. It has food and ornaments proportionable. What love is this, that He should feed our souls with His own body, and clothe us with His own righteousness! “He loved me,” saith Paul (Gal. ii. 20). What was the effect of this love? “and gave Himself for me.” He gave Himself, both that we might have a righteousness to clothe us with in the sight of God, and He gave Himself, that He might be the bread of life: “My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (John vi. 55). The guilty, the self-accusing soul feeds upon Christ dying for its sins. Again, in Rev. i. 6, you have His love set forth: “He loved us”; and how does He witness it? He has washed us in His own blood, and made us kings and priests. The like you have in Eph. v. 2: “He loved us, and gave Himself a sweet sacrifice to God for us.” When this world is at an end, we shall see what His love is. He is not satisfied till we are all in one place. What does He pray for to His Father? “Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am” (John xvii. 24). Run through the whole course of salvation, election, vocation, justification, glorification, you shall see His love in them all. But it were an infinite argument to follow to show the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge (Eph. iii. 19); and it too large for us to know all the dimensions of it, to see the height, breadth, length and depth of it, which we should ever think, speak and meditate of, because the soul is then in the most fit temper to serve, love, and glorify God, when it is most in the apprehension of His love.
II. It is a most invincible love, that nothing could quench it.
As we see here the Church droops, and had many infirmities, yet she is Christ’s love; so that the love of Christ is a kind of love which is unconquerable. No water will ever quench it; no sin of ours, no infirmity. So it is very comforting that the Church considered under infirmities is yet the love of Christ. “I sleep, but my heart waketh”; yet Christ comes with, “My love, my dove,” etc.
But what? Cannot Christ see matter of weakness, sinfulness, hatred, and dislike in the Church? O yes, to pity, help, and heal it; but not at all to diminish His love, but to manifest it so much the more. His love is a tender love, sensible of all things wherewith we displease Him; yet it is so invincible and unconquerable, it overcomes all. Again, He sees ill indeed in us, but He sees in us some good of His own also, which moves Him more to love than that which is ill in us moves Him to hate. For what He sees of ours, He sees with a purpose to vanquish, mortify, and eat it out. The Spirit is as fire to consume it; He is as water to wash it. But what He sees of His own, He sees with a purpose to increase it more, and to perfect it. Therefore He says, “My love,” notwithstanding that the Church was asleep.
This serves, however, greatly for our comfort, to search what good Christ by His Spirit has wrought in our hearts; what faith, what love, what sanctified judgment, what fire of holy affections to Him and to the best things. O let us value ourselves by that which is good, that Christ has in us. We are Christ’s love, though we are sleepy. If we are displeased with this our state, that as Christ dislikes it, so if we by the Spirit dislike it, the matter is not what sin we have in us, but how we are affected to it. Have we that evil in us, which is truly the grief of our hearts, which as Christ dislikes, so we abhor it, and would be purged and rid of it? And is it the grief of our souls that we cannot be better and more lovely in Christ’s eye? Then let us not be discouraged. For Christ esteems of His Church highly, even as His very love, even at that time when she was sleepy. This may teach us, in time of temptation, not to hearken to Satan, who then moves us to look altogether upon that which is sinful in us, thereby to abate our love to Christ, and our apprehension of His love to us. For He knows if we are all sensible of the love of Christ to us, we shall love Him again. For love is a kind of fire, an active quality, which will set us about glorifying God and pulling down Satan’s kingdom.