Christ Still Loves You
Commentary
Once you fully grasp your own depravity, it is easy to believe that Christ’s love is begrudging. The internal dialogue becomes: since my sin against God is so evil, He certainly must be extending love to me solely out of obligation. This is a dangerous thought we must fight against. As Goodwin argues in this book, His heart toward sinners remains the same now that He is in heaven as it was when He walked the earth. His love for us did not diminish when He ascended into heaven.
This edition from the Crossway Short Classics series is titled “The Heart of Christ for Sinners” and is part of the RTP Where to Start Reading List. As their note to readers states, this is an adaptation and has been “edited for clarity and concision, including the substitution of certain words or phrases that might be unclear to a general audience today.” So, the first thing to note of this edition is that you are not reading the original. The original was much longer and carried a title that may even clarify the direction of his work. Titles today are marketing schemes meant to grab your attention. Titles of the era of the Puritans were meant as an explanation of what the work was about. For instance, the original title of this work published in 1651 was “The Heart of Christ in Heaven; Towards Sinners on Earth; or, A Treatise Demonstrating the Gracious Disposition and Tender Affection of Christ in His Human Nature Now in Glory, unto His Members Under All Sorts of Infirmities, Either of Sin or Misery.” Your first reaction may be that this is too much but read it again. The title tells you much more than today’s titles and actually prepares you to read the book. With the modern title, you’re left with a question…what is the heart of Christ for sinners? With the original, you know the thesis of the book. I wish we still used old titles.
Goodwin’s purpose in writing was twofold. First, he wants believers to understand that, even though Christ is in heaven, His heart is still tender and inclined toward them. His love and compassion for us did not change and we should come to the throne of grace with this in mind. Second, he wants to eliminate the thought that Christ’s physical absence makes it more difficult to obtain salvation than it was for those who walked the earth with Him.
Goodwin walks through multiple passages of Scripture to show that Christ’s heart is the same now as it was then. He gives examples before His death, after His resurrection, and after His ascension. Scripture shows that He promised to love us “to the end” which means forever, not just until the end of his earthly life. He also promised to send the Spirit and that He himself will pray for us. It is clear that His love for us remains and that He even made arrangements for our physical absence that are for our good. He is as gracious to us as He ever has been.
Many times, forewords to books are largely worthless. They are simply someone’s thoughts and personal interpretations of the book which can actually diminish what you can gain from reading the book yourself without coming into it with someone else’s biases. For this reason, I would always recommend reading the foreword after you read the actual book unless the foreword is written by the author as well. In this case, the foreword was written by Dane Ortlund and he provides some excellent, clarifying thoughts.
First, in speaking of Goodwin, he says his aim is to “take our cowering hearts in one hand and the heart of Jesus Christ in the other hand and connect the two through probing reflections on Scripture.” This provides a premise, that our hearts and thoughts do not match the reality of Christ’s heart for us. Second, Goodwin’s “ministry was one of reassuring Christians that God had set his heart on them and would never grow cold toward them, even when they terribly failed him.” This drives at the root cause of our mental disparity. We believe that when we sin and fall short, that it affects the materiality of Christ’s love for us and that His heart changes and grows cold toward us. This is a lie we tell ourselves and our adversary loves to reinforce. Finally, Ortlund states “He is not the kind of God who justifies us while feeling disgust over us. The justifying God is a yearning God, just as a human father feels a certain longing for his child when he sees his child in sin or affliction.”
The Heart of Christ for Sinners is still the same loving, compassionate, gracious heart as it was when He was on earth. Only now, He is interceding for us and has sent His Spirit for us. We are actually far better off now than those that walked with Him and before Him. This book is part of our Where To Start reading list at Read the Puritans. We believe the thesis of this work to be foundational in your sanctification and especially in your prayer life. When you know that you are deeply loved, it can give you the confidence to face another day in this fallen world or to endure another day of affliction. We don’t have to wonder if our Savior still loves us despite our shortcomings. He does and He will.
Structure of the Book
The book is divided into 2 major sections:
Showing that Christ’s Heart Toward Sinners Remains the Same
Demonstrations from Christ’s Last Farewell to His Disciples
Demonstrations from Passages and Expressions after His Resurrection
Demonstrations from Passages at and After His Ascension into Heaven
Showing the Reasons and Ground Why His Heart Must Remain the Same
Five Key Quotes
“Christ is love covered over with flesh.”
“God often orders it, that when he is in hand with the greatest mercies for us, and bringing about our greatest good, then we are most of all sinning against him; which he does, to magnify his love the more.”
“his love is not a forced love, which he strives only to beat toward us because his Father has commanded him to love us, but it is his nature, his disposition”
“rest assured, therefore, that the Spirit stirs up in him bowels of mercy infinitely larger toward you than you can have unto yourselves.”
“God the Father has given Jesus Christ a special command to love sinners and has further implanted a merciful, gracious disposition in his heart toward them.”
Recommended Complementary Reading
All Loves Excelling by William Perkins
Of Christ the Mediator by Thomas Goodwin
The Love of Christ by Richard Sibbes
The Lord’s Prayer for His People by Robert Traill
Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance by Thomas Brooks
Where to Buy the Book
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