Christ's Heart of Patient and Continuing Love Toward Me

What patient and continuing love there is in Christ's heart towards His people. 

• It is written that "having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end."
• Knowing perfectly well that they were about to forsake Him shamefully in a very few hours, in full view of their approaching display of weakness and infirmity, 
• our blessed Master did not cease to have loving thoughts of His disciples. 
• He was not weary of them--He loved them to the last

The love of Christ for me is the very essence and marrow of the Gospel. 

• That He should love me at all, and care for my soul--
• that He should love me before I love Him, or even know anything about Him,
• that He should love me so much as to come into the world to save me, take my nature on Him, bear my sins, and die for me on the cross--
• all this is wonderful indeed! 

It is a kind of love to which there is nothing like it, among men. 

• The narrow selfishness of my human nature cannot fully comprehend it. 
• It is one of those things which even the angels of God "desire to look into." 
• It is a truth which I should proclaim incessantly, and never be weary of proclaiming.

But the love of Christ to me His own is no less wonderful, in its way, than His love to sinners, though far less considered. 

• That He should bear with all our countless infirmities from grace to glory--
• that He should never be tired of our endless inconsistencies and petty provocations--
• that He should go on forgiving and forgetting incessantly, and never be provoked to cast us off and give us up--
• all this is marvelous indeed! 

No mother watching over the waywardness of her feeble babe, in the days of its infancy, has her patience so thoroughly tried, 

• as the patience of Christ is tried by Christians. 
• Yet His patience is infinite. 
• His compassions are a well that is never exhausted. 
• His love is "a love that passes knowledge.”

Let no man be afraid of beginning with Christ, if he desires to be saved. 

• The chief of sinners may come to Him with boldness, and trust Him for pardon with confidence. 
• This loving Savior is One who delights to "receive sinners." (Luke 15:2.) 
• Let me not be afraid of going on with Christ after I have once come to Him and believed. 
• Let me not fancy that Christ will cast me off because of failures, and dismiss me into my former hopelessness on account of infirmities. 
• Such thoughts are entirely unwarranted by anything in the Scriptures. 

Jesus will never reject any servant because of feeble service and weak performance.

• Those whom He receives He always keeps. 
• Those whom He loves at first He loves at last. 
• His promise shall never be broken, and it is for saints as well as sinners--
• "Him that comes unto Me I will in no wise cast out." (John 6:37.)

Adapted Excerpt From

The Gospel of John

J. C. Ryle