The highest love that can be attained in this life is poor, cold, low, and not worthy to be compared with our obligation to love. The greatest saints are discouraged that they love Christ so little. They feel ungrateful for his dying love. They are convinced their corruption is much greater than their goodness. The least sin against an infinite God has an infinite hatefulness or deformity in it, but the highest degree of holiness in a creature does not have an infinite loveliness in it. This makes human loveliness equal nothing. The more a person has of true grace and spiritual light, the more it will appear this way. Our best is less than a drop in the ocean. The finite bears no proportion at all to that which is infinite.

—Jonathan Edwards

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them.” (Luke 6:32)

It’s possible for self-love to be the foundation of great affections toward God and Christ, without seeing anything of the beauty and glory of the divine nature. Some gratitude is merely natural. Gratitude raises from self-love very much in the same way as anger. Anger is a feeling against another because something crosses self-love. Gratitude is a natural response one has toward another when something gratifies self-love. There may be gratitude without any true or proper love in the same way there can be anger without genuine hatred. Parents become angry with their children even while they have a strong love for them. This is the principle Christ points to in the verse quoted above. Even a dog will love a master who is kind to him. Saul was greatly affected, and even dissolved with gratitude towards David for sparing his life, and yet remained his habitual enemy.

We may, from mere nature, be affected in the same way towards God. There are many instances of it in Scripture. The children of Israel sang God’s praises at the Red Sea but soon forgot God’s works. So it was with Naaman the Syrian and King Nebuchadnezzar. Because gratitude is a natural principle, ingratitude is all the more contemptible and scandalous. Ingratitude demonstrates a suppression of the better principles of human nature.

—Jonathan Edwards

As all Christian affections flow from true divine love, false affections flow from a counterfeit love. In both cases, love is the fountain and the other affections are the streams. There are many channels from one fountain. If there is sweet water in the fountain, sweet water will flow in the channels. If the water in the fountain is poisonous, then poisonous streams will flow out. The channels and the streams will be alike, but there will be a great difference in the nature of the water.

Our nature may be compared to a tree. If the sap in the root is good, there will also be good sap distributed throughout the branches. Its fruit will be good and wholesome. But if the sap in the root and stock is poisonous, so it will be in many branches, and the fruit will be deadly. The trees in both cases may be similar in shape and appearance. Eating the fruit reveals the difference. This is the way it is between saints and hypocrites. There is sometimes a very great similarity between true and false religious experiences.

—Jonathan Edwards

Many persons spend time in fruitless labor, poring over past experiences and examining themselves by signs they hear outlined from the pulpit or read in books, when there is other work for them to do. They neglect important tasks for vain self-examination. Although self-examination is a duty of great use and importance that we should not neglect, it is not the principal means by which the saints gain confidence. Action brings more assurance than self-examination. The apostle Paul looked for assurance this way: I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. He obtained assurance of winning the prize more by running than by considering. The swiftness of his pace assured him more of a conquest than the strictness of his examination.

—Jonathan Edwards

The higher gracious affections become, the more a spiritual appetite increases. False affections are satisfied with themselves.

The more a true saint loves God with a gracious love, the more he desires to love Him, and he is more uneasy at his lack of love. The more he hates sin, the more he desires to hate it. The more his heart is broken, the more he desires it should be broken. The more he thirsts and longs after God and holiness, the more he longs to long. Gracious affections are like kindling wood to a fire—the higher it is raised, the more ardent it is and the more it burns. A healthy baby has the greatest appetite. Peter encourages us, Like new born babes, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. The most that the saints have in this world is but a taste. The most eminent saints are never satisfied with their spiritual life. They always want more. The more of God’s grace they have, the more they see their imperfection and emptiness. They know how far they are from where they should be. Grace is a growing thing that needs to feed. The cry of true grace is like that cry of true faith, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” The greater spiritual discoveries and affections the true Christian has, the more he becomes a earnest beggar for grace, and spiritual food, that he may grow.

—Jonathan Edwards

God has given to man some things in common with animals, such as: his outward senses, his bodily appetites, a capacity of bodily pleasure and pain, and other animal faculties: and some things he’s given him superior to the beasts, the chief of which is an ability of understanding and reason. Now God never gave man these capabilities to be subject to those which he has in common with the animals.

This would be great confusion, and equivalent to making man to be a servant to the beasts. On the contrary, he has given those inferior powers to be employed in subserviency to man’s understanding; and therefore it must be a great part of man’s principal business to improve his understanding by acquiring knowledge. If so, then it will follow, that it should be a main part of his business to improve his understanding in acquiring divine knowledge, or the knowledge of the things of divinity: for the knowledge of these things is the principal end of this capability. God gave man the faculty of understanding, chiefly, that he might understand divine things.

—Jonathan Edwards

Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it. If this is true of the book of Revelation, it is even truer of the Bible in general. God has opened a very large treasure for us, to supply our needs. We thank God for giving us so much. If we are too lazy to gather it, this means our thanksgiving is insincere. There is enough material in the Bible to keep us busy for a lifetime. Those who have learned the most realize how little they know. The subject is inexhaustible. As God is infinite, the science of divinity is full of unsearchable wonders. The Psalmist says, To all perfection I see a limit; but your commands are boundless. There is enough in this divine science to employ the understandings of saints and angels to all eternity.

—Jonathan Edwards