“We love Him because He first loved us.” – 1 John 4:19
“The doctrine of human depravity has been called gloomy & dreadful. Aside from the gospel so it is. And unbelievers under the gospel (simply because they were unbelievers) have recoiled from its conviction, from coming down to the humble place it assigns to them. But with the gospel, if our hearts will only believe it, this truth about our entire depravity has a most glorious bearing. It helps to explain to us the love of God. He did not love us because we deserved it. He did not love us because He saw among the defilements of our character some lingering traces of holiness, some spots of light & promise, which won Him to our relief…
God loved us in our depravity, in our entire depravity. When we see this, the glorious truth brings us up to a vast elevation above the groveling of such sentiments as attribute the love of the Deity for us to His discernment of some excellencies in us which deserved His love. He made no such discovery. He loved us without it. He loved like a God…God loved us – not from the lingering attractions of our character, but from the adorable grace of His own kindness. We believing in the entire depravity of man, have this high idea of God. We carry out His love to a different thing, to an altogether different sphere of action. We make His love itself a different thing – heaven-high above all the conceptions of it which a man can ever entertain who believes that God loved us because He saw something in us to be loved. It is foundation of this love of God, on this fixed & settled conviction of its unequalled nature, that believers love Him.”
- Dr. Ichabod Spencer, We love Him because He first loved us,
The life and sermons of Dr. Ichabod Spencer, volume Three
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