Sovereign Love

I rejoice that the LORD has often refreshed your soul with that Great Word: “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” (Jer. 31:3) Since God's love to His people was an everlasting love, as it respects eternity past, it must needs to be free love, in that it was fixed upon His chosen in Christ before they had done good or evil—yes, even before in God's eternal mind they were beheld as having any goodness in them, for there could be no goodness in any creature but what God resolved to give it from Himself—the Infinite Ocean of Goodness. And His resolving to bestow goodness, special goodness, or special grace, upon one creature and not another, was from His sovereign love to one creature—when He passed by or did not so love another, according to the good pleasure of His will; not because God's people were better than others did the LORD set His love upon them and choose them but because the LORD loved them. He loved them because He would love them and because He would be gracious unto whom He would be gracious and show mercy on whom He would show mercy.