The love of the Father

Reading these most encouraging words from John Owen's Communion about the love of the Father...

Resolve of that, that you may hold communion with him in it, and be no more troubled about it. Yea, as your great trouble is about the Father’s love, so you can no way more trouble or burden him, than by your unkindness in not believing of it. So it must needs be where sincere love is questioned…

Communion consists in giving and receiving. Until the love of the Father be received, we have no communion with him therein. How, then, is this love of the Father to be received, so as to hold fellowship with him? I answer, By faith. The receiving of it is the believing of it. God has so fully, so eminently revealed his love, that it may be received by faith. “Ye believe in God,” John xiv. 1; that is, the Father. And what is to be believe in him? His love; for he is “love,” 1 John iv. 8.

This is that which is aimed at. Many dark and disturbing thoughts are apt to arise in this thing. Few can carry up their hearts and minds to this height by faith, as to rest their souls in the love of the Father; they live below it, in the troublesome region of hopes and fears, storms and clouds. All here is serene and quiet. But how to attain to this pitch they know not. This is the will of God, that he may always be eyed as benign, kind, tender, loving, and unchangeable therein; and that peculiarly as the Father, as the great fountain and spring of all gracious communications and fruits of love. …for the love of the Father is the only rest of the soul.

(Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I:3 [1657] )

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