God’s Lovingkindness Is Better Than Life
“Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.”—Psalm 63:3
Forsake all, and possess all; give up all, and enjoy all.This is the doctrine of Jesus, and the experience of faith. So we overcome the world, by preferring the love of Christ to everything besides. Most blessed enthusiasm! Really tasting that the Lord is gracious, truly feeling the comforts of his love, actually partaking of fellowship with Jesus, communion of the Holy Spirit, freely conversing with the Father of all consolations—how transporting, how ravishing to the soul! With what holy indifference does the enraptured heart look down upon the objects of sense. The gilded toys of time that so attract the views, the empty shadows of sense that so bewitch the heart; yea, life itself with all its comforts—what are all, compared to one moment’s enjoyment of the lovingkindness of the Lord. In competition, as shadow to substance; in worth, as the dust of the earth to the gold of Ophir. Sense is but short-lived fancy; faith is reality and substance. It brings love, the kindness of love, yea, the God of lovingkindness himself into the sinner’s heart. This changeth a fallen son of Adam into a glorious saint in Christ, a miserable sinner into a comfortable, holy, humble praiser of our covenant Lord.
Thus it is when the soul hath found God in Christ, who is its life, its glory, its treasure, its heaven, its all. But this knowledge consists not only in ecstasy of soul and rapturous sensations, but faith is an habitual principle; love is an active grace, hope has a purifying efficacy. Not only are the lips opened in praise, the tongue loosed to speak of the glory of Jesus, but the life, the practice, the conversation, will also be savoured with the grace of truth, as an evidence that we know his love, and have been with Jesus. So we prove that he has taught us wisdom, not to prefer heaven to earth in word only, but in conduct also. Therefore, having received all from him freely, in love by grace, we desire to do what he has commanded, to avoid what he has forbidden. The fruits of righteousness are by him, to the glory of God the Father; therefore we pray to be filled with them. The works of the flesh, the works of darkness, we desire to mortify, and have no fellowship with, because contrary to love, and the enjoyment of it. “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” 1 John 4:16.
Of all the joys we mortals know,
Jesus, thy love exceeds the rest:
Love, the blest blessing here below,
And nearest image of the blest.
Sweet are my thoughts, and soft my cares,
When the celestial flame I feel:
In all my thoughts, and all my fears,
There’s something kind and pleasing still.
William Mason (1719-1791) was a High-Calvinist author. For many years he served as a Justice of the Peace, and in 1783 was appointed a Magistrate. He served as editor of the Gospel Magazine before and after the editorship of Augustus Toplady. He is best known for a morning and evening devotional entitled, “A Spiritual Treasury For The Children Of God.”
