Christ did not die to make his Father loving, but because his Father is loving: the atoning blood is the outflow of the very heart of God toward us.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that Christ's sacrifice is a demonstration of God's inherent love rather than a means to create it.
Charles Spurgeon's quote underscores the belief that the love of God is intrinsic and eternal, and that Christ's death was an expression of this love rather than a catalyst for it. It suggests that the act of atonement was a reflection of God's heart and character, demonstrating how deeply He cares for humanity.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a church service to illustrate the nature of God's love.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things.
We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
As nonhuman animals, plants, and even 'inanimate' rivers once spoke to our oral ancestors, so the ostensibly “inert” letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless - as mysterious as a talking stone.
What is that which can never die It is that faithful force that is born into us that one that is greater than us that calls new seed to the open and battered and barren places so that we can be resown. It is this force in its insistence in its loyalty to us in its love of us in its most often mysterious ways that is far greater far more majestic and far more ancient than any heretofore ever known.
We have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good - always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, 'Don't be evil' seems the easiest way to summarize it.
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