Meditations - (Nos. 43-47)

"My meditation of Him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the LORD." — Psalm 104:34.
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43. The love of Jesus Christ, as one puritan divine put it, "is wonderful and sweet as His Name." It is indeed so vast, boundless, free, and eternal. Romans 8:35-39.

44. "the whole world lieth in wickedness (or, the wicked one)." I John 5:19b. —It is in union with him, under the power of darkness; whereas the saints are in union with Christ as the apostle declares: "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and Eternal Life." (I John 5:20.) What an immeasurable gulf that eternally separates us from the world! (cf. Col. 1:13-14.)

45. “And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” (I John 1:4.) The source of our ever abiding joy is the Lord Jesus Christ as the apostle here unfolds before the saints, the excellency of Christ—"That Which was from the beginning"— It is Christ in all His incomparable greatness and glory of His eternal Deity, His eternal Sonship, His eternal communion with the Father, and the mystery of His Incarnation, and the infinite efficacy of His blood to cleanse us from all sin, v7, etc. These are the things—the Person of Christ and His finished work—upon which our joy and fellowship are founded, I John 1:1-7.

46. "and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." (I John 1:3a.) What can be more desirable and delightful to the saints of God than this incomparable, holy, heavenly and eternal fellowship, which they are already made partakers of, in virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ His Son, which cleanseth us from all sin, v7?

47. Of the love of God from past eternity. "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us:" I John 3:16a. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." I John 4:10. This is because, the source and spring of that love had always been from past eternity, in the bosom of the Father, where Christ the eternal Son of God ever dwelt, and from that place in eternity past, too, we further learn, that His delights were with the sons of men in those habitable parts of the earth where this creation did not yet exist. (See Proverbs 8.) So the love of God is not some abstract idea, but a very real thing, which we perceive by faith, because the Son of God did indeed descend from the heights of glory into this world of sin and darkness in order that He may elevate us in Himself far above the angels by virtue of His death on the cross. (Heb. 2; Eph. 4:9-10.)

[July, 2018; Revised Nov. 2019]


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