The True Christian’s Love For the Unseen Christ

One of the most common things I hear when I meet with people who are facing trial or personal failure is that they aren’t aware of God’s love. Is God that distant from me? Is He that disappointed in me? Why don’t I love him like I should? It doesn’t help us in these times that our confidence in God’s love so often comes from what we feel. We cherish the feeling of God’s love, and we want it back when we lose it. And when we don’t feel loved, its hard to love, isn’t it?

Puritan Pastor Thomas Vincent wrote a book to help Christians who struggled with loving God because their experience didn’t seem to be coming from a loving God. He wrote the book, The True Christian’s Love for the Unseen Christ to comfort the souls of believers in the midst of the Black Plague (he had left a safe country church to go into London specifically to pastor Christians in plague-ravaged areas). These were godly people tempted to believe God had abandoned them. And they were battling the fear that they might abandon God. Vincent wrote to assure them that their love for Christ was based in, and therefore secured in, the love of Christ. As the Apostle John wrote, “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

If you have lost awareness of the love of Christ, or wonder where your love is for him, allow Vincent’s wonderful catalogue of the love of Christ to recast your vision.

“True Christians love Christ because of His love, His love which He bears to them. He loves them with a first love and with a free love. He loves them with a tender and compassionate love, with an active or doing love, with a passive or suffering love. His love is infinite, without bounds of limits; it is superlative, without comparison; transcendent, beyond comprehension; everlasting, without change; and will have no end or conclusion. He loved them when they were polluted in their sins, and washed them with His own blood; He loved them when they were naked in their souls, and clothed them with robes of His righteousness. He loves them in their sickness and sorrows, and is their Comforter; He loves them in their wants and straits, and is their Benefactor. He loves them in life, and is the life of their souls; He loves them at death, and is the stay of their hearts; and He loves them after death, and will be there portion forever.” (The True Christian’s Love for the Unseen Christ, page 16)