A Life Well Lived: Charity and Its Fruits (5)

Our love for each other should be "an imitation of the eternal love and grace of God, and of the dying love of Christ, which . . . was sung by the angels at his birth."

Jonathan Edwards

"Love is patient, love is kind" (1 Corinthians 13:4a, NASB)

From Lecture Five: "Charity Disposes Us To Do Good."

The main thing in that love which is the sum of the Christian spirit, is benevolence, or goodwill to others. — We have already seen what Christian love is, and how it is variously denominated according to its various objects and exercises, and, particularly, how, as it respects the good enjoyed or to be enjoyed by the beloved object, it is called the love of benevolence, and as it respects the good to be enjoyed in the beloved object, it is called the love of complacence. Love of benevolence is that disposition which leads us to have a desire for, or delight in, the good of another. That is the main thing in Christian love, yea, the most essential thing in it, and that whereby our love is most of an imitation of the eternal love and grace of God, and of the dying love of Christ, which consists in benevolence or goodwill to men, as was sung by the angels at his birth (Luke 2:14). So that the main thing in Christian love is goodwill, or a spirit to delight in and seek the good of those who are the objects of that love.