The Incomprehensible Love of Christ
As we approach the theme of God’s love, it will benefit you greatly to recognize how God’s love is connected to His other attributes. When you hear someone say, “God loves you,” instead of a weightless concept, you will see God’s love as one aspect of His immensity and perfection, and this will hit like a wrecking ball against your pride.
— Dr. John Snyder, Behold Your God: The Weight of Majesty
Thomas Vincent (1634–1678) was an English Puritan minister and author. After completing his education, he served as catechist to John Owen and as chaplain to Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester. When Vincent was ejected from his church under the Act of Uniformity, he went on to assist Thomas Doolittle at his Nonconformist Academy. Vincent was known as a friend to the afflicted during the great 1665 plague in London. He completed his life and ministry preaching to a congregation in London and educating young people.
In The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ, Vincent writes of the love Christ bears to his people, which motivates our love to him who first loved us.
True Christians love Christ because of His love that 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 or limits; it is superlative, without comparison; transcendent, beyond comprehension; everlasting, without change, and which 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 the 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 their portion forever. There is great reason that true Christians should love Christ because of His loveliness; and there is further reason that they should love Him because of His love, especially when both are incomparable, both are incomprehensible.