Originating Love.
The love of all who love God is a consequence of God's love to them.
I. By an act of creative power. All love in the heart is a creation; and whom God loves, in them He creates love to Him. It might be enough to see that, but we may trace the creation. First, by moral cause and effect. There is always an inclination to love those who we believe love us. If you believe God loves you, it is a sure effect that you will try to love Him; it is a part of the ordinary constitution of our nature. It is so wonderful a thing that the great God should indeed love a poor miserable sinner that whenever it is really brought home to the heart and conscience it awakens heavenly affections.
II. And now mark, it must be believed and felt. Many have a general sense of the love of God, but they cannot believe that He personally loves them; and yet till this is done nothing is done. You will not love God until you are quite sure that God specially and individually loves you.
III. But then this feeling cannot be produced by any natural process, by any reasoning whatever. Therefore the way by which God's love produces our love is altogether spiritual. Where God loves the Holy Ghost comes and shows us that love of God.
IV. Hence we arrive at the fourth reason of mutual love in a believer's heart. It is a necessity: the love of God has shone there, and it must reflect itself. And the reflection of God's love to the soul is that soul's love first to God, then to the Church, and then to every creature.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,8th series, p. 188.
References: 1 John 4:19. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. v., No. 229; vol. xvii., No. 1008; vol. xxii., No. 1299; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 163; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 114; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 5. 1 John 4:21. Church of England Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 414. 1 John 5:1. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 979.