Divine Love

DIVINE LOVE EXEMPLIFIED IN OUR SAVIOUR:  His diligence in doing God’s Will and His patience in bearing it.  That sincere and devout affection wherewith his blessed soul did constantly burn towards his heavenly Father, did express itself in an entire resignation to his will; it was his very “meat to do the will, and finish the work of him that sent him.” This was the exercise of his childhood, and the constant employment of his riper age. He spared no travel or pains while he was about his Father’s business, but took such infinite content and satisfaction in the performance of it, that when, being faint and weary with his journey, he rested himself on Jacob’s well, and entreated water of the Samaritan woman. The success of his conference with her, and the accession that was made to the kingdom of God, filled his mind with such delight, as seemed to have redounded to his very body, refreshing his spirits, and making him forget the thirst whereof he complained before, and refuse the meat which he had sent his disciples to buy. Nor was he less patient and submissive in suffering the will of God, than diligent in the doing of it: he endured the sharpest afflictions and extremist miseries that ever were inflicted on any mortal, without repining thought, or discontented word: for though he was far from a stupid insensibility, or a fantastic or stoical obstinacy, and had as quick a sense of pain as other men, and the deepest apprehension of what he was to suffer in his soul, (as his bloody sweat, and the sore amazement and sorrow which he professed, do abundantly declare,) yet did he entirely submit to that severe disposition of providence, and willingly acquiesced in it.
And he prayed to God, that “if it were possible,” (or, as one of the Evangelists hath it, “if he were willing,”) “that cup might be removed:” yet he gently added, “nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” Of what strange importance are the expressions, John xii. 27. where he first acknowledgeth the anguish of his spirit, “Now is my soul troubled,” (which would seem to produce a kind of demur,) “and what shall I say?” And then he goes on to deprecate his sufferings, “Father, save me from this hour;” which he had no sooner uttered, but he doth, as it were, on second thoughts, recall it in these words, “But for this cause came I into the world;” and concludes, “Father, glorify thy name.” Now, we must not look on this as any levity, or blameable weakness in the blessed Jesus: he knew all along what he was to suffer, and did most resolutely undergo it; but it shows us the inconceivable weight and pressure that he was to bear, which, being so afflicting, and contrary to nature, he could not think of without terror; yet considering the will of God, and the glory which was to redound from him thence, he was not only content, but desirous to suffer it.