The unknown ways of love

Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do you know not now; but you shall know hereafter. John 13:7

Our not being able to know what the Lord does should never shake our confidence in Him. I hope, dear brothers and sisters, our faith in Christ does not rest upon our capacity to understand what He does! If so, I fear it is not faith at all, but a mere exercise of self-conceited carnal reason. Some things which the Lord has done bear upon their very forefront the impression of His infinite love, but I hope you know enough of Him now to be able to believe that where there are no traces of His love apparent to you, His love is as surely there. I rejoice in that part of my text which runs thus, “What I do.” This washing of the feet was not being done by Bartholomew, or Nathanael—it was the personal act of the Lord Himself. Now, when the Master and Lord is doing it, who needs to raise a question or to suggest an inquiry? It must be right if He does it—to question His conduct would be an insult to His majestic love. Do you know Christ? Then you know the character of His deeds. Do you know your Lord? Then you are sure that He will never act unkindly, unbecomingly, or unwisely. He can never send a needless sorrow, or wantonly cause a tear to flow. Can He? Here, then, is the question, not—why is it done?—but, who is doing it? And if the Lord is doing it, we can have no doubt about the excellence of His design! We believe that He is right when we cannot see that He is right. If we do not trust Him far beyond what we know, it will show that our confidence in Him is very limited. When a person only obeys another because he chooses to obey, and sees it a proper thing to do, he has not the spirit of implicit obedience at all; and when a person only confides in another as far as he can see that he is safe, he is a stranger to implicit confidence. Confidence has its sphere beyond the boundaries of knowledge; where judgment ceases, faith begins. “What I do you know not now.” Ah, most beloved of our souls, You spoke the truth in that, but we can reply to You that we know and are sure that what You do is supremely good!

The Unknown Ways of Love, Sermon 1293 - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Photo credit: By Markus Trienke (Winter Morning) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons